by Brian Lumley
“‘Ahhh, see! Now be makes a move. Now be flees this place, and in so doing shows us the way out …’ That much and no more, before Zek closed her mind again. But more than enough, surely? Panicked, Bruce Trennier was on his way … and how many of the Wamphyri were following on behind him?
“But it also showed a degree of uncertainty on their part—showed that they weren’t entirely sure of what they were up against in this world—for they hadn’t simply taken Trennier and made him show them the way out. What would that cold Thing have learned, for example, from the damaged minds of the Refuge’s children? Nothing, except perhaps something of the caring warmth and attention of the Refuge’s staff. But that in itself might have been seen as a weakness, for on Starside such children wouldn’t have been spared. Mentally, and frequently physically unfit, their only use would be as fodder for the beasts. Even on Sunside the Szgany would have thought twice before accepting such burdens, especially under threat from the Wamphyri. What could such children be, except an enormous hindrance? Yet here they were cared for? It spoke volumes for the inhabitants of Earth, but mainly that they were soft, riddled with unnecessary guilt, self-doubt, and pity for their society’s underdogs. In Starside underdogs were eaten.
“What Zek didn’t know, of course, was that Vavara and the others had already seen something of Earth’s awesome firepower. At the Starside Gate, they’d clashed with General Mikhail Suvorov’s men: an unequal battle, yes, but at the time they’d been an army. Now there were just the three of them, plus a handful of lieutenants. Not only that, but Malinari also knew that at least one of this world’s inhabitants was a powerful telepath. While she wasn’t of his order (but then again, who was?) still she was proof that the Hell-lands weren’t entirely defenseless.
“The minutes ticked by, and Zek was on tenterhooks. Five minutes, six, seven. Even if she returned to the dry bed of the resurgence and climbed up to the crevice with the switch, still she couldn’t reverse the process now. The clock was ticking and nothing could stop it, and the only way to delay it would be to open one of the hatches, a temporary measure and definitely the most dangerous of all.
“The basement was lit by half-a-dozen naked light bulbs in the ceiling. Since these were powered by a small emergency generator, their light was less than reliable. Through all of what she had been doing, Zek had worked in the flicker of these weak light sources, all the while conscious of the Refuge’s foghorn alarms, their muted blare carrying down to her through concrete floors and steel stairwells. Yet in a way the sound had comforted her, and even the flickering lights had reminded her of the world above, its relative sanity.
“Now it seemed someone was intent on denying her even these small comforts. For suddenly the alarms ceased, and at the same time the lights burned low, held for a moment, and went out. It could only be that up there in the chaos of the Refuge, someone had turned the alarms off. Whoever it was, he had inadvertently hit the basement light switch, too.
“And now there were only a few minutes left before the sump erupted in death and destruction. Zek couldn’t even be sure that she herself was safe there in the basement, let alone Bruce Trennier in the sump. And she was tempted to reach out to him yet again and see what progress he’d made. She would have done so—but that was when the telephone jangled.
“Mercifully she’d thought to take a small torch down there with her. Three paces took her to the niche with the telephone, and in another moment she was asking: ‘Bruce … are you alright? Where on earth are you?’
“‘At the foot of the duct,’ he answered, and his voice was one long shudder. ‘I’ve been dodging … God, things! I catch them in my torch beam, and they just sort of melt aside! But I can feel them there in the darkness. One of them … it doesn’t seem to have a shape! It collapses in my torch beam, flows, reforms. And Zek—God, Zek—they make my flesh creep!’
“‘Bruce, come up,’ she told him. ‘But as quick as you can, and I’ll let you out.’
