by Brian Lumley
“You’ve done fine,” said Trask, “both of you. But we’re not finished yet. Now, while there’s still time, I want you to look at the monastery …”
16
MALINARI DREAMS OF BLOOD—VAVARA OF TREACHERY—THEIR DREAMS COALESCE
The sunlight was almost gone, reduced to a pale yellow stain on the walls and bastion-like towers of the monastery as once more Liz and the locator took up their binoculars, focussed them for greater range, and commenced scanning. And this time Trask said nothing at all—made no comment with regard to safety measures—for there was now a tangible tension in the evening air which would make any such warnings redundant.
“The towers?” Liz queried.
“The towers, yes,” Chung’s almost imperceptible nod, as he sent his probe spearing down his line of sight. “The one that’s closest to the road. I have its highest windows focussed now.”
“Check,” said Liz, her voice a breath of air.
Then the locator’s shoulders shook in an involuntary shudder. And: “God!” he gasped. “Mindsmog—but mindsmog like I’ve never felt it before—so thick you could cut it with a knife!”
“Me, too,” Liz whispered. “A blanket of mental fog, an impenetrable mindshield. And behind it, someone sleeping. Except it isn’t just a shield but a warning that says: ‘This close and no closer.’ And now … and now … what on earth?”
“What?” said Trask, urgently. “What?”
“It’s gone!” Liz answered. “I mean, it was there for a moment, and now … no mindsmog, nothing.”
“No,” said Chung. “Not nothing, but something … something different. It’s like … like a warm, scented wind blowing outwards from the monastery. A soothing, balming breeze, carrying the message that this place is … that it’s—”
“Benign!” Liz finished it for him. “Fresh and clean. Wholesome. There’s nothing there but goodness and even saintliness.” And she actually shrugged her shoulders before continuing, “But of course. For after all, the place is a monastery.”
“A lie!” Trask reminded her, while from nearby, the Old Lidesci said:
“Vavaaara! You’re seeing what she wants you to see! All but Ben, who sees only the truth.”
“The other tower,” Trask snapped. “Focus on the tower standing at the rim of the cliffs. But quickly now, while the sun is still on it.” Even as he spoke, twin shadows commenced creeping up from the high fortress walls, covering the towers with their gloom. And all that was left of the sun was a yellow blister on the hills of the western range.
Working in unison—locator and telepath together—Liz and Chung followed his instructions. “I’ve got it,” said Chung, and Liz said:
“There, there!”
Their probes were linked, each magnified by the other. They saw the shadows creeping—no, sweeping—up the high walls of the tower, transmuting it from gold to the faded yellow of ancient stone. Then:
“It’s … dim,” said Chung. “And it’s dark, empty.”
“No, there’s something there,” Liz answered him. “Some kind of light …”
“Careful!” said Trask, as his espers continued to gaze down the barrels of their glasses …
… Where at first the lenses framed grey light, then feral yellow light, and finally a gush of crimson!
And as if the binoculars were suddenly filled with blood—which was exactly how it had felt—they dropped them and went staggering away from the boulder. Choking back their horror and cowering down, it seemed they were hiding from something; and a single word or query—a single hollow grunt like that of some great pig—continued to reverberate in their minds.
W-W-WHAT? … W-WHAT? … WHAT!?
Then it was gone, finished—cut off as they withdrew their probes—and a wind sprang up out of the twilight, to cool the dome of the knoll.
Trask grabbed Liz and held her tightly, and Manolis went to steady David Chung where his feet skidded on loose pebbles. For all of them had felt something of what the espers had felt.
“What was it?” Trask spoke to Liz, shuddering in his arms.
“It was him,” said Liz. “I’m pretty sure of it. I mean, who else would dream of … of blood? We may have woken him up, but I don’t think he had time to get a fix on our probes. He’d most likely think the intrusion was some kind of nightmare, or maybe a part of the normal waking process. God, at least I hope so!”
Chung nodded his agreement. “I think she’s right. Myself, I often start awake. That’s what it felt like: some kind of weird awakening, like an ice-cold wavefront washing outwards from him. But a red wavefront, of frozen blood. Certainly it froze mine!”
