Necroscope: Defilers

by Brian Lumley

  “Then I really do think I should point out,” Malinari told her, “that while you are a very worthy woman, I am a man, with all the advantage of the greater strength of a Lord of the Wamphyri. However angry you may be now—and however unjustified your anger—rage alone will not sustain you.”

  “Then perhaps this will!” She pulled a gun from her ragged clothes, but even as she moved Malinari snatched up a jerry can of fuel and hurled it. Vavara was thrown backwards; her weapon flew from her claw hand, and the jerry can glanced off her into the sea. Then they were at each other’s throats as the caique throbbed out across the ocean.

  Eventually it was stalemate. In the bottom of the boat, he clutched her windpipe in a massively strong hand, and Vavara’s left hand was on his face, its long barbed fingers hooked into the orbits of his eyes.

  “I could tear your throat out!” he told her.

  And unable to talk, she nevertheless answered: And I would blind you on the instant!

  They pushed apart and lay gasping, glaring their hatred at each other. And! “Are we done, then?” he enquired. “If not for good, at least for now?”

  “A truce,” she answered, rubbing her throat. “At least for now.”

  Malinari regained the tiller. “I’m sure you had a plan. So where are we going?”

  “My first plan is in ruins,” she croaked, seating herself in the prow. “For thanks to you yet again, a third of our fuel is now lost in the sea. It was my intention to head for Istanbul via the Dardanelles, which is now out of the question. And so I’m forced to adopt my second plan.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which isn’t so pleasant or so easy, and involves a degree of suffering.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Malinari.

  “No,” she answered. “For I see that you are right. You are the stronger and the more devious. If I were to tell you what I’ve planned, what use would I be to you then?”

  “As you will,” Malinari shrugged. “So where shall I direct the boat?”

  “Get out of the way and let me take the tiller,” she answered. “I shall direct it, for I know where we’re going. And on the way my vampire will replenish me.”

  “So be it,” Malinari grunted.

  And as they changed places: “Wrap yourself well,” she told him, “if your intention is to sleep.”

  “Sleep? I think not!” he answered. And raising an eyebrow, “Do you find the nights cold, then?”

  “No.” Vavara smiled a grim smile. “But when the sun comes up it will be hot and deadly. It will find us adrift and possibly becalmed.”

  “Oh, really?” said Malinari. “And only a degree of suffering!”

  “Perhaps something more than a degree,” she shrugged. “But all part of my plan.”

  “Then let’s hope your plan is a good one,” said Malinari …

  En route to the Christos Studios in one of the cars, Jake told Liz and Ian Goodly what he had been up to—gave them the bare bones of his story, at least—and the precog in turn told him about Millie in London: the fact that she’d been taken by Lord Szwart.

  And in the second car Ben Trask sat alone—sat there with David Chung, Manolis, and Lardis, yet still alone, or at best with his thoughts—on the one hand thrilling to the fact of Liz’s survival, while on the other … he knew it would take a long time, if not forever, to recover from Millie Cleary’s … to recover from her whatever.

  But as the three cars returned to base, and the weary band parked them, got out, and stood together for a while, with lots to say but unwilling to break the unaccustomed sitence—

  —Suddenly Goodly went limp at the knees, uttered a soft, sharp cry and might well have fallen, but Jake and Liz propped him up and leaned him against one of the cars. Ben Trask, when he saw the precog’s pale face, knew exactly what had happened; he saw “the truth” of it at once. But it had little enough to do with his weird talent this time, for he’d seen Goodly looking like this before. And:

  “What is it, Ian?” he said at once. “What have you seen?”

  “Damn this thing!” Goodly straightened up and took a deep breath. “When I want it I get nothing. But the moment I relax, right out of the blue—” He stared directly into Trask’s eyes. “She was in your thoughts, right? And in mine. And that’s what prompted it.”

  “She?” said Trask, not daring to hope. “She?”

  “It was Millie, Ben,” Goodly told him. “I saw Millie!”

  “Millie?” Trask’s jaw fell open. “How? Where? When?”