“And then another slow minute until she heard him banging on the hatch that she’d closed. A moment to spin the wheel, her heart hammering and breath coming in panting gasps; the silence absolute, the darkness, too, except where her torch beam sliced into it. She hauled on the hatch, and he pushed from below, and in that last moment she thought to reach out to him, touch him with her mind. And she did—
“—But his mind was a blinding white agony, and his single thought was a scream that shrank even as it pierced her, gradually disappearing into the distance of mental oblivion. And as it ran and ran, with nowhere to hide, still it echoed her name: ‘Zek!—Ah, Zek!—Zekkk!—Zekkkk!—Ah, Zek-k-k-k-k!’ Until it was gone. Then:
“Zek’s strength was as furious as her fear as she tried to slam the heavy lid on Trennier. For in fact it was the New Zealander—his head and shoulders—emerging from the hatch. But it wasn’t his mind that drove him; it wasn’t his muscles propelling him up out of the darkness, for pain had robbed him of consciousness and all its attendant skills. Try to picture it. His body rising up, loose arms flopping up over the rim, blind eyes staring, back ramrod straight. The engineer was like some grotesque puppet … he was a grotesque puppet!
“For someone had an arm up inside him, at full stretch, and that someone’s hand was gripping his spine from inside, holding him upright! A glove-puppet, yes, as he folded in the middle to topple out of the turret, and another’s head and shoulders came into view. But such an Other!
“Zek’s legs were rubber, her hand, too, where she forced it to reach for the gun in her waistband. She was stumbling backwards, away from this scene of uttermost horror, yet every move she made was in some kind of dreadful slow-motion. And the figure in the hatch wrenching its crimson arm from Trennier’s body … blood flying, splashing Zek’s face in a red slap … yellow eyes burning on her, seeming to burn into her, their cores blazing scarlet in a moment. They were like the holes in a Halloween mask, those eyes, but they were alive!
“He—it—came out of the hatch in one flowing movement, while another figure rose up behind him; all of this happening in a surreal slow-motion that was simply a trick of Zek’s mind. For in fact it was very fast, and in her extreme of numb, gnawing terror, almost too fast to follow.
“She snapped out of it, put her hands together, aimed with the torch and the gun both. But even as she pulled the trigger, that bloodied arm swept the gun aside, sent it flying, and the torch, too. And a cold wet hand caught at her wrists, trapping both of them in its icy grip … .”
Trask had paused. His eyes were staring, unblinking. Gaunt and grey, he seemed to have collapsed down into himself a little.
When a crackle of static sounded from the radio, the duty officer gave a start. But then a tinny voice was heard, reporting the jet-copter’s progress. “Bird One to base … ETA twenty to twenty-five minutes, over.”
“Roger, out,” said the D.O. into his handset. That served to bring Trask out of it, and:
“I suppose I’d better finish it,” he said. And in a little while, lacklustre and robotic, but inured now, he carried on.
“Understand, this wasn’t my dream—not all of it—though I’m sure that parts of it were. What I’ve told you so far is my … my reconstruction of the so-called ‘Radujevac incident,’ as I’ve pictured it time and time over in my mind’s eye, and in my current nightmares. It’s built out of details that Nathan Keogh gave us, out of … God, evidence … that we found at the Refuge, and lastly out of Zek’s telepathic contact with me, while I lay tossing and turning during her final moments.
“Her final moments, yes …
“For that was when she knew it was over, when that bastard thing Malinari trapped her wrists, gripped them in his freezing cold hand, and smiled his dreadful smile at her. Smiled at Zek, inclined his head, and began reading her like a book. But every page as he absorbed it was torn out, discarded, went fluttering into oblivion. And knowing it was over, that was when she contacted me. Once before she’d done it, when she’d thought she
was dying. But this time she was dying.
“In my nightmare I saw his face. Handsome, yes, but a vacant sort of beauty, superficial, cosmetic. Lord Malinari looked as he willed himself to look, young but not too young, dark but not too dark, thirsty and … and no way to hide it. Greedy for knowledge, and the power it would bring. Zek’s knowledge, which she wasn’t going to give him without a fight.
“At first she didn’t look at him, could only stare at poor Trennier, sprawled on the floor in his own blood, his face alternating between glaring white and shadow, white and shadow, as her torch rocked to a standstill close by. At his bulging eyes, his gaping mouth. Poor Trennier, raped and dead. But—
“‘Ah, no,’ said Malinari the Mind, in a voice like bubbles bursting on a pool of oil. ’Not dead but undead, or soon to be. He knows things—of metals, machines, and engines—and I would know them, too. But you … the things that you know are of far greater interest. Moreover, I see that I am not the first of my kind that you have known.’
