The Plague-Bearer

by Brian Lumley

  V

  It was surely one of the strangest of liaisons, one of the most peculiar and even mismatched affairs of the heart. And to Harry Keogh and Bonnie Jean Mirlu alike it had become one of the most puzzling yet simultaneously satisfying adventures.

  It had been that way almost from their first meeting—more properly a collision—one night in London, where they had both been hunting the same psychotic killer. On that occasion Bonnie Jean had probably saved Harry’s life, and in return the Necroscope had saved B.J. from a whole lot of trouble; though if they had known who or what they were saving events might easily have proceeded in the opposite direction.

  As it was Harry had found her magnetically attractive right from the start and sexually irresistible ever since. It was the animal in her, he thought, without fully appreciating the irony of his appraisal. But it was a fact that Bonnie Jean was a sexy woman and “a real Looker,” as the Necroscope had once heard her described. Tall, slim and slinky—but entirely natural with it—she seemed ageless; she could be anything from twenty-two to thirty-five. As for her roots: possibly Eurasian? She could be, from the shape of her eyes. As oval as almonds, and almost unnoticeably tilted, they were a deep hazel flecked with gold; and when she was angry Harry might even think of them—and of B.J. herself—as feral! And her hair, bouncing on her pale shoulders, seeming black as jet but grey in its sheen, especially at dusk. And those legs of hers that went up forever, or not quite forever, but certainly to that place where Harry’s entire world invariably dissolved into some soul-sweetening essence whenever they made love.

  The rest and greater part of her—which from the Necroscope’s point of view included B.J.’s personality, for he wasn’t utterly besotted; it wasn’t simply Bonnie Jean’s body he lusted after—was equally, undeniably attractive. Her ears, large but not obtrusive, flat to her head and elflike, with their pointed tips often as not hidden in the bounce of her shining hair; her nose, tip-tilted but hardly “cute;” her mouth, perhaps a fraction too ample, yet still delicious in the curve of its bow. And last but not least her teeth: Harry couldn’t recall ever having seen teeth so perfect or so white.

  “What sharp teeth you have, Bonnie Jean!” some inner voice, perhaps his own, would sometimes begin to advise him. And: “All the better to—” it would continue, until another voice, B.J.’s voice, or his memory of it, would cut in with:

  “Ah, no! Don’t go there, mah wee man. For that’s no a verra safe place…no safe at all.”

  That was part of how she controlled him, while at the same time giving herself to him, without understanding the fascination that she in turn felt in Harry’s presence. For what was he after all but a mere man? If that’s all he was. Or was it possible he was something more? And looking at him—just thinking of him, the way he looked—she would wonder about that: about the facts in the former life of her mystery man, this stranger who had become her lover.

  While Harry’s frame was solid enough he was far from muscular. He wasn’t handsome, or only moderately so, and in fact his features—apart from an occasionally bitter expression and the wry curl of a caustic upper lip—were generally unexceptional; but not entirely. The anomaly lay in Harry’s eyes: those honey-brown eyes that were so obviously, vastly intelligent and knowing while yet, paradoxically, seeming so incredibly innocent.

  Or was Harry’s apparent innocence also some kind of facade, a cover to conceal what lay beneath? As for his past: B.J. had questioned him about that; about some of it, anyway. Indeed, he hadn’t really needed to be questioned. Only start him off about his lost wife and child and he would tell it all, or almost all. But there was always something in there that he kept back, kept to himself despite the spell of obedience—those post-hypnotic commands—which she had lodged in the deepest recesses of his subconscious or semiconscious mind.

  Harry had mentioned in passing certain powerful friends in London: members of a secret security organization with which he had once been connected. But while B.J. had tried to dig deeper he would mention it only in passing, and immediately change the subject. Obviously his loyalty came uppermost; some deep-seated sense of moral integrity—some vow he’d made which he couldn’t revoke or renege upon—caused Harry always to avoid or obscure the issue, denying B.J. access. While this was frustrating, however, still she admired his mental tenacity and high principles. It wasn’t just anyone who could hide even his innermost secrets from such as Bonnie Jean Mirlu! If her “wee man” could be faithful to some old vow, pact, sentiment, or agency from years gone by, how then to a girl, woman, moon-child who he took to his or her bed each night?

