by Brian Lumley
The air was blue and acrid from Roberts’s endless chain-smoking, and steam whistled from an electric kettle in one corner where Carson was making yet another cup of instant coffee. “I’m knackered,” Roberts admitted, stubbing out his half-smoked cigarette and lighting another. “We’ll take a break, find somewhere quiet and try to snatch forty winks. Start up again in an hour’s time.” He stood up, stretched, said to Carson, “Stow the coffee for me, Mike. One addiction’s enough, thanks!”
Trevor Jordan pushed his chair away from the desk, went over to the room’s small window and opened it as far as possible. He lowered himself into a chair beside it and hung his head out into the night.
Layard yawned, rolled up the map and pigeon-holed it in a rack behind him. In doing so he exposed the huge 1:625,000 scale map of England which they had worked on earlier. At ten miles to an inch the thing covered the desk. He glanced at it, at Birmingham’s grey blot, let his talent reach out and touch that sleeping city—and …
“Guy!” Layard’s whisper stopped Roberts half-way out of the door.
He looked back. “Eh?”
Layard jerked stiffly to his feet, crouched over the map. His eyes searched frantically and he licked suddenly dry lips. “Guy,” he said again, “we thought he was down for the night, but he’s not! He’s off and running again—and for all we know he’s been on the move for the last hour and a half!”
“What the hell …?” Roberts’s tired mind could barely grasp it. He came lurching back to the desk, Jordan too. “What are you talking about? Bodescu?”
“Right,” said Layard, “that bloody thing! Bodescu! He’s cleared off out of Birmingham!”
Grey as death, Roberts slumped down into his chair as before. He put a meaty hand over Birmingham on the map, closed his eyes, forced his talent into action. But no use, there was nothing; no mind-smog, no slightest suggestion that the vampire was there at all. “Oh, Christ!” Roberts hissed through grating teeth.
Jordan looked across the room at Carson where he was stirring sugar into three cups of coffee. “Square one, Mike,” he said. “You’d better make it four after all …”
It had been Harvey Newton’s first choice to take the Al north, but in the end he’d settled for the motorway. What he lost in actual distance he’d get back in speed, comfort, three-lane running, and Ml’s ruler-straight road.
At Leicester Forest East he stopped for a coffee break, answered the call of nature, picked up a can of Coke and a wrapped sandwich. And breathing the cool, moist night air he turned up his coat collar and made his way back across the almost deserted car park to his car. He had left the door open but had taken his keys with him. The whole stop had taken no more than ten minutes. Now he’d top up with petrol and get on his way again.
But as he approached his car he slowed down, stopped. His footsteps, echoing back to him, seemed to pause just a moment too late. Something niggled at the back of Newton’s mind. He turned, looked back towards the friendly lights of the all-night eater. For some reason he was holding his breath, and maybe it was a very good reason. He turned in a slow circle, took in the entire car park, the squat, hulking snail-shapes of parked cars. A heavy vehicle, turning off the motorway, lit him up in the glare of its thousand watt eyes. He was dazzled, and after the lorry angled away the night was that much darker.
Then he remembered the upright, forward-leaning dog-thing he thought he’d seen—no, which he had seen—at Harkley House, and that brought his mission back into focus. He shook off his nameless fears, got into his car and started the engine.
Something closed on Newton’s brain like a clamp, a mind warped and powerful and growing ever more powerful! He knew it was reading him like a stolen book, reading his identity, divining his purpose. “Good evening,” said a voice like hot tar in Newton’s ear. He gave a gasp of shock and terror combined, an inarticulate cry. and turning looked into the back of the car. Feral eyes fixed him in a glare far more penetrating, far worse than the lorry’s lamps. Beneath them, the darkness was agleam with twin rows of white daggers.
“Wha—!?” Newton started to say. But there was no need even to ask. He knew that his vendetta with the monster had run its course.
Yulian Bodescu lifted Newton’s crossbow, aimed it directly into his gaping, gasping mouth—and pulled the trigger.
