Defilers

by Brian Lumley

  PART FOUR

  PSEUDO MEMORIES AND MAYHEM

  19

  JAKE—REMEMBERING

  As he showered, first in hot water, but gradually increasing the cold until he could take no more, Jake gasped, “You know, I’m starving?”

  The Möbius Continuum, said Korath. It obviously depletes you. But as for me: I am beyond all such, and my situation is different entirely—I am starved of life itself! Perched on the rim of your mind, I cannot even appreciate the true taste of your food, only an echo of the pleasure which you derive.

  “But better than sitting in your sump, right?”

  Anything is better than that! said Korath. As for starving you don’t know the meaning of the word. When your one option is to take the bone plug from the knuckled backbone of a flyer and sip on his grisly spinal fluids, then you know the meaning of the word!

  “What? Would you try to turn me off eating?” Jake grimaced. And when Korath declined to answer: “The hotel restaurant will have closed by now, but I know an excellent Chinese restaurant in Soho. I ate there with Lardis Lidesci. He’s from your world—one side of your world, anyway—and he thought the food was great.”

  I am at your service, said Korath.

  Jake dried off, swept his hair back. Normally he preferred it done professionaly, braided into a pigtail by a barber, but tonight he made do with a simple band of black elastic. And he dressed simply, too, in the clothes he’d brought with him when he left E-Branch, which he’d had cleaned and pressed up by the hotel …

  In Soho it was 10:20. The place was alive with young Londoners out in the unseasonably warm night. The Chinese food was good, likewise the Chinese beer with which Jake washed it down.

  Afterwards, walking in Oxford Circus—breathing the city smells, and taking in the sights and sounds—he said, “Well?”

  Well? Korath answered.

  “The food?”

  Was good, said the other. You thought so, anyway.

  “Better than spinal fluids?”

  Better than those of a flyer, yes, Korath answered darkly.

  And Jake chose not to question him further.

  So what now?

  Jake shrugged. “I could head for Leicester Square, but it’s too late to take in a movie,” he answered. “Pity, for they were showing Predator 2020 just a few days ago. On the other hand, all that gratuitous violence—the blood and guts and what have you—would probably get you all worked up, so I suppose it’s just as well. Which leaves us stymied; too late to do anything worthwhile, and too early to visit Frankie’s. I want to ensure that place is empty, shut down for the night, before I shut it down permanently. Of course, I could always ask you to give me a break, return to your sump, leave me to enjoy my own company a while?”

  Go back to Radujevac? Korath protested. That dreary place? But why?

  “Well,” said Jake, “you’d be surprised how close we are to E-Branch HQ right now. Even without the Möbius Continuum, it’s no great distance.”

  Ah! said Korath. Liz again. She’s on your mind. That’s why you came to London.

  Jake shrugged undecidedly. But then, however reluctantly, he said, “No, that’s definitely out. It was just a thought, that’s all. Or rather, she is on my mind—how can I deny it when you know she is?—but I can do without the complications. And anyway, I have things to think about, other things to do.”

  Such as?

  “For one, there’s a number I want to call,” said Jake. “And for two, there’s a surprise package I have to make up for Frankie’s Franchise.”

  Oh? said Korath. But weren’t you the one who was concerned about my craving for gratuitous violence? Perhaps I’ll yet convince you that we’re very much alike, you and I.

  But Jake only shook his head and said, “No way. Everything I’m doing has been—it feels like it’s been—arranged for me. My course has been set for me. I have no choice. It’s like I’m driven to do what I’m doing.”

  Precisely, said Korath. And what of myself? I did not want to become a vampire, Jake. But when I became one, do you think that I was not driven? Why, I could no more deny my blood than you can deny your mysterious urges!

  “Well, maybe,” said Jake. “But we’re different anyway. And now we’re going back to Paris.”

  But first he “dropped in” at a garage he knew in Marseilles, explained how his car had run out of gas, bought a three-gallon container and had the attendant fill it from a pump.

  Your surprise package for Frankie’s? said Korath.

  “Part of my package,” Jake told him. “And all it lacks now is a thimbleful of plastique to wrap it up very nicely, thank you …”

  From the Paris hotel Jake tried an international connection to Bagheria, Sicily: Castellano’s number from the old caretaker’s card, but all he got was static. Communications were bad worldwide and getting worse. Which left only one thing to do.

