by Brian Lumley
She led the way to a cavern, and to what it contained … .
“Who were they?” Malinari inquired after a while.
“But can’t you tell? What, you and your much vaunted mentalism?”
“You know better than that,” he told her. “I can only read minds where minds exist. But here … they no longer exist.”
“The one was the Mother Superior in the monastery,” Vavara answered him then. “The other was the woman I recruited in that place in Romania when first we arrived here. She served me well, taught me the Greek tongue, explained away the many things that I found difficult. But she never stopped sobbing; day or night, it seemed I could never escape from her whining and whimpering! And so I put her out of my misery. Hah!”
“Was that your only reason?” said Malinari. “For if memory serves, she was also a pretty little thing …” And:
“That, too!” Vavara tossed her head. “Anyway, here she is. And as for the Mother Superior: she’s not so superior now, eh?”
While they had been standing there, a number of purplish grey tendrils of proto-flesh had come creeping across the dusty floor to investigate. Though there was very little of sentience in them, only residual vampire instinct, still Malinari thought he detected a vague query:
Perhaps this intrusion means something good to eat …?
But as Vavara stamped her foot and shouted—and Malinari reached out his mental probes to whatever was left, if anything was left—so the tendrils wriggled back, fusing with the rest of Vavara’s handiwork: an ankle-deep, morbidly mobile carpet of gelatinous metamorphic filth, spreading out in an uneven circle from a pair of slumped, sucked-dry figures that lay as if reclining against the wall. And protected within that living or undead circle, a bed of squat black mushrooms, their caps dully glistening from a covering of moisture as thick as sweat. And a heavy mist going up from the whole, clinging to the ceiling and seeping into every crack and crevice there.
And eventually: “It would seem you’ve done … very well!” said Malinari. “Very well indeed.”
And Vavara allowed herself to take some small pride in his words. For she knew that they were true and that his admiration was genuine in every respect.
Likewise his jealousy: that she had what he no longer had, which had been taken from him and destroyed in Australia …
On their way back to the monastery, Malinari said, “Something I don’t understand.”
“Oh?”
“Sara—who, er, fell from that high window—had a leech. She was one of the first you took, of course, but still to have developed a leech in so short a time?”
“But she got my egg,” said Vavara.
“Really?” said Malinari. “Another error, perhaps? I cannot see that she would be your first choice!”
Vavara merely smiled.
“Which leads to my next question,” said Malinari. “Zarakis has been your man for long and long. He would have been ideally suited to the production of spore-bearing mushrooms. And indeed, with Sara dead he would be your only choice, for who else could produce such a crop?”
“Any leech-bearer,” Vavara answered, “or any egg-daughter, or egg-son, for that matter. Or any lieutenant who had survived the years and risen through the ranks until he aspired. Such as your man Demetrakis, for instance.”
“Exactly!” said Malinari. “Just so, and Demetrakis was the spawn for my crop in Xanadu. But as my eyes are witness Zarakis lives, and your egg was wasted on Sara. So how is it that—?”
“I wasted one egg on the girl Sara,” said Vavara. “But the first of my eggs went to the Mother Superior.”
“The first of—?” Malinari knew what it meant but couldn’t quite accept the concept. Not in connection with Vavara.
“Perhaps I should exercise better control over my passions, eh?” she said. “It would seem that when my emotions get out of hand, then that …” Shrugging, she let it trail off. But Malinari understood her well enough.
“You?” he said. “A mother? A mother of vampires?”
“All of that, and a Mother Superior!” Vavara laughed.
“But … you were not depleted?” Malinari was stunned. For he knew the legend: that very occasionally, very rarely, a Lady of the Wamphyri would be a mother, a creature with not just one egg but a great many. And that when they issued forth, together in one vast spawning, the mother would be so exhausted that she would wither to a wrinkled, empty sack, thus suffering the true death. It was nature’s way, the legend said, of prolonging Wamphyric life; a mother could only come into being in the time of some great bloodwar, when the species was at a very low ebb and required replenishing and the one spawning could make vampires of a hundred aspiring thralls.