It had been Felix Krakovitch’s plan to stay overnight in Chernovtsy; in the event, however, he had ordered Sergei Gulharov to drive straight on to Kolomyya. Since Ivan Gerenko had known that Krakovitch’s party was scheduled to stop over in Chernovtsy, it had seemed a very good idea not to. Thus, after Theo Dolgikh got into Chernovtsy at about 5:00 A.M. it had taken him a futile and frustrating two hours simply to discover that the men he sought were not there. After another delay while he contacted the Chateau Bronnitsy, Gerenko had finally suggested that he go on to Kolomyya and try again.
Dolgikh had been flown from Moscow to a military airport in Skala-podolskaya where he’d been required to sign for a KGB Fiat. Now, in the somewhat battered but unobtrusive car, he drove to Kolomyya and arrived there just before 8:00 A.M. Discreetly checking out the hotels, it was a case of third time lucky—and also unlucky. They had put up at the Hotel Carpatii, but they had been up and on their way again by 7:30. He had missed them by half an hour. The proprietor was only able to tell him that before leaving they’d inquired the address of the town’s library and museum.
Dolgikh obtained the same address and followed after them. At the museum he found the curator, a bustling, beaming little Russian in thick-lensed spectacles, in the act of opening the place up. Following him inside the old cupolaed building, where their footsteps echoed in musty air, Dolgikh said, “Might I enquire if you’ve had three men in to see you this morning? I was supposed to meet them here, but as you see I’m late.”
“They were fortunate to find me working so early,” the other replied. “And luckier still that I let them in. The museum doesn’t really open until 8:30, you see. But since they were obviously in a hurry …” He smiled and shrugged.
“So I’ve missed them by … how much?” Dolgikh put on a disappointed expression.
The curator shrugged again. “Oh, ten minutes, maybe. But at least I can tell you where they went.”
“I would be very grateful, Comrade,” Dolgikh told him, following him into his private rooms.
“Comrade?” The curator glanced at him, his eyes bright and seeming to bulge behind the dense glass of his spectacles. “We don’t hear that term too much down here—on the border, so to speak. Might I inquire who you are?”
Dolgikh presented his KGB identification and said, “That makes it official. Now then, I’ve no more time to waste. So if you’ll just tell me what they were looking for and where they went …”
The curator no longer beamed, no longer seemed happy. “Are they wanted, those men?”
“No, just under observation.”
“A shame. They seemed pleasant enough.”
“One can’t be too careful these days,” said Dolgikh. “What did they want?”
“A location. They sought a place at the foot of the mountains called Moupho Aide Ferenc Yaborov.”
“A mouthful!” Dolgikh commented. “And you told them where to find it?”
“No,” the other shook his head. “Only where it used to be—and even then I can’t be sure. Look here.” He showed Dolgikh a set of antique maps spread on a table. “Not accurate, by any means. The oldest is about four hundred and fifty years old. Copies, obviously, not the originals. But if you look there”—he put his finger on one of the maps—“you’ll see Kolomyya. And here—”
“Ferengi?”
The curator nodded. “One of the three—English, I believe—seemed to know exactly where to look. When he saw that ancient name on the map, ‘Ferengi,’ he grew very excited. And shortly after that they left.”
Dolgikh nodded, studied the old map very carefully. “It’s west of here,” he mused, “and a little north. Scale?”
“Roughly
one centimetre to five kilometres. But as I’ve said, the accuracy is very suspect.”
“Something less than seventy kilometres, then,” Dolgikh frowned. “At the foot of the mountains. Do you have a modern map?”
“Oh, yes,” the curator sighed. “If you’ll just come this way …”
Fifteen miles out of Kolomyya a new highway, still under construction, sped north for Ivano-Frankovsk, its tarmac surface making for a smooth ride. Certainly to Krakovitch, Quint and Gulharov the ride was a delightful respite, following in the wake of their bumpy, bruising journey from Bucharest, through Romania and Moldavia. To the west rose the Carpathians, dark, forested and brooding even in the morning sunlight, while to the east the plain fell gently away into grey-green distance and a far, hazy horizon.
Eighteen miles along this road, in the direction of Ivano-Frankovsk, they passed a fork off to the left which inclined upwards directly into misty foothills. Quint asked Gulharov to slow down and traced a line on a rough map he’d copied at the museum. “That could be our best route,” he said.
