Bloodwars

by Brian Lumley

  ‘When they got awkward, he … he simply shot them! All of them, except me. But I knew I’d be next if I gave him any kind of argument. I didn’t know why he’d spared me until I saw Starside. Then I knew. It isn’t the kind of place you’d want to be alone in …”

  Lardis called Nathan to one side, and whispered, ‘This one isn’t a survivor.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘See how he rubs his neck? He has punctures there, beginning to fester. He’s been bitten by some lieutenant during the fighting. He’ll be just another plague-bearer, if we allow it. But of course we can’t.’

  Nathan nodded but said, ‘Let Trask finish questioning him. And when you do it, be merciful. Don’t let him know it’s coming. He isn’t to blame.’

  ‘None of us are,’ said Lardis, showing him the hilt of a razor-sharp machete in his belt. ‘Don’t worry, he won’t feel a thing.’

  ‘Does Trask know?’

  ‘I don’t think so, or he wouldn’t sit so close.’

  ‘That’s odd. Trask usually knows the truth of things.’

  ‘The truth is that this one is not yet a vampire,’ Lardis answered. ‘But he will be when next he wakes up. If he were to wake up. Except he won’t.’

  ‘He has no idea what that bite means, then? No, of course he doesn’t, else Trask would know.’

  Lardis nodded. ‘He’s an innocent, poor bastard! But he’s strong, too, else that bite would have put him down. It’s the worst possible combination: a strong physique and a vampire’s bite. He would be a menace!’

  Then let me know when you’re ready, and I’ll call Trask away.’

  Again, Lardis’s nod.

  Meanwhile Trask had asked, ‘Where’s Paxton now?’

  ‘Dead,’ said the CMI man. ‘I don’t know what his game was, but after the fighting started he took off after the leader of those nightmarish women. Him and Bruno Krasin, Tzonov’s 2I/C. They chased her into a cave back there. There were a couple of explosions - grenades, I suppose -and the cave came down on them. Nothing could live through that.’

  ‘You’ve been lucky,’ Trask nodded, and for the first time noticed how the man kept rubbing at his neck, the ugly craters there. So … maybe he hadn’t been so lucky after all. Slowly, then, Trask stood up and moved apart, and Lardis gave Nathan a certain look.

  ‘Ben,’ Nathan called out. ‘Can I speak to you a moment?’

  Trask went to him and they turned away. But before Nathan could speak, Trask said, That man. I think -‘

  ‘— I know what you think,’ Nathan cut him short, grabbed his arm.

  From behind came the chopping sound of a meat cleaver and a short, gurgling cry.

  Then silence …

  As Geoffrey Paxton surfaced through the dark, choking flotsam of unconsciousness, he studied the various pieces floating by: scraps of memory, bits of the past, all leading to his present situation. He was aware of an urgency in himself, without knowing what it signified. In the misty and mainly unexplored zone which lies between the alpha and omega

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  states of consciousness, that area between vacancy and tenancy of mind, he yet felt impelled to advance his rate of ascent, like a scuba diver short on air. And in fact he was short on air — and even shorter on time as an entirely human being.

  And so he lay in the rubble of fallen rocks, dirt, dust, in the back of the cave, and ‘dreamed’ his past, or fragments of it:

  His childhood, when he was ever aware of his developing telepathy, and increasingly aware of the hypocrisy all around him; his failure to understand that the world doesn’t turn on what is thought but what is said and done. His gradual opposition to mankind, a turning inwards, an acceleration of self-appreciation, egotism. Knowing that he was talented, and his search for a royal road to power. His time with E-Branch, and his eventual rejection by the Branch, coming hot on the heels of the war with the Necroscope, Harry Keogh.

  Paxton’s part in that war: his telepathy against the awesome powers of Keogh’s metaphysical mind, and the fact that he hadn’t stood a chance! And afterwards, the knowledge that he’d stood face to face with just such a POWER as he sought, an even greater POWER than any he’d ever imagined. And from then on his lust for that POWER. But how to achieve it? The Necroscope had stolen — or switched off - his telepathy.