At which precise moment:
Malinari’s gauntlet on the boulder made a metallic sound—then gave a clang!—and sprang like some terrible insect seven or eight inches into the air. A moment later and it fell inert, but with all of its murderous blades and hooks fully extended, to the marble-chip gravel of the knoll’s stony dome.
Shaken, the eight looked at each other and began to breathe again. “It’s metallic,” Ian Goodly piped. “As the sun went down and that wind sprang up, it got cooler and contracted, and some mechanism inside was activated.”
“I agree,” said Trask, his rasping voice more than a little shaken. “But while you’re the precog, still it’s an omen. And I don’t think there’s any doubt now but that Malinari is there in that tower, in what used to be a monastery.”
Chung was steadier now. Since he was in charge of the alien weapon he knew it better than any of them. “I think you’re both right,” he said, taking up the gauntlet and putting a slim hand inside it. A moment more to search with his fingertips, and its lethal arsenal of punches, hooks, and gleaming blades ch-chinged from sight one after the other, as they slipped back into their housings.
“Now let’s get out of here,” said Trask. “The light’s going and it’ll soon be dusk. The last thing I want is to be out here in the dusk. And certainly not in the dark.”
As they went scrambling their way back down the side of the knoll, no one disagreed with him …
Dreams of blood, yesss! Dreams of a life of lust and greed, and of ascending to a Lord … followed by banishment and suspended animation in the frozen northen wastes. Of the great melt, and of the return to Starside and the toppled stumps of once-mighty aeries. Then of a man of the Szgany, called Nathan, whose weird powers were such that they made life-and undeath—unbearable in what was once a paradise; where beyond the Barrier Mountains, in Sunside, the Szgany fatted in the forest like so many cattle. A land of milk and honey, yesss!—and blood, of course—the very font of perpetual youth.
Dreams of youth, and of ages flown … and youth flown with them. But a man need not look old, not while there is blood for the taking. Nor need a woman look old, for that matter.
Dreams of Vavara, and of her aerie—this fine monastery—and of the sibling horde she fostered in Palataki, keeping them to herself and denying him their use.
Oh, Vavara … you ungrateful, greedy, withered bitch! Just how many ages have you depended upon your counterfeit “beauty,” your lying, mass-hypnotic talent, to extend your existence? The years are countless. And all of that time you’ve let your metamorphism lapse. Unused, it has wasted like an atrophied muscle, become useless to you. And now like a fool you’ve trapped yourself here in a castle on the edge of an alien ocean!
But I, Nephran Malinari, shall not be trapped when they—
—trapped when they—
—when they come?
“W-w-what!?” Malinari snapped awake. “What!?”
He jerked bolt upright on his pallet, so suddenly that his companion through the long hours of daylight was dashed to the bare boards of the floor.
“What? What’s that?” She, too, came quickly awake, looking up from where she sprawled naked beside the pallet, and seeing, almost as if for the first time, Malinari’s face.
But where last night he had seemed strangely handsome when he “rescued” the
ex-New Yorker, Sister Anna, from her would-be tormentors, the former sisterhood, now in his moment of truth, Malinari was more surely Wamphyri!
His hair shone black where it was brushed back behind conchlike ears, falling like a small cloak around his shoulders. His brow was high and slate grey, as was all the flesh of his naked body and alien features. His eyes were crimson—the colour of blood itself—and his convoluted snout flared when he sniffed at the air like a nightmare hound, or more properly a great bat. But worse than the rest of these anomalies together, Malinari’s jaws were incredible, monstrous where they gaped at some unseen presence. And:
“Too soon!” he snarled, and the words rumbled from him like an avalanche. “They’re here—they’ve found me—too soon!”
“What? Oh, what?” Sister Anna’s hand flew to her mouth. “Is it Vavara … I mean, our Mother Superior? Has she heard us? Am I to be punished for my sins?” And she gasped as she gazed upon her nakedness, the great bruises on her breasts and thighs, the rusty brown web of his sperm where it matted her pubic bush and glued it to her belly. For she had thought it was a dream, only a terrible dream!