  “It was close,” the precog answered. “The immediate future, I think. But she’s alive, Ben—she is alive!”

  “Where alive, for God’s sake?” The Head of Branch looked as if he was about to start dancing now, shifting from one foot to the other and back again in his nervous anxiety.

  “I don’t know,” Goodly answered. “A dark place, and Ben—there was a darker shadow, a shape, a thing, close behind her. Millie was very frightened. She was reaching out … for Liz?” He turned to look at Liz, and nodded. “Yes, for Liz. And Jake was there, too.”

  “What?” Trask’s eyes opened wider yet. “Jake was there? My God! But of course he was!” He grabbed hold of Jake’s arm.

  But before he could say another word: “It’s okay,” Jake told him. “It’s okay. If it can be done, we’ll do it. And I’m ready when you are.”

  And speaking as one Liz and Chung said, “That goes for me, too …”

  Jake made two Mobius trips to London and transported Trask and the E-Branch crew back to their HQ. Once there, it took just a few minutes to kit him out with the equipment he required, and the rest was up to Liz and the locator.

  By 12:35 A.M. local time, the giant screen in the Ops Room was displaying a detailed map of London’s subterranean systems, and Chung was standing before it with various items of Millie’s personal belongings—a ballpoint Paper-Mate pen, a small hand mirror she used when applying her makeup, a lipstick in a silver-plated holder—close to hand on a desk. Liz stood beside him, bruised but undefeated, ready at a moment’s notice to add her own special skills to his.

  And with Trask and Jake looking on, the locator placed his left hand on Millie’s things and the widespread fingers of his right hand on the map. Then:

  It was as if his hand was drawn to a certain spot: central London between Waterloo and the Embankment. And, “This is it!” he whispered, as his index finger began vibrating like a water diviner’s hazel twig. “Millie’s there but deep, deep down. Too deep for me to gauge, and far deeper than anything we’ve known about before, that’s for sure. It’s beyond me to explain it. I can tell you this, though: she’s reaching for us, else I don’t think I could have found her so quickly. But there’s a hell of a lot of interference—mindsmog! She’s not alone down there, or something’s so close it makes no difference—and it’s not too hard to guess what or who it is! I don’t think that he has detected my probe, but his mere presence is fogging everything up, making it hard to maintain contact.”

  “Keep trying,” Liz told him, placing her left hand on top of his on Millie’s things. “Just stay with it and guide me to her, and if she’s trying to reach us I should be able to tell. Telepathically speaking, we’ve ‘rubbed shoulders’ fairly frequently, Millie and I. I’d know her signature anywhere. And if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s receiving.”

  “God almighty!” Trask kept groaning, whispering to himself over and over again where he stood a few paces apart with Jake. “Good God almighty!”

  And: “Take it easy,” Jake whispered back, but to no avail. “Just try to relax and take it easy.”

  “But that’s Millie they’re talking about,” Trask answered, a little louder now. “It’s Millie …”

  “Yes—yes it is!” said Liz. “It’s Millie, reaching out to us. And I think … I think I’ve got her! I can’t read her … only her fear, making my—ugh!—making my flesh creep! And the mindsmog is … it’s overwhelming! But I’ve got her.”

&nbs
p; “The coordinates?” said Jake, moving to her side and placing his hand on top of hers and the locator’s. And immediately he was into her mind, reading what she read, and knowing where Millie was.

  Liz knew what he would do—what he was here to do—and said, “I’ll go with you.”

  But Jake shook his head. “Haven’t you had enough of danger tonight? You’ve done your bit, Liz. Now it’s my turn.”

  He looked at Trask—as haggard a sight as ever he’d seen—who simply nodded and said, “Bring her back to me, Jake, and I’ll ask nothing more of you ever again.”

  “Whatever,” Jake answered. “But if it all works out, there may well be something I’ll ask of you.”

  “Anything,” said Trask. And then, frowning: “But I thought you’d solved your problem?”

  “One of them, yes,” Jake answered. “Maybe we’ll be able to talk about it later—I hope.”

