Necroscope II_Vamphyri!

by Brian Lumley

  Bravo! said Faethor again; but Harry remained in the dark.

  “Explain,” said the Necroscope, admitting defeat.

  If Thibor can lure Yulian Bodescu to the cruciform hills, said Faethor, and there cause his surviving creeper—the protoflesh he shed, perhaps for this very purpose—to join with Bodescu …

  “He can form a hybrid?”

  Why not? Bodescu already has something of Thibor in him. He already is influenced by him. The only obstacle, as you point out, will be the youth’s mind. Answer: Thibor’s vampire tissue, once it is in him, will simply eat Yulian’s mind away, to make room for Thibor’s!

  “Eat it away?” Harry felt a dizzy nausea.

  Literally!

  “But … a body without a mind must quickly die.”

  A human body, yes, if it is not kept alive artificially. But Bodescu’s body is no longer human. Surely that is the essence of your problem? He is a vampire. And in any case, Thibor’s transition would take the merest moment of time. Yulian Bodescu would go up into the cruciform hills, and he would appear to come down again from them. But in fact—

  “It would be Thibor!”

  Bravo! said Faethor a third time, however caustically.

  “Thank you,” said Harry, ignoring the other’s sarcasm, “for now I know that I’m on the right track, and that the course of action chosen by certain friends of mine is the right one. Which leaves only one last question unanswered.”

  Oh? Black humour had returned to Faethor’s voice, a certain sly note of innuendo. Let me see if I can guess it. You desire to know if I, Faethor Ferenczy—like Thibor the Wallach—have left anything of myself behind to fester in the dark earth. Am I right?

  “You know you are,” said Harry. “For all I know it’s a precaution all the Wamphyri take—against the chance that death will find them out.”

  Harry, you have been straightforward with me, and I like you for it. Now I too shall be forthright. No, this thing is of Thibor’s invention. However, I would add that I wish I had thought of it first! As for my “vampire remains” : yes, I believe there is such a revenant. If not several. Except “revenant” is perhaps the wrong word, for we both know there will be no return.

  “And it—they, whatever—is in your castle in the Khorvaty, which Thibor razed?”

  A simple enough deduction.

  “But have you no desire to use such remains, like Thibor, to raise yourself up again?”

  You are naïve, Harry. If I could, I probably would. But how? I died here and may not depart this spot. And anyway, I know that you will destroy whatever Thibor left buried in that castle a thousand years ago—if it has survived. But a thousand years, Harry—think of it! Even I do not know if vampire protoplasm can live that long, in those circumstances.

  “But it might have survived. Doesn’t that … interest you?”

  Harry detected something like a sigh. Harry, I will tell you something. Believe me if you like, or disbelieve, but I am at peace. With myself, anyway. I have had my day and I am satisfied. If you had lived for thirteen hundred years then you might understand. Perhaps you will believe me if I say that even you have been a disturbance. But you must disturb me no longer. My debt to Ladislau Giresci is paid in full. Farewell …

  Harry waited a moment, then said, “Goodbye, Faethor.”

  And tired now, strangely weary, he found a space-time door and returned to the Möbius continuum …

  Harry Keogh’s conversation with Faethor Ferenczy had ended none too soon; Harry Jr. was awake and calling his father’s mind home. Snatched from the Möbius continuum into the infant’s increasingly powerful id, Harry was obliged to wait out his son’s period of wakefulness, which continued into Sunday evening. It was 7:30 P.M. in England when finally Harry Jr. went back to sleep, but in Romania it was two hours later and darkness had already fallen.

  The vampire-hunters had a suite of rooms in an old world inn on the outskirts of Ionesti. There in a comfortable pine-panelled lounge they finalized their plans for Monday and enjoyed drinks before making an early night of it. That at least was their intention. Only Irma Dobresti was absent, having gone into Pitesti to make final arrangements for certain ordnance supplies. She had wanted to be sure the requisition was ready. All of the men were agreed that whatever she lacked in looks and personal charm, Irma certain made up for in efficiency.