“The road has a barrier,” Krakovitch pointed out, “and a sign forbidding entry. It’s disused, a dead end.”
“And yet I sense that’s the way to go,” Quint insisted.
Krakovitch could feel it too: something inside which warned that this was not the way to go, which probably meant that Quint was right and it was. “There’s grave danger there,” he said.
“Which is more or less what we expected,” said Quint. “It’s what we’re here for.”
“Very well.” Krakovitch pursed his lips and nodded. He spoke to Gulharov, but the latter was already slowing down. Up ahead the twin lanes narrowed into one where a construction gang worked to widen the road. A steam roller flattened smoking tarmac in the wake of a tar-spraying lorry. Gulharov turned the car about-face and, at Krakovitch’s command brought it to a halt.
Krakovitch got out, went to find the ganger and speak to him. Quint called after him, “What’s up?”
“Up? Oh! I mean to see if these people know anything about this area. Also, perhaps I am able to enlist their aid. Remember, when we find what we’re looking for, we still have to destroy it!”
Quint stayed in the car and watched Krakovitch stride towards the workmen and speak to them. They pointed along the deserted road to a construction shack. Krakovitch went that way. Ten minutes later he came back with a bearded giant of a man in faded overalls.
“This is Mikhail Volkonsky,” he said, by way of introduction. Quint and Gulharov nodded. “Apparently you are right, Carl,” Krakovitch continued. “He says that back there, up in the mountains, that’s the place of the gypsies.”
“Da, da!” Volkonsky growled and nodded his concurrence. He pointed westward. Quint got out of the car, Gulharov too. They looked where the ganger pointed. “Szgany!” Volkonsky insisted. “Szgany Ferengi!”
Beyond the foothills, rising out of the thin morning mist, the blue smoke of a wood fire climbed almost vertically into the still air. “Their camp,” said Krakovitch.
“They … they still come.” Quint shook his head in disbelief. “They still come!”
“Their homage,” Krakovitch nodded.
“What now?” asked Quint, after a moment’s silence.
“Now Mikhail Volkonsky will show us the place,” said Krakovitch. “That blocked off road we passed back there goes to within half a mile of the castle’s site. Volkonsky has actually seen the place.”
All three searchers got back into the car, the huge foreman with them, and Gulharov began to drive back the way they’d come.
Quint asked, “But where does the road go?”
“Nowhere!” Krakovitch answered. “It was meant to cut through the mountains to the railhead at Khust. But a year ago the pass was declared unworkable because of shale, sliding scree and badly fractured rock. To force it through would constitute a major engineering feat, and there’d be little real benefit to show from it. As an alternative, and to save face, the road will be driven through to Ivano-Frankovsk instead; that is, the existing road will be widened and improved. All on this side of the mountains. There is already a railway route, however tortuous, from Ivano-Frankovsk through the mountains. As for the fifteen miles of new road already built”—he shrugged—“eventually there may be a town out there, industrial sites. It won’t have been a total waste. Very little is wasted in the Soviet Union.”
Quint smiled, however warily.
Krakovitch saw it, said, “Yes, I know—dogma. It’s a disease we all seem to catch sooner or later. Now it appears I have it too. There is great waste, not least in the mass of words from which we build our excuses …”
Gulharov stopped the car at the new road’s barrier; Volkonsky got out, swivelled the barrier to one side, waved them through. They picked him up again and headed up into the mountains.
No one noticed the battered old Fiat parked a half-mile down the road back towards Kolomyya, or the blue exhaust fumes and cloud of dust as it rumbled into life and followed in their tracks …
Guy Roberts had eaten two British Rail breakfasts, washed down with pints of coffee, and by the time his train pulled out of Grantham he was half-way through the day’s first packet of Marlborough Kings. He was huge, red-eyed and whiskery, and no one bothered him much. He had his corner of the carriage all to himself. No one looking at him would ever have guessed he possessed the talent of some primal wizard, or that his mission was to slay a twentieth-century vampire. Indeed the thought might be amusing—if it wasn’t so very desperate. There were too many desperate things, too much to do, and no time to do it all. It was so very tiring.