  The Necroscope: a man, a monster, a vampire .. . yet weak (in Geoffrey Paxton’s eyes) in that he’d allowed his enemies to banish him from his own world, or one which he could have made his own. If Paxton had been in his position, he would not have been banished. By now the world would be his.

  It would be his!

  And so the plan forming, and finally the chance he’d been waiting for: to restore his telepathy, reverse his misfortunes. The coming of the son of the Necroscope!

  Between times, Paxton had worked, elevated himself in

  the world of men; but that was as nothing now, while his dream, his grand plan, was everything. Keogh had been (or could have been) all-powerful, but didn’t know how to control his talents. They controlled him; so it seemed to Paxton. But this time it would be different. If he were a vampire he would know how to control it, how to get back his telepathy, stolen by a vampire .. . how to extract the necessary knowledge, from Nathan Keogh, to make himself a Necroscope!

  … His coming here to Sunside/Starside … and his subsequent search for an instrument of change to bring about his own metamorphosis into that most powerful of creatures -Wamphyri! The attack in the pass … he could have been killed and all schemes at an end! … But, no, there’d been a warning: flyers glimpsed in the sky immediately before the attack. And that had struck him as strange: that they would give themselves away like that. Or had they underestimated the alien weapons? Or … had they simply been betrayed? Whichever, forewarned is forearmed; when the vampires had sprung from ambush, Krasin’s men had excelled in accounting for themselves. Oh, they had died, but they had accounted for themselves.

  Then, in the battle, the moment Paxton had waited for. A female, hideous, obviously Wamphyri, had her manta mount blown from under her. He had seen her crawl into a cave — but so had Bruno Krasin! And Paxton had known that Krasin would kill her. Well, so would he, but there’s killing and killing. Not all of her must die. Something of her - of her inner species - must live. In Paxton!

  But in the cave, before he could act, that idiot Krasin tossing a grenade! Paxton had barely managed to dive behind a shielding hump of rock. And as he’d stood up in the smoke and stink of the explosion, Krasin had pulled the pin on a second grenade! Paxton had seen his one great opportunity disappearing before his eyes! At which his outrage - and his weapon - had spoken for him. Tossed back against the wall of the cave, his uniform tunic gouged

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  crimson in a dozen places, Krasin’s arms were flung wide … the grenade went bounding toward the narrow entrance … an uproar!. .. and darkness.

  Out of which Paxton, the great survivor, now clawed himself inch by monotonously slow inch towards the present, the here and now, the one proof positive of continuing sentience and life: consciousness.

  Consciousness! He woke up!

  And coughed in the sulphur and cordite stench, the claustrophobic confines of the collapsed cave. He felt the weight of rocks and dirt pinning him down, the multiple hurts of cuts and bruises, the whirling of his scattered senses … but, more than anything else, the darkness. And so he knew that he was still in the cave, while his pain told him that he was still alive.

  He moved, and the rubble moved with him. The dust rose up, making him cough some more. He used hands crusted with blood to pick rocks off his chest and body. Laying them aside, he lifted his head, felt nauseous and laid it down. And in a little while lifted it again.

  Airlessness! Was that why he couldn’t breathe properly? Or was it just the weight of the mountain pressing on him? And the darkness. Paxton put aside more rocks, sat up, freed his limbs and felt them in turn. Nothing broken; just
cuts and bruises, and a bump like a hen’s egg on the back of his head.

  He remembered a pencil torch in his pocket. God (in whom he didn’t really believe) please let it be undamaged! And in a moment a smoky beam of light lancing through wreathing cordite stink and trickles of dust from overhead. The interior of the cave was intact; only the entrance had been brought down.

  Close to the wall of the cave, Bruno Krasin’s uniformed legs and lower trunk stuck out from beneath ten tons of large rocks; his legs and a dark, wet stain. Well, the Russian had been dead anyway. But what of the woman - or the ‘Lady’? - whom they’d chased in here?

