by Brian Lumley
“The mistress saw you leave,” that one said, “and since she was sending us out and about tonight, she thought we might take you into Krassos town.”
“I want no favours of your mistress,” said Malinari.
“But she insists,” said the other. “She said that we should … that we should see you safely on your way, and—”
“And safely off her territory, aye!” Malinari snarled.
“—And that you would appreciate … that you’d appreciate her concern for you,” the nun continued, albeit gaspingly.
Malinari showed her his teeth and half-turned away … and then, on second thought, turned back. Since it was obvious that Vavara wouldn’t rest until she knew he was gone for good—and since it suited his purpose to give the bitch just such a false sense of security—accepting this ride into town could well work to his advantage.
“Your mistress … is very gracious,” he said. “The road is a long one into Skala Astris, and I can’t be certain of finding a taxi there. Also, since I wouldn’t want to draw attention to myself by walking these night roads …”
The back door of the vehicle sprang open. Malinari got in, and without further pause was carried into Krassos town. As for the cowled women seated in front—brides of a holy order,upon a time,now “wedded” to the unholy hag Vavara—they never once looked back. It could be that they feared him; indeed, Malinari was sure of it—
—But he fancied they feared Vavara a great deal more …
They dropped him in a dark, deserted alley on the outskirts of the seaport town, then continued with their “duties.” Malinari had scanned their minds on the way into Krassos; he knew where they were going: to relieve their sisters keeping watch on the incoming ferries, the last of which had recently docked.
Wanting to give them time to get out of the way, he walked along the seafront toward the harbour, until he found a taverna with upstairs seating that looked down on the main road. Ordering red wine, he sat listening to soothing bouzouki music while watching the gyrations of a belly dancer on a television screen over the bar. Reception was very poor, making the figure on the screen fade in and out like a stroboscopic special effect. Malinari couldn’t watch for too long because it made his head ache, and anyway he was keeping an eye on the road, or trying to. But this close to the centre of a major town—this close to people—he was at his usual disadvantage. Namely, he could hear them.
He could hear them thinking. And recognizing only too well the dangers inherent in that, he tried not to hear them. Which worked for a little while, at least …
Affecting his best manlike appearance, Malinari didn’t seem out of place in this setting; he might well be Italian, French, or even cosmopolitan Greek. The taverna’s subdued blue lighting hid his paleness, and his hair was fashionably long, loose, and flowing, except at his temples and upper sideburns where it was lacquered back to disguise the upper extremities of his fleshy, conchlike ears. These might otherwise have betrayed him—but betrayed him as what? As a foreigner with malformed ears?
Other than that Malinari was, to all intents and purposes, just another lone, late-season tourist on a night out, enjoying the cool of evening after another incredibly hot day. Oh, there might also be something a little odd about his nose—a certain flattish look, as if nature had pushed it too far back—but in any case the taverna was three-quarters empty, and none of its patrons was paying him more than casual attention …
… Which might have been because of his eyes.
Let anyone look at him curiously or for too long, and Malinari would fix him with a certain look, with those eyes of his under their high-arcing eyebrows—those oh-so-penetrating eyes, which were black as night yet oddly luminous and, at a certain angle, even feral. And then, for all his sharply creased black slacks, polished shoes, silk shirt, and fashionable lightweight jacket—for all such trappings of mundane civilization—then there would be something primal, something of the great predatory animal about him. And whoever was watching would sense the danger and quickly look away.
This made it easy to maintain his integrity—his physical isolation, that is—but as for his mental isolation …
Lord Nephran Malinari, of the Wamphyri! Malinari the Mind, aye. They hadn’t called him that for nothing, in old Starside. It had been both his blessing and his curse; it still was, but now, more often than not, it was his curse. His talent working in reverse, working against him. And tonight, here, and now …
… He could hear them.
Their voices in his mind. Their teeming thoughts—lustful, greedy, malicious, dirty, bloody, hateful, scheming—it was as bad as being back on old Starside in the time of the bloodwars, before he’d suffered his great defeat and was banished north!
