Deadspawn

by Brian Lumley

  Harry’s thoughts had something of form and order; his mind was almost healed; his body, not nearly so. Silver was present in his vampire blood like grains of arsenic, so that his broken flesh and bones couldn’t mend. But he heard Shaithis taunting him and felt a splash of rain, and opened his soulful eyes in the dark grey predawn light. Then he almost wished he was blind.

  Lieutenants of Shaithis were up on ladders, bringing Karen down from her cross. Her head rolled this way and that and her limbs flopped loosely as they tossed her down on a blanket upon the stony ground. Shaithis turned from Harry’s cross, went to his tent, and slashed through its ropes, collapsing it like a deflated balloon.

  “And so you see, Necroscope,” he crowed, “how I intend to honor my promise. For perceiving that you now see, hear, and understand all, this time—for the last time—I shall take her in the open. No thrill in it for me, not any more; this time my labors are all for you. And when I’m done, then you shall witness how my warriors deal with her! As well to keep one’s creatures happy, eh? For after all, they too were men, upon a time.”

  The rain came on harder and Shaithis issued commands. His thralls ripped the collapsed tent into two halves, then used its torn skins to cover the faggots of the torture pyres. It would not do for them to get too wet. Shaithis had meanwhile returned to the foot of the cross; Shaitan too, from his own tent. More leech than man, the Fallen One’s eyes were glowing embers in the shadow of a black, corrugated cowl of flesh.

  “It’s time,” he said, his voice a phlegmy cough, “and the Gate awaits. I say have done with all this. Put the woman on her pyre and burn them.”

  Shaithis paused. He was reminded, however briefly, of his old dream. But dreams are for dreamers, and he was weary now of all dark omens—especially his ancestor’s warnings. “This man was the cause of my exile in the Icelands,” he answered. “I vowed revenge, and now I take it.”

  They glared at each other, Shaitan and Shaithis. There in the Gate’s white dazzle, their eyes blazed where they measured one another. But finally, the Fallen One turned away. “As you will,” he said, but quietly. “So be it.”

  The clouds were flown and the rain had stopped. Shaithis called his thralls to light torches. He took a torch and held it up to Harry on his cross. “Well, Necroscope, and why don’t you call up the dead? My ancestor has told me that in your own world you were their champion, and I saw you call up crumbling trogs in the battle for The Dweller’s garden. So why not now?”

  Harry hadn’t the strength for it (which his tormentor knew well enough), but even if he were strong he knew that the dead wouldn’t answer him. No, for he was a vampire and they had forsaken him. But in the foothills behind the Gate, a grey shape fretted and whined, prowling to and fro, to and fro; and the pack watching him intently through feral eyes, where they lay with their tongues lolling and ears erect. The great wolf’s memory was imperfect and his nature devolving, but for now he understood the Necroscope’s every thought. In a bygone time, as a human infant, Harry Wolfson’s mind had been one with his father’s.

  The Necroscope sensed his son there, felt his concern, and at once closed his mind to external scrying. It was an effort, but he did it. Shaitan knew it at once, flowed forward, and said to Shaithis, “Get on with it. This one’s not finished, I tell you! Now he has closed his mind, so that we don’t know what’s brewing in there.”

  “In just a little while,” the other snarled, “his brains will be brewing in there! But for now, leave … me … be!”

  And again Shaitan backed off.

  “Well, Harry Keogh?” Shaithis called up to the crucified man. He waved his torch and tugged aside the skins from the dry branches of the balefires. “And did you think to shut me out from your delicious agonies? And can you ignore the pain itself? Ah, we Wamphyri have our arts, it’s true: we steel ourselves to the throb of torn flesh and the ache of broken bones; aye, even as they’re healing. But the vampire never lived who was insensitive to fire. And you’ll feel it, too, Necroscope, when your flesh begins to melt!” He reached down with his torch to the base of the pile. “So what do you say? Should I light it now? Are you ready to burn?”

  And at last Harry answered him. “You burn, you … ordure of trogs and stench of gas-beasts! Burn in hell!”