  Harry Keogh, when he materialized, found them with drinks in their hands around a log fire. The only warning of his coming was when Carl Quint suddenly sat bolt upright in his easy chair, spilling his slivovitz into his lap. Visibly paling, staring all about the room with eyes round as saucers, Quint stood up; but even standing it was as if he had shrunk down into himself. “Oh-oh!” he managed to gasp.

  Gulharov was plainly puzzled but Krakovitch, too, felt something. He shivered and said, “What? What? I think there is some—”

  “You’re right,” Alec Kyle cut him off, hurrying to the main door of the suite and locking it, then turning off all the lights except one. “There is something. Take it easy, all of you. He’s coming.”

  “What?” Krakovitch said again, his breath pluming as the temperature plummeted. “Who is … coming?”

  Quint took a deep breath. “Felix,” he said, his voice shivery, “you’d better tell Sergei not to panic. This is a friend of ours—but at first meeting he may come as a bit of a shock!”

  Krakovitch spoke to Gulharov in Russian, and the young soldier put down his glass and slowly got to his feet. And right then, at that very moment, suddenly Harry was there.

  He took his usual form, except that now the infant was no longer foetal but seated in his mid-section, and it no longer turned aimlessly on its own axis but seemed to recline against Harry, eyes closed, in an attitude almost of meditation. Also, the Keogh manifestation seemed paler, had less luminosity, while the image of the child was definitely brighter.

  Krakovitch, after the initial shock, recognized Keogh at once. “My God!” he blurted. “A ghost—two ghosts! Yes, and I know one of them. That thing is Harry Keogh!”

  “Not a ghost, Felix,” said Kyle as he took the Russian’s arm. “It’s something rather more than a ghost—but nothing to be afraid of, I assure you. Is Sergei all right?”

  Gullharov’s Adam’s apple bobbed frantically; his hands shook and his eyes bulged; if he could have run he probably would have, but the strength had gone out of his legs. Krakovitch spoke to him sharply in Russian, told him to sit, that everything was in order. Sergei didn’t believe him but he sat anyway, almost collapsing into his chair.

  “The floor’s yours, Harry,” said Kyle.

  “For the sake of goodness!” said Krakovitch, feeling a growing hysteria, but trying to stay calm for Gullharov’s sake. “Won’t someone explain?”

  Keogh looked at him, at Gulharov, too. You are Krakovitch, he said to the former. You have psychic awareness, which makes it easier. But your friend doesn’t. I’m getting through to him, but it’s an effort.

  Krakovitch opened and closed his mouth like a fish, saying nothing, then thumped down into his chair beside Gulharov. He licked dry lips, glanced at Kyle. “Not … not a ghost?”

  No, I’m not, Harry answered. But I suppose it’s an understandable mistake. Look, I haven’t time to explain my circumstances. Now that you’ve seen me, maybe Kyle will do that for me? But later. Right now I’m short of time again, and what I have to say is rather important.

  “Felix,” said Kyle, “try to put your astonishment behind you. Just accept that this is happening and try to take in what he’s saying. I’ll tell you all about it just as soon as I have the chance.”

  The Russian nodded, got a grip of himself, said, “Very well.”

  Harry told all that he’d learned since the last time he and Kyle had spoken. His terms of expression were very abbreviated; he brought the INTESP men up to date in less than half an hour. Finally he was done, and looked to Kyle for his response. How are things in England?

  “I contact our people
tomorrow at noon,” Kyle told him.

  And the house in Devon?

  “I think the time has come to order them in.”

  Keogh nodded. So do I. When do you make your move in the cruciform hills?

  “We finally get to see the place tomorrow,” Kyle answered. “After that … Tuesday, in daylight!”

  Well, remember what I’ve told you. What Thibor left behind is—big!

  “But it lacks intelligence. And as I said, we’ll be working in daylight.”

  Again the Keogh apparition nodded. I suggest you move in on Harkley House and Bodescu at the same time. By now he has to be pretty sure what he is and he’s probably explored his vampire powers, though from what we know of him he doesn’t have Thibor’s or Faethor’s cunning or insularity. They guarded their Wamphyri identities—jealously! They didn’t go around making more vampires unnecessarily. On the other hand Yulian Bodescu, perhaps because he’s had no instruction, is a time-bomb! Frighten him, then make a mistake and let him go free, and he’ll go like wildfire, a vile cancer in the guts of all humanity …

  Kyle knew he was right. “I agree with you on the timing,” he said, “but are you sure you’re not just worrying about Bodescu getting to Thibor before we can act against him?”