“Zek could feel her knowledge slipping from her—slithering out of her and into him, like a greasy rope in a tug-o’-war—and she fed her thoughts to me that much faster. But Malinari would not be denied; he read her telepathic messages, too, interpreting them as best he might. As for her knowledge:
“It was as if Zek’s past, her memories, her understanding of the world … as if it were all iron-filings, and Malinari’s mind a vast magnet drawing them out of her. But she fought—oh how she fought—so that what came to me was of the moment, not of the past, as she allowed me to see how it was, and explained in a kaleidoscope of telepathic scenes how it had been for her, and how it would be for the world if I didn’t receive her warning.
“But she knew that it couldn’t go on—couldn’t be allowed to go on—for he was taking too much, and if she let him he’d get it all. About me, E-Branch, our espers, their talents; Malinari would get it all, if she let him.
“By now the others were up out of the sump: Vavara, incredibly beautiful in Zek’s mind, lit by her own radiance, alluring so as to further weaken Zek by her presence. And I saw her, but I’ll spare you any description because I know that any description would be false. For the beauty of a vampire Lady is literally skin deep. Let me just say this: most women—young women, especially those of great beauty—would hate her; they would be irresistibly attracted to her, but they’d hate her. And even the most blasé man, a man drained by his excesses, sated to his full measure, would lust after Vavara.
“And finally Lord Szwart. A darkness … a flowing, oozing something … a shape without a shape … the ultimate in metamorphism … scorning any fixed form for the constant, ongoing, unceasing mutation of protoplasm which was his existence. A fly-the-light, but more so than any other Great Vampire: the closest comparison we could make would be Nathan Keogh’s description of Eygor Killglance of Madmanse in Turgosheim, in a vampire world. But where Eygor was made of flesh and bone—albeit the flesh and bones of others—Szwart was of a far more elemental material. And most of it was darkness.
“Vavara, seeing Zek drawn up against Nephran Malinari, and jealous of any naturally attractive woman, said, ‘Take what you will and finish it.’ Her voice was beautiful as her lying form, as ugly as her words. And Szwart’s was a hiss of air driven out through temporary lungs specifically created, as on the spur of the moment, to enable speech:
“‘Aye, get done with it. There are young ones up above … sweet meat for the taaaking … and a world entire to conquer.’ But:
“‘No, ah no,’ said Malinari, and moved his slender hand to lift Zek’s chin. ‘She fights me with a will of iron, and I desire what’s in there.’ And to Zek—and through her to me—’Do you know, the eyes are the windows of the soul? It’s true, Zekintha. But to these fingers of mine, they are also the doorways to the mind. And I weary of this and would have it quickly.’ He held up two fingers before her, aiming them at her, only inches from her eyes.
“Zek knew what he would do; but seeing his fingers vibrating, pulsing with purple veins, elongating and reaching towards her, she also knew what she must do. She volunteered a picture, thrust it at him, showed him the doom she’d planned for him and the others and seared it into his probing mind. Oh, she lied—described a devastation far greater than the truth, that would come ripping through the floor in rivers of fire and tortured concrete, threatening him even here—and perhaps Lord Malinari suspected it was a lie. But the way Zek’s eyes were locked on that open hatch, out of which the last of three lieutenants was even now appearing, he couldn’t take the chance.
“‘What?’ he said, furious where he drew back a pace. ‘And was this for me, for us?’ Then he gathered her up, carried her to the hatch, and without pause … without pause …
“Headfirst she fell, down and down, and as Nephran Malinari slammed and locked the hatch, the time was up.
“That was when I woke up, drenched and shivering, hot yet cold, with Zek’s last words still ringing in my mind.
“‘Goodbye, Ben,’ she said. ‘I love you.’
“And then a blinding white light, which I prayed was only the dazzle of my bedside lamp as my trembling fingers switched it on. That’s what I prayed it was—
“—But it wasn’t.”