Thinking back on the events of last night, he lay back in his seat and closed his eyes. He and Layard had stayed with it right through the night, and it had been one strange, strange night for both of them. Kyle, for instance, at the Chateau Bronnitsy. As the sky had brightened into dawn, so Layard had found it increasingly difficult to locate Alec Kyle. In his own words it had been like “the difference between finding a live man and a dead one, with Kyle somewhere in between.” That didn’t bode at all well for INTESP’s Number One.
Roberts, too, had been unable to penetrate the Château’s mind blocks. He should have been able to “scry” Kyle, but all he’d got on those few occasions when he had actually penetrated the mental defences of Bronnitsy’s espers had been … well, an echo of Kyle. A fast-fading image. Roberts didn’t know for sure what E-Branch was doing to Kyle, and he didn’t much care to guess.
Then there’d been Yulian Bodescu; or rather, there hadn’t been him. For try as they might, Layard and Roberts hadn’t been able to relocate the vampire. It was as if he’d simply vanished off the face of the map. There was no “mind-smog” in or around Birmingham, none anywhere in the whole country, so far as the British espers were able to discover. But after they’d thought about it for a little while, then the answer had seemed obvious. Bodescu knew they were tracking him, and he had talents, too. Somehow he was screening himself, making himself “disappear” out of mindscan.
But at 6:30 in the morning, Layard had picked him up again. Very briefly he’d made contact with a reeking, writhing mind-smog, an evil something that had sensed him at once, snarling its mental defiance before disappearing once more. And Layard had located it somewhere in the vicinity of York.
That had been enough for Roberts. It had seemed to him that if there’d ever been any doubt as to where Bodescu was heading, his destination was now confirmed. Leaving INTESP HQ once more in the capable hands of John Grieve, the permanent Duty Officer, he’d prepared to head north.
It was only as he was actually making his exit from the HQ that word of Harvey Newton came in: how his car had been discovered in an overgrown ditch just off the motorway at Doncaster, and how his mutilated body had been found in the boot with a crossbow bolt transfixing the head. That had clinched it, not only for Roberts but for everyone else involved. They didn’t even consider that there might be some other explanation ap
art from Bodescu. From now on it would be outright warfare—no quarter asked and none given—until the fiend was staked, decapitated, burned and definitely dead!
At this juncture of Roberts’s reflections, someone “ahemmed” and stepped over his outstretched feet. He opened his eyes briefly, saw a slim man in a hat and overcoat claiming the seat beside him. The stranger took off his hat, shrugged out of his coat and sat down. He produced a paperback book and Roberts saw that it was Dracula, by Bram Stoker. He couldn’t help but grimace.
The stranger saw his expression, shrugged almost apologetically. “A little fantasy doesn’t hurt,” he said, in a thin, reedy voice.
“No,” Roberts growled his agreement before closing his eyes again. “Fantasy doesn’t hurt anyone.” And to himself: But the real thing is something else entirely!
It was 4:00 P.M., on the Russian side of the Carpathians, and Theo Dolgikh was weary as a man could be, but he drew strength from the sure knowledge that his job was almost done. After this he’d sleep for a week, then indulge himself in as many pleasurable diversions as he could manage before seeking a new assignment. Assuming, that was, that he hadn’t already been assigned some new task. But pleasure can take many forms, depending on the man, and Dolgikh’s work had its moments. His missions were often very … satisfying? Certainly he was going to enjoy the end of this one.
He looked out and down from his vantage point in a clump of pines on the north face of the mountainside where it wound back into the gorge, and trained his binoculars on the four men who climbed carefully along the last hundred yards of boulder- and scree-littered ledge weathered into the sheer cliff which formed the south face. They were less than three hundred yards away, but Dolgikh used his binoculars anyway.
He enjoyed close-up the strain in their sweating faces, imagined he could feel their aching muscles, tried to picture their thoughts as they headed one last time for the old creeper-grown ruins up there where the ravine bottle-necked and the stream rushed and gurgled unseen in the depths of the gorge. They’d be congratulating themselves that their quest—their mission—was almost concluded; ah, but they could hardly imagine that they themselves were also at an end!