  Thus she was reassured, for there could be little doubt but that his love, not to mention his lust—or for that matter her own—were very real. And indeed B.J. sensed that Harry’s feelings for her might well last for ever; certainly for as long as he himself lasted. As for her fondness for him, if that was all it was…well, that was a different matter entirely. For B.J. had certain loyalties of her own which hadn’t weakened down all the decades. Or perhaps they had. For knowing that the time was coming when she must, or should, let Harry go—and where, and to whom he would be going—knowing these things disturbed her greatly. And despite that she had known men before and that her Master in his high place knew and accepted it, this time Bonnie Jean felt guilty…

  These were her thoughts as she looked at Harry where just a moment ago his eyelashes had flickered and his breathing quickened. Downstairs B.J.’s girls worked the wine bar, and here she lay naked with her lover, wondering at his most unusual nature. And oh, what an irony in that! When her own nature was anything but usual! A low purr, or more properly a growl, escaped Bonnie Jean’s throat as she went to kiss his neck…but only a kiss, never a bite. No, for his blood might be as sweet as Harry himself, and that would never do. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to resist it!

  Harry’s eyelashes fluttered again, and with a mumbled, “Uh? What?” he rolled onto his side, more surely facing her. And now she got down from the bed, to begin dressing herself as quickly and quietly as possible. He had been sleeping for a little less than two hours since they’d made love; but B.J. had experienced his apparently boundless energy before, and she didn’t want him to wake up and see her naked. Not just now, anyway.

  She felt hot, flustered; she had work to do downstairs, her girls to supervise, her guilty wayward thoughts to pull together into some semblance of order! And she knew she could do none of these things with his eyes and then his hands upon her.

  Huh! But wasn’t she supposed to be the great beguiler!

  Harry yawned, stretched, propped himself on one elbow, and said, “Uh! B.J.? Where are you going?”

  “Where there’s work for a body,” she answered. “Downstairs, mah wee man. It’s late, aye, but there’s two hours yet till the midnight hour, and I like tae do mah share. Ye can stay here if ye so desire, or come down and have a wee dram. The one thing I ask ye tae remember: There’ll be the usual bunch o’ likely lads in the bar, and ye mustn’t let it be seen that we’re—”

  “—Lovers?” Harry finished it for her, and continued: “because they all of them like to think they stand a chance, eh?”

  “Somethin’ like that, aye,” she nodded. “But they don’t.”

  “I’ll get dressed and come on down,” he said, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. “But I’ll skip the wee dram. I’d prefer a glass of that wine of yours, that’s if you keep any in the bar?”

  B.J. smiled and nodded an affirmative. Oh, there was a full bottle of her wine in the bar, all right—kept out of sight of the customers but within easy reach. One glass of that and he’d be ready for bed again—this time to sleep. Then, after closing the bar, she’d be able to talk to her girls, her moon-child pack in private, reminding them of the dangers out there in the streets and the night and warning them against…against what she couldn’t say, not yet. But something, she felt sure. It was in the night air; and, in addition to what two of her girls had told her, B.J. coul
d sense it.

  As if her thoughts had been spoken out loud, Harry appeared to answer them, saying: “Bonnie Jean, I came back early because you told me there might be a problem here in Edinburgh—but we haven’t talked about it. Do you want to take five minutes, tell me what’s troubling you, what’s going on?”

  Halfway to her bedroom door she considered it for a moment, and thought, Well, why not? For Harry’s mind would be too dull, blunted, after drinking her wine. Tomorrow, in the light of day, he might not remember what she’d told him; her words might have flown right over his head without making sense to him. That was something of the nature of her wine.

