by Brian Lumley
Mario ran—for the helicopter, of course, but also away from Anthony—out of his rooms, down the great staircase, and out into the courtyard. And his master came flowing and floating, collapsing and reforming, laughing and loping behind him.
Harry emerged from the Möbius Continuum near the rocky outcrop, where Radu came running to meet him. “All done, Necroscope?”
“I think so,” Harry nodded. “But we’ll see better from up there.” They ran back to the rocks, and Radu sprang to the summit in two bounds. Harry climbed, looked up, saw the dog-Lord’s great paw reaching down for him, and his lantern eyes watching his every move.
“Allies, for the moment, Harry?” Radu growled. Harry took the proferred paw, and the dog-Lord pulled him up.
All the lights blazed in Le Manse Madonie; weapons blazed, too, uselessly. Headlights swept the plateau as another vehicle—the Francezci’s stretch limo—glided out under the archway. The dog-Lord grunted and pressed the last but one button on the Necroscope’s remote. And the car’s roof blew off, and its sides ruptured, as the blast expanded into a red and yellow fireball. Then: a lone wheel went bounding, and a bent axle turned lazily in the updraught. It was a scene in slow-motion—which suddenly speeded up. Scarred metal rained to earth, leaving other scraps burning where they drifted on high.
Harry nodded and glanced at his watch. “I don’t know how much we’ll see of this,” he said. “Maybe nothing of the actual bang. But it’s due just about … now.”
Then, very faintly, the ground trembled underfoot. A section of Le Manse Madonie’s courtyard wall buckled and fell. Dust fountained up from a jagged crack that suddenly appeared in the earth, zig-zagging like a bite from rim to rim of the high promontory and encompassing the sprawling villa and its walls.
Lights dimmed, went out, and cries of alarm came drifting from antlike figures staggering atop the walls. And:
“Damn!” Harry said. “It looks like Humph was wrong.”
But then the dust jets geysered higher yet, and the crack widened as yet more detonations—mysterious this time—were felt underfoot …
“Get her up!” Anthony mouthed as Mario gunned the helicopter’s engine, willing her to lift off. The machine twitched, bumped, skittered, and began to lift as the engine’s whine climbed up and up. And Anthony frothed and foamed where his rubbery tentacle fingers couldn’t fasten his seat-belt. Then the walls of Le Manse Madonie were falling away—but they were falling faster than the chopper was lifting! Literally falling, and the entire Francezci-Ferenczy empire going with them—crumbling from the face of the great cliff.
Anthony laughed and laughed, his flesh rippling, his face transforming, and Mario leaned away from him, choking where he fought to control the aircraft. But she was lifting, yes, gaining elevation even as Le Manse Madonie lost it and slid groaning into the ravine.
And a quarter-mile away on the roof of the rocky outcrop, Radu and Harry saw the chopper’s lights and heard the accelerating whup, whup, whup of its rotors. “The other brother,” Harry said, grimly. “You can bet your life—or you can’t—that it’s him. The last button, Radu. Time to press it.”
The effect was extraordinarily dramatic. Like a giant fan cut loose, the complete rotor assembly blew off, shot into the night sky trailing sparks. And the body of the machine was gutted, a black shape disintegrating in the fireball that consumed it and the blast that reduced it and its vampire passengers to the basic elements of plastic and metal and flesh, indistinguishable one from the other.
Where Le Manse Madonie had stood there was now the rim of a cliff, fresh and raw, and scraps of debris still floating on the billowing air. Of the Ferenczy dynasty, nothing remained—except a few antlike figures, thralls and a lieutenant or two, stumbling in their dazed panic-flight across the plateau.
“And now I ravage!” Radu growled.
Harry thought: who better? And said, “While I have other things to do.”
“The Drakuls? I should be there …” Radu was uncertain.
“No,” Harry answered. “Best if you … clean up here.”
Radu nodded his great shaggy head. “I have faith in you—of a sort.” And he urged, “Do it for me, Necroscope!”
“I’m afraid not,” Harry told him. “I’m doing it for someone else. A whole lot of someone elses.”
