by Brian Lumley
‘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 Jnr’s fever resulted from the mental contest he waged with his father, a fight the infant was winning hands down. But Harry Snr 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 did Harry jnr want him? Was it simply the terrific greed of any healthy infant, or was it something else entirely?
As for the baby himself: he recognised 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 — defenceless? — 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 lonesti:
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 problems 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 hardhat 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 hardhat 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 for 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…ut 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 strik
e 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 Gulharov 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 that 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 horn 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
— … 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 roar and crackle of blazing trees and the hiss of molten earth. ‘I learned them for myself!’ -
Can you put on the shapes of lesser creatures?
‘I can go on all fours like a great dog,’ Yulian answered. ‘And in the night, people would swear I was a dog!’
Hah! A dog! A man who would be a dog! What is that for an ambition? It is nothing! Can you form wings, glide like a bat?
‘I… haven’t tried.’
You know nothing.
‘I can make others like myself!’
Fool! That is the simplest of things. Not to make them is much harder! -
‘When harmful men are nearby, I sense their minds.
That is instinct, which you got from me. Indeed, everything you have you got from me! So you read minds, eh? But can you bend those minds to your will?
‘With my eyes, yes.’
Beguilment, hypnotism, a stage magician’s trick! You are an innocent.
‘Damn you!’ Yulian’s pride was hurt at last, his patience all used up. ‘What are you anyway but a dead thing? I’ll tell you what I’ve learned: I can take a dead creature and draw out its secrets, and know all that it knew in life!’
Necromancy? Is it so? And no one to show you how? That is an achievement! There is hope for you yet.
‘I can heal my own wounds as though they never were, and I’ve the strength of any two men. I could lie with a woman and love her — to death, if I desired — and not even weary myself. And only anger me, dear father, and then I could kill, kill, kill! But not you, for you’re already dead. Hope for me? I’ll say there is. But what hope is there for you?’
For a moment there was no answer from the melting Thing. Then — Ahhh! And indeed you are my son, Yuliaannn! Closer, come closer still.
Yulian moved to less than arm’s length from the Thing, facing it squarely. The stench of its burning was monstrous. Its blackened outer shell began to crumble, rapidly disintegrated and fell away. The flames immediately attacked the inner image, which Yulian now saw almost as a reflection of himself. It had the same features, the same bone structure, the same dark attraction. The face of a fallen angel. They could be peas from the same pod.
‘You… you are my father!’ he gasped.
I was, the other groaned. Now I am nothing. I am burning away, as you see. Not the real me but something I left behind. It was my last hope, and through it and with your help — I might have been a power in the world once again. But it’s too late now.
‘Then why do you concern yourself with me?’ Yulian tried to understand. ‘Why have you come to me — or drawn me to you? If I can’t help you, what’s the point of this?’
Revenge! The burning Thing’s voice was suddenly sharp as a knife in Yulian’s dreaming mind. Through you!
‘I should avenge you? Against whom?’
Against the ones who found me here. The ones who even now destroy my last chance for a future. Against Harry Keogh and his pack of white magicians!
‘You’re not making sense.’ Yulian shook his head, gazed in morbid fascination as the Thing continued to melt. He saw his own features liquefying, streaming away and falling from the burning creature in molten tatters. ‘What white magicians? Harry Keogh? I don’t know anyone of that name.’
But he knows you! First me, Yulian, and then you!
Harry Keogh knows us — and he knows the way: the stake, the sword, and the fire! You tell me you can sense the presence of enemies — and have you not sensed just such enemies close to you even now? They are one and the same. First me, and then you!
Even dreaming, Yulian felt his scalp crawling. The secret watchers, of course
! ‘What must I do?’
Avenge me, and save yourself. That, too, is one and the same. For they know what we are, Yulian, and they cannot abide us. You must kill them, for if you don’t they’ll surely kill you!
The last scrap of human flesh fell from the nightmarish entity, revealing at last its true, inner reality. Yulian hissed his horror, drew back a little way, gazed upon the face of all evil. He saw Thibor’s bat’s snout, his convoluted ears, long jaws, crimson eyes. The vampire laughed at him — the bass booming of a great hound — and a split tongue flickered redly in a cave of teeth. Then, as if someone had applied a giant’s bellows to the task, the flames roared up higher still and rushed in, and the image blackened at once and turned to glowing cinders.
Trembling violently, running with sweat, Yulian came awake, sat bolt upright in his bed. And as from a million miles away he heard again, one last time, Thibor’s far, faint voice: Avenge me, Yuliaannn.
He stood up in the dark room, went shakily to the window, looked out on the night. Out there, a mind. A man. Watching. Waiting.
Sweat quickly dried on Yulian and his flesh turned cold, but still he stood there. Panic receded, was replaced by rage, hatred. ‘Avenge you, father?’ he finally breathed. ‘Oh, I will. I will!’
In the window’s luminous, night-dark pane his reflection was an echo from the dream. But Yulian was neither shocked nor surprised. It simply meant that his metamorphosis was now complete. He looked through the reflection at’ the dark, furtive shadow there in the hedgerow
and grinned.
And his grin was like an invitation to step in through the gates of hell.
At the foot of the cruciform hills, Kyle and Quint, Krakovitch and Gulharov waited close together in a small group. It wasn’t cold but they stood together, as if for warmth.
The fire was dying down now; the wind which had earlier sprung up out of nowhere had quickly blown itself out, like the dying breath of some unseen Gargantuan. Human figures, half hidden in the trees and the billowing black smoke, toiled above and to the east of the devastated area, containing the fire and beating it down. A grimy, coveralled hulk Of a man came stumbling from the trees at the foot of the slope towards the vampire hunters where they huddled. It was the Romanian ganger, Janni Chevenu.