  A moment later, a final glance at Liz where she stood biting her lip, and Jake turned to his right, took a pace forward, and was gone …

  In the Möbius Continuum, Jake asked Korath, Will you help me?

  Against Szwart? Korath answered. No one can help you! Trust to luck and your weapons. Szwart saw such used on Starside, and they worried him considerably. My best advice: get in, find the woman, and get out! Don’t go up against Szwart—not on his own ground. Avoid him if at all possible, and if not—run!

  But if I needed your help, Jake pressed him, you’d give it to me?

  Of course, said Korath sourly. What bappens to you happens to me, remember? If you die, I die, and return to my sump. I’ve tried that once and didn’t much like it! So the answer is yes—of my own free will I’ll help you—if needs be. But don’t play me for a fool Jake, and don’t for a moment think I didn’t understand what you were saying to Trash about your “other” problem. Hah! So despite that we are now one, still I’m obliged to be on my guard. Well, so be it.

  Following which, only one thing remained to be said. And as the coordinates firmed up in Jake’s mind and he made a door, he said it: Be on your guard now then, Korath, for we’re there …

  Jake’s torch was strapped to his forehead like a miner’s lamp; pausing before stepping out through the invisible frame of his door, he switched it on. And with the strong, broad white beam penetrating an otherwise stygian darkness, he emerged onto the hexagonal stone flags of that place of long-forgotten esoteric worship, abandoned more than eighteen hundred years ago by its Roman sect members.

  Millicent Cleary was there but Jake didn’t at once see her; she was huddled behind the raised sacrificial dais, making herself as small as possible. But while Jake didn’t see Millie, he couldn’t help but see the giant, roughly hewn statues of Mithra and Summanus were they stood in a row with others of their pantheon. And as the beam of his torch threw the carven gods into monstrous, almost living relief and their shadows moved on the wall of the cave, he fell into a defensive crouch.

  Jake’s heart quickened; his finger went to the trigger of his flamethrower; he applied a half-pressure and saw the pilot light flare up a little, and only at the last moment recognized the true nature of what he was seeing. But taking a deep, grateful breath as he straightened up, he was suddenly aware of what seemed to be furtive movement. And now he wheeled in the direction of the sacrificial slab.

  And there was furtive movement, but in no way hostile.

  Having seen the glare of Jake’s torch as he swept the cave, Millie had got to her knees behind the dais, drawing herself up until her white face edged up over the rim. In the split second before she ducked down again, Jake saw her eyes—the perfectly normal eyes of a very frightened woman—blinking in the harsh glare of his torch. And as she disappeared he said, “Millie? Is that you?”

  “What?” Her small whisper reached him “Who? I mean, yes—yes, it’s me.” Trembling in every limb she managed to stand up, and Jake saw that she was exhausted, staggering. “But who—I mean, who are you? Not that it matters much, as long as you’re really here.”

  “It’s Jake,” he answered, as it dawned on him how he must look to her in his combat suit, still streaked and dirty, with a lamp glaring on his forehead, the flamethrower’s cylinder on his back, and half-a-dozen grenades attached to his belt. “Jake Cutter—from E-Branch.” Finally he had accepted it: he really was one of the team now.

  “Jake?” she said, emerging from behind the dais. “Oh, thank God!”

  They moved together and she clung to him for a moment. Then he said, “Where is he? Where’s Szwart?”

  “Enlarging his flue, I think,” she answered, her body shuddering against his. “He didn’t think the wind was strong enough for the job.” And she quickly explained her meaning.

  Wally Fovargue’s lamp was still flickering under the arched entrance to the cave of the garden. With Millie cowering behind him, Jake went to it, took it up, and handed it to her. “Turn it up full,” he told her. “The brighter the better.” Then, passing beneath the arch, he saw the garden’s ignis fatuus bioluminescence—and in the next moment saw the garden itself.

  And clinging to his combat jacket, almost holding him back, Millie said, “Is that what you saw under the casino in Xanadu?”

  “It’s much the same,” Jake nodded grimly. “And this is what I did to it!”

