Vamphyri!

by Brian Lumley

  Roberts had found the task not at all to his liking and far from easy. The vampire is a solitary creature whose nature it is to be secretive. There is that in a vampire’s mental makeup which shields him as effectively as the night screens his physical being. Roberts could see Harkley House only as a vague, shadowy place, as a scene viewed through dense, weaving mist. When Bodescu was there this mental miasma rolled that much more densely, making it difficult for Roberts to pinpoint any specific person or object.

  Practice makes perfect, however, and the longer Roberts stayed with it the clearer his pictures were coming. He could now state for certain, for instance, that Harkley House was occupied by only four people: Bodescu, his mother. his aunt and her daughter. But there was something else there, too. Two somethings, in fact. One of them was Bodescu’s dog, but obscured by the same aura, which was very strange. And the other was—simply “the Other.” Like Yulian himself. Roberts thought of it only that way. But whatever it was—in all likelihood the thing in the cellars which Alec Kyle had warned about—it was certainly there and it was alive …

  “Roberts here,” the scryer spoke into the telephone. “What is it, Peter?”

  Keen passed his message.

  “Travel agency?” Roberts frowned. “Yes, we’ll get on to it at once. Your relief? He’s on his way right now. Trevor Jordan, yes. See you later, Peter.” Roberts put down the telephone and picked up a directory. Moments later he was phoning the travel agency in Torquay, whose name and address Keen had given him.

  When he got an answer, Roberts held a handkerchief to his mouth, contrived a young voice. “Hello? Er, hello?”

  “Hello?” came back the answer. “Sunsea Travel, here—who’s calling, please?” It was a male voice, deep and smooth.

  “Seem to have a bad line,” Roberts replied, keeping his voice to a medium pitch. “Can you hear me? I was in, oh, an hour ago. Mr. Bodescu?”

  “Ah, yes, sir!” The booking agent raised his voice. “Your Romanian inquiry. Bucharest, any time in the next two weeks. Right?”

  Roberts gave a start, made an effort to keep his muffled voice even. “Er, Romania, yes, that’s right.” He thought fast—furiously fast. “Er, look, I’m sorry to be a nuisance, but—”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I’ve decided I can’t make it after all. Maybe next year, eh?”

  “Ah!” There was some disappointment in the other’s tone. “Well, that’s the way it goes. Thanks for calling, sir. So you’re definitely cancelling, right?”

  “Yes.” Roberts jiggled the phone a bit. “I’m afraid I have to … Damn bad line, this! Anyway, something’s come up, and—”

  “Well, don’t worry about it, Mr. Bodescu,” the travel agent cut him off. “It happens all the time. And anyway, I haven’t yet found the time to make any real inquiries. So no harm done. But do let me know if you change your mind again, won’t you?”

  “Oh, indeed! I will, I will. Most helpful of you. Sorry to have been such a nuisance.”

  “Not at all, sir. Bye now.”

  “Er, goodbye!” Roberts put the phone down.

  Darcy Clarke, who had been party to this exchange, said, “Sheer genius! Well done, Chief!”

  Roberts looked up but didn’t smile. “Romania!” he repeated, ominously. “Things are hotting up, Darcy. I’ll be glad when Kyle gets his call through. He’s two hours overdue.”

  At that very moment the phone rang again.

  Clarke inclined his head knowingly. “Now that’s what I call a talent. If it doesn’t happen—make it!”

  Roberts pictured Romania in his mind’s eye—his own interpretation, for he’d never been there—then superimposed an image of Alec Kyle over a rugged Romanian countryside. He closed his eyes and Kyle’s picture came up in photographic—no, live—detail.

  “Roberts here.”

  “Guy?” Kyle’s voice came back, crisp with static. “Listen, I intended to route this through London, John Grieve, but I couldn’t get him.” Roberts knew what he meant: obviously he would have liked the call to be one hundred per cent secure.

  “I can’t help you there,” he answered. “There’s no one that special around right now. Are there problems, then?”

  “Shouldn’t think so.” In the eye of Roberts’s mind, Kyle was frowning. “We lacked a bit of privacy in Genoa, but that cleared up. As for why I’m late; it’s like contacting Mars getting through from here! Talk about antiquated systems. If I didn’t have local help … anyway, have you got anything for me?”