  B.J.’s wine: a potentially addictive soporific, and on certain occasions an aid to her hypnotic powers:

  Its recipe had been old when most of Earth’s sciences were yet unborn, and even alchemy was in its youth. B.J. didn’t know what the ingredients were, but she knew something of their origins, where to find them today, and how to brew them up and make the brew potent. Certain of the herbs, pollens, and resins came from the Greek islands—also from Bulgaria and further afield—and in the long ago some had come from the Far East with the Hsiung-nu in the form of precious balms and medicines. But that was centuries before men learned how to synthesize such chemicals. The wine had been known in Manchuria and Sinkiang, also to the Takla Makan Desert’s Worm Wizard cultists, and later to the Arab alchemists of olden Irem, the City of Pillars. In the 14th century it had been used by the Bulgars—who were good chemists and vintners both—and by the Serbians and Ottoman Turks, to ward off the Black Death, which also had its source in eastern parts.

  After that its secrets had been lost to mankind in the reel and roil and turmoil of a troubled world. Lost to mankind, perhaps, but not to B.J.’s Master—who remembered all such things from the olden times—and not to Bonnie Jean herself, in whom, over the years, the dog-Lord had invested many items of esoteric and otherwise forgotten knowledge…

  “Well?” said Harry, getting dressed. “Is there a problem or isn’t there? Someone being a nuisance in the bar, maybe—like that Big Jimmy bloke: that jealous clown who fancied you, found he couldn’t have you, and decided to take it out on me? Well at least he tried, and we can do without more like him! I mean, he was a roughneck, a street fighter, and dangerous! Hardly one of your ‘usual bunch of likely lads,’ now was he?”

  “No,” B.J. replied, “and neither are you! He was twice your weight, built like a gorilla, and you handled him like a baby!” And Harry made a mental note that her Edinburgh accent had completely disappeared again.

  “It was him or me,” he answered, and shrugged. “I suppose I was lucky.” But he knew that luck had nothing to do with it. It was simply that he’d called on a dead friend—an ex-Army PTI, a Physical Training Instructor and expert in a handful of martial arts—to come to his aid and lend him the know-how to deal with the jealous bully. Of course Bonnie Jean didn’t know about that; she only knew what she’d seen. And:

  “No, you weren’t lucky,” she shook her head. “You’re good, Harry, and you know it! Anyway, I was glad to see Big Jimmy get his…though I can’t say the same for the bar’s furniture!”

  Harry frowned. “You know, I’d have bet good money that he’d be back for more, that one. That he’d be out looking for me one dark night. But we never have seen him again.”

  Ah no, not quite true! she thought, sitting down beside him on the edge of the bed as he buttoned his shirt. The reason you haven’t seen him again, Harry Keogh, is because me and my girls sucked that big bastard dry one night when you were away! While out loud she said, “Oh, I shouldn’t worry about him. I did hear that Big Jimmy has moved out of the city to Dunbar or somewhere down the coast. And a good thing he didn’t come back, or by now there’d be no furniture left in the bar at all!”

  Harry leaned towards her but B.J. pulled away, saying, “Now hold! You asked me a question—about that problem I mentioned—and I’ll tell you about it, if you’ll only be still! Just lie there and listen…mah wee man!” But that last was spoken with a certain irresistible emphasis, and in a moment the Necroscope was as pliable as putty where she pushed on his shoulders until she’d stretched him out again with his head on the pillows. And then:

  “Very well,” B.J. said, her voice low, husky, but in no way seductive. “Now listen!” She reached out a hand and turned down the bedside lamp, and in the dull golden glow her eyes were yet more tilted, almost triangular, animal-like and totally undeniable.

  “Harry, it’s the middle of the moon’s cycle,” she began her narrative, outlining post-hypnotic orders or instructions which would lie submerged or “forgotten” in the Necroscope’s subconscious mind, but ready to resurface the moment he needed them. “A waning moon, Harry,” B.J. continued, “which won’t be full again for sixteen days. So why is that important, eh? Well, while I’m hardly what you would call a weak woman, still I am at my weakest beneath a waning moon. Now, normally I wouldn’t involve you but deal with this thing myself; except this time I’m of a mind that the threat is other than normal—indeed, far from normal—and I can feel it drawing closer, even looming over us.

  “You see, this isn’t a Big Jimmy sort of threat, Harry. Indeed, I would rather a dozen Big Jimmies than this, whatever it is! And that’s the problem, for I just don’t know—but I know what it might be.