  Shaithis slapped his thigh and laughed like a madman. “Oh? Hah, ha, ha! A taunt for a taunt, eh? What, and do you think to insult your executioner?” He touched his torch to tufts of kindling and a wisp of smoke at once curled up, then a small tongue of flame.

  And in the shadowy foothills Harry Wolfson issued an ululating howl, then turned and at a fast lope headed downhill for the tableau set in the light of the Gate. The grey brotherhood made to accompany him, but he stopped them:

  No! Return to your mountains. What befalls me befalls.

  Flames licked up from Harry’s pyre, small bright tongues but gaining rapidly. Shaithis went to Karen, where his thralls held her down. She was conscious now, would throw them off but had no strength for it. “Necroscope,” the vampire Lord continued to taunt, “wanderer in strange worlds and stranger spaces between the worlds. Now say, why don’t you conjure one of your mysterious boltholes and come down from your cross? Step down and challenge me face-to-face, and champion this bitch whose flesh we’ve both known. Come, Necroscope, save her from my embrace.”

  Instinctively, Harry’s metaphysical mind began to conjure Möbius math. Invisible to all other men, the shimmering frame of a door commenced to form in the eye of his mind. Except, of course, it was warped and highly volatile. Only let it develop fully and all of this would be over: so close to the Gate, Harry would probably be shredded and his atoms diffused through the myriad universes of light. Maybe that was the answer, the way to go. At least he would be spared the agony of the fire. But what of the agony of others? What of the future agony of the entire world which lay beyond the Gate?

  Too late to worry about that: Earth was already doomed. Or was it? For Harry knew that miracles can happen, and also that they occasionally happen when all seems lost. But in any case, he could always conjure another door—a bigger, more powerful door—when things became unbearable. But:

  No! said Harry Wolfson in the Necroscope’s inner mind, even as he thought to collapse what he’d made. Hold it there, Father. Just for a moment. And Harry felt his son looking at the Möbius equations where they mutated in his mind, and at the flickering, warping configuration of the part-formed door. Looking, trying hard to understand … and finally remembering!

  In another moment the great wolf conjured equations which even Harry in the fullness of his powers could never have identified, symbols revenant of a time when the Necroscope’s son had been far more powerful than his father. For a few seconds certain of Harry Wolfson’s lost talents were recalled, and with the effortless skill of all but forgotten times he used one of them to diffuse through his father’s ill-formed door a picture of their here and now, and a warning of possible tomorrows. It sped out from him at the instantaneous speed of thought, into all the innumerable universes of light.

  The Necroscope canceled his own numbers and let go of the now highly dangerous door, which drifted away from him towards the magnet of the Gate. But his son’s message—and his warning—had been transmitted. Harry Wolfson had completed the mental part of his self-imposed mission; all that remained now was the physical. But where the first had been merely improbable, the rest was impossible. That made no difference, not to the great grey wolf, who remembered now that he had been a man. As well, then, to die like a man.

  In through the encircling thralls he loped, like a wraith appearing from the smoke of Harry’s fire. And snarling he made for Shaithis where the vampire Lord kneeled beside Karen. But he didn’t make it; lieutenants got in his way; one of them hurled a spear and brought him down. Slavering and snarling, with the spear transfixing his breast and emerging bloody through his hackles, still his slender human hands reached spastically for Lord Shaithis—until a sword flashed silve
r and took his head.

  From his cross, through billowing smoke (though the flames had not yet reached him), Harry had seen it all. “No!” he cried out loud. And in his mind cried out again: No … no … no!!! And something of his agony, not merely of the flesh but of the soul, went out through the disintegrating Möbius door, which on the instant imploded into the Gate. Then—

  —A single, brilliant, prolonged flash of lightning illuminating the peaks, followed by a long, low, ominous drumroll of thunder, and finally a silence broken only by the crackle of the bonfire and the sputtering of fresh raindrops striking the flames.

  Until, for the third time, Shaitan came forward.

  “You cannot feel it, can you?” He stood over his descendant, glared at him awhile, then lifted his head to sniff like some great hound. “The Necroscope has released something into the air, and into his secret places. But you feel only your own lust. You’ve neither thought nor vision for the future, only for what you can take today. And so I warn you one last time: beware, son of my sons, lest you lose us a world!”