Indeed, it seemed to Malinari that the only real difference between the Wamphyri and humankind—other than their physical strength—was that the Great Vampires admitted of their tremendous passions, giving vent to them and revelling in their excesses, but human beings sought to bury theirs out of sight, pretending they didn’t exist. But they did, they did!
That was what made men the perfect hosts. Surely it must be so, else there were no Wamphyri!
And all of their secret voices, gabble-gobbling away in his head, invading his mind! Those three fat-gutted, greasy-looking men, where they sat close to the bar and gazed up at the belly dancer.
One of them was thinking: How I would love to be into that. All that loose flesh. I’d fuck her arse, her tits, her armpit … anything but her sweaty cunt!
And another was climbing unsteadily to his feet, making for the toilets where be would masturbate the grease out of his fat dick. All he could think of was the throbbing in his pants!
While the third was simply sitting there with a limp penis, wishing, wishing, desperately wishing! But since wishing wasn’t doing him any good, in the back of his mind he was going at the belly dancer with an imaginary knife, slicing at the parts that no longer worked for him, gutting her like a fish. And not just the dancer but any woman—the poor, impotent bastard …
Their thoughts—theirs, and not Malinari’s at all—but all of them and a hundred more exactly like them infesting his mind from near and far. A roaring on the one hand, and a whispering on the other, but all of it intermingling into a mental uproar. It was maddening! It was so … so maddening!!!
Hearing a small, splintering report, he saw that he’d been clenching his glass so tightly that it had cracked. That was a very bad sign—even an ominous sign—which warned him that his old trouble was surfacing again. But he couldn’t afford to let it, not tonight.
Pushing the cracked glass to the far side of his table, he sat there trembling, watching it dribble red awhile, and drinking from the bottle. But the spilled wine only reminded him of blood, the rich red blood of the fat bastards in this bar, and in the street below, and in the town, and in all the cities of all the world!
So that when the bartender suddenly appeared from nowhere, plumping a new glass down on the table, Malinari came close to starting to his feet, grabbing him, and … and he wasn’t sure what else might have happened then! But seeing his eyes, their luminosity, the bartender backed away from him and didn’t come back. Nor would he return later when Malinari left—not even to collect payment—such was the shock, and the impression of pent violence he’d seen mirrored in Malinari’s eyes …
Malinari got a grip on himself.
Stifling his trembling and stabilizing his mental shields to deflect all outside influences, he slowly became his own man again. The screen was blank now, the belly dancer gone, and the night air was cool where it came in across the balcony. It blew on Malinari and his hot mind both, gradually cooling them down.
And barely in time.
For down below, Vavara’s black limo was cruising east along the seafront, heading back towards the monastery, and Malinari’s mental condition had been such that he might easily have missed it. But no, he was fine now, and it was time he was on his way.
; The bartender was nowhere to be seen. Since Malinari didn’t care whether he paid for his wine or not, he simply rose and left, went downstairs to the side of the road, and flagged down the first available taxi.
By the vehicle’s dashboard timepiece it was a minute or so before ten o’clock, and with time to spare, Malinari was being driven back along the coast road toward Skala Astris.
Or more precisely, toward Palataki …
A little more than an hour later, Vavara’s lieutenant, Zarakis Mocksthrall, stood in the shadow of the crumbling Little Palace and looked down from the promontory on the scattered handful of lights and ribbon of road that was Skala Astris. The tavernas, what few had been open, were all closed now, and the last fishing vessel had bobbed home and was safely at mooring.
In the west, the twinkling jewel lights of Portos, Peskari, and Sotira were strung out along the coast, gradually dwindling into the distance, and a brilliant half-moon laid a path across the sea. Except for the occasional clatter of transports along the road, all was quiet.
Time now to take a turn about Palataki’s overgrown gardens, checking for intruders and ensuring that Vavara’s candle still burned in its small, central shrine.
