Defilers

by Brian Lumley

  And finally, as Trask released him and turned away: “But we don’t know that, Ben!” Goodly spoke up. “We only know something will happen. We don’t know how or when or why—or what the end result will be.”

  Trask had collapsed on his bed, his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. “God damn you!” he raved, his whole body shaking. “You and your fucking talent! God damn us all!”

  Chung went to him but didn’t touch him. “Boss,” he said quietly after a moment. “This isn’t Ian’s fault. It’s like you said, a warning. It gives us extra time to speak to HQ again, tell them something’s coming down and they’ve got to look after the women. It’s a warning, that’s all.”

  Trask took a deep breath, looked up, said, “David, you know it doesn’t work like that. How many times have we seen it? When Ian says it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. And that’s it. There’s no escaping it.”

  “But we don’t know how it will happen,” Goodly repeated himself, “or what the end result will be.”

  “Jesus! Jesus!” said Trask, jumping to his feet. “I have to speak to London again. But …” He looked at his friends, shook his head, and said, “You two, I don’t know how to say I’m sorry for the way I acted a moment ago. I don’t even know if I should just yet. I hate this. I hate our talents. Why can’t we be like other men? Why do we have to suffer all this shit? What in hell did our forebears do that we had to be born fucking freaks? Ian, I didn’t mean to go off at you like that. But Millie—my God—Millie!”

  “It’s all right,” said the precog. “I hate it, too, Ben. We all do. People say we’re talented, but I say we’re cursed. Just don’t … don’t be concerned with anything else right now. Just go and speak to HQ.”

  And without another word Trask took his jacket and went out into the Mediterranean night …

  Morning, the sun just clearing the horizon, and it was probably the coolest it would be all day and well into the next night.

  “Now we really are tourists,” said Liz, a passenger in the lead car as all three vehicles headed out from Christos Studios and went their various ways. “To all intents and purposes, that is … except the real one.”

  “I used to ‘tour’ Sunside,” Lardis chuckled gruffly. “But I called it ‘beating the bounds,’ and I rode in a caravan or went on foot. That was how the old Szgany chieftains protected their territories. The farthest I ever went was into Starside, to the last great aerie of the Wamphyri. But that was before Trask and Chung and Goodly and Zek and Nathan, before they all brought it crashing down, of course.”

  This was news to Manolis, who was driving. “What?” he said. “Ben Trask and thee others, they were all with you in a vampire world?”

  “In my vampire world, aye,” said Lardis. “And without them, I don’t suppose I’d be here talking about it. For they’re brave lads all, these E-Branch people. And me and my kind, the Szgany as a race, we’d have been goners without them.”

  “E-Branch,” Manolis nodded. “Brave ones, yes—and so many of them are thee goners now, gone away for ever. I knew one of them, a man called Darcy Clarke, quite well, but I don’t think either of you will have known him. He was before your time with thee Branch. We did some work with thee vrykoulakas bastards on thee island of Halki, he and I. That was like—it was like a nightmare! —but we lived through it. Did I say lived through it? Hah! Darcy had this thing inside him, his talent, which so protected him he should have lived to be a hundred! Yet now he is no more. No more Darcy Clarke, Ken Layard, or Trevor Jordan, and no more Jazz or Zek.”

  “Did you know Jazz? Jazz Simmons?” Now it was Lardis’s turn to be surprised. “Ah!—but he was a fighter, that one! I named my boy after Jazz. My only son, Jason Lidesci, who by now would have been a chief in his own right.”

  “Would have been?” Manolis glanced at him.

  “The Wamphyri got him,” Lardis growled, and turned his face away. Following which they fell silent.

  And as these men from different spheres dwelled awhile with their own private memories—memories that, however disparate, were linked by common factors—Liz relaxed as best she could and thought about what they were all doing here …

  The three recce or initial-search teams consisted of Lardis, Manolis, and Liz in their four-wheel-drive vehicle; Stavros and Chung in a second; and Trask, Goodly, and Andreas in the third. This first phase of the operation was simply to look the island over, and if possible to pinpoint the location of the infestation. Namely, to find Vavara and Malinari, and to do it in broad daylight when the Great Vampires were least active and probably wouldn’t realize that they’d been discovered.