  It was 11:30 when Jake undressed and stretched himself out full-length on his bed. He felt wide awake and didn’t think he would actually get any sleep, but it was worth a try. Maybe he could glean something useful from the ever-present whispers of the teeming dead; perhaps the Necroscope Harry Keogh himself—if anything was left of him—would put in an appearance, and Jake could ask him one or two leading questions.

  And so he tossed and turned, and was genuinely suprised in a little while when a customary numbness, the prelude to sleep, began to invade his mind and limbs.

  At which he lay still and let himself drift …

  … At 3:30 A.M. a sleepy switchboard operator gave Jake the early call he’d booked. The phone rang a good half-dozen times before he picked it up and mumbled his thanks, and it took him another ten minutes to get himself together and work out where he was and what he was doing here.

  Then, splashing cold water on his face, Jake complained to Korath, “It’s like—I don’t know—like my brain is fogged up? You must be right: using the Continuum is draining me.” He spoke in all innocence, never for a moment suspecting that his dead “partner” already knew what was affecting him, and that in fact he alone was the source of the problem.

  But indeed Korath was “tired,” too—or more properly frustrated—and the cause was the same; the only difference being that he knew why, that it was because he’d spent the last four hours trying to penetrate Jake’s shields and bury himself even deeper in his unwilling host’s mind. The frustration came from having failed, and utterly. For now, even when Jake’s mind was only partially shielded, as in sleep, still it was impregnable.

  Whatever powers had been willed to him—literally “willed” to him, by the will of the Necroscope Harry Keogh—it seemed they’d taken root and were growing exponentially, and Korath’s earlier opportunities had passed him by. Cajoling didn’t work; neither promises, threats, nor stealth. He had tried them all, and now he would have to find a different key to the innermost rooms of Jake’s mind.

  But all of the probing Jake had suffered as Korath searched for a breach in his defences had taken its toll of him. Even in sleep, unaware of Korath’s assault, he’d fought back; his metaphysical mind had resisted, held, and repelled. Which accounted for his weariness and for Korath’s mounting frustration.

  On the other hand, the dead vampire considered himself fortunate indeed that in the last few seconds before Jake woke up, he’d succeeded in inserting a hurried posthypnotic suggestion that the sleeper forget his attempted intrusion …

  “Are you there?” said Jake, calling Korath back to earth—as it were—startling him and causing him to gather his wits. “You’re very quiet. What’s on your mind for a change?” (Almost as if he’d guessed what had been going on here, though in fact he hadn’t.)

  I’m here, Korath answered. I was silent because you didn’t require me to speak. Did you want something?

  “No,” Jake replied. “It’s just that when you’re quiet like that, I can’t help wondering what you’re thinking. See, Korath, this barrier between us works both ways. Just as my
inner mind is forbidden to you, yours is forbidden to me.” And then, perhaps a little suspiciously, “Maybe we should both be grateful, eh?”

  Whatever you say, said Korath, as he carefully strengthened his own shields …

  Dressed all in black, Jake returned to the cobbled alleyway in Genoa, where the double F neon sign was still unlit and the way was almost blocked by the day’s garbage, reeking and steaming in piled plastic bags and rusty refuse skips. Frankie’s Franchise was flanked by a dingy, flyspecked pizzeria on one side, and a tiny hardware store selling fishing gear on the other. Jake could only hope they were insured. But what the hell: whoever owned them, they’d be better off anyway.

  Looking at the upper storeys, Jake saw that the windows of Frankie’s upstairs rooms were boarded up. But since the neighbouring windows had been hung with dirty curtains, he supposed he’d better check inside.

  He could see inside both the hardware and pizzeria, and so had the coordinates. There were no alarms, and quick checks of both places showed him that they were unoccupied. Good. Now he could get on with it.

  Back to Paris for his “gear,” and from there directly into Frankie’s barroom. And: “Goodbye, Frankie’s,” Jake growled, as he pressed the button on his five-second delay firebomb. Just enough time to fashion a door and get out of there.

  At the end of the alley he looked back, wincing and automatically shielding his eyes from what he knew was coming.