  I might be, the apparition frowned. But as far as we know Bodescu isn’t even aware of the cruciform hills and what’s buried there. But put that aside for now. Tell me, do your men in England know what has to be done? It isn’t every man who’d have the stomach for it. It’s rough work. The old methods—the stake, decapitation, fire—there are no other ways. Nothing else will work. It can’t be done with kid gloves. The fire at Harkley will have to be a big one. A bonfire! Because of the cellars …

  “Because we don’t know what’s down there? I agree. When I speak to my men tomorrow, I’ll make sure they fully understand. They already do, I’m sure, but I’ll make absolutely certain. The whole house has to go—from the cellars up! Yes, and maybe down a little, too.”

  Good, said Keogh. For a moment he stood silent, a hologram of thin blue neon wires. He seemed a little uncertain about something, like an actor needing a prompt. Then he said: Look, I’ve things to do. There are people—dead people—I need to thank properly for their help. And I’ve not yet worked out how to break my baby son’s hold on me. That’s becoming a problem. So if you’ll excuse me …

  Kyle stepped forward. There seemed some sort of air of finality about Harry Keogh. Kyle wanted to hold out his hand but knew there was nothing there. Nothing of any substance, anyway. “Harry,” he said. “Er, give them our thanks, too. Your friends, I mean.”

  I will, said the other. He smiled a wan smile and disappeared in a rapidly dispersing burst of foxfire.

  For long moments there was a breathless silence. Then Kyle turned the light up and Krakovitch drew a massive breath of air. Finally he expelled it, and said: “And now—now I hope you’ll agree that you owe me something of an explanation!”

  Which was something Kyle could only go along with …

  Harry Keogh had done all he could. The rest of it lay in the hands of the physically alive, or at least with people who still had hands to accept it.

  In the Möbius continuum Harry felt a mental tugging; even sleeping, his baby son’s attraction was still enormous. Harry Jr. was tightening his grip, and Harry Sr. was sure that he had been right about the infant: he was drawing on his mind, leeching his knowledge, absorbing the substance of his id. Soon Harry must make a permanent break. But how? To where? What would be left of him, he wondered, if he were completely absorbed? Would there be anything left at all?

  Or would he simply cease to be except as the future esoteric talent of his own son?

  Using the Möbius continuum, Harry could always plumb the future to find the answers to these questions. He preferred not to know all of the answers, however, for the future seemed somehow inviolable. It wasn’t that he would feel a cheat but rather that he doubted the wisdom of knowing the future.

  For like the past, the future was fixed; if Harry saw something he didn’t like, would he try to avoid it? Of course he would, even knowing it was unavoidable. Which could only complicate his weird existence more yet!

  The one single glimpse he would allow himself would be to discover if indeed he had any future at all. Which for Harry Keogh was the very simplest of exercises.

  Still fighting his son’s attraction, he found a future door and opened it, gazed out upon the ever expanding future. Against the subtly shifting darkness of the fourth dimension, Earth’s myriad human life-lines of neon blue shot away into a sapphire haze, defining the length of lives that were and lives still to come. Harry’s line sped out from his own incorporeal being—from his mind, he supposed—and wound away apparently interminably. But he saw that just beyond the Möbius door it took on a course lying parallel to a second thread, like the twin strips of a motorway with a central verge or barrier. And this second life-line, Harry supposed, must belong to Harry Jr.

  He launched himself from the door and traversed future time, following his own and the infant Harry’s threads. Faster than the life-lines themselves, he propelled himself into the near future. He witnessed and was saddened by the termination of many blue threads, which simply dimmed and went out, for he knew that these were deaths; and he saw others burst brightly into existence like stars, then extend themselves into brilliant neon filaments, and knew that these were births, new lives. And so he forged a little way forward. Time was briefly furrowed in his wake like the sea behind a forging ship, before closing in and sealing itself once more.