  “Can we talk straight?”

  “We’ll have to.”

  Roberts quickly brought him up to date, finishing with Bodescu’s thwarted trip to Romania. In his mind’s eye he saw, as well as physically hearing, Kyle’s gasp of horror. Then the head of INTESP got hold of his emotions; even if Bodescu’s plans to come over here hadn’t been foiled, still it would have been too late for him.

  “By the time we’ve finished over here,” he grimly told Roberts, “there’ll be nothing left for him anyway. And by the time you’ve finished over there … he won’t be able to go anywhere.” Then he told Roberts in detail exactly what he wanted done. It took him a good fifteen minutes to make sure he covered everything.

  “When?” Roberts asked him when he was finished.

  Kyle was cautious. “Are you part of the surveillance team? I mean, do you physically go out to the house and watch him?”

  “No. I co-ordinate. I’m always here at the HQ. But I do want to be in on the kill.”

  “Very well, I’ll tell you when it’s to be,” said Kyle. “But you’re not to pass it on to the others! Not until as close as possible to zero hour itself. I don’t want Bodescu picking it out of someone’s mind.”

  “That makes sense. Wait—” Roberts sent Clarke into the next room, out of earshot, “OK, when?”

  “Tomorrow—in daylight. Let’s settle for 5:00 P.M. your time. By then we’ll have done our bit, just an hour or so earlier. There are certain obvious reasons why daylight will be best, and on your side of the job one not so obvious reason. When Harkley goes up, it’ll make a big blaze. You’ll need to make sure local fire services don’t get there too soon and put it out. If it was at night, the flames would be visible for miles. Anyway, that’s for you to work on. But the last thing you want is outside interference, OK?”

  “Got it,” said Roberts.

  “That’s it, then,” said Kyle. “We probably won’t be talking again until it’s all finished. So good luck!”

  “Good luck,” Roberts answered, letting Kyle’s face fade in his mind as he replaced the receiver in its cradle …

  Most of Monday found Harry Keogh trying without success to break the magnetic attraction of his son’s psyche. There was no way. The child fought him, clung to both Harry and the waking world alike with an incredible tenacity, would not go to sleep. Brenda Keogh marked the baby’s fever, thought to call a doctor, then changed her mind; but she determined that if the baby stayed as bad tempered through the night, and if in the morning his temperature was still on the high side, then she’d get advice.

  She couldn’t know that Harry Jr.’s fever resulted from the mental contest he waged with his father, a fight the infant was winning hands down. But Harry Sr. knew it well enough. The baby’s will—and his strength—both were enormous! The child’s mind was a black hole whose gravity must surely pull Harry in entirely. And Harry had discovered something: that indeed a mind without a body can grow weary, and just like flesh be worn down. So that when he could no longer fight he gave in and retreated into himself, glad that for now his vain striving and struggling were over.

  Like a game fish on the end of a line, he allowed himself to be reeled in, close to the boat. But he knew he must fight again when he sensed the gaff poised to strike. Incorporeal, it would be Harry’s last chance to retain an individual identity. That was why he would fight, for the continuation of his existence, but he couldn’t help wondering: what did all of this mean to his son? Why di
d Harry Jr. want him? Was it simply the terrific greed of any healthy infant, or was it something else entirely?

  As for the baby himself: he recognized his father’s partial surrender, accepted the fact that for now the fight was over. And he had no means by which to tell this fantastic adult that it wasn’t a fight at all, not really, but simply a desperate desire to know, to learn. Father and son, two minds in one small, fragile—defenseless?—body, both of them took the welcome opportunity to sleep.

  And at 5:00 P.M. when Brenda Keogh looked in on her baby son, she was pleased to note that he lay still and at peace in his cot, and that his temperature was down again …

  About 4:30 P.M. that same Monday afternoon, in Ionesti: Irma Dobresti had just answered a telephone call from Bucharest. The telephone conversation had grown sufficiently heated to cause the rest of the party to listen in. Krakovitch’s face had fallen, telling Kyle and Quint that something was amiss. When Irma was through and after she’d hurled the phone down, Krakovitch spoke up.