  Manolis and his party went west, back towards the capital. Bypassing Krassos town on its ring road, they would swing north on the coastal route, then east along the “back” of the island, and eventually meet up with Ben Trask and his party at a place called Skala Rachoniou. By then they would have covered no more than thirty miles or so on the actual coast roads, but twice as many again in their forays inland on secondary roads and tracks to the various foothill and mountain villages.

  Along the way and apart from Krassos itself, they would pay visits to every village, community, and archaeological site, of which there weren’t too many, and acting as tourists assess the viability of each place as a possible aerie or vampire hideout. That was their brief: to carry out a reconnaissance of half of Krassos, while Trask and his party covered the eastern half of the island. Also, since Manolis’s men hadn’t been able to find spearguns in Skala Astris, he intended to stop at the various fishing villages en route until he’d found what he wanted.

  As for Stavros and Chung, they were “staying local,” in the countryside around Skala Astris because it seemed the most likely hunting ground. The unidentified woman with the leech had been washed up only six or seven miles away; Vladi Ferengi, the Gypsy chief, had camped there with his people; Manolis had been forced off the road close by; and Vavara and Lord Nephran Malinari had actually been sighted there on the night that a would-be Hell’s Angel made his fatal error. Also, and most logical of all, David Chung was E-Branch’s chief locator. If the vampires were in this vicinity, Chung should be able to find them …

  That being the case, Liz suspected that she and Lardis had been sent on a wild-goose chase west away from Skala Astris for a similar reason, or more properly, the opposite reason: it was simply Trask’s way of keeping them out of the line of fire. And if by chance they should get into trouble anyway, then the very capable Manolis Papastamos would be on hand to get them out. As for Manolis: he seemed one hundred percent fit again. He drove confidently—too confidently on roads like this, Liz thought—and if he was hurting at all he didn’t show it.

  But there again, he did have injuries, and it might well be that Trask was taking care of Manolis, too, if only by ensuring that he was well out of it.

  Thus Liz felt she could afford to relax a little. And maybe because she had been keeping her telepathy on a tight rein, she also decided that now would be a good time to get some practice in. The sun was in the sky; the temperature was already rising; the Wamphyri would be in their beds or skulking in the darkness of their as yet undiscovered aerie, and so she’d have little or nothing to fear from them just yet. So she thought.

  Certainly her heart felt lighter now that she was speeding west, as though she was leaving something dark and terrible far behind. If only she could leave her dark and terrible fears for Jake behind her, too, then her world would be a brighter place; and that despite all the horrors she had known in her time with E-Branch, and others that she supposed must surely be waiting for her around some future bend.

  But hopefully, not around the next bend …

  It was noon of a baking hot, very frustrating day when finally Liz brought the car to a halt where the road cut through a high spur overlooking a long white beach fronting the small village-cum-resort of Skala Rachoniou. She had taken over driving when Manolis’s shoulder had started to play up, and now he was
resting up beside her, “easing the pain,” by pulling on a bottle of Ouzo 12 purchased at a liquor store in one of the villages en route. Lardis—thank goodness—had remembered Trask’s request that he keep his drinking to a minimum, and he’d refrained from buying Metaxa, though Liz guessed he’d been sorely tempted. Now he was sitting in the back of the car, sipping from a bottle of mineral water that he was sharing with her, doubtless feeling envious of Man-olis.

  “That’s it,” said the latter, glancing at a map where he’d folded it onto the dashboard. “Thee Skala Rachoniou. According to thee legend on my map, which has two umbrellas to signify a beach resort, thee place is very popular for thee swimming and snorkelling. Huh! But thee map has almost as many umbrellas as thee beach! Just look down there!”

  “Deserted,” said Liz. “Well, almost. All of that wonderful ocean, and I can’t see more than two or three swimmers.”

  “It is thee white sand,” Manolis nodded. “You can’t walk on it, it’s so hot.”