  Suddenly, despite the fact that Harry was without body, he felt an icy blast blowing on him from the side. It could hardly be a physical chill and must therefore be of the psyche. Sure enough, away out across the panorama of speeding life-lines, he spied one that was as different as a shark in a school of tuna. For this one was scarlet—the mark of a vampire!

  And quite deliberately, it was angling in towards his and Harry Jr.’s threads! Harry knew panic. The scarlet life-line drifted closer; at any moment it must converge with his and the infant’s. Then—

  Harry Jr.’s life-thread abruptly veered away from his father’s, raced off at a tangent on its own amidst an ocean of weaving blue lines. And the thread of Harry Sr. followed suit, avoiding the vampire thread’s thrust and turning desperately away. The action had looked for all the world like the manoeuvring of drivers on some otherworldly race track. But the last move had been blind, almost instinctive, and Harry’s life-thread seemed now to careen, out of control, across the skein of future time.

  Then, in another moment, Harry witnessed and indeed was party to the impossible—a collision! Another blue life-thread, dimming, crumbling, disintegrating, converged with his out of nowhere. The two seemed to bend towards each other as by some mutual attraction, before slamming together in a neon blaze that was much brighter and speeding on as one thread. Briefly Harry felt the presence—or the faint, fading echo—of another mind superimposed on his own. Then it was gone, extinct, and his thread rushed on alone.

  He had seen enough. The future must go its own way. (Which it surely would.) He cast about, found a door and side-stepped out of time into the Möbius continuum. At once the infant Harry’s tractor id put a grapple on him and began to reel him in. Harry didn’t fight it but merely let himself drift home. Home to his son’s mind in Hartlepool, on a Sunday night early in the autumn of 1977.

  He had intended to talk to certain new friends in Romania, but that would have to wait. As for his “collision” with the future of some other person: he hardly knew what to make of that. But in the brief moment before its expiry, he was sure that he had recognized that fading echo of a mind.

  And that was the most puzzling thing of all …

  Chapter Twelve

  GENOA IS A CITY OF CONTRASTS. FROM THE LOW-LEVEL POVERTY in the cobbled alleys and sleazy bars of its waterfront areas, to its high-rise luxury apartments looking down on the streets fro
m broad windows and spacious sun-balconies; from the immaculate swimming pools of the rich to the dirty, oil-blackened beaches; from the shadowy, claustrophobic labyrinthine alleys down in the guts of the city to the airy, hugely proportioned stradas and piazzas—contrast is everywhere evident. Gracious gardens give way to chasms of concrete, the comparative silence of select residential suburbs is torn cityward by blasts of traffic noise which lessen not at all through the night, and the sweet air of the higher levels gives way to dust and blue exhaust fumes in the congested, sunless slums. Built on a mountainside, Genoa’s levels are many and dizzying.

  British Intelligence’s safe house there was an enormous top-floor flat in a towering block overlooking the Corso Aurelio Saffi. To the front, facing the ocean, the block rose five high-ceilinged storeys above the road; at the rear, because its foundations were sunk into the summit of a fang of rock, with the building perched on its rim, there was a second level three floors deeper. The aspect from the stubby, low-walled rear balconies was vertiginous, and especially so to Jason Cornwell, alias “Mr. Brown.”

  Genoa, Sunday, 9:00 P.M.—but in Romania Harry Keogh was still talking to the vampire-hunters in their suite of rooms in lonesti, and would soon set off to follow his life-thread into the near future; and in Devon, Yulian Bodescu continued to worry about the men who were watching him and worked out a plan to discover who they were and what their interest was. But here in Genoa Jason Cornwell sat thin-lipped and stiffly erect in his chair and watched Theo Dolgikh using a kitchen knife to pick the rotten mortar out of the stonework of the balcony’s already dangerous wall. And the sweat on Cornwell’s upper lip and in his armpits had little or nothing to do with Genoa’s sticky, sultry Indian summer atmosphere.

  But it did have to do with the fact that Dolgikh had caught him out, trapped the British spider in his own web, right here in this safe house. Normally the flat would be occupied by a staff of two or three other secret service agents, but because Cornwell (or “Brown”) was busy with stuff beyond the scope of ordinary espionage—a specialist job, as it were—the regular occupiers had been “called away” on other work, leaving the premises suitably empty and accessible to Brown alone.