by Brian Lumley
Before then, however, there was one last task he must perform, one final act of vengeance in this place. He had admitted to the hell-lander Karl Vyotsky that his warriors were all dead. Well, and so they were — but that was not to say he couldn't make another. Indeed, the making of warriors and other beasts was an art of the Wamphyri, and certainly Shaithis was a great artist. Moreover, he had the necessary materials right here. Ah, but this one would be the warrior!
In a recent experiment, Shaithis had created a small creature of such primitive slyness and insidious vileness that his creation had surprised even him. The small mind of a trog, with some subtle alterations, had governed the thing — if governed was the word — while its principal physical component had not been man-flesh but that of wild creatures. The tissues of a great bat and a feral wolf had featured strongly, together with protoplasmic flesh from Shaithis's pit-things. But twice the creature had escaped, which in the end prompted him to put it down and have done with it.
Indeed, it would not have been prudent to let it live — not here, anyway — not and chance the other Wamphyri Lords learning of it. For while Nature often gave wild creatures a vampire egg, it was generally deemed unseemly for the Wamphyri themselves to perform such experiments.
And yet Shaithis had done just that. Slighted by a lesser Lord, he'd challenged and killed him, and so earned the right to burn his remains. Instead he had brought the body here to his workshop, cut out the vampire within and transplanted its egg into his creature! But when he saw how uncontrollable was the thing, then he'd sent it through the Gate. It had seemed to him a grand jest: that his creature should take its own brand of hell with it into the hell-lands.
Ah, but that was before he realized just how hellish the hell-lands were! Shaithis little doubted now but that all his troubles stemmed from that unknown place beyond the shining sphere-gate; perhaps even The Dweller himself had his origin there. Which was why he would now create the WARRIOR of all warriors! And, who could say, perhaps it might even be the last warrior? Aye, and when they saw what he had sent them, then the wizards of that world would think again before sending their hirelings adventuring here.
So thinking, Shaithis tossed Karl Vyotsky's limp form down onto the great slab of stone which was his workbench, then went to fetch the other ingredients of his work and certain instruments with which to fuse them…
It was a long job; sunup came and went, and a new sundown was beginning; finally Shaithis was done. He inspected with some satisfaction the thing heaving and hissing where it waxed in its enormous trench of a vat, striding down the length of it and admiring the rapid formation of a deadly array of weapons. Then, into its groping, vestigial mind, he implanted those commands which would form its one aim, its single goal in life, and left it to fend for itself. Emerging in a very little while, the warrior would discover the pit-things and devour them, and find its way out of here. The exit might well be too small for it by then, but Shaithis could not doubt that this warrior would make it bigger.
In the interim he had tested his flyer; the beast was better than any before it, fit steed for the long journey ahead. First, however, Shaithis would gaze once more upon the face of that mother of all treachery, the beautiful face of the Lady Karen. He flew to her aerie and without
hostility began circling it, calling to her in the way of the Wamphyri until she came to a window.
'So, Karen,' he called, from where he rode a gusting wind, 'then you are the last. Or maybe the first? Still, no matter, we are all undone because of you.'
'Shaithis,' she answered, 'of all the great Wamphryi liars, you are the greatest. You even lie to yourself! You blame me for your troubles, or whoever else it takes your fancy to blame, when in fact you know that you alone have brought the Wamphryi to this end. And in any case, what care you for them? Nothing! You care only for the Lord Shaithis.'
'Ah, you're a cold, cruel creature, Karen!' he nodded and scowled at her across an abyss of air.
'Merely accurate,' she answered. 'Do you think I did not know your plans for me? The truth is that you underestimated, Shaithis. You underestimated me, The Dweller, everything. You were so bloated up with your own schemes and lust for ultimate domination that you considered yourself beyond defeat. Well, and now we see how wrong you were.'
He flew closer, all of his great fury visible in his partly-healed face; until she cautioned: "Ware, Shaithis! I have a warrior. It's but the work of a second to launch him/
He drew back. 'Aye, I have seen it. But do you call that a warrior? I doubt if it would have my measure, not if I was the whole man. Which I will be, one day.'