It was his mistress’s vanity, Zarakis knew—and her idea of a joke—to keep that candle burning there; her mockery of all such symbols of faith, even as the images that she assumed mocked true beauty and femininity. For no such candle was ever before lit for Vavara, not in Starside or anywhere else, until now … unless it was a candle of corpse grease, whose special “incense” she enjoyed to inhale.
And Zarakis (vampire that he was, more than a mere thrall, and indeed a lieutenant), even he shuddered. “Mocksthrall,” she had named him, as she named all of her thralls, and he accepted without question his station as the first lieutenant, currently the only lieutenant, of that very heart of mockery, the eidolon Vavara. For Zarakis’s life, or rather his undeath, was itself a mockery in her service. But be that as it may, it was far better than the true death and no life at all …
It was a strange night, Zarakis thought, where he followed familiar paths through the gardens, causing the sweating ground mist to swirl about his ankles. There was an unaccustomed stillness in the air, as if it were full of some weird expectancy or charged with the static energies of a gathering storm … which might well be the case. For the very gentlest of gentle breezes off the sea was cool at last, and it seemed that this freakish summer was finally at an end.
But as he drew near to the little shrine, where the night’s first candle had already guttered out—what was that? A presence, here at Palataki!? Zarakis paused suddenly between paces, stood stock-still, and sniffed at the air. And letting his vampire senses flow out from him, he held his breath and waited to see what they would detect.
Somewhere nearby, a tiny Greek owl hooted its forlorn, solitary note, like a single drop of molten gold on the motionless air. Motionless now, aye, for even that gentlest of breezes had ceased to blow. But …
… No one was there—else he were stealthier far than Zarakis! And as he lit a new candle and placed it in the window of the marble shrine, to glimmer its deceit there in the darkness, he remembered what Vavara had told him just an hour or so ago: that he should be especially careful this night, and attend his duties as never before. She had not been specific, but then again her mood had been a bad one, and Zarakis had known better than to ask questions. She could flay you with her tongue, that one; and if that didn’t suffice, she had other tools with which to finish the job!
But best not to think such thoughts, for one could never be sure that she wasn’t—
Zarakis! Vavara’s voice, sounding in his mind, cutting into his thoughts like a razor-sharp knife! Ahhh! He went cold as death—the true death—and wondered if she’d been listening. Mentalism wasn’t her forte, no, but if she were near, and concentrating … and the night so still!
Zarakis, where are you? Her sweetly lying voice calling out to him, and behind it her sour signature, like a discord in the psychic aether.
She must be here to spy on him, to ensure that he was about his duties as instructed. What? All these years of service, and still she didn’t trust him? But no, no—he hadn’t thought that last—he mustn’t think such things, but pull himself together and answer her call.
“Mistress, I am here!” Zarakis spoke out loud, yet quietly, breathlessly, and knew that she would hear him anyway. “I am in the gardens, near the marble shrine. Your candle burns, and all else is well. But where … where are you?”
I am waiting for you, Vavara answered, near the entrance to the Little Palace. Hurry now.
“Of course,” he babbled. “I’m on my way. But mistress, what is the matter? I mean, when you were here earlier, you seemed—dare I say it?—out of sorts with yourself? What is it that so concerns you?”
For a moment there was silence, and Zarakis thought perhaps he’d said too much. But then:
But I was out of sorts, she answered to his relief, And I was more than a little short with you, Zarakis—which is why I now bring you a small token of my esteem. Or should we say, a special tidbit?
A tidbit? But how very rare! How very strange! And her mental voice … was there something different about it? Or was it just an effect of this weird night, the peculiar atmosphere?
Zarakis was now at the dark entrance, but where was Vavara? “Where are you, mistress?” he enquired. “I can’t see you.”
Oh, you great laggard! She chided him, but without discernible malice. I grew weary of waiting for you and have proceeded to the spawning chamber. Follow me down. There is something you must see.
“And my tidbit?” Her mood seemed such that he was prompted to be forward with her.