  “Don’t you believe it,” said Liz. “I’ll walk on it, just as soon as we can get down there. I’ve never sweated so much in my life.”

  And Lardis, with a pair of binoculars to his eyes, growled, “At least we’ll have no trouble finding Ben and the others. In fact I think I can see their vehicle from here.” He handed the binoculars to Liz. “That taverna in the middle of the straight stretch of road, the one with the blue canopy.”

  “I see them,” she said, and passed the glasses to Manolis. “By now they’ll be wondering where we’ve got to. We’d best get on down there.” Letting out the clutch, she drove the car back out onto the last mile of winding road to the beachfront …

  “So what kept you?” a worried-looking Trask wanted to know when the three joined him, Goodly, and Andreas in the stirless shade of the open-sided taverna. “I was just beginning to feel uneasy about you. We’ve been here for something like an hour now.” And waving for the waiter, he called for sandwiches and iced drinks for the latecomers.

  “We had a tyre blow out on us west of Krassos town,” Liz told him, “and Manolis did some damage to his shoulder trying to fix it. Lardis and I finished the job. Also, we had to try almost a dozen hardware and fishing stores before Manolis could find the right kind of spearguns. He needed spears with the right gauge of thread to take the silvered spearheads. Then he had to chase up someone who was willing to open up his store for him—it is a Sunday, after all, and late in the season. And finally … finally there seemed to be lots more road up into and down from the mountains than we’d reckoned on.”

  And before Trask could say anything else, she went on, “How long do you plan on us being here?”

  “Maybe another hour,” Trask shrugged. “Give you time to get your breath, have a bite to eat, soak up a little liquid. Why?”

  “Because I for one intend to soak in a little liquid!” she told him. “In fact, a lot of it. Manolis can supply the details of our recce, not that there’s much to tell.” And shrugging out of her dress to reveal the bikini underneath—but leaving her sandals on her feet against the heat of the sand—she set off out of the taverna and down across the narrow strip of beach to the sea.

  Watching her go, Lardis said, “That Jake Cutter’s one lucky lad. Or he would be if he’d see sense. She has the hips for it, that one.”

  “You should be past that stuff,” Trask told him, but Lardis only grinned.

  “When I’m past that stuff,” he answered, “then by all means shoot me!”

  But Trask was frowning. “She was short with me,” he finally worked it out. “And she also seemed a little evasive. So what’s bothering her now, I wonder?” While he didn’t mention it, he’d also noticed faint purple shadows under Liz’s eyes, a sure sign that she’d been concentrating her mind, using her telepathy.

  Manolis stroked his chin, looked at Trask shrewdly, and said “Maybe she feels thee same way I feel: that you sent us west to keep us out of danger.”

  “But I—” Trask began to protest, then saw how pointless it would be to lie. “But I’m trying to keep us all out of danger!” he said. “We’re not expendable, none of us, and I’ll need every one of you if we’re to see this thing through. Okay, so maybe I seem a little overprotective of Liz. But Nephran Malinari knows her mind, and I don’t want to use her talent until I absolutely have to. Not anywhere near someone as powerful as he is, anyway. Then there’s Lardis. He’s my responsibility, too, and—”

  “As you were mine, on Sunside that time,” said Lardis. “But I didn’t try to keep you from doing your bit.”

  “—And his wife is waiting for him back in London,” Trask continued. “So how am I supposed to explain it to Lissa if I go back without him?”

  “And me?” said Manolis. “What about me? Are you responsible for me, too? Am I not thee big boy in my own right? Ah, but you didn’t want me in on this in thee first place, did you?”

  Trask threw up his hands. “We had to recce this island!” he protested. “I chose you three to do the western half. So you’ve done it. And now … now if you’re ready, I think I’d like your report,” he finished lamely.

  “Our report?” Lardis repeated him. “But it’s like Liz told you. There isn’t anything to report. We didn’t find anything.”

  “And you, Ben?” said Manolis. “What did you find?”

  Trask shook his head. “The same as you,” he said. “Nothing. Wherever these creatures are, they’re keeping their heads down. And so we’re left with Chung—and I can’t get through to him.”

  “Let me try him again,” said Goodly, taking out his phone. But it was no use; the locator’s phone had been activated, they knew that much, but his words were lost in the hiss and sputter of static caused by sunspot activity.

  “So what now?” said Manolis.

  “Now we go back to Skala Astris,” said Trask, straightening up in his chair. “What the hell? It’s early days, and we’re not nearly beaten yet. Out in Australia, we had thousands of square miles to cover. But we did it in the end. And what’s this place but a huge chunk of marble in the middle of the sea? We’ll find the bastards, if not today then tonight or tomorrow night. Like I said yesterday: the nighttime is their time. And so it is—but it could well prove to be our time, too.”

  “Of course, we didn’t cover all of our half of the island,” said the precog.

  “Oh?” Manolis looked at him, then at Trask.

  “We stuck to the coast road,” said the latter, “but there’s a major route right through the mountains—the highest part of the island—that we’ll look at on the way back. We may as well go back together, in convoy.”

  “Whatever you say,” said Manolis.

  But leaning towards the Greek policeman, Trask was suddenly frowning again when he asked: “Is that ouzo I can smell on your breath?”

  “Er, that was for my shoulder,” said Manolis. “To ease thee pain.” And then, recognizing a certain look in Trask’s narrowed eyes, he sighed and added, “Well, not entirely for my shoulder, perhaps—but it did help a lot, I promise you that!” And when the look didn’t go away, “However, since you insist—” Catching the waiter’s eye, he called for coffee, black …

  By the time Manolis was down to the dregs, Liz had finished bathing and was coming back up the beach. And by the time she’d reached the taverna, her gleaming, sun-bronzed skin was already dry.

  15

  THE SEARCHING—THE FINDING—THE SEETHING

  Having juggled the crews a little, Trask had taken over driving the lead vehicle. Manolis was his front-seat passenger, reading the map, and Andreas sprawled in the back. Behind them, as they climbed into the densely wooded mountains along contour-hugging roads, Goodly drove the other car. Lardis had moved up front as the precog’s navigator, but map-reading skills were scarcely a necessity—Goodly was simply following where Trask led. Liz was taking it easy in the back, and all the windows of both vehicles were wound all the way down.

  “At least we’re out of the sunlight
,” said Trask, beginning to feel more comfortable in the shade of ramrod-straight pines. “Why, it’s like being in a regular forest! Apart from this terrible heat, we could be in Canada or even Norway.”

  “Thee Krassos peoples are especially proud of their wooded mountains,” Manolis told him. “And of their marble, of course. Some of thee world’s finest marbles are quarried here in these mountains. This is thee Ypsaria ‘massif.’ Well, not so massive to thee great world traveller, perhaps—I mean, it isn’t thee Rockies—but very impressive on a small Greek island, yes?”

  “It’s green, it’s shady, and I can breathe without setting fire to my lungs,” Trask answered. “So it’s good enough for me. Not too good for driving, though. Quite apart from the winding road—which is bad enough and demands a lot of concentration—this dappled light is very confusing. It’s almost as bad as driving at dusk. But in contrast to all the heat and the glare of the coast roads, it’s very refreshing indeed.”

  He glanced sideways at the Greek, who sat studying his map, and went on. “What’s so interesting with the map? There’s only this one major road, if you can call it that, so it’s not likely we’ll get lost.”

  But Manolis was frowning now and stabbing with his finger at a point on the folded chart. “Here is thee very interesting item,” he said, musingly. “An hotel, close to a trig point. At twelve hundred metres, it is perhaps thee second highest place on Krassos. From up there we can scan thee entire island coast to coast.”

  “Good,” said Trask. “We’ll take a short break there.” Then he saw that Manolis was still intent on the map. “So what else are you looking at? What’s bothering you now?”

  “Just thee name of thee place,” said Manolis. “It’s called … it’s called Thee Aerie!”

  Trask gave a small start—then thought about it, shrugged, and said, “And so it should be, if it’s the vantage point that you say it is. Let’s face it, it’s hardly likely that Malinari and Vavara would be advertising their presence, now is it?”