15
CHARNEL HOUSE
It was plain that Trask couldn’t go on, so while he sat there shaking his head in a kind of numb disbelief, still seeking a reason for, or perhaps a solution to, his irreparable trauma, the precog Ian Goodly took over. In contrast to Trask’s harsh, grating rasp, his voice was almost melodious:
“It was a period of unrest among the old USSR’s satellite countries,” he began, “one of many since the death of European communism. The former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, they were all in a state of political turmoil, and Radujevac stood at the crossroads, as it were, of all three nations. The Refuge was a kind of Sovereign Base Area—a British enclave, if you tike—on foreign soil. But despite that, and as a result of its work, it was greatly respected and had achieved an almost diplomatic status. Of course, the British government had safe houses, embassies and the like, in all the former satellites. But because of the unrest access was always difficult, even to the Refuge.
“Well, Nathan Keogh arrived at our London HQ that night, and he was in the process of explaining what was happening in Sunside/Starside when Ben got there. At first Ben was overjoyed, even relieved to see him. Maybe this was what had sparked his dream; perhaps in some way he had anticipated this renewed contact with a friend from the once-hostile environment of the vampire world. But as Nathan’s story unfolded, Ben’s awareness—his sense of dread, of foreboding—returned in short order. It was one of those times that come to all esp-endowed persons, when out of the blue they’re made aware of the other side, the downside of their talents. And now more than ever Ben’s talent was telling him that Zek’s telepathic message had been no mere nightmare … .”
As the precog paused, Trask levered himself off the desk, stood up straight, and closed his eyes. He breathed in until his lungs couldn’t take any more, then made for the door. And no one said anything until he had made an unsteady exit.
Covering for his superior—though in fact Trask needed no such excuse—Goodly said, “Did you hear the chopper?” (No one had.) “Ben will want to see it safely down, and maybe … maybe talk to the pilot?” He offered a shrug which was followed by an awkward silence, until Jake said:
“Ian?” It was the first time he’d used Goodly’s first name. “Will you finish it?” Goodly looked mildly surprised as he answered, “Of course. All of this is for you, after all. But in any case there’s not much more to tell.
“We had radio and telephone links to the Refuge,” the precog went on. “Well, we should have had, but not that night. We tried but couldn’t get through. And because of what Nathan had told us, we feared the worst. But Ben—denying, or even defying his own talent—he had to know for sure, of course. Several means were to hand.
�
��We called in our espers, everyone who was available, and put them to work. But long before the first of them arrived at the HQ, Nathan was volunteering his services. He’d been to the Refuge before and its coordinates were locked in his mind. But if Ben was right and the Wamphyri had come through the subterranean Gate—and if they were still there—what then?
“For Ben, the next hour was an endless anxiety attack; he sweated and agonized over danger-fraught decisions and equally painful but inescapable truths. Having faith in his talent, he knew it was already too late—but it was Zek who was there at the Refuge! And Nathan: he would have gone at the snap of Ben’s fingers—indeed, he was the only one who could go, along that special route of his. And in fact we had to restrain him, order him not to. And Ben weighing all of this in his tormented mind, all the time knowing in his heart that it was too late, that it had been too late from the moment he’d started awake in a cold sweat at his home in Kensington.
“Then Millicent Cleary arrived; Milly is—now she is—the very best of our telepaths. And right on her heels our locator of long standing, David Chung. I’ll never forget the scene in the ops room that night: Chung standing before the illuminated wall-map with the tip of his index finger touching the location of Radujevac, and his left hand holding Milly’s. We frequently work in tandem that way. And after only a second or so, their reactions:
“How David snatched himself back, away from the wall. And how Milly snatched back her hand from his! For the locator had sensed something—something at Radujevac, at the Refuge—and she had picked it right out of his mind: the clammy feel of it, its evil taint. Mindsmog!
“Milly had hoped to contact Zek; firm friends and colleagues, they knew each other’s minds. But now, there was simply no trace of Zek’s telepathic aura, no indication of life. Hers was a ‘flatline’ on the monitor of telepathic awareness. And as for the overwhelming presence of mindsmog: it couldn’t be denied or mistaken, and Ben’s worst fears were corroborated.