  “Despite the fact that all of this should have been cleared, now there is a problem from the Lands Ministry. Some idiot is questioning our authority. You are remembering, this Romania—not Russia! The land we want to burn is common land and has belonged to the people since time—how do you say?—immemorial. If it was just some farmer’s property we could buy him off, but—” He shrugged helplessly.

  “This is correct,” Irma spoke up. “Men from the Ministry, from Ploiesti, will be coming here to talk to us later tonight. I don’t knowing how this leaked out, but this is officially their area and under their, er, jurisdiction? Yes. It could be big problems. Questions and answers. Not everyone believe in vampires!”

  “But aren’t you from the Ministry?” Kyle was alarmed. “I mean, we have to get the job done!”

  They had driven out early that morning to the spot where almost two decades ago Ilya Bodescu’s body had been recovered from a tangle of undergrowth and densely grown firs on a steep south-facing slope of the cruciform hills. And when they had climbed higher, then they’d come across Thibor’s mausoleum. There, where lichen-covered slabs had leaned like menhirs under the motionless trees, all three psychics—Kyle, Quint and Krakovitch alike—had felt the still extant menace of the place. They had left quickly.

  Wasting no time, Irma had called up her team of civil engineers, a foreman and five men, based in Pitesti. Through Krakovitch, Kyle had put a question to the hardhat boss.

  “Are you and your men used to handling this stuff?”

  “Thermite? Oh, yes. Sometimes we blast, and sometimes we burn. I’ve worked for you Russians before, up north in Berezov. We used it all the time—to soften up the permafrost. Can’t see the point of it here, though …”

  “Plague,” said Krakovitch at once, by way of explanation. It was an invention of his own. “We’ve come across old records that tell of a mass burial of plague victims right here: Although it was three hundred years ago, the soil deep down is still likely to be infected. These hills have been redesignated arable land. Before we let any unsuspecting farmer start ploughing it up, or terracing the hillside, we want to make sure it’s safe. Right down to the bedrock!”

  Irma Dobresti had caught all of this. She had raised an eyebrow at Krakovitch but said nothing.

  “And how did you Soviets get involved?” the hard-hat had wanted to know.

  Krakovitch had anticipated that one. “We dealt with a similar case in Moscow just a year ago,” he had answered. Which was more or less the truth.

  Still the hard-hat had been curious. “And the British?”

  Now Irma stepped in. “Because they may have a similar problem in England,” she snapped. “And so they’re here to see how we deal with it, right?”

  The ganger hadn’t minded facing up to Krakovitch, but he wasn’t going to go against Irma Dobresti. “Where do you want your holes?” he’d asked. “And how deep?”

  By just after midday the preparations were completed. All that remained was the detonators to be wired up to a plunger, a ten minute job which for safety’s sake could wait until tomorrow.

  Carl Quint had suggested. “We could finish it now …”

  But Kyle had decided against it. “We don’t really know what we’re playing with here,” he’d answered. “Also, when the job’s done, I don’t want to hang about but get straight on with the next phase—Faethor’s castle in the Khorvaty. I imagine that after we’ve burned this hillside there’ll be all kinds of people coming up here to see what we’ve been up to. So I’d prefer to be out of it the same day. This afternoon Felix has travel arrangements to see to, and I’ve a call to make to our friends in Devon. By the time that’s done the light will be failing, and I’d prefer to work in daylight after a good night’s sleep. So—”

  “Sometime tomorrow?”

  “In the afternoon, while the sun’s still slanting onto that hillside.”

  Then he’d turned to Krakovitch. “Felix, are these men going back to Pitesti today?”

  “They will be,” Krakovitch answered, “if there is nothing else for them to do until tomorrow afternoon. Why are you asking this?”

  Kyle had shrugged. “Just a feeling,” he said. “I would have liked them to be closer at hand. But—”

  “I, too, have had a feeling,” the Russian answered, frowning. “I am thinking, nerves—perhaps?”

  “That makes all three of us then,” Carl Quint had added. “So let’s hope that it is just nerves and nothing else, right?”