  His intentions—his thoughts—were crystal clear in his metaphysical mind, and of course they were deadspeak. And even as he applied first pressure to the trigger of his flamethrower, so they were heard and answered:

  Don’t! said an unknown deadspeak voice. Don’t you use that weapon! There’s methane darn ‘ere—marsh gas, firedamp, call it what yer will; the gas given off by rotten vegetation, sbit, an’ all the dead dogs an’ cats what’s been washed darn ’ere since forever—an’ you could blow yerse/f to ‘ell just as easy as that!

  Jake eased his finger off the trigger, and speaking out loud said, “What? Who are you?”

  “Eh?” said Millie from behind him.

  “Nothing,” Jake told her, and switched to deadspeak. Who is it? And if what you say is true, why hasn’t the oil lamp set it off, or the pilot light of my flamethrower?

  It’s in pockets, streams, said the other. When yer see that there pilot light flare up an’ sputter, that’s ’cause it’s in the air—an’ the same goes for my old lamp. But if yer fires that flamethrower thingy, chances are yer’d get a kind o’ chain, er, a chain—

  A chain-reaction? Jake prompted him.

  Right, said the other. As for who I am: Wallace Fovargue is who I was. Then Szwart killed me ’cause I was … well I was hinterested in the woman.

  Jake looked at Liz. “Wallace Fovergue?”

  “An ugly, diseased little dwarf,” she told him, picking the reason for Jake’s question right out of his mind. “He was a flusher; he worked in London’s sewers. Szwart killed him, and I think he ended up there,” she pointed a trembling hand, “in the heart of that dreadful garden. But Jake, there’s something else you should know. Something more important.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve been keeping tabs on Szwart—telepathically, I mean. I could sense him up there somewhere, working on enlarging this flue thing. You’ll have noticed that the current of air flowing over these fungi is stronger now?”

  “I noticed,” said Jake.

  “When these mushrooms spawn the wind will lift their spores up to the surface through the tubes and into London. But just a moment ago, I lost contact with him. I think Szwart’s shielding himself, which probably means he’s ‘heard’ me talking to you. I don’t think we have much time left down here.”

  “He’s on his way back?”

  “That’s my best guess,” she answered.

  ‘Ere, whoever you are! said Wally. Are yer still listenin’?

  Yes, Jake told him, but make it quick.

  ’Ow’d yer get darn ere? Wally was curious. I mean, I knows every bloody tunnel an’ pipe an’ sewer from ’ere to the surface, an’ I could never ’ave done it so
quick!

  It’s a trick I do, said Jake. And in a matter of seconds—using a kaleidoscopic series of scenes straight out of his mind—he showed Wally something that words couldn’t have explained in the same number of hours.

  An’ you talk ter dead folks, too, said Wally, wonderingly.

  Er, dead folks … well, they’re my friends, said Jake.

  Does that include me? said Wally. I mean, for all that I’ve been … yer know, a bit of a lad?

  Millie hadn’t told Jake how much a bit of a lad, but in any case the Necroscope would feel sorry for anyone who ended up in this kind of mess. And so he shrugged and answered, No point in being your enemy, Wally. Not now that … well, not any longer.

  See, said Wally, I can feel myself gettin’ all used up. The garden is suckin’ on me, an’ soon I’ll be gone. But I reckon ’e was wrong to do this to me. I never did ‘im no ’arm.

  You’d like to help me, said Jake. Is that it? You know something that can help me?

  ’Elp you? said Wally. I can more than ’elp you. I knows ’ow yer can blow that bastard Thing and ’is fuckin’ garden away for good, that’s all! (There was a sob in his deadspeak voice now.) I mean, Szwart’s fuckin’ toadstools are leechin’ on me, suckin’ me away to nothin’ at all! But you can stop ’im, Jake—you can stop ’im. It’s the gas, yer see—it’s the gas!

  “Jake,” said Millie, tugging at his jacket. “A moment ago I felt Szwart’s probe. He’s coming, Jake! And any time now, he’ll be here!”

  “Okay,” he answered. “I‘ll get you out of here, then return and finish up.”