  “I want you to remember certain of the things I’ve told you before. Not on the surface of your mind but deep down inside it. In the days to come remember, and be aware of the danger; for I fear it’s a danger not only to my girls but also and especially to me and my Master in the heights up North. But because we are together, you and I—and even though you’re not of the pack—who or whatever this threat proves to be may believe it necessary first to deal with you in order to get to me and mine. Now, is all of this understood? Answer me.”

  Harry lifted his head an inch from the pillows, nodded, and fell back again. And with his unblinking gaze fixed on hers, he said, “You think someone or thing is coming for you and I might get in its way, putting myself in danger.”

  “That’s right!” she replied. “But if I am correct in what I more than suspect, it won’t come in the form of a human agency. This is a dark thing, Harry, from dark times. Now let me remind you:

  “My Master has powerful enemies in the world. They hate him because he is unlike them; his nature is not like theirs. While I am less than he is—and my girls less than me—still they hate us also. They know that without me, a moon-child, sworn to serve Him in the Mount, he would be weakened, easy prey to them and their agents. And now I’m given to suspect that one or more such agents could be here in Edinburgh.

  “As to what makes me think so:

  “In the last few days, no more than a week, two of my girls have been followed by a furtive figure, both times on their way to late-night duties in the bar. On the first occasion the male figure kept its distance, head down and collar up, following in the darker shadows of the street’s buildings. It quickly turned away as Zahanine, my black girl, looked back as she reached the door to the bar; turned away and vanished into an alley. But he was so quiet—a wraith, like a shadow in himself—and there was something else about him: such an evil emanation that Zahanine felt this dreadful premonition. And it was such a terrible foreboding that as she entered the bar I saw how she shuddered! I am sure you’ll appreciate, Harry, that my moon-children, like myself, don’t take fright any too easily, and that when they do there is usually a very good—or very bad—reason!

  “That was the first time, and despite that it might simply be an attack of nerves on Zahanine’s part—for she is known to be a little skittish on occasion—it sounded the alarm. But to tell the truth and because we were aware of Zahanine’s periodic panic attacks we weren’t too much concerned, just a little more alert and cautious. Which is as well, for the next incident was much more ominous.

  “It was the youngest of my girls, Kate, who lives less than a mile away and always walks fear
lessly to the bar on even the darkest night. And why not? For night is her element, as it is mine. But while Kate’s habitual route is the shortest, it passes through a maze of some of the city’s oldest, bleakest alleyways. Just three nights ago she walked that same route, and for the last two or three hundred yards of cobbled alleys was aware of soft footfalls from somewhere behind her—but ever closing the gap!

  “Are you listening, Harry?” She stared hard at him, at his unchanging features and almost glassy eyes. “Can you understand what I’m telling you?”

  Again the Necroscope lifted his head, nodded and said, “Yes, I understand. She was being pursued—possibly.”

  “Huh!” B.J. snorted. “Not just ‘possibly’, mah wee man, but definitely! Now let me get on:

  “Kate came out of the alleys onto the street only a handful of doorways from the bar. Glancing back, she saw that her pursuer was very close now: a man all in black, his description was the same as the one given by Zahanine. Ah, but Kate is a feisty one for all that she’s young! And so she stood waiting beside a recessed doorway. For if this was just some man—some perverse but otherwise ordinary man, who fancied his chances for a quick grope or perhaps something more than that—then she would know how to deal with him. When a man’s penis is hard, there’s nothing compares with a kick between his legs to soften it up a bit And never forget, young Kate’s a moon-child with a moon-child’s strength. She had none of Zahanine’s nervousness and could take care of herself against most men, be sure. But as for this man:

  “For all that the night was warm he wore a long black coat, buttoned to the neck, with its collar turned up. And as he came level with Kate on the empty street he grabbed her, forcing her back into the deeper shadows of the recessed doorway. Surprised by his ferocity and speed, still Kate fought back and momentarily drove him into the open. At which, further enraged, he took her by the throat; and now his grip and strength were such that she knew he was no ordinary man! But a madman? Well, possibly.