“Don’t forget to come back for me,” said Radu. And then, the inevitable threat: “Remember, there’s always Bonnie Jean.”
“Oh, I haven’t forgotten,” said Harry, in a certain way, with a certain look.
Then he was gone, and Radu went to ravage …
Midnight was two hours past in the so-called Drakesh Monastery on the Tingri Plateau, yet still Daham Drakesh held back. Despite that he had read the death-cries of his lieutenant Singra Singh across all the miles between, and despite knowledge of a new regime at the Xigaze Garrison—and the fact that he could be visited and investigated at any time—still he held back. His creatures were not yet waxed; his many children in the old walled city were as yet infants, drawing blood from flame-eyed, vampirized mothers; his monastery was still the safest place in the world, especially a world primed to burst into flame at the touch of a button.
Drakesh had planned to press that button—still planned to do so—but yet hoped that the task force at Xigaze would hold off a little longer. If he was forced to flee this place on his own, to leave his children and waxing warriors behind, he could not doubt but that they would be destroyed, all laid to waste; and he would have to start again without advantage, in a world likewise laid to waste.
Also, it could be true that the special forces at Xigaze were in fact there to put down Tibetan insurrection, and that Drakesh and his project had little or nothing to do with their current deployment. And what a folly that would be: to abandon his works and initiate Armageddon, out of an ill-founded sense of insecurity! On the other hand, he could always pre-empt matters, press the button anyway, and blow Central London, Moscow, and Chungking to hell! Which might do the trick at that: China would doubtless discover new priorities, and deploy her forces elsewhere.
Thus the “High Priest” of the sect was torn two ways where he paced the floors of his apartment, pondered his options, and waited on word from his familiar albino bats …
… But for the Necroscope Harry Keogh there was only one option, one objective, as he exited from the Möbius Continuum at the only co-ordinate he was absolutely certain of: Zahanine’s snowed-in car where he had left it in the lee of a cluster of rocks on the frozen plateau a mile from the Drakesh Monastery.
Almost entirely buried in a drift now, with only its rear-end free where it stood at an angle with its trunk to the leaning boulders, the car formed a hump of snow entirely in keeping with the terrain. But knowing what was under the hump—a modern motor vehicle, where never such a thing was seen before—and knowing who sat with her back to the fender—a black girl in modern Western clothing, equally alien to these parts—the Necroscope felt the strangeness of it. Like a scene from some weird fantasy.
The large trunk was open; a soft bed of snow lay within; Harry picked the girl up and put her inside. She was solid in his arms, like an ice-sculpture. Then he got in with her, and yanked down on the cover from the inside until the frozen hinges gave way and the cover crunched most of the way shut. And now for the real miracle.
Scrambling over the seats to the front, Harry found the keys in the ignition where he’d left them. Using the cigarette lighter salvaged from Auld John’s place to warm the frozen barrel, finally he tried turning the key. And even Harry was surprised when the engine gave a muffled cough, caught, and began to tick over. The car’s nose was way under the snow but it was soft, fluffy stuff; there’d be plenty of air down there. Also, the radiator was very likely full of—
—Antifreeze, said Zahanine, startling him. In the winter in Edinburgh, I never took chances, always used twice the recommended dose! And then straight to the point. What’s on your mind, Necroscope?
Getting the accelerator ped
al working—jamming it in a fast tick-over and turning on the heater—Harry told her. And as the car and the dead girl warmed up a little, Zahanine told him one or two things, too. For she had been here a while now, and she’d talked to the local dead, of which the Drakesh Monastery was responsible for more than its fair share.
Now the Necroscope could talk to them, too. And he did:
Talked to the original inhabitants of the forbidden city, about the “plague” that had taken them a hundred years ago and how Drakesh had used them—and used them up—in building his monastery. Talked to a certain would-have-been initiate, a boy the Necroscope had once seen in a precognitive vision tramping the white waste to the monastery, in the company of six of the sect’s bell-jingling acolytes; a mere youth—crushed like an orange for its juice, to fuel the vampire appetite of the high priest, Daham Drakesh. And talked to others who knew the innermost secrets of that nightmarish “temple,” until he knew those secrets, too. And until he knew their co-ordinates.
And even when he thought he was through there were others waiting to talk to him. Major Chang Lun, for instance, speaking from the bottom of a ravine near Xigaze, where he and his mangled driver were friends now forever, lying frozen and broken in the tangle of wreckage that had been their snow-cat.
So that finally all the pieces of this last corner of the jigsaw puzzle came together, and Harry could see the whole picture. Except for one detail. One last piece, which would remain missing until he fixed it in place. And: “I’ll need your help,” he told Zahanine and Major Chang Lun.
Against the Drakuls? Zahanine was eager.
“Against their master,” the Necroscope answered. “Against him and his charnel house, that entire temple of blood!”
Then you’ve got it, Harry! she told him. Let me know what you want, and it’s yours. And Chang Lun was in complete agreement.
Harry explained what he would do, and finished by saying: “I want to drive him to the limit, panic him into action.”
He is a madman, Chang Lun said. Or teetering on the edge, at least. A megalomaniac, yes—but even so, how can you make him do a thing like that?
“I probably can’t, but you can.” And again Harry explained his meaning. “He’s on the edge, you said—so why not push him right over? I would very much like him to do it himself—do it to himself—but if not, then you’ll be there to finish it.”
And if I should fail, or something should go wrong?
“Nothing will go wrong. And I know it’s going to work, for I’ve seen it. It’s just waiting to happen, there in my future—or as it now seems, in all our futures. What will be has been.”
Except we don’t have futures, said Zahanine of herself and Chang Lun, and so nothing to lose. So let’s do it.
And as coincidence would have it:
At the vampire monastery, Daham Drakesh’s albino familiars reported back to him that a large contingent of military vehicles at Xigaze had commenced forming up in his direction. They were coming by night, doubtless to surprise him. Well, surprise was on his side. They would be in radio contact with each other and with the garrison, of course, and the garrison with Red China; and if anything were to happen in the outside world, more specifically Chungking, they might yet be diverted. If they weren’t … then Drakesh would let the soldiers into the monastery, but of necessity their vehicles, and most of their firepower, must stay outside. And in the monastery:
His bats would fight, of course; likewise his “priests”—fight with the strength of vampires—and win. But even if they lost, Drakesh would not lose. There were refuges in the outside world where he would be welcome, where he could start again as the planet devolved into chaos.
And if he won, then he would stay here and finish his work with little or no threat of outside interference. Indeed, Tibet would be the last bastion of mainly radiation-free, air-breathing man, and the first whole nation with a new ideology: vampirism. Enough! They had forced his hand.
Hurrying through the monastery, issuing orders as he went, Drakesh climbed to the transmitter room in the hollowed dome of the skull—and found Major Chang Lun, his old enemy, waiting for him there, where Harry Keogh had left him …
At a little after 8:20 P.M. GMT, the American Air Force Base at Greenham Common was a quiet place. It was a weekday and people had to work in the morning. Security and other duty posts were filled, of course, but the bomb-proof underground storage facilities might just as well have been tombs. Which would make the Necroscope a ghost where he emerged from the Möbius Continuum at a co-ordinate remembered from his one previous visit.
A short Möbius jump took him into the container with the combination safe. He kneeled, frowned at the knurled, numbered knob, and said, “Harry, this is it.” But he wasn’t talking to himself. And Harry Houdini answered:
OK, I see it. But now I need to feel it—through your fingers.
The Necroscope blanked his mind, let the other Harry take over, felt his fingers thrill to the weird magic of Houdini’s entirely different talent. The knob twirled this way and that, spinning through a seemingly endless sequence of combinations. But to the dead magician it was as easy as turning a key in a lock. When a final sharp click! sounded, Harry’s hand left the knob to yank on the safe’s handle—and the door sprang open.
“Damn, you’re good!” the Necroscope said.
But Houdini only chuckled. Tell that to my agent the next time you stop by his way, he answered.
Harry took the harmless-looking receiver and antenna from the safe, made a second short jump into the container with the bomb on its trolley. But the floor of the container was wired, and as it took his weight alarms were triggered. As the first distant sirens started to sound, he placed the receiver on the trolley, conjured another door, and wheeled the entire contraption through it and right out of there. And out of this universe.
Taking his deadly cargo with him, he followed the instantaneous Möbius route to Zahanine …
While in Daham Drakesh’s transmitter room:
Chang Lun was a lumpish, broken, scarecrow caricature of the man Drakesh had known and killed, but he was unmistakably Chang Lun. Splintered bones stuck out of his torn, dishevelled uniform; sagging to the right from a crushed spine, he threatened to crumple to the floor. His left shoulder hung awkwardly askew, but his right arm and hand seemed to be in good working order—especially the hand, and the pistol that followed Drakesh’s every move.
Not that the last Drakul was moving much; spreadeagled to the wall, his blood-red eyes bugged and his split tongue wriggled like a crippled snake, uselessly in his gaping mouth. But Chang Lun stood between Drakesh and the transmitter’s console, and as Drakesh gradually recovered from his shock, he knew he would have to move the Major in order to finalize his plan.
But what would he be moving? A corpse? A figment of his imagination, his conscience? Ridiculous! He had no conscience. And whatever this thing was, it was real, it was happening.
Facing him, Chang Lun faced a dilemma of his own. He was here to “drive Drakesh over the edge”—but the master of the monastery was already past that point; he wanted to press the button, to press it twice. Once to arm his bombs (as he imagined), and once again to detonate them. But Chang Lun couldn’t let him, not until the Necroscope gave him the word.
Harry, where are you? Chang Lun’s dead thoughts went out; and the Great Majority were “breathless,” keeping the psychic aether clear.
Right here, Harry answered, where at that very moment he and Zahanine wheeled the trolley out through a Möbius door into the bowels of the monastery; indeed, into the “temple” of self-flagellation with its bloody trough and terrible sluices. None of Drakesh’s people were there now, but from his conversations with ex-priests and initiates the Necroscope knew well enough where he was. And it was as good, or bad, a place as any.
Drakesh was a hugely talented telepath; while he couldn’t intercept or read the incorporeal thoughts of the dead, or the Necroscope’s thoughts while he was using
that medium, still he sensed that something—some form of communication—was happening here. And putting out a vampire probe, he at once found a second intruder, Harry Keogh, in the guts of the monastery. And his crazed mind immediately flew to the wrong conclusion, or a conclusion that was only part-right.
He was under attack! His plan was known! They would stop him, destroy the monastery, his works, even Daham Drakesh himself! He couldn’t be sure who “they” were, but it was definitely time to give them something else to worry about. Advancing on the dead man, his clawlike hands and arms elongated towards him. And the pistol in Major Chang Lun’s dead hand went click! Click! Click! The weapon was empty.
Drakesh swept Chang Lun aside like a tailor’s manikin. The Major’s broken spine collapsed, his legs gave way and he crumpled to the cold stone floor. And Drakesh stabbed at the button once … and paused, blinked, reconsidered, as he saw—what? A smile?—transforming Chang Lun’s face. Alive, the Chinese Major would be in agony. Dead, he wouldn’t be feeling anything—but he was. It was a smile of satisfaction, yes. Of triumph!
And again Drakesh’s probe went out to the Necroscope, and read, and saw, what was on his mind! Instantly, he snatched his skeletal hand from the console, staggered, turned and ran—out of the room, up the last flight of stone steps to the bald dome of the skull carved in the mountainside—ran like the grotesque parasite he was from a terror beyond anything he could ever dream to conjure. From a man who called up dead men from their graves, to enact their own vengeance!
And high on the moonlit dome of the skull he threw up his spindly arms to the night and willed metamorphosis. That greatest of all the skills of the vampire Lords, at which every Drakul before him had been past-master.
While in the room of the transmitter, Chang Lun still had a job to do. And dragging himself inch by inch back across the floor, he somehow managed to heave his wreck of a body upright at the console. And:
