Resurgence_The Lost Years_Volume Two

by Brian Lumley

  Left outside to keep watch, Tanziano felt a little out of things, but McGowan soon came to him, grinning, and told him it would be their turn before too long.

  “She’s talking?” Dancer’s pale blank oval of a face showed signs of animation. He knew that when the Francezci was through with the girl, she’d be his and McGowan’s.

  “Oh, aye,” McGowan told him. “With Francesco’s hand up her muff, she’s talkin’ all right—and so would ye. Imagine havin’ a wee umbrella wi’ sharp spokes up yere dick, and if ye’re difficult somebody puts the brolly up and yanks on the handle, eh? It’s a verra weird thing, a woman’s muff. Outside, it’s no such a sensitive part as ye might think. But inside … there’s organs up there that’s verra sensitive! And those hands o’ Francesco’s; man, they’re like so many snakes …”

  Twenty minutes later Francesco came to them, said: “She’s all yours. I’ve gagged her—I don’t want any screaming. Also, when you’ve done, her body goes with us. We can dump it in the heights. I have this feeling there’s too much rubbish been left lying around already. None of this was as tidy as it might have been.”

  “You first,” McGowan told Dancer, who was grateful. “Only dinnae kill her or knock too much life out o’ her. Ah’ll enjoy doin’ that mahsel, OK? Oh, and make sure that gag is secure. For now, anyway.” And Dancer went off to the house.

  Francesco said nothing. It was as well to keep one’s lieutenants and thralls satisfied in however small a measure. And it was of old repute that Angus had a “thing” for tongues. Not for languages so much as real tongues, and especially women’s tongues. As for this one screaming: she’d have no strength for that when Dancer was done, and no capacity for it after McGowan. Out of curiosity, he asked, “Are you hungry then, Angus?”

  “Oh, ye ken yere people well, Francesco,” McGowan answered with a grin. “Ah cannae help but wonder how many throats she’s had that slippery tongue o’ hers down. But when Ah take it off at the roots, mine will be the last! As for her heart: when Ah call a girl ‘sweetheart,’ it has a different meanin’ entirely. Aye …”

  While his men shared the girl, Francesco thought over what she had told him. First, that B.J. Mirlu had ascended and was Wamphyri! Perhaps after all this time that was only to be expected. No ordinary thrall could have lived her years without at least a dash of “superior” blood—or in the case of a dog-Lady, “inferior” blood—but Wamphyri blood in any case. And so Radu’s watchdog, or bitch, had ascended, but only very recently. This made her a Lykan, of course, an immemorial enemy to Drakul and Ferenczy. In that respect nothing had changed, but in another everything had changed; for in the “grand” tradition of the Old Wamphyri B.J. was now opposed to her old Master, his enemy. All of B.J.’s life—through all the years she had served the dog-Lord during his “absence”—she had been the mistress of these territories, if only in her own mind. And now she was reluctant to give them up. Also, she had fallen for this man, this Harry Keogh. And if there was one thing about the werewolf Radu that was certain, it would have to be that he wasn’t about to entertain the notion of a human rival …

  When McGowan and Dancer were done with Moreen—after they’d bundled her body into the boot of the car, and on the way back to Aviemore—Francesco told them what he had learned from her and outlined his plan for tonight:

  B.J. Mirlu was climbing to Radu’s lair with another girl called Sandra, the last of her pack. B.J. suspected that Auld John Guiney and two others of Radu’s thralls had sided with the dog-Lord and were already in the mountain. It fitted with Luigi Manoza’s sighting of three men up there and probably meant that the woman would have a fight on her hands before she’d had time to recover from her climb. Since the dog-Lord must be active by now, she couldn’t possibly win—but she might take out one or two of his people. Which was all to the good.

  As for the Drakuls who were known to be in the vicinity: if they were in the mountain, that was better still. Let them all fight it out between them, and then the Francezcis—more properly the Ferenczys—would pick off any survivors! And so it appeared that old Angelo and Francesco’s “dear” brother had been right: it was going to be that easy.