Malinari heard her, and it was as if he’d just this moment noticed her. “Eh?” he grunted, wrinkling his nose at her. “Vavara? No, it isn’t Vavara, you shivering sow! It’s worse—it’s much worse—than Vavara.”
“What have I done?” Anna whispered, her hands like crippled moths as they fluttered over her bruises. “I … I remember how the sisters held me trapped in my room. I didn’t want to let them in but they promised they’d do me no harm. All they wanted was to talk, to tell me of their plan. I was the last … I had lasted the longest, and my innocence was important to their … to their plan—?”
“They ‘planned’ to use you,” Malinari scowled, his features gradually returning to normal as he recovered from the shock of his awakening, “to break and abuse you.” He stood up in an easy flowing motion, caught her under the arm, and hauled her upright. “I saved you from being wasted, that’s all. When I took you the first time, you were as tight as the hole that’s left where the stalk is pulled from a ripe plum—and that was good. But to be honest, I don’t know which of your openings I enjoyed the most. You used your mouth to very good effect—well, for a novice.” And then he grinned a rabid wolf’s grin, so that Anna could see the split, devil’s tongue wriggling in the cave of his mouth.
But what was he saying? Something about her mouth?
She licked her saltily scaled lips, and … that taste!
Caught up by Malinari, Sister Anna stood aghast, shivering. She tried to cover her nakedness, her irreparably defiled body, her very soul … if she still had one. But she was weak in all of her limbs. And there was pain—such pain—in those several parts of her body that … that she had always …
She opened her mouth to scream her denial—and Malinari’s hands flew to her head—one to grasp her throat, the other to cover her mouth.
“Be quiet!” he hissed. “Or she really will hear you. I want her to sleep on, if she is still asleep. Get dressed—throw on that hooded sack that you wear to cover your ‘sinful’ body. Ah, but how pleasurable this sinning, eh? Consider yourself fortunate, little Anna, that a master broke you open with real flesh, and not those sluts with their lifeless wooden pricks!” Releasing her suddenly, he thrust her away.
Anna trembled so much she could scarcely pull on her habit, but finally it was in place and she said, “I must go to her, to Vavara, and repent what I’ve done. I—”
“You’ll do no such thing,” said Malinari, more nearly a man now. And as she turned her face away in shame: “Look at me!” he commanded her. “Look at me now!” She couldn’t refuse as he held her head between his hands, but more gently than before.
“Do you know why you thought it was a dream?” he said.
She could only answer with the smallest shake of her head.
“Because I took it away from you. When I was in you, I told you to forget. And now I’m telling you again. Forget that we’ve been joined, and that you’ve felt my flesh expanding within you and my cold seed flooding your openings. Nothing so … so vile has ever happened to you! What, you? A virgin nun?”
“But … my bruises,” Anna whispered, as her eyes rolled up and her mind felt the ice of his hands, his awful power sucking at her memories, erasing them.
“You fell,” he told her. “You fell on the steep steps, when you ran from those filthy, lustful women. That’s all you remember. And if Vavara or anyone else asks about me, you’ll say you don’t know me, except as the good Father Maralini. There, now—there! And as for that which you thought was a dream—why, it was a dream!”
Again he released her, and as Anna’s eyes rolled down, they gradually focussed. Then she blinked, gasped, and said “W-why am I here?”
“I picked you up, my dear,” he answered, “when you fell.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I … I fell on the steps.”
“Indeed,” Malinari told her. “But you are only bruised, and nothing broken. Now you must go, for it’s evening and the monastery will soon be awake. Tongues would wag, I fear, if you were to be found here, and Vavara would doubtless hear them.”
“The other sisters …” She shuddered violently.
“Avoid them, yes,” he nodded. “Lest they chase you, and you are made to fall again. Now leave me.” And abruptly opening his door, he thrust her out …
Malinari dressed quickly, then stood in the centre of his cell-like room and sent out his probes. It was still very quiet. The nuns were asleep, or barely waking, in their cells. And Vavara, in the other tower … her spell held true. The lying stench of goodness, mercy, and virtue—all of these things, of which in fact she knew so very little—enticed and enwrapped Malinari’s cautious probe until he almost believed them himself … except he knew better. Hah! But so much for the bitch: she slept on.