  Paxton searched for his weapon .. . gone. Lost under all this debris. Stooping, stumbling, careful of his aching head, he moved further into the cave, his torch-beam flickering before him, picking out the way. And there -

  - There she was! Except she had no head. That was missing; her right arm and flabby right breast, too. And the cave wall close to where she lay was spattered red. Dead.

  Paxton knew as much as most men about the Wamphyri, but not everything by any means. And just like most men, he knew and remembered the myths better than the facts. He had wanted her alive, to bargain for her life. He had wanted her to give him what he needed to be Wamphyri! Little chance of that now.

  He sat down on a rock to rest a while and think. The beam of his torch roved over Zindevar, the tattered stump of her fat neck - and he saw it move! He swung the beam back again, held it still with a hand that refused to be still but shook as in a palsy. Zindevar’s neck was pulsing, throbbing, expanding - as something struggled to find its way out!

  And suddenly Paxton wasn’t so sure about what he wanted, or even why he’d wanted it in the first place. And there in the cramped confines of the cave, Zindevar’s vampire leech emerged; that blind, cobra-hooded thing, trailing mucus from the bloody red tunnel of her neck. She was dead but life went on. The vampire is tenacious.

  The thing sensed him (his warmth, blood, humanity, availability, something), and came crawling, undulating. And Paxton was sure now what he did not want! Oh, and however briefly, he was as sane as the sanest of men, as he drew a long knife from its sheath in his belt. He jammed his torch in a crack, pointing at the horror, took his knife, and pinned the leech to the dirt floor. Which only served to accelerate the process.

  The leech whipped to and fro as he jerked back away from it; it issued its egg, which came skittering out of the torch-beam into darkness. That pearly, flickering, oversized planktonic thing - no bigger than his fingernail, but quite deadly — somewhere in the dark, with Paxton.

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  Sobbing, he scrambled for the torch and knocked it flying. Its beam went out. And something cold crept on his hand, flowed up his right arm inside his shirt, went from his armpit across his nipple to his neck. It moved like lightning! He slapped at it, at himself, futilely. It was on - it was in -his ear!

  PAIN!

  Agony to make him dance, scream, slapping madly at the side of his head again and again, bounding this way and that. Someone was pouring acid into his ear, his brain, melting his head away! He stumbled this way and that, howling his torment .. . until once again his head made contact with something.

  Something mercifully hard.

  Darkness.

  Again …

  V

  Dreams of the Dead - EthJoi’s Symbols -Terror in Turgosheim/

  It was the dawning of a new day, and, conceived perhaps out of urgency and frustration in the face of a period of impending inactivity, a new idea had likewise dawned.

  Nathan’s original plan had been to wreak maximum havoc in the vampire camps during the long daylight hours. But according to Grinner — who, while recuperating, continued to relay periodic reports from Blaze and others of the grey brothers in the mountains, thus keeping Nathan updated on Wamphyri activity - this was now out of the question.

  Starside of the high passes and peaks, in the permanent shadow of the barrier range, the Lords of Turgosheim had trebled their pickets and, despite that it was day, were alert as never before. Devetaki had seen for herself something of the fantastic talents of her Szgany foe - a man Alexei Yefros had called ‘the Necroscope’ — and had taken appropriate measures. Further forays against the camps at this time would be sheerest folly, if not actually suicidal.

  Thus Nathan found himself stalemated by his own success, and only two days left before Gustav Turchin would close Trask and his colleagues’ escape route to Perchorsk. These were Sunside days, of course, which relieved some of the urgency, if not the frustration. And if it came down to it, in the face of some insurmountable difficulty, Nathan could always transport Trask, Zek and the others to within an ace of the Starside Gate, wish them luck and see them on their way. That would mean the end of their obligations to him, yes, and vice versa. But . .. the Necroscope’s emotions were

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  very mixed on the subject; friends like these would be hard to come by in any world; he didn’t look forward to it. Following which, and if matters were not resolved by the time they left, the rest would be in his hands entirely. But for now there was a new day and Nathan must dream up some new ideas …

  He asked Grinner to relay amended orders to all of his grey brothers, and withdrew them to safe positions from which to keep a wary eye on the Wamphyri without putting themselves at further risk, then considered other options and objectives - such as Wrathstack.

  But here, too, he was disadvantaged. Twice, he had struck at the last aerie, whose inhabitants were not fools. To go against the stack again would be to take an enormous risk; only emerge from the Continuum in the wrong place at the wrong time - disaster! And in any case, Nathan actually desired that Wratha and the others should not be utterly disadvantaged when it came to the all-out war which must ensue at nightfall. The more evenly matched the opposing sides, the more damage they’d be able to inflict on one another.

  Which meant that since he dare not attack, his single alternative course of action - action of a sort, at least - was to take defensive measures. And he had the full span of a Sunside day in which to perfect and complete them.

  Dressed in the best Szgany clothing he could beg or borrow, and accompanied by Misha, all scrubbed and attired in her finest, he set out to visit the Thyre, to explain and explore the feasibility of his plan, which was far simpler in outline than it would be in execution. But if it were at all possible, then before the onset of night, in some one hundred hours’ time, Nathan intended to move not just one tribe (albeit the biggest) into the comparative safety of the Thyre colonies, but as many surviving Traveller pockets as he could locate. Except he knew that he should first have the blessing of the Thyre themselves.

  Before leaving the temporary camp, he explained his mission to Lardis and the others. Then, leaving Zek and

  Chung with work to do - work which only they were equipped to carry out: the locating of other Traveller groups in the forests to east and west - he conjured the first of several Mobius doors …

  Starting at Place-Under-the-Yellow-Cliffs, the closest of all the Thyre colonies, Misha and Nathan commenced visiting a long itinerary of suitable refuges. Contacted by Nathan in advance, Atwei was there to meet them in the deep sandstone gorge where the Necroscope had first conversed with the philosopher Rogei. Then the gorge had been a dry, inhospitable place. Now … it was very different.

  On Nathan’s last visit, when he had brought members of his party here after their arrival through the Starside Gate, he had not stepped outside the mausoleum except through a Mobius door. This time Atwei had begged him to come to the gorge itself, because she wanted him to see it.

  Her reason was simple: against its rear wall, the gorge was now a small but flourishing oasis full of shrubs, flowers, bees, hives and honey; all thanks to Nathan and to the artisan Shaeken and the gardener Tharkel. Upon a time, the Necroscope had relayed the words and works of these two Thyre ancients to their living descendants, with the result that Shaeken’s Wa
ter Ram was now operational, pumping life-giving water up from the Great Dark River; and Tharkel’s gardening and bee-keeping theories and skills had not been lost beyond the barrier of his last long sleep.

  ‘But the Water Ram keeps breaking down,’ Atwei told her visitors. ‘And so the people of Place-Under-the-Yellow-Cliffs are working on Shaeken’s “Hydraulic Hoist”.’ She shrugged her thin brown shoulders. ‘Alas, that the things that men make .. . break! And that when they do, there’s nothing for it but that we use muscle and put machines aside. It is very hard to keep the oasis going.’ At which Nathan remembered something.

  It had seemed a big, important thing when first he saw it in Trask’s world, but now seemed dwarfed to insignificance

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  by the events of the long night. Anyway, it would be something by way of repayment for the very great favours he must ask of the Thyre. Standing some way apart from the oasis, seeing movement in the greenery, he turned to Atwei and asked her: ‘Are any of the elders in the oasis? The other elders, I mean?’

  ‘Petals, grandson of Rogei is there,’ she answered. ‘Petals who was so hard on you when first you came among us. Will you speak to him? He would be honoured!’

  ‘He became my friend in the end.’ Nathan smiled. ‘Bring him here into the sunlight, if you will, for I have something to show him. I’ll be back.’ And to Misha: ‘It will only take a moment.’ Before they could query him, he conjured a door and disappeared into thin air -

  - And was back again by the time Petais (thin as all the Thyre, and bald before his time) had been introduced to Misha. Nathan had brought with him a small box, whose location he had marked among the ammunition boxes in the temporary camp. Now, if the box’s contents had come through undamaged .. .