by Brian Lumley
“My God!” Jordan whispered, swaying a little as he looked all around at the night street.
Harry thought: God? The Möbius Continuum? Well, and you could be right. August Ferdinand thinks so, anyway! He steadied the telepath and said, “I know. It’s a weird sensation, isn’t it?”
Jordan looked at Harry and felt himself in awe of him. He talked about the immundane, the utterly unbelievable, as if it were merely odd. But finally Jordan gathered his senses to say, “Nice shot, Harry. That’s Darcy’s place right there.”
They let themselves in through the garden gate and walked up a path between the shrubs. The glowing white globe of a lamp drew a cloud of moths where it hung like a small moon over the front door. Harry directed Jordan to stand to one side, put on his dark glasses, and pushed the doorbell; in a little while footsteps sounded from within.
The door was equipped with a peephole lens; Clarke used it and saw Harry standing on his doorstep, staring right at him. His talent made no objection as he opened the door, which told him a lot. “Harry!” he said. “Come in, come in!”
“Darcy,” Harry said, taking hold of his arm, “Listen, take it easy—but there’s someone with me.”
“Someone with—?” Darcy started to say as Jordan stepped into view. He saw him and said, “Trevor … ?” Then he started violently and took a pace to the rear. Harry, following him in, said:
“It’s okay, it’s okay!”
“Trevor!” Clarke breathed, his eyes bulging in his suddenly pale face. “Trevor Jordan! Oh, my God! Oh, sweet Jesus!”
Harry wished people wouldn’t keep using these Names of Power so casually, but on this occasion he understood and made nothing of it.
Trevor Jordan pushed past Harry and took Clarke’s other arm; Clarke at once strained back and away from both of them. But again it was a “normal” reaction, nothing to do with his talent. Jordan said, “Darcy, it really is me. And I’m okay.”
“Okay?” Clarke’s mouth opened and closed and the word came out like a croak. He tried again. “Really you? Yes, I can see that. But I know you’re dead. I was with you in that Rhodes hospital, remember, when you put a bullet in your brain!”
Harry said, “Can we go inside, sit down, talk?”
“Talk?” Clarke looked at him—at both of them—as if they were mad, or as if he was. But then he nodded. “Sure, why not? And then I might wake up!”
In the living room Clarke pointed to chairs, poured drinks like a robot, actually apologizing for the untidiness, and said he wasn’t quite settled in yet. And then he very carefully sat down and tossed back his large whiskey in one … and at once sprang to his feet again and said, “So for fuck’s sake, talk! Convince me that I haven’t cracked!”
Harry calmed him down and very quickly explained everything—or almost everything—but without going into the fine details. And when he was through: “So we’ve come to see you to find out what’s going on, what it is that you and E-Branch are up to. Actually, I’m pretty sure I already know. So I’m counting on you to keep them off my back until I get done with what I’m pledged to do.”
Finally, Clarke closed his mouth and turned to stare hard at Jordan. Jordan, yes—looking exactly as Clarke had always known him—but still he took the other’s hand and squeezed it, and stared even harder just to be one hundred percent sure. But in the end there was no way round it, this could only be Trevor Jordan. The telepath suffered Clarke’s astonished scrutiny and made no complaint as this old friend of so many years standing checked him out, checked every well-remembered line of his face and form.
Jordan’s face was fresh, oval, and open, and with his fair, thinning hair falling forward over grey eyes, it would normally look boyish; except that now it was lined with worry and not a little astonishment of its own. His feelings were reflected in the line of his mouth: naturally crooked, it would tighten and straighten out if something was wrong. Which was how it looked now, straight and tight. Well, and Clarke would well understand that.
And Clarke thought: Good old easygoing Trevor! Transparent as a window, readable as an open book. Such has always been your guise, anyway. As if you’d like people to be able to read you as easily as you read them, like you were trying to compensate for your metaphysical talent, or even apologize for it. Trevor Jordan: sensitive but always determined, I never met the man who didn’t like you. And if there was such a one, why, you’d simply avoid him. And if you really are you, you’ll know exactly what I’m thinking.