She is with me! said Vavara. At which Zarakis made yet more haste …
The way down into the nitre-streaked cellars—and then through the alveolate bedrock to the old mine workings—was treacherous with pitfalls, but Zarakis was familiar with it as with the back of his own hand. From the day his mistress first purchased Palataki, it had been his lot to patrol its grounds, the ruined building itself, and its underground labyrinth of tunnels, mine-workings, and natural caverns. The latter had been hollowed out by the sea ages before the Mediterranean’s seismic activity had folded the rock and thrust it up to form Palataki’s promontory, and it was in just such a cavern that Vavara’s misted spawning chamber was situated.
Zarakis, as he emerged from an access tunnel into the main chamber, fully expected to see his mistress there—also to see the “tidbit” she’d brought with her, presumably one of the nuns from the monastery, one of the younger nuns, Zarakis hoped. But what he did not expect to see was a chamber empty of life other than the creeping loathsomeness covering the floor, and the now tumescent fungi with their gills distended, ready at a moment’s notice to release their lethal spores.
But in fact the cavern wasn’t entirely empty of life, which became apparent just a moment later when Lord Nephran Malinari, Malinari the Mind, stepped from the deep shadows behind Zarakis and grasped his head between his hands.
It took but a moment.
Zarakis opened his mouth to cry out—and then was unable to do so. He made as if to wrench himself free—and found himself immobilized. And as he went to his knees, Malinari released him, but just long enough to move round in front of him before once more clasping his head. And:
“Ah! Agh! Arghhh! Tidbit?” Zarakis grunted then. For apart from his shock, that had been his last coherent thought before Malinari’s hands took him, and so was the first item of memory to be deleted. “M-m-my tidbit?”
Then all of his limbs jerked spastically, as if galvanized by a powerful electrical current, and his head shook violently: entirely involuntary reactions to the other’s preliminary examination. But:
“No, no!” said Malinari. “Hold still, lest I hurt you even more.” And extending his semiliquid forefingers deep into Zarakis’s ears—dislodging the ossicles, the malleus, incus, and stapes, eac
h in its turn, and passing through the inner chamber to the cochlea, and from there tearing channels along the nerve connections to the brain—he said: “As for your tidbit: alas, that was a lie. No tidbits here, Zarakis. At least, not from me to you. But from you to me? Well, we shall see.”
And then he laughed and went on, “Except, it was not me who lied to you but your mistress—or so you imagined. For just as Vavara’s hypnotic powers allow her to create a near-perfect imitation of beauty, so I have imitated Vavara herself! No, not physically, but in your mind! Or rather, that which was your mind, which is now mine.”
Malinari’s hands, transformed by metamorphosis, covered Zarakis’s head like twin purple-veined webs—like the leaves of some huge carnivorous plant—as the terrible extrusions that were his forefingers continued exploring his silently shrieking victim’s brain. And blood from Zarakis’s violated ears trickled down his neck to soak his collar, while the awful pressure from within caused his eyes to stand out in his face …
… Until Malinari used his thumbs—as long and slender as pencils now—to dislodge those eyes, push them aside and enter their bleeding orbits the better to absorb Zarakis’s memories.
“What you have heard, what you have seen, and what you have known,” Malinari murmured. “These are the things I seek.”
“Urk! … Uk! … Argh!” Zarakis gurgled, as his body began jerking again.
But the ice of Malinari’s hands soon brought him back under control, as that Great Vampire told him: “Ah, no! Don’t try to answer. I don’t require you to answer physically, Zarakis. The answers are all here in your head. All of the secret places you’ve discovered down here in this buried maze, where a man might hide if he had need. The bolt-holes that lead out of this place, which you kept secret even from Vavara. The location of her boat, and how to get there. The whereabouts of its fuel cache, and knowledge of its operation. Ahhh!”
And all of it flowing out, drawn out of Zarakis, into Malinari’s mind. But not all of his memories, not all of his learning, and certainly not enough to kill him. For he was a vampire after all; a lieutenant who aspired—or who had once aspired—to be Wamphyri, and would prove very hard to kill by this means alone. Even with his mind three-quarters incapacitated, emptied of knowledge, his vampire essence would fight on, those strands of mutant DNA that one day might even have metamorphosed into a leech. And:
