by Brian Lumley
“Stuff about precogs, locators, espers, and telepaths—and like that. Weird conversations I could only just go with, about extraps, and GCHQ, gadgets and ghosts, and some kind of ongoing search for a trio of invaders: three guys called Vavara, Malinari, and something that sounds like, er, Schwarz? Kraut, maybe? And Greek and Italian? So if that’s not international, tell me what is?
“Sure I know what a telepath is, and this GCHQ’s a part of the British security setup, right? But as for this other stuff … it’s all a mystery to me!
“Anyway, the leader of these people is this Ben Trask, but the others Chung, Liz Merrick, and two other guys called Ian Goodly and Lardis Lidesci—they all seem to be pretty high up in the rankings. And there are plenty of others. I mean, I must have watched two dozen different types, male and female, in and out of that hotel’s rear entrance. But no rolled umbrellas, pinstripes or bowler hats. Just normal, everyday, ordinary-looking people, if you can believe that.
“And that’s about it, Luigi. I’m all done. No, wait, there was just one other thing. It’s about these three invaders. When these E-Branch types talked about them, they grouped them under one funny-sounding name. It was … it was …”
“Well?” said Castellano, his voice not so much threatening now as keenly interested, even fascinated.
“Shit! I’ll remember it in a minute,” said Lefranc. “But I have it on tape, anyway, which I’ll be bringing back with me as soon as I can get out of here. Er, Luigi—?”
“Which might not be for quite some time,” said Castellano, after a moment’s thoughtful silence. “Because what you’ve told me is … very interesting, Alfonso. It’s possible you may have stumbled upon something of great importance. As for Jake Cutter … at first I thought he was just—how does one say it?—an innocent bystander? Someone who got in my way and had to be put aside? I’d never thought of him as anything more than that, not until you saw him with those people in Australia. But now …”
“Yeah?”
“Now I see him as something very different.” Castellano’s voice was deep and dark now. “I think it’s possible—I don’t know how, but I think it’s possible—Jake Cutter knows things that I would dearly love to know. Suddenly he is very important to me, and not alone because he’s killed off some of my top men and may even be trying to kill me. No, it’s why he’s done these things—and why he continues to do them, despite that he must know his life is in jeopardy—that interests me.”
“Er, because of the girl, right?” Lefranc was baffled. His understanding was that it was a vendetta, pure and simple.
“Wrong,” said Castellano, his voice deeper yet. “Cutter is working for someone, some cause: this E-Branch, as it now seems. But I fancy they’re no simple policemen, these people who would appear licensed to take the law into their own hands, or ignore it entirely. And Jake Cutter is no simple law officer …
Lefranc waited, said nothing, and in another moment it was back to business as his master continued in a more normal, less intense manner: “Stay on it, Alfonso. You’ve done well, and I’m not displeased with your efforts so far. But I’m sure there’s a lot more to be learned about these people. So you’ll stay right where you are. If you need money, it’s not a problem; as of now you have full access to the London account. But I want results. Stay in daily contact—any time of the day or night—but use Garzia’s number, not this one. Garzia will pass on whatever you tell him to me. And above all else, be careful and remember: if you should ever be caught and questioned, the last thing you’ll ever say—the last word you’ll speak—is my name. Because it really would be the last thing, ever …”
“Sure, Luigi. Don’t worry about it,” Lefranc answered, the corner of his mouth twitching uncontrollably, where he stood in his domed booth on Victoria station. But Castellano didn’t hear him because he had already put his receiver down.
And then Lefranc remembered that group name he’d been searching his memory for. And: “Wamphyri!” he told himself, now that it was too late to tell anyone else. “Shit, yeah, that was it: Wamphyri!”
The intercity diesel had long since departed the platform, and the Gatwick Express had just pulled in, bringing passengers from the airport into the city. Hanging up the phone and exiting from under the dome’s privacy, Lefranc scarcely noticed two cowled nuns making their way along the platform toward the taxi rank; he had enough on his mind already.
And as for the nuns: unseen in the shade of their cowls, their eyes shone with a luminosity created of a dedication to something other than their order; indeed, to a new or entirely different order of being, that was anything but holy. And they had more than enough on their minds to ever notice someone like Alfonso Lefranc …
“Luigi, do you think we can talk … ?” In the villa at Bagheria, Garzia Nicosia stood by the desk of his once-friend and now his master—or, as Garzia preferred to consider their relationship, his mentor, the vampire Luigi Castellano—and patiently waited on his reply.
Tall, broad-shouldered, and as straight as a rod, Nicosia was an imposing figure in his own right. Despite his pale features, he was as dark and brooding in his mind as the history of his country. Sicilian in both looks and nature, he was entirely loyal to Castellano and a deadly enemy to his master’s enemies. He was, indeed, “in thrall” to Castellano, which meant that his loyalty was based principally on his awe of the other; on that, and on a basic understanding of his powers, and a promise more than fifty years old that one day he would share those powers.
Unlike Lefranc, Nicosia would never dream of playing word games with Castellano; he knew from past experience that in any conversation with this man one listened and learned (and, where applicable, obeyed), asked only the most relevant of questions, and other than that made no attempt to discuss, redirect, or in any way impress oneself upon the flow of Castellano’s words and thoughts. Also, while commonsense suggestions might on occasion be sought, accepted, and even appreciated, opinions were out of the question.
As Castellano himself had once remarked: “I’ve found that personal opinions are generally slanted in the direction of personal advantage. Since I only ever concern myself with opinions which tend to my advantage—namely my opinions—I’m obliged to view those of others with some suspicion. Often as not, I’ve discovered them to be the devices of ambitious men. And I can’t abide men with ambitions beyond their station …”
Which basically was the reason why Castellano—last in an ancient line of men and monsters—rarely actually conversed at all. Rather he expressed himself and made known his wishes, and generally shaped his future by directing the actions of others; and to interfere with his thought processes was to distract and anger him. Garzia Nicosia, his companion since boyhood, was one of only a handful of men who had ever been able to speak to his master (his friend, his mentor) on something of a level playing field. Even so, it was a field with many pitfalls, and one must always be careful where one stepped …
Castellano remained seated in his armchair; he leaned forwards with his left elbow on the desk, a long-fingered left hand supporting and fingering his chin. His thoughtful gaze lay upon the telephone, silent now in its cradle. But after several long brooding moments—sensing Nicosia’s eyes upon him, and finally acknowledging his statement, which had also been a request—he stirred and looked up. Then, fixing the other’s feral eyes with his own burning gaze, he nodded and said: “I think perhaps you are right: it’s time we talked. Years ago—ah, but how many years, eh, Garzia?—I promised you an answer to a certain question, indeed to many questions, despite that I myself didn’t know all of the answers. I was vain enough to believe that in the fullness of time I would learn the greatest mysteries of this thing, and eventually come to understand its mechanics. And so I have come to understand … some of it, and to know some of the answers. But tell me, Garzia—do you still remember the questions?”
“Of course,” said Nicosia. “They were how, and why, and to what end? What of tomorrow? And will it be forever
? These were a few of them—which both of us asked, if memory serves—and time would seem to have answered at least one or two.”
“Such as?” said Castellano.
“The how, for one,” said the other. “How do we go on, down all the years, while others die and crumble to dust? Well quite obviously, ‘the blood is the life.’ In drinking the blood—the lives of so many others—we have prolonged our own. But as for eternity …”
“You doubt that what we have is forever?”
“Forever is … it’s a very long time,” Nicosia could only offer a shrug. “It means tomorrows without end. But knowing you the way I do—and having known you all these years—I sense an uncertainty in you that wasn’t there before. It’s as if even the soonest of those tomorrows, the one following today, is now indefinite. Oh, it will definitely arrive, we can be certain of that … but can we be sure that we’ll be a part of it?”
Castellano stood up, stretched, strode out from behind his desk. “If some other had said what you have said,” he answered, “I would take it hard and perhaps consider it wishful thinking. For it would hint of a future in which I had no part. It would at least hint of such a possibility. But you are not any other, Garzia. You’re my man, whom I caused to be like myself. And I’m sure that life or undeath burns as fiercely in your veins as it does in mine. You might—now don’t deny it, Garzia, for I know I’m not the easiest person to live with—you might in certain circumstances wish me dead, but never yourself! And, of course, if I were to die, then in all likelihood you would be following fast on my heels. Following me to hell, as it were. Well, if we were believers.”
Garzia said nothing, but simply watched the other pace the floor to and fro. “But the fact is,” Castellano continued, “that you do know me well—far better than anyone else—and what you have sensed in me does your perceptions credit. Uncertainty, you said, and you are not mistaken …”
And when Nicosia remained silent: “Have I ever told you my story?” Castellano stopped pacing, halting in the middle of the floor. “Well of course I have! A half dozen times or more, over the years. But only to you, Garzia, because you are my one confidant: my ‘blood brother,’ eh?” And he chuckled in a rumbling, deep-throated fashion. “Ah, but if I can’t trust you, then who can I trust? My blood is yours, and yours mine, and if men were ever to discover us for what we are”—he was sober again in a moment—“your fate would surely be the same as mine.”
“You know you can trust me,” said the other. “And not only because of what we are now but what we have always been. Foundlings as infants, we were inseparable friends as boys. When our guardian took us to the USA in 1930, we were innocent children. Then, as we grew to youths the war loomed. Having found our way into the Mafia, we avoided the conflict, returned to Sicily, and brought back something of the American dream with us. Except by then it was our dream, or more properly yours: a dream of great power, wealth, even of empire. What happened between us … was an accident, which brought about a change in both of us. But in you that change was … it was profound, a fathomless thing!”
“A taste of blood, yes,” Castellano nodded. “Which was all it took. My only true friend’s blood—your blood, Garzia. And indeed my change was profound. But go on, tell it as you remember it.”
“We went to a powerful don in Palermo,” said Nicosia. “Don Carlo Alcamo; he was to be our patron and ease our way into the Sicilian brotherhood. But Don Carlo refused us! The war was on; we must keep our heads down; the Mafia would pull in its horns, shrink down into itself (for the time being, at least), and Don Carlo wasn’t about to enlist any would-be young bloods, untried soldiers such as you and I.”
“How very true,” Castellano nodded. “Our blood was untried, at that time. Yet mine burned like a fire; it leaped in my veins until I could no longer contain it! I was twenty-two years old, already a whole year past manhood—which to others of the time was the age of consent—to me the age of ascent; for the fire in my blood demanded that I rise up! Yet this old man, this Don Carlo, he would hold me down. As if I were a child.”
And Nicosia took it up again. “After the American invasion, you were a passenger on the back of the first tank into Palermo from the south. You pointed out possible pockets of resistance, which of course included Don Carlo’s place. On your advice they blew it to hell, and him with it!”
“I became a hero to our ‘liberators,’” Castellano chuckled again. “I was an untouchable, at least as long as the Americans held the island, which would be for quite some time. Of course, the other dons knew who had brought down Don Carlo Alcamo. They knew, but could do nothing about it. I (or perhaps I should say we), we were feted at the American bases as fifth-column heroes of the Sicilian Resistance! It gave us a taste of power. We ran the black market and took control of prostitution. With all the American troops that were on the island, both lines proved very profitable. So that despite the gradual resurgence of the dons, we were very much ‘in.’ And from that time forward they weren’t ever able to put us out again. Until finally they accepted us.”
“Now all the Old Guard are dead and gone,” Nicosia carried it on, “while the new have forgotten or weren’t ever aware that we were—that we are—those same ‘young bloods’ from seventy years ago …”
“All of which is our story,” said Castellano. “But mine is still untold. Not from its beginning. Perhaps you would like to hear it again?”
“Refresh my memory, by all means,” said Nicosia. “It’s a story that has always fascinated me.”
“As it should,” said Castellano. “For after all, it’s your origin, too …” And in a while he continued: “Foundlings, you said, which in your case was true enough. Found on a doorstep wrapped in a torn blanket, on a cold winter night in Nicosia, the Sicilian village from which you took your name: you were a foundling, Garzia, yes. But as for myself, the story is somewhat different.
“I wasn’t a foundling as such—wasn’t left to my fate on a doorstep by some peasant woman who littered me out of wedlock under an olive tree or in some goatherd’s barn, no—but I will admit that I, too, was a bastard, and I know some would have it that I’ve been one ever since! Well, however that may be, there was no cold doorstep in my history. My mother was a girl from a family once of high standing, though of diminished means at the time of my birth.
“Later I would meet and even get to know her, and then she would try to explain why I’d been abandoned; or rather, why she had been obliged to give me secretly into the care of relatives in Nicosia, where you and I met and grew up together. But where you took the town’s name, I had my own. I was a Castellano from the beginning—even though I wasn’t! For if I’d been given my father’s name, then it would have been something else entirely.
‘The story put about was that I was the orphaned infant of a Genovese line of Castellanos; my father had died in a hunting accident in Italy, and my mother in childbirth, in giving birth to me. My only living relatives were the Sicilian widow and her simpleminded but harmless son who had taken me in. In fact the widow was my grandmother, and the simpleton my uncle, though he never knew it. The story which my ‘aunt’—my grandmother—and my mother had concocted was their way of protecting not only me but my mother, too!
“But from what? What was the true story, eh?
“Well, my mother was a true Castellano, which gave my name some legitimacy at least. Her name was Katerin and she had gone into service as a young girl. A servant girl, yes, in the house of her masters in the Madonie: in fact Le Manse Madonie, in the high mountains forty miles east of here. And I was the child of those masters, those two men, those respected brothers in their high house, perched like an eagle’s aerie on the very edge of a chasm. And where better for such as them to dwell, eh? For they were both great birds of prey, those Francezcis.
“But surely I couldn’t be the child of both? No, of course not. But such had been the way of it that my mother wasn’t able to differentiate! They had both had her, from time to tim
e, and whenever it took their fancy. Anthony and Francesco: I could be the son of either one!
“So then, why hadn’t she tried to escape, to run away from Le Manse Madonie long ago? And why didn’t she even now, to care for me where I was hidden away?
“Ah, but my mother was in thrall to the Francezcis no less than you are to me, Garzia, and perhaps even more so. For unlike our relationship, the fact that we are, well, ‘friends’—or as close as our natures will allow—she loathed the brothers, yet at the same time was drawn to them irresistibly, like a moth to the flame! But she hated to leave me alone and motherless, too, at the close of each fleeting visit when the brothers were away on business and she could come to see me. That was in the early years. Later the Francezcis only rarely left Le Manse Madonie together, and my mother’s visits became fewer and fewer …
“I mentioned relationships. They are all we can ever know, Garzia, such as we are. Relationships, yes. But were we ever in love? Did we ever have girls to make our hearts beat faster, or to break them with their fickle ways? Well, and perhaps we were in love, now and then, as young men in America. But never since then. Or rather, never since ‘the accident,’ as you are wont to call it. But that was no accident, Garzia; it had been bound to happen, sooner or later, to me if not to you. That was the only accident: that it was you …
“But I’ve drifted from my story. Let me get back to it:
When I was old enough to understand her whispered words—but not yet old enough to understand their meaning—my mother told me things. Or rather, she would say things to me, which at the time made little sense. She spoke of blood: of some frightful thing in my father’s blood—in all the Francezci blood—which might also be in mine. She talked about vast treasures at Le Manse Madonie, and of cellars filled with a king’s ransom. I should be heir to all such treasures, she said, but at the same time she was concerned that I was heir to something else. And I could often feel her eyes upon me, those wide, hag-ridden eyes, as if she were fearful of finding some strange taint or sprawling cancer in me. Of course, I understand all such things now, but at the time … what was I but a child?