Jordan grinned and said, “You missed out the handsome, rangy-limbed, athletic bit! But what’s this about ‘boyish’? Are you calling me a big kid, Darcy?”
Clarke sat back in his chair and touched his feverish brow with a trembling hand. He didn’t know which one of them to look at, Harry Keogh or Trevor Jordan. Finally, he said, “What can I say? Except … welcome back, Trevor!”
After more drinks, it was Darcy’s turn. He told them what he knew, which wasn’t much, and finished up:
“So Paxton must have reported how I sent you the files on those girls, Harry, which was sufficient to get me suspended. As for them coming after you: you know how the Branch works almost as well as I do. Of course they’ll be coming after you, sooner or later.”
Trevor said, “And me?”
“No,” Darcy told him, “because tomorrow first thing, I’ll go into town and put them in the picture. I could phone the Minister Responsible right now, but at this hour he wouldn’t thank me for that. So I’ll go in and speak to everyone who is anyone in E-Branch, and make sure they fully understand what’s going on. It might do the trick and get them off Harry’s back for a while.”
“I hope it gets them off my back,” said the Necroscope unemotionally. “I really do.” And he took off his dark-lensed glasses and asked Darcy to dim the lights.
When E-Branch’s suspended boss saw Harry’s face in the darkened room, he quietly said, “Harry, I hope so, too … for their sake, every last one of them!”
Harry supposed that Darcy was genuine, supposed he was one of only a very few men in the entire world whom he could trust; but the Necroscope’s vampire weirdness was strong in him now, and looking at Darcy Clarke he saw a man who was half friend and half enemy. Harry couldn’t read the future, not with any certainty—and in any case he knew that prognostication was a dangerous game, fraught with paradoxes—but he could make a damn good guess at what was coming. If he had to stay here in this world longer than he’d planned, if this task he’d set himself took longer than just a few more days, then it could well be that Darcy would be obliged to join the other team. Darcy was an expert, and as Harry’s metamorphosis progressed, the Branch would need all the expert help it could get. Eventually, one way or another, even Darcy would turn against him. He’d have no choice: sooner or later the plague carrier would have to be destroyed. It was as simple as that.
“Darcy,” Harry said, as he turned the lights up again, “if we ever did come up against one another, why, you’d be just about the only one who could stop me! For which reason I’m half afraid of you. You know I’m a telepath now, but I wonder: would it bother you if I took a closer look into your mind?”
Darcy’s talent sensed no danger. Of course not, for Harry intended him no harm. What he did intend was to take out a sort of insurance policy, one which could be canceled later, when the danger was past. No harm at all to Darcy Clarke the man, only to his talent itself. For that was what the Necroscope feared: to come up against Clarke knowing he couldn’t win, that the deflector’s guardian angel would protect him. But with his talent taken away from him, Clarke would be impotent. At least for what remained of Harry’s term here. Afterwards … he would give it back to him.
“Look into my mind?” Darcy repeated him.
Harry nodded. “With your permission. But it has to be of your own free will.”
Darcy read nothing into the Necroscope’s words. “But can’t you read my mind, just like Trevor here?”
“This is different,” sai
d Harry. “For this you need to invite me in, as if your mind was a door which you were opening for me.”
Darcy shrugged. “Anything you say.” His eyes met the other’s and locked on them, and in another moment Harry was into his mind.
The mechanism Harry sought wasn’t difficult to find, and he saw at once that it was a freak, a mutation. It was Clarke’s unique talent, which all of his life had protected him from external dangers but was impotent to save itself from the internal danger which was Harry Keogh. And even if it could save itself it did nothing, because Harry meant no harm.
There was no trigger Harry could jam, so he simply wrapped the entire mechanism in a fragment of Wellesley’s blanket. The job took as long as it takes to tell and then he was out again. And he was satisfied that Clarke’s guardian angel had been gagged, for the time being at least.
“Is that it?” Darcy frowned. “Are you satisfied I’ll do you no harm?”
Absolutely, Harry said to himself, while outwardly he merely nodded. Because if you try you’ll have no protection, which means I’ll at least be able to protect myself.
And then he heard another voice in his head, Jordan’s, saying: Which means he’s no longer protected from anything. Won’t you at least tell him what you’ve done?
No, Harry answered. You know Darcy: he’d become paranoid about his safety in a moment. That was always his paradox, that despite this weird talent of his, still he looked after himself like he was accident-prone or something.
I hope he’ll be all right, that’s all, said the other.
“Well?” Darcy prompted Harry.
“I’m satisfied you won’t go against me,” the Necroscope told him. “And now we have to be on our way.”
Jordan said, “It strikes me as likely that the Branch will know we’ve been here. If you want to stay on their good side, Darcy, you might like to call the Duty Officer and confirm it. Let them see that you’re not in collusion with us. And at the same time you might use your good offices to clear me.”
Darcy pulled a wry face. “Actually, my ‘offices’ aren’t looking any too hot right now,” he said. “But certainly, I’ll give it a try.” He looked at Harry. “So where are you two off to now? Or shouldn’t I ask?”
“You shouldn’t ask—” Harry answered, “—but I’ll tell you, anyway: we’re tracking your serial killer. I sort of got hooked up on it. That’s the job I want finished before I move on.”
Darcy nodded. “That way you’ll leave a clean sheet behind you, Harry, which is the way it should be. You’ll always be the right sort of legend: famous instead of infamous.”
Harry said nothing. Fame, even infamy, didn’t concern him. All that mattered was his obsession. What was more, he knew why it had become an obsession. He was being chased off his territory, forced to vacate his very own world, which he had fought for. Not physically driven out—not yet, anyway—but soon. And the vampire, especially one of the Wamphyri, is tenacious and territorial. Frustrated almost beyond endurance, Harry was fighting back. But if he must take it out on someone, then at least let that someone be a fiend in his own right. Namely, the serial killer, the necromancer, the torturer of Penny and those other poor innocents. Even Pamela Trotter, innocent, yes. Compared to him, anyway.
It was time Harry and Trevor Jordan were on their way. They said the usual farewells, very simply, and Harry told Jordan to close his eyes again. Darcy Clarke watched them go and when they were no longer there held out his trembling hand into the space where they’d passed through a Möbius door into nothing.
And that was all he found there.
Nothing …
2
FINDING JOHNNY
In Edinburgh it would soon be dawn, but Harry Keogh knew that things—all sorts of things—were rapidly coming to a head and he wasn’t nearly ready to ease off now. Now that he’d started this job his one thought was to get it finished. In darkness or, if needs be, in light.
Early summer sunlight would be a problem from now on in, but it was more an inconvenience than a threat proper. The sun wouldn’t kill him—not yet, anyway—but taken in large doses it would sicken and weaken him. His glasses helped keep its glare out of his eyes; his floppy hat protected his head and face but was a dead giveaway; he must keep his hands in his pockets for long periods, which gave him the slovenly look of a delinquent youth or a Labour politician but was absolutely necessary. Only the British weather, almost invariably mean, was on his side. Trevor Jordan, on the other hand, suffered no such restrictions and could come and go as he pleased; and with Harry’s help, go as far as he pleased and instantly.
In the Necroscope’s Bonnyrig house they drank coffee (Harry would prefer good red wine but needed a resupply), and split the list of Frigis Express depots down the middle. They would work through them alphabetically until they found what they were looking for. Jordan would take the day shift with Harry supplying the transport; Harry would do nights with Jordan for lookout. The telepath had asked what was the big deal with this job and Harry had showed him a series of vivid mind-pictures taken from Penny Sanderson and Pamela Trotter, and now Jordan was as eager as he was. There was a monster loose in the world and he had to die.
“There’ll be night watchmen on these places, I’m sure,” Jordan said, studying his half of the list, “but at this hour of the morning they’ll be kipping off: asleep in some secret corner. We could do a few of the depots right now, before the drivers or packers or whatever get in.”
“The bloke we’re after is a driver,” Harry said. “He uses the M1 and possibly the A1 or A7. Maybe we should start with depots close to those major routes.”
Jordan had been glancing through the files on the murdered girls. Penny’s report seemed to interest him greatly. Ignoring what the Necroscope had just said, he asked, “Harry, did you know Penny’s body was found in the gardens under the castle’s walls?”
Harry frowned. “Yes. Is that significant?”
“It could be,” the other answered. “There are quite a few small, specialized units housed in the castle. For all we know our man from Frigis delivered meat to the various messes and cookhouses that night, and when the coast was clear he bundled Penny over the wall.”
Harry nodded. “I’ll check out the exact spot where she was found. I remember looking over the wall. There are places where it rears over grassy ledges and steep banks, where the drop is only a few feet, and if she fell—or was tossed—her body might slip and slither a bit without breaking anything or suffering any real damage. Because apart from the damage and suffering he had caused her, she wasn’t in bad shape.” His gaunt face had turned angry as he remembered Penny as she had been the first time he saw her. Shaking his head to dismiss the memory, he growled, “Anyway, I’ll look at it. If it seems at all likely or even possible … well, it could be you’ve narrowed down the field a little. Thanks, Trevor.” And then, ruefully: “As you can see, I’d never have made the grade as a detective, or even a common or garden policeman!”
“Listen,” Jordan told him. “You drop me off in Edinburgh right now and let me follow it up. Let’s face it, you’ve been seen up in the castle. People may remember you. But they don’t know me. I’ll take this file with me. I still have an old E-Branch identity card I picked up from the flat. It’s as good as a policeman’s uniform for getting me into places to gather information. Then, while I concentrate on this end of the job, you can get on with checking out the list of depots.”
Harry saw the sense of it. “All right,” he said. “And we’ll meet back here tonight. Meanwhile, we can easily contact each other if anything breaks. But you have to understand that the sun hampers me. It might stop me getting through to you or you to me. On the other hand, if the day is dull, everything will be okay. The only thing is …” He paused uncertainly.
“Yes?” Jordan waited.
“You’ll be on your own,” the Necroscope continued. “If the Branch decides to move on me, they’ll be picking my friends up, too.”
�
��But picking them up,” Jordan repeated him. “Not picking them off! And anyway, Darcy said he’d take care of that.”
Harry nodded. “But he can’t take care of the fact that I’m a vampire. And you know the Branch won’t be taking any chances, Trevor. In fact I’d lay you odds that my warrant has already been issued, and that right now they’re busy closing off any boltholes. For now … they’ll probably lay off this place, because it’s mine and I know it better than they do. But sooner or later even this house of mine won’t be safe. Hell, it would be the perfect place to settle with me! Out of the way, alone and lonely.”
“Morbid’s not the way to go, Harry,” the other told him. “Let’s for now just try to find this Johnny, right? Plenty of time then to sort the rest of it.” And the Necroscope knew he was right. All except the “plenty of time” part …
The following morning, the Minister Responsible called Darcy Clarke into E-Branch HQ. When Clarke walked into what had once been his office, the Minister was seated at his old desk … and Geoffrey Paxton was standing in one corner of the room, arms folded across his chest and with his back to the reinforced-glass windows. Clarke could do without Paxton picking at his mind, but he was no longer in a position to complain about it.
After apparently casual nods of greeting or acknowledgment, the Minister remarked how ragged Clarke looked; to which he replied, “I was up late. In fact I’d just managed to snatch an hour or two when your office called to arrange this meeting. Well, that was good, for I was coming in anyway. You see, last night I had a couple of visitors. Except I’m afraid you’re not much likely to believe me when I tell you who one of them was.”
Paxton spoke up at once. “We know who they were, Clarke,” he said sourly. “Harry Keogh and Trevor Jordan—vampires!”
Clarke had been ready for that. He sighed and turned to the Minister. “Do we have to have this meathead in on this? I mean, if he must forever be wriggling about like a fucking great maggot in people’s heads, can’t it be from a distance? Say, right outside the door here?”