Vavara knew the legend, too, and said, “That has to be the answer. Here in this world we are so few that our scarcity must have triggered this thing in me. But in my case I issue my eggs one by one as I will it. So don’t expect me to deflate, wither, and die, Malinari! I am as firm as ever, and firmer than most.”
So then, something new. And Malinari sat and pondered upon it all the way back to the monastery. Vavara, a mother of vampires, capable of bringing them into being at will. And not only vampires but full-blown Wamphyri! Hordes of Lords and Ladies in the making, their seeds germinating, burgeoning even now inside her body, within her bastard mutant leech!
And with his shields firmly in place:
But not if I can help it! What, this new world filled with egg-sons and -daughters of Vavara, all in thrall to her, Wamphyri from the very moment of their conversion? Would I have room to breathe? Would there be any room at all for anyone else?
He very much doubted it but made no comment … why should he give her ideas? And putting the notion aside—burying it in his secret mind—Malinari changed the subject to inquire: “Are you satisfied, Vavara, with what you’ve achieved here?”
“Mostly, yes,” she answered. “When the spores are ripened, bursting free, then my nuns shall carry them out into the world. They come from all parts, these women, and the seeds of vampirism shall go back with them to their roots, new roots for a new and very different order. And until then the nuns fill my needs. I take from each of them in their turn, and every sip increases their dependency upon me. So you see, apart from my one mistake with that Gypsy girl, all was in order and went according to my plans. Well, until you came.”
“What?” Malinari pretended to be affronted. “Will you hold it against me forever that I came to you for help? Now tell me, without the money I sent you, how would you have purchased even this car, let alone Palataki? All revenue—those monies earned from the religious industry of your nuns, their needlework, art, and other knickknacks for the tourists—was lost when you had to close the monastery down for fear of prying eyes. Without my money, Vavara, how much of what you’ve achieved would have been possible?”
“Jethro Manchester’s money, do you mean?”
“Whoever’s money,” said Malinari. “But never forget, I was the one who found a way to send it.”
“For which I am grateful,” she said. “And I shall help you however I can. But understand, Malinari: what I have worked for is mine and mine alone—the monastery, my women, Palataki and the crop ripening in its cellars—everything. So if you truly desire to remain on friendly terms, make your plans, state your requirements, take what I can give, and begone from here.”
Malinari turned away from her. “So much for five centuries of friendship.”
“Most of which we spent entombed in the ice,” she reminded him. “And that, too, was your fault as I recall!” Then, when he made no answer, she sighed and said, “Nephran, you said it yourself: you’ve suffered a setback. Well now overcome it. Begin again, and this time be sure to win through. But do it somewhere else. And if you’re afraid that in the interim I shall speed ahead of you, don’t be. This is a big world, and room for all of us … well, for a hundred years, at least.”
“So,” he said sourly. “You are telling me that out
of all those many spores under Palataki, you will not let me imprint a few with my authority, my personality? You are telling me quite literally … that I must start again? On my own?”
“There you have it.”
“And if you in your turn, in some unforeseen but perfectly feasible future, should suffer just such a setback—what then? Would you turn to me for help, Vavara—again? I hope not!”
“No such future looms,” she answered.
“But upon a time, I was of a like opinion,” said Malinari. “And look at my situation now. I can promise you that even now, in London, people plot against us. How they avoided my traps in Xanadu … I don’t know, can’t say, but I’m sure that they did. The echoes of their group-mind are faint and fardistant—perhaps they are even shielded, for their skills are extraordinary among common men—but as I sniffed them out once before, so I can sense them now. And I’ll tell you something else: there was a rare Power among them, such as I haven’t felt since … since …” But here he paused and let his warning lapse into silence.