'Are you in a position to threaten?'
He glared at her, saw that a second face had appeared at her window. 'Ah, and you even managed to save a companion for yourself!' he said. 'A lieutenant lover to warm you through all the lonely time ahead, no doubt? But… I don't recognize this one. Now tell me, who is he?'
'I speak for myself,' Harry Keogh answered. 'I'm a hell-lander, Shaithis. The father of the one you call The Dweller.'
Shaithis gasped, drew back further yet. But in a little while his courage returned. From what he knew of The Dweller and his sort, if they were desperate to have him dead, then he would be dead! Perhaps they were satisfied with what they had done. Curiosity overcame all, and Shaithis flew his beast closer. Tell me one thing,' he called out. 'Why did you come here? To destroy the Wamphryi?'
Harry shook his head. That was the way it worked out, that's all.' And then he remembered a promise he'd made. 'Maybe you should ask instead, who sent me?'
Shaithis nodded. 'Say on!'
'His name was Belos,' Harry said, 'and he told me: "Tell them Belos sent you."'
It meant nothing to Shaithis, who had never been much of a one for studying the legends and histories. He frowned, shrugged, turned his beast away and headed north. The winds carried back to them his final word:
'Farewell.'
But they knew he didn't mean it…
Chingiz Khuv, accompanied by two of his KGB men, was on his way to the Failsafe Control Centre. It was almost 2 a.m. and Khuv's shift would last for six hours, when he'd be relieved by the next Failsafe Duty Officer. The wee small hours of the morning, but here in the Projekt time didn't mean a lot. Except that it was rapidly running down. For Khuv, for his commando platoon, maybe even for the Projekt itself.
These were Khuv's thoughts as he marched the steel and rubber corridors with his men flanking him. One of them was armed with a machine-gun, the other had a flame-thrower. Khuv himself carried only his issue automatic, but the safety-catch was off where it sat snug in its holster.
Eight days, Khuv thought. Eight days of sheer hell! Tomorrow he had no official duties and could rest, but the day after that… that was when he and his platoon were scheduled to be on their way, through the Gate. That in itself — the preparations, worrying about what was waiting in there and on the other side — would be troubles enough; but of course in the thirty-six hours between times there would also be the small matter of staying alive!
The Perchorsk Projekt had always been claustrophobic: its magmass levels had been eerie, frightening places ever since the accident which spawned them, and there was always the fear of further nightmare incursions from the Gate; but at least the creeping horror of the magmass was a familiar one, and the dangers of the Gate were known and appreciated. Now, however, the entirely unknown had entered into it, and someone or something was loose in the Projekt which struck and disappeared without trace, and which so far seemed quite invulnerable. It wasn't simply a case of stopping it, first it had to be found. For since the night of the triple murder… well, things had only got worse.
Now, to any outsider entering Perchorsk for the first time, it would seem a place of total madness. The main exit was guarded day and night by half a dozen men with a variety of weapons; people no longer moved about singly but in pairs or even threes; every face wore a strained look, with eyes hollow and bloodshot, their gaunt owners
given to violent starts at every smallest unaccustomed sound. A terror had settled on Perchorsk, and there seemed no way to break its hold.
It had started with the deaths of the KGB men Rublev and Roborov, and the psychic locator Leo Grenzel; God alone knew where it would end. Khuv thought back on the string of murders since those first three:
A lab technician had been next, during a late-night power failure as he was clearing up in his lab. Something had entered in the darkness, crushing his windpipe to a pulp and crumpling his face and forehead with what must have been a single terrific blow. It had looked as though a giant bulldog grip had been allowed to snap shut on his face and the front of his head. Agursky had given his opinion that it was the work of a maniac with a tool of some sort, possibly a portable power-vise from the workshops.
Next had been a pair of soldiers going off duty, leaving the core and passing through the magmass levels, where they'd encountered something which they shot at. The shots had been heard, of course, and the bodies of the two eventually discovered. Their throats had been torn out and they'd been stuffed into one of the magmass holes. An examination had shown that under the massive bruising many bones had been broken, and the spinal columns dislocated.