  “But,” Francesco concluded, “Anthony also said our losses would be light. His exact words, or as near as I can remember, were, ‘The hound is finished. You’ll win hands down. The opposition’—which I took to mean the Drakuls and B.J. Mirlu and her people—‘will collapse. They’ll offer only token resistance, and costs to you will be minimal …’” Francesco paused, narrowed his eyes a little, then shrugged.

  “Well, and so far our ‘costs’—our losses—have been minimal. Ragusa and Potenza? What were they for a loss? Nothing. As for Jimmy Nicosia: well, that was unfortunate. But no one can expect to win all the time.”

  Then they were back at Aviemore, where Francesco told the others, including Luigi Manoza: “Now we wait for nightfall. We have a couple of hours yet. You three take it in turn to watch that one,” he aimed a thumb at the helicopter, “and we can all relax and eat in the bar … that’s if you’re still hungry. If or when this Keogh wakes up—no matter what we get out of him or don’t—we’re taking him with us into the mountain. Up into the mountain, and down from it. Or more properly down from the chopper. He flew like a ghost into and out of Le Manse Madonie that time, so now he can fly again—into thin air! I’m going to enjoy watching that bastard step or get tossed into space a couple of thousand feet up!”

  Which the others found a very agreeable sentiment …

  B.J. had hit Harry very hard, perhaps even too hard. But she’d wanted to be sure he wasn’t going anywhere, that he was definitely out of the real trouble. It had never occurred to her that leaving him at John’s house might place him in yet more jeopardy; surely, after the fighting there, and this close to Radu’s rising, her enemies wouldn’t go back there? They must know she would no longer be there. So she’d reckoned, but reckoned without the tenacity of the Wamphyri.

  By now the Necroscope had been out for almost four hours, it was the twilight before true night, and a full moon was coming up over the Cairngorms. Wrapped in a blanket, Moreen’s body had been transferred to the helicopter; her killers were aboard and Luigi Manoza was warming up the engine, waiting for Francesco’s order to get aloft.

  “The moon is on the roof of the mountains even now,” Francesco said. “Are we all ready? … Then I’ll tell you what you can expect. By now there may well have been fighting up there, between Drakuls and Lykan thralls, and maybe including the dog-Lord Radu himself. It could be going on right now, and from the moment we touch down we could be in the thick of it. So what do we have against Radu, who is Wamphyri? First there’s me, for I, too, am Wamphyri! I can be hurt—I can be killed—but that’s not an easy thing to do, and we have it on very good authority, advance information courtesy of Angelo, that we are on the winning side.

  “Then we have superior weapons. You’ve seen what the woman had: a shotgun? Hah! But on the other hand the Drakuls could be heavily armed, though not as heavily as us, I fancy. You’ve all got red armbands, and you can all see in the dark. There can be no errors: if it moves and it isn’t wearing red, shoot it! And shoot to kill!

  “Radu: the odds are he’ll be weak physically. But if he’s still the legendary wolf, we can tame him. Every third round in your magazines is a silver bullet. Deadly to all of us, I know, but even more so to him. If you see him, if you get him in your sights—don’t fuck with him! Give him all you’ve got. And when he’s down get up close and keep hosing it to him. I want him in pieces, and then I want to burn each piece!”

  He looked at the faces of McGowan and Tanziano, where they were seated with him in the passenger cabin, and at the back of Luigi Manoza’s head at the controls. “That’s it, then. Now, are there any questions?”

  There were none, and Francesco leaned forward to give Manoza a tap on the shoulder. “Luigi? Can you put her down OK?”

  “I got a good look at the place,” Manoza shouted
over the rising clamour of the rotors. “Most of it is fairly flat where I’ll put down. The weather forecast gives us a clear night, no wind to mention and the temperature several degrees above zero. It couldn’t be better. And then there’s the dog-Lord’s big silver friend in the sky.” He meant the full moon. “It’ll be like daylight.”

  Francesco nodded. “Yes, this time his silver mistress has really let him down. Very well, let’s get on our way …”

  Harry heard none of this, or if he did it was as a fuzzy background static to the gradual transition he was making from true unconsciousness to healing sleep. The sleeping bag tossed over him had kept him relatively warm, and his good physical condition overall had guaranteed that apart from a headache he would come out of this intact—for however long or short a time.