  Gratuitous violence indeed! commented Korath, as Frankie’s Franchise went into its death throes.

  First a flash of brilliant yellow light—like daylight in the gloomy night street, as if someone had switched on the sun—and then the sound of a double explosion, but the two blasts coming so close together that they were literally inseparable. A sharp crack as the plastique went off like a mortar bomb, the sound stretching itself out and changing in timbre into a long-drawn-out protracted howling, like a jet engine on test, as the petrol ignited and was propelled by the plastique in pressured sheets of fire along every avenue of expansion.

  The effect was almost nuclear. The roof came off Frankie’s Franchise, hurled aloft on a pillar of fire, while at the front the door and windows bowed outwards—almost as if the building had taken a deep breath—before exploding into the street in a frenzy of fire and bricks and glass. And as the lower structure disintegrated, so the gutted upper storey remained in place for a brief moment, apparently suspended on the heat alone, before crumpling down into the inferno below.

  Then, as the initial dazzle faded—as the flames roared up and a great ring of smoke shot with fire rose skywards—so the adjacent buildings followed suit, settled on their foundations, groaningly tilted inwards, and finally spilled their substance into the sprawling cauldron of yellow fire. And:

  “Done,” said Jake with some satisfaction.

  But the fire is bound to spread, said Korath.

  “It can take the whole waterfront area out for all I care,” Jake answered, “so long as there are no human casualties. There shouldn’t be, for with the weather the way it is and everything bone-dry, the fire services are bound to be on standby.”

  They were, and as Jake stood there awhile longer surveying his work—as astonished people in their nightclothes gathered and sirens began to sound—so Korath made ready to conjure the Möbius equations.

  Then, as the first of a fleet of howling fire engines began to arrive, Jake moved apart from the crowd into the shadows and made his exit …

  Back in Paris, he phoned the Bagheria number again and actually got through. In a crackle of static he heard the phone taken up, and then a gravelly voice inquiring, “Who is it?” But it wasn’t Luigi Castellano’s voice.

  “I want to speak to the man who runs the hounds,” Jake said then, “not to one of his dogs. So go and get him—and make it quick, while we still have a line.”

  There was a moment’s pause—more fizzing and popping—and finally a voice that Jake recognized instantly, a deep-rumbling, powerful purr that he’d never forget till the day he died, and knowing what he knew now, not even then. “Who are you, and what do you want?” that voice said.

  “I want you, Castellano,” Jake answered. “And as for who I am, you already know that. I’m the one who took out your place in Marseilles, and your little gold mine under the Madonie, and just a few minutes ago Frankie’s Franchise in Genoa.”

  “Jake Cutter,” said the other, but his voice was no longer purring. Now it was a snarl, a low growl, a threat in itself—which made any verbal abuse redundant. It was a dark, primal voice, that said “Jake Cutter,” but which meant “You’re a dead man!”

  “Cutter, right,” Jake replied, “and I’ve been cutting into your organization, your lousy rat-holes. Next, I’ll be cutting into you.”

  “What?” said Castellano. “All of this for that little cunt Natasha? A drug-running slut who had been fucked by every boss in Moscow? Was she really worth dying for, Jake Cutter?”

  “You tell me, you bastard!” Jake spat. “For you’re the one who’ll be doing the dying.”

  Then the static flared up worse than ever, indeed so badly that Jake was barely able to make out the other’s reply: “When you come I’ll be ready, Jake. Just you and I, winner take all. And be sure I will take you! I’ll keep your balls in a jar until they rot, to remind me of you, and your screams in my head forever, so that I can listen to them before sleeping. Your screams and Natasha’s sobbing … a duet, like a lullaby, you know? So do please promise me that you won’t keep me waiting too long, won’t you?”

  “It’ll be sooner than you fucking think,” said Jake—

  —And then there was only the static, and perhaps a clattering sound as the phone was hurled down in Bagheria …

  Korath had been in Jake’s head and he had heard everything. Do you know, he said, this Luigi Castellano might easily have been Wamphyri? The way be taunted you … I’ve heard just such talk in Starside. Haven’t I told you about that? The way great enemies would taunt each other before fighting, to enrage each other beyond wisdom’