Then, the night before last, one of Khuv's remaining four KGB men had gone missing and still hadn't been found; and just three hours ago…
That one was one of the worst. The body of Klara Orlova, a theoretical physicist working closely with Luchov's team of scientists, had been discovered in one of the ventilation shafts dangling upside-down from the pulley cables. Her throat, too, had been ripped out. And as with many of the other cases, there hadn't seemed to be very much blood around.
Khuv had barely arrived at the scene of that one when he was called on the double to the telepath Paul Savinkov's room. The door, a light-weight timber frame with a thin metal skin, had a fist-sized hole in it and was hanging half-wrenched from its hinges. Inside was Savinkov, crumpled in a corner like a discarded doll and hideously broken. Although the snapping of his bones must have sounded out like a series of gunshots, apparently no one had heard a thing.
But at least this time it was seen how the murderer was wily as well as immensely strong and brutal. The cable to Savinkov's telephone had been cut outside his room in the corridor. The killer had been taking no chances that he might try to summon help. Which seemed to prove Vasily Agursky's theory: the murders were the work of a powerful, cunning madman, or at least a human being.
By then, however, it had been time for Khuv to prepare himself for his duty at Failsafe Control. He'd left Gustav Litve in charge of the new cases and gone to change into clothes suitable for the long shift ahead. And now that shift was about to commence.
Approaching Failsafe Control, Khuv and his men heard footsteps behind them, turned on their heels to see Gustav Litve coming at a run. White-faced, he was thrusting a sheet of paper before him, waving it at Khuv. 'Comrade Major,' he gasped, drawing close. 'This is it! I found it stuffed down the back of Savinkov's chair.'
The paper was a little crumpled; Khuv smoothed it against the wall, saw shaky lines written in pencil. They said:
I've been checking all the staff one by one. I would have done it sooner, but Andrei Roborov saw it with his own eyes and what he saw wasn't human. So I thought it must be something from the Gate, something we'd missed. Then I thought: how is it that with all these espers we can't find the intruder? Maybe it was shielding itself psychically; maybe it was hiding behind its own mind-screens! But if it could do that, then I should be able to detect the shields. Grenzel would be proud of me: I found it! He would have done it better, of course — which is why it stopped him! How I did it: I found an area where there were no telepathic readings, where there was powerful psychic interference. It was the mortuary. I checked to be double sure, and found I'd been wrong. But then I got the same sort of reading in the accommodation area — in the scientific section. I narrowed it down. It's Agursky! He keeps the bodies in the mortuary. He must have been in there when I checked the place the first time. And he was in his room when I went there a few minutes ago. I managed to contact his mind — and I think he recognized me! But be sure, he's the thing that Roborov saw! My telephone is out of order. I think there's someone outside. If I listen at the
The note stopped right there. Khuv read it again, his eyes wide, skipping over the words. Something of the meaning of the thing sank in and he felt the short hairs stiffen at the back of his neck. His blood seemed to turn to ice in his veins; but he forced himself to leap toward the heavy metal door of Failsafe Control and hammer on it, yelling:
'Viktor, open up for God's sake!'
Direktor Luchov was on duty. Red-eyed, he came to the door and opened it, was bowled backwards as Khuv burst in. 'What in the name of-?'
'Read this!' said Khuv, thrusting Savinkov's note at him. 'It's something of a dying declaration. Things are beginning to add up, making a monstrous sort of sense. Savinkov seems to be saying that there's a connection between Vasily Agursky and the thing he kept in that tank of his. I still don't know what it's all about, but I'm damned well going to find out! Now listen, Viktor: get on the phone. Let's have no alarms, for that would only alert him, but I want everyone looking for Agursky. God, I've known there was something weird about him for weeks, ever since… since…'
Luchov stared at him, said: 'Since that time when he had his breakdown? When they found him down there in the thing's room? Poor Vasily, and he always seemed to me such a harmless little man.'
'Well, he's not harmless now!' Khuv snapped. 'Right, we're off to find him. Put the word about: if anyone gets to him first they're to hold him, by any means possible. And if they can't hold him they must kill him — also by any means possible.' He ushered his men out of the room, called over his shoulder: 'Search-parties in threes, Viktor. For God's sake don't let anyone tackle him alone!'
The mortuary was situated off the main perimeter corridor above the magmass levels. In its time it had housed the victims of the Perchorsk Incident, and for a while it had been a cold storehouse, but right now it was a mortuary again. And Agursky was the only one with a key. On their way to the place Khuv and Litve had separated from the other two KGB men; Litve had commandeered one of the Projekt's flame-throwers from its bracket on a wall, and the Major had equipped himself with a snub-nosed sub-machine gun taken from a reluctant soldier. They'd been to Agursky's laboratory and found it locked, with the lighted sign over its door proclaiming it 'vacant'. Likewise Agursky's room, which Khuv had opened with skeleton keys. Agursky could be anywhere in the complex, but they might as well try the mortuary. All of the bodies from the murders were down there, on ice, where Agursky had supposedly been examining them. Word of the manhunt had not got down to the core, and the magmass levels were silent as usual. Khuv and Litve looked down there for a moment — down to where the lights were low and the wormhole-riddled walls moulded into weird shapes — before turning off along the short straight corridor through solid rock to the door of the mortuary. It was locked but it wasn't a security door; Khuv's keys opened it. They swung the door wide and stepped inside, and Litve went to put on the lights. They didn't come on. The light-bulbs had been removed from their fixtures in the low ceiling.
A little light filtered in from the corridor. Khuv and Litve stood just inside the open doorway, glanced at each other, then at the tables against the wall, and at the long narrow boxes on the tables. At the back of the mortuary machinery made a slow, regular breathing sound, sending frigid air circulating. Other than that there was no sound, no motion. The room was a giant refrigerator.
Litve primed his flame-thrower, lit the pilot light. Its blue flicker threw the shadows back a little. 'Major,' Litve said, his voice nervous and echoing, 'there's nowhere he could hide in here. Let's go.'
Khuv tucked his elbows in and shivered. He blew into the palm of his free hand. 'All right,' he said, 'but don't be in such a hurry.' He turned in a slow circle, paused for a moment to watch his bre
ath pluming in the air. Then he relaxed a little. 'OK, we'll make for the — ' and again he paused, listening intently. After a moment: 'Did you hear something?'
Litve listened, shook his head. 'Just the pumps back there.'
Khuv stepped toward the makeshift coffins where they lined the walls. 'While we're here,' he said, 'it might be a good idea to check on what Agursky's been up to. You don't know him quite as well as I do.' He shivered again, but not from the cold. 'He has funny ways with dead bodies, that one.'
With Litve moving up beside him, he looked into the first casket. Klara Orlova had been brought down; white as a 'candle and stark naked she lay there. The gash across her neck, which went from ear to ear, looked like a black velvet choker. On a young girl it would have looked erotic — if one was unaware that in fact it was a fatal wound.
The two men stepped to the next box. The contorted face of a young soldier, still silently screaming, looked up at them. God! Khuv thought. You'd think someone would have closed his eyes!
The next box was empty, and as Khuv moved on Litve quickly crossed the room to where a box stood on its own on a separate table. It had a lid loosely laid on top, which he lifted down. On Khuv's side of the room, the next box contained the second soldier. His face was a raw red mess, completely unrecognizable. Two more boxes to go. Khuv made to move on, and -
Across the room Litve drew breath in a shocked gasp. 'Erich!' he said.
'What?' Khuv strode over to where he stood. Litve seemed frozen in horror; but he was right, the man in the box was the missing KGB agent, Erich Bildarev. He was naked and of course dead; the ribs over his heart were crushed in, as badly as if he'd fallen on a bear trap. Khuv grasped Litve's arm, more for support than any other reason. His breath came faster, making a string of tiny plumes. At last he managed to gasp: That's the last bit of proof we needed. Savinkov was right, Agursky's our man!'