  He was aware, however dimly, dreamily, that someone else was with him, close to him; he could feel a cold marble thigh against his, and a cold arm across his body. But then again it could be part of his dream. Except he dreamed of flight … of motion through the air. It would be soothing—like rocking in a chair or drowsing in a hammock—except someone seemed to be trying to tip him out of the hammock. “Whoever you are, please piss off!” he tried to say. But if he said anything at all it was lost in the rumbling of the helicopter’s rotors.

  The Necroscope’s mental barriers were down; the disturbance he experienced wasn’t anyone trying to tip him out of anything, but rather into something; in fact, into a response. It was Sir Keenan Gormley, who was insisting:

  Harry, for God’s sake accept me, can’t you? Listen to me! I thought we’d lost you. We all did—for suddenly you weren’t there! Your light had gone out and there was nothing but darkness out there. But just a moment ago it flared up again, so I know you’re still there. And Harry my boy, I must talk to you!

  Keenan? (Harry dreamed on, but at least the dead man had got his attention.) Can’t it keep? I don’t feel too good, need to take it easy. It was a weak response—as weak as and weaker than Sir Keenan had ever had from the Necroscope—but knowing him of old, the ex-Head of E-Branch read him like a book. And:

  You’ve been hurt? Well, that doesn’t surprise me. For without your full range of talents, without being able to use them to maximum effect, what are you but a man after all? But Harry, I can give them back to you! Or if I can’t, I know someone who can.

  Now Sir Keenan had his full attention, even if it hurt, and Harry said, Give something back? What are we talking about?

  The Möbius Continuum! Sir Keenan told him. Its unrestricted use! Harry, you’ve been robbed, and you don’t even know it.

  “I was robbed?” he spoke out loud—or rather in a croaky whisper, unheard over the throb of the helicopter’s engine and the whup, whup, whup of rotors—as one of his legs jerked in a semi-conscious, reflex manner, striking against a naked figure lying beside him. Harry was waking up, and Francesco Francezci had noticed his twitching.

  “Keogh moved,” he said to Angus McGowan and Dancer, seated opposite him. Tanziano at once reached down, flicked aside the blanket covering the girl’s body. But when he went to yank the sleeping bag from the Necroscope’s crumpled figure, Francesco stopped him. “Let it be,” he said. “I can’t really talk to him here anyway, and who cares? He’s a dead man; our mission is as good as accomplished; we have my father’s guarantee that we’re coming out on top. And if this one is, or was, as dangerous as Angelo thought he was—why keep him around any longer than we have to, eh?” He reached out, touched Manoza’s shoulder. “Luigi, let’s have a little altitude. There’s someone back here wants to go sky-diving.”

  Meanwhile Sir Keenan Gormley had introduced Harry to a new “voice” in the metaphysical aether. But whoever it belonged to, he was so faint, distant, damaged that the connection was like a long-distance call to another planet.

  We met once, Harry, the disembodied, dislocated voice told him. Maybe you’ll remember? It wasn’t long ago, at E-Branch HQ in London. You, Darcy Clarke, and Ben Trask, you gave me a lift home one night. But I didn’t make it. Since then … it’s taken me a long time to get it together. And me … well, I don’t supposed I’ll ever get myself together! My name is—or was—James Anderson. I was a self-styled “Doctor,” and my business … was hypnotism. I did the occasional work for E-Branch, and you—

  “And I was one of your subjects?” Even half-asleep (and the Necroscope had never known the sleep or dreams of ordinary men) Harry’s voice was hard. He caught on fast and things were dropping into place. And the more they dropped, the closer he came to waking.