“This E-Branch?” Vavara shrugged. “But I have my own plots to hatch, and tomorrow my ‘special agents’—two of these nuns, who have served me well in the recent past—will fly to London and seek out Szwart. Together with him, they will find a way to put some small obstruction in this Trask’s way. Did I sit still in Starside when enemies plotted against me? Never! Nor shall I do so in this world. But I personally shall not be involved.”
“Good!” said Malinari however falsely and halfheartedly. “And so it would seem you have everything covered.”
“Yes.” Vavara smiled. “Irksome, isn’t it?”
Then they were at the monastery, sweeping in through its broad, high gates. And a moment later, as they got out of the limo: “Now you will excuse me,” said Vavara. “There are things I must attend to.”
“I know,” said Malinari. “For you barely touched your food in that taverna.”
“Nor you yours,” she answered. “But here in my own place—at least I won’t go hungry. You see? There’s nothing quite like a manse and provisions of your own, eh, Nephran?”
“You forbid me to take from your women?”
“Absolutely. One way or the other, Malinari, I intend that you shall move on. And all this talk of E-Branch: it only makes me that much more determined. It seems to me that you are their real target, not I, and I won’t have you leading them to me …”
Alone in his room, Malinari prowled the boards awhile. But then, pausing at a window to cast his mentalist probes out across the darkened island, he stopped scowling. Out there, a mind that he recognized.
Malinari homed in on it: On a certain young Greek, clad in iron-studded leather, where he trudged all the weary miles home … He pushed a heavy, waterlogged motorcycle alongside … And he was alone … his so-called friends had deserted him, ridden off to Krassos town in search of adventures of their own … He cursed his American, Western-styled boots; they looked good and were ideal for riding his bike, but they were lousy for walking … The way was mainly uphill, and oh, how be looked forward to the next downhill stretch!
A pity, thought Malinari, that he would never reach it.
A pity? Well, not really.
Blowing in through the window, a warm thermal rose from the night ocean. Malinari quickly shed his clothes, got up onto the window ledge, leaned out into the abyss.
A cloud of tiny Mediterranean bats were on the wing around the monastery’s towers. Inaudible to human ears, Malinari heard them well enough. Their sonar cries welcomed him to the night.
His eyes filled with blood, burning like lamps in his face as he wrought the change. And in the next moment a greater bat, or something with a similar shape, soared outwards on the air.
A man has his needs, after all. And if by chance it should bring problems Vavara’s way—well, what of it? She had stated her case, made her bed, so now let her lie in it.
And sniffing the air, Malinari turned inland and glided to his target …
10
KAVÁLA … KRASSOS … SZEGED …
The Suntours plane carrying Ben Trask and David Chung had left Gatwick some forty-five minutes late, touching down just after 1:30 P.M. local time at Kavála. And if the pair had thought it was warm in London for this time of year, the furnace interior of the spartan Greek airport had changed their minds in double-quick time. London was cool by comparison.
After reporting dutifully to the Suntours representative, a tourist-harassed young woman using her millboard as a fan and trying desperately hard not to sweat, they’d excused themselves from the scheduled ferry trip from Keramoti to Krassos and told her they’d find their own way across and see her later at their accommodation on the island. Then—little knowing that indeed Krassos was to be their destination—they had taken a taxi to Kavála hospital.
The hospital stood halfway between the airport and the port of Keramoti on the Mediterranean coast, and much like the airport itself it had been designed to serve the military. The scenario was that in any future border dispute or shooting war with Serbia or Turkey, wounded Greeks would be casualty evacuated to Kavála.
The drive was of mercifully short duration—only a very few minutes—but the antique taxi’s air-conditioning had long since given up the ghost, and even with the windows wound down it was still like sitting in a pressure cooker.
Then, at the hospital:
Though the Minister Responsible had cleared something of the way for them, still there was the ID check, the obligatory security telephone call, and the halfhearted salute from an MP wilting in his sentry box, before the striped barrier pole went up and they were allowed through the gates, past the guardroom, into the hospital’s grounds.
Finally, after Trask had handed the taxi driver a fat wad of notes, asking him to wait until told otherwise, they entered the large, gaunt, nationalistically blue-and-white square block of a building, where a nurse waited at the desk in reception to escort them down a white-walled corridor on the ground floor to the room where Inspector Papastamos presumably lay abed.
Outside the room, a heavy-set man in civilian clothes was seated on a chair with his arms folded on his chest. His chair was balanced on its rear legs, tilted against the wall, and he kept pushing himself forward an inch with his head, and letting himself fall back again. Patently it was some kind of balancing game designed to keep his mind occupied, for his expression was one of total boredom.
But as Trask, Chung, and the nurse drew closer, suddenly the man snapped out of it, came to his feet, and faced them. It was at once obvious to Trask that this was a policeman. As the Head of E-branch he had frequent dealings with the police, and in his experience (and however cliched it might seem) they all “looked the same” to him. From Toulouse to Tangier to Timbuktu, no matter their nationality, Trask could spot one a mile away. But this one left nothing to chance: he swept aside his jacket and showed them his badge, saying, “English?”
The “greeting” was abrupt and even blunt, but it told its own story: that he had been expecting them.
“I’m Ben Trask, and this is David Chung,” Trask told him. “We’re here to see Inspector Manolis Papastamos.”
The policeman, short in the legs but built like a battering ram, used a huge left hand to push his jacket even further back, displaying not only his badge but also the pistol grip of a gun in its underarm holster. And tilting his head a little on one side, he grunted, “I seeing your IDs—please?”
The nurse had just started to explain something in Greek, when from inside the room an anxious voice called out: “Trask? Ben Trask? Is that you out there? Thank God for that! Andreas will let you in … or perhaps he won’t!”
In the next moment the door was snatched open from within, and Andreas, the blocky policeman, stepped aside. After that:
It had been a good many years, but despite Manolis Papastamos’s bruises and bandages, Trask knew him immediately where he stood framed in the doorway.
Papastamos’s sh
irt was loose and hanging open, and he was bandaged under the shirt around his ribs. His face was bruised on the left side from the cheekbone to the chin, and his left arm was in a sling to relieve the weight on his shoulder where his collarbone had been cracked. He looked decidedly older—and rightly so, Trask thought, considering all the years flown between—and he was definitely shaky. But he was Manolis.
Recognition was mutual. After searching Trask’s face for a moment, then seeing Chung standing beside him, the Greek policeman said, “You two, and still thee same! Well, perhaps a little older, eh?” He went to hug Trask, changed his mind, and grimaced apologetically, explaining, “It is thee ribs. Some bruised, and some broken, and none of them up to thee hugging. Come in, come in!”
Inside the room, two more policemen were seated at a table with a deck of cards laid out in three hands. There was a small pile of money on the table; also a bottle of ouzo and some tiny shot glasses. And Trask was at once relieved.
“I see we’re not the only ones who are still the same!” He pumped Papastamos’s hand, but carefully. “The message I got … I thought you were in a very bad way!”
“I very nearly was,” said the other. But his welcome smile at seeing old friends had turned to a grimace now. And: “Ben, I need to talk to you—tell you things—and right now, because we don’t have thee time to lose.”
“I know,” Trask answered just as grimly. “I knew from the moment we got your call, even before your call, that there was, er, something of a problem here?”
“You mean thee special kind of problem?” Papastamos looked at his men, a quick glance, but they obviously didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Exactly,” said Trask. “The kind we knew once before.”
Now it was Papastamos’s turn to heave a sigh of relief. “So, perhaps I am not thee obsessive lunatic after all! But for this kind of talking we needing thee privacy, right? These men, they don’t speak thee English too well, but we take no chances, eh?”