Vavara slept, yes—but what of those others, whose spying had brought him snarling awake? The roof of the tower, its parapet, would make for a perfect vantage point.
Standing to one side, where no stray ray of lethal sunlight would strike, if such remained, he drew back the heavy drapes—layer upon layer of them—from one of his narrow windows. But the sun was down and twilight gathering. Good.
He left his tiny room, swept up the stairs to the trapdoor, and let himself out onto the tower’s roof. It made an excellent vantage point, yes, and would make for an even better launching platform, when the time came. For as Malinari assumed his vampire form, lifting his face to sniff the night air, he was sure that the time would come, and soon.
The air was alive with the chittering of bats. Inaudible to others, it was as though they spoke to Malinari. A pity that he didn’t understand them, or rather that their tongue was foreign to him. Ah, but if only this were Starside, and these creatures his familiars. Ten thousand eyes, and all of them searching the night at his behest!
But sight is only one of the senses, and a mundane sense at that. Malinari knew the signatures of certain minds—his memory was such that he could never forget them—and he knew the psychic pattern of a certain group-mind, the one he believed had wrenched him from his sleep. But on the other hand, he also knew that he was as prone to nightmares as ordinary men; except his were more nightmarish yet. Which meant that it was possible, barely, that he’d been nightmaring; that in reality his shields had not been brushed by the probes of would-be intruders, would-be assassins. But he had to be absolutely certain, for his very existence depended upon it—
—Likewise the cessation of Vavara’s, the ungrateful hag.
Westward, the gradually fading rays of a vanished sun stuck up like spokes over the distant hills. That was the first place Malinari looked. Drawn by the menace that had been, he narrowed his eyes to scowl at the last shred of gold on the western horizon. But the sun was truly down and night fast approaching.
Nighttime—his time—when Malinari’s powers were potent beyond the most exaggerated expectati
ons of merely human espers. And there in the west … trace elements in the psychic aether, like a taint in the balming dusk of evening. His lips drew back in a silent snarl; his concentration was such that the cloak of hair rose up from his shoulders as if electrified; he separated out the various “scents” making up the telltale group-signature of a body of people known as—
—Known as E-Branch! They were here! They really had found him! And, of course, they had found Vavara, too. Even adversity can have its compensations. In this case he knew what he was up against, and she didn’t. She didn’t even know they were here—and wouldn’t, not if Malinari had any say in it.
But there was no denying his vampire-enhanced senses, those warning “odours” adrift and dispersing on the aether, which yet permeated his innermost mind:
The female, Liz (an emerging Power, that one, who should be dead in the ruins of Xanadu, and yet was here, albeit inexplicably). And that cursed locator, with his mind like a lodestone, or a Starside wolf sniffing at the heels of its prey; he’d come very close to costing Malinari his life, that one!
These were the principal elements discovered by his probes, but they weren’t by any means the only ones. No, for the group-signature was reinforced by others whose talents were harder to define or understand.
Trask, for instance. The one “scent” he had left behind was one of utter loathing—of Malinari! And Malinari knew why. It was because of Zek, the telepath he’d encountered and killed in Romania when first he entered this world. She had known all the secrets of these people, this E-Branch, and if he had been able to drain more of them from her before killing her—
But too late now to cry over spilled blood and a beautiful, wasted female body. Zek had been Trask’s, yes, and Trask wanted revenge—which by Malinari’s lights was perfectly natural. But as for Trask’s talent (for all of these people were talented), as yet it remained a mystery. Malinari had read something of it in Zek’s mind, as his cold hands drained her knowledge away: it had something to do with truth. But what good was such a talent against the centuried disciplines of a Lord of the Wamphyri? If one can only tell the truth, or recognize the truth, how can he hope to prevail against the very Father of Deceit? There can be no common ground, no interface, where everything is an untruth! And the Great Vampire was never born, or made, who couldn’t lie his heart out.