  Anderson told him everything and, however faintly, his message got through. And because intercourse with the dead is more akin to telepathy than physical speech, more an experience than a conversation, Harry absorbed it all in double-quick time. But when he knew how Anderson had died, and why he was so faint … then there was nothing for it but to accept his apology and forgive him. For Anderson hadn’t known what it was all about, after all, only that he was doing a job for E-Branch. And:

  “Bloody E-Branch!” Harry said, disgustedly. “They dropped you right in it, didn’t they? Oh, they’re good at that! Well, I don’t know if this will help any, but I can tell you—or show you—what happened to the two who … who did it to you.” And he pictured again the explosion in the Möbius Continuum, a fire-ball expanding, then shrinking, as the wreckage of the Mercedes sped on forever. And the death-shrieks of the men inside going on forever, too.

  Forever? Anderson queried, his voice even smaller.

  “I can’t say,” Harry answered. “I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it …” And a moment later, explosively: “Fucking E-Branch!” he spat, as one of Nostradamus’s quatrains leaped to mind:

  Six hundred north, and west unto the Zero,

  the men of magic are his friends, but chained.

  They may not help the one who is their hero,

  or tell him that which may not be explained …

  Chained by their own rules, yes—by the Minister Responsible, bureaucracy, governmental “expediency,” by the Department of Dirty Tricks—but mainly by their fear: that someone else might try to recruit him after he’d quit! Harry saw it all now. He’d always suspected that there was something Darcy desperately wanted to tell him but didn’t know how to explain it.

  E-Branch, the bastards!

  But Harry, Anderson told him, I can put it right. I’m the only one who can put it right! Why, it’s as easy as this: (The snap of mental fingers—Anderson’s oh-so-talented fingers—in Harry’s mind, as he came a little more fully awake … then sprang fully awake, in knowledge at least.) And this time there was no conflict; Harry’s various levels of conscious awareness, his several realities interfaced perfectly, because the man who had been responsible for creating the first of his mind-blocks was also the one who removed it.

  And Dancer said: “Francesco, this guy’s talking to himself and starting to move. He’s coming out of it.”

  But not quite, for the dead were still talking to the Necroscope, and they still had his attention. Indeed, they had his attention more fully than at any time since Anderson had placed his post-hypnotic manacles on Harry’s mind and behaviour, constraints which were now lifted.

  Harry? said a new voice, male, with a slight Scottish accent; a voice of once-authority, but shaky now and with nothing of its former confidence. I just wanted to warn you about who—or what—you’re up against. Ex-Inspector George Ianson paused to introduce himself, and then quickly told his story … which was as bad or worse than Anderson’s. So, there you have it, he finished with a mental shudder. That little man, McGowan, a man I called my friend, has to be the devil incarnate! And while he is alive, I … can never rest. Literally …

  “One devil,” Harry answered. “Just one of many. So thanks for the warning but it really wasn’t necessary. I know they’ve got to go. It’s them or me, and I don’t intend it to be me …”

  I was a man of law and justice, Ianson told him, but the
re can be no sane or civilized “trial” for such as them, just revenge—or maybe a “just” revenge? I’m only one, Harry, but how many other victims have there been? And his voice slowly faded into the background static of the grave—or in lanson’s case, a place even darker than the grave.

  The Necroscope’s anger was making him restless now; it was a cold anger, that bit into his soul like an icy blast. All the way down the line he had been everybody’s fool, and he’d placed all of the blame on himself. He had actually believed himself a drunk, or an amnesiac, or a madman; he had committed himself to an asylum! And only now, when it might well be too late, did he have the complete story; only now the missing pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place. And the bitter chill of realization, of knowledge, was eating deeper and deeper into him.

  Harry? said a female voice from close, very close at hand. Can I—I mean, would you mind—if I talked to you, too? You are human, but you were our friend. My friend, briefly. But you should know: I can’t, couldn’t help what I was, and neither can B.J. It was in the blood, that’s all. In her more than in me or any of the girls. That’s not an excuse, it’s simply a fact. And Harry, if you don’t already know, then you should know that she really does love you.

  The Necroscope knew the voice: it was Moreen, one of B.J.’s girls. But dead?

  By the Watcher’s hand, McGowan’s hand, yes, she said. But I won’t go into details. Anyway, who am I to say what should or shouldn’t be? What, with my background? But that policeman you were talking to … he’s so right, Harry. For no matter what I was, that little man is the devil incarnate!