  All of that had been mid-morning, and everything had appeared to be going smoothly. And now suddenly there was this threat of outside interference. Between times Kyle had made his call to Devon, taking two hours to get through, and had arranged for the strike against Harkley House. “Damn it!” he snapped now. “It has to be tomorrow. Ministry or none, we’ve got to go ahead with this.”

  “We should have done it this morning,” said Quint, “when we were right on top of it …”

  Irma Dobresti stepped in. She narrowed her eyes and said, “Listen. These local bureaucrats are annoying me. Why don’t you four just drive back to the site? Right now, I mean! See, I was perhaps alone when that call came in—you men were all out there in the foothills, doing your job. I’ll telephone Pitesti, get Chevenu and those rough men of his back up there to meet you at the site. You can do the job—I mean finish it—tonight.”

  Kyle stared at her. “That’s a good idea, Irma—but what about you? Won’t you be setting yourself up? Won’t they give you a hard time?”

  “What?” She looked surprised at the suggestion. “Is it my fault I was alone here when I took that telephone call? Is it me for blaming that my taxi took a wrong turning and I couldn’t find you to stop you from burning the hills? All these country tracks looking the same to me!”

  Krakovitch, Kyle and Quint, all three grinned at each other. Sergei Gullharov was mainly out of it, but he sensed the excitement of the others and stood up, nodding his head as if in agreement. “Da, da!”

  “Right,” said Kyle, “let’s do it!” And on impulse, he grabbed Irma Dobresti, pulled her close and kissed her soundly …

  Monday night.

  9:30 middle-European time, and in England 7:30 P.M.

  There was fire and nightmare on the cruciform hills under the moon and stars and the looming Carpatii Meridionali, and the nightmare transferred itself westward across mountains and rivers and oceans to Yulian Bodescu where he tossed on his bed and sweated the chill, rank sweat of fear in his garret room at Harkley House.

  Exhausted by the unspecified fears of the day, he now suffered the telepathic torments of Thibor the Wallach, the vampire whose last physical vestiges were finally being consumed. There was no way back for the vampire now; but unlike Faethor, Thibor’s spirit was unquiet, restless, malignant. And it ached for revenge!

  Yuliaannn! Ah, my son, my one true son! See what is become of your father now …

  “What?” Yulian talked in his sleep, imagined a blistering heat,
flames that crept ever closer. And in the heart of the fire, a figure beckoning. “Who … who are you?”

  Ah, you know me, my son. We met but briefly, and you were still unborn at the meeting, but you can remember if you try.

  “Where am I?”

  For the moment, with me. Ask not where you are, but where I am. These are the cruciform hills—where it started for you, and where it now ends for me. For you this is merely a dream, while for me it is reality.

  “You! Now Yulian knew him. The voice that called in the night, unremembered until now. The Thing in the ground. The source.”You? My … father?”

  Indeed! Oh, not through any lover’s tryst with your mother. Not through the lust or love of a man for a woman. No, but your father nevertheless. Through blood, Yulian, through blood!

  Yulian fought down his fear of the flames. He sensed that he only dreamed—however real and immediate the dream—and knew he would not be hurt. He advanced into the inferno of fire and drew close to the figure there. Black billowing smoke and crimson flames obscured his view and the heat was a furnace all around, but there were questions Yulian must ask, and the burning Thing was the only one who could answer them.

  “You have asked me to come and seek you out, and I will come. But why? What is it you want of me?”

  Too late! Too late! the flame-wreathed apparition cried out in anguish. And Yulian knew that his pain was not born of the consuming fire but bitter frustration. I would have been your teacher, my son. Yes, and you would have learned all the many secrets of the Wamphyri. In return … I can’t deny that there would have been a reward in it for me. I would have walked again in the world of men, known again the unbearable pleasures of my youth! But too late. All dreams and schemes to no avail. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust ...

  The figure was slowly melting, its outline gradually changing, rendering down into itself.

  Yulian must know more, must see more clearly. He penetrated the very heart of the inferno, came close up to the burning Thing. “I already know the secrets of the Wamphyri!” he cried above the crackle of blazing trees and the hiss of molten earth. “I learned them for myself!”