  Shaithis’s face was twisted in its madness; he was first and foremost Wamphyri, and now allowed his vampire full sway. A beast, his hands were transformed into talons. Blood slopped from his great jaws where his teeth elongated into fangs and tore the flesh of his mouth. With Karen’s once crowning, now lusterless hair bunched in his fist, he looked up at Shaitan and beyond him to the man on the cross. And his eyes blazed scarlet as he answered.

  “I should feel something? Some weird, mystical thing? All I desire to feel is the Necroscope’s agony, and the flight of his and his vampire’s spirit as he dies. But if I can hurt him a little more before he dies, so be it!”

  “Fool!” And a heavy, grey-mottled appendage of Shaitan’s—a thing half-hand, half-claw—fell on Shaithis’s shoulder. He shrugged if off and came easily to his feet. And:

  “Ancestor mine,” he ground the words out, “you have pushed me too far. And I sense that I shall never be free of your interference in my affairs. We’ll talk more about that—shortly. But until then …” With a mind-call, he brought forward his warrior out of the shadows, placing the creature between himself and Shaitan the Fallen.

  Shaitan backed off and gloomed on the warrior—which, in the Icelands, had been Shaithis’s most recent construct prior to their departure—and inquired of his descendant, “Are you threatening my life?”

  Shaithis knew that sunup was nigh and time of the essence; he had none of the latter to waste right now; he would confront his ancestor later, possibly after the fortress beyond the Gate had been taken. And so: “Threatening your life?” he answered. “Of course not. We are allies, the last of the Wamphyri! But we are also individuals, with our individual needs.”

  For which reason Shaitan in his turn let Shaithis live. For the moment.

  And as the fire smoked and blazed up brighter, despite a renewed downpour, and as Harry Keogh felt the first breath of heat where flames closed in towards his lower limbs, Shaithis again turned his attentions to the Lady Karen.

  While in another world.

  … It was midnight in the Urals.

  Deep under the Perchorsk ravine, in the confines of his small room, Viktor Luchov snatched himself awake from a monstrous nightmare. Panting and trembling, still only half awake, he stood up on jelly legs and gazed all about at the grey-metal walls, and leaned on one for its support. His dream had been so real—it had impressed him so badly—that his first thought had been to press his alarm button and call out to the men he kept stationed in the corridor outside. Even now he would do so, except (and as he’d learned only too well the last time) such an action could well be fraught with a terror of its own. Especially in the claustrophobic, nerve-racking confines of the Perchorsk Projekt. He had no desire to have anyone come bursting in here with the smoking, red-glowing muzzle of a flamethrower at the ready.

  As his heartbeat slowed a little and while he fumblingly dressed, he examined his nightmare: a strange, even ominous thing. In it, he had heard an awful, tortured cry go out from the Gate at Perchorsk’s core, and he’d known its author: Harry Keogh! The Necroscope had cried out his telepathic anguish to any and all who could hear him, but mainly to the teeming dead in their myriad resting places across the world. And in their turn they had answered him as best they could—with a massed moaning and groaning, even with their soft and crumbling movements—from the airless environs of their innumerable graves. For the dead knew how they had misjudged the Necroscope, how they’d denied and finally forsaken him, and it was as if they were grief-stricken and preparing for a new Golgotha.

  And the departed spirit of Paul Savinkov—a man who had worked for KGB Major Chingiz Khuv right here at Perchorsk, worked and died here, horribly—had materialized and spoken to the Projekt Direktor in his dream, telling him about the warning which Harry Keogh’s son had sent out through the Gate. For in life Savinkov had been a telepath, and his talent had stayed with him, continuing into the afterlife.

  And seeing in Luchov’s mind the nuclear solution to the threat from beyond the Gate, Savinkov had told him: Then you know what to do, Viktor.

  “Do?”

  Yes, for they are coming, through the Gate, and you know how to stop them!

  “Coming? Who is coming?”

  You know who.

  Luchov had understood, and answered: “But those weapons may not be used until we are sure. Then, when we can see the threat—”

  —It will be too late! Savinkov cried. If not for us, too late for Harry Keogh. We’ve all wronged him and now must make amends, for he suffers needless agonies. Wake up, Viktor. It’s in your hands now.

  “My God!” Luchov had tossed and turned, but Savinkov had seen that he wouldn’t wake. Not yet. But … there were others sleeping here who would. And then, when Luchov heard the telepath talking again—to whom, and what he asked, begged them to do!—that was when he’d started awake.

  Now he was dressed and almost in control of himself, but still breathless, still alert and listening, tuned into the Projekt’s heartbeat. The dull throb of an engine somewhere, reverberating softly through the floor; the clang of a hatch, echoing distantly; the hum and rattle of the ventilation system. In the old days the Direktor had been accommodated on an upper level, much closer to the exit shaft. Up there, it had seemed quieter, less oppressive. But down here, with the magmass caverns and the core almost directly underfoot, it could be that he felt the entire mountain weighing on his shoulders.

  Still listening intently, Luchov’s breathing and heartbeat gradually slowed as it became apparent that all was in order and it really had been a dream. Only a terrible dream. Or had it?

  That sudden clatter of running footsteps, coming closer in the corridor outside. And voices shouting hoarse warnings! Now, what in the world … ?

  He went to open the door to the corridor and heard in the back of his mind, like an echo from his dream: But Viktor, you already know “what in the world!” Paul Savinkov’s telepathic voice, and clear as a bell. Except this time it was no dream!

  A hammering at his door, which Luchov opened with hands that were trembling again. He saw his guards, astonishment written in their drawn, tired faces, and a pair of gaunt technicians just this moment arrived here from the core. “Comrade Direktor!” one of the latter gasped, clawing at his arm. “Direktor Luchov! I … I would have telephoned, but the lines are under repair.”

  Luchov could see that the technician was stalling; the man was terrified to report what must be reported, because he knew it was unbelievable. And now for the first time there sounded the sharp crack! crack! crack! of distant gunshots. At that, galvanized, Luchov found strength to croak, “It’s not … something from the Gate?”

  “No, no! But there are … things!”

  Luchov’s flesh crawled. “Things?”

  “From under the Gate! From the abandoned magmass regions. And oh God, they are dead things, Comrade Direktor!”

  Dead things. The sort of th
ings Harry Keogh would understand, and which understood him only too well. And according to the warnings of a dead man, the worst of it still to come. But hadn’t Luchov tried to warn Byzarnov what could happen? And hadn’t he advised him to press that damned button right there and then? Of course he had, even knowing at the time that the Major didn’t fully understand, and that in any case circumstances didn’t warrant it. Also, Byzarnov was a military man and had his orders. Well, circumstances had changed; maybe now he would put his orders aside and take matters into his own hands.

  Luchov had experienced and lived through similar disasters before. Now he felt torn two ways: should he make his escape to the upper levels and abandon the Projekt entirely, or should he see what could be done down below? His conscience won. There were men down there, after all—just following bloody orders! He headed for the core.

  As he ran along the angled, split-level steel ramp through the upper magmass cavern to the steep stairwell leading down to the Gate, the Projekt Direktor heard the first shouts, screams, and more gunshots from the core. The technicians were right behind him; his own men, too, armed with SMGs and a flamethrower. But as he approached the actual shaft where it spilled light from the Gate up into the cavern, so Major Alexei Byzarnov’s voice echoed from behind, calling for him to wait. In a moment the Major had caught up.

  “I was alerted,” he gasped. “The messenger was incoherent. A gibbering idiot! Can’t you tell me what’s going on, Viktor?”

  Though Luchov hadn’t seen it yet—not with his own eyes—still he had a fair idea what was “going on”; but there was no way he could explain it to Byzarnov. Far better to let him see it for himself. So that when he answered, “I don’t know what’s happening,” his simple lie was in fact a half-truth.

  In any case, there was no time for further conversation. For as a renewed burst of screams and gunshots rang out, so the Major grasped Luchov’s arm and shouted, “Then we’d damn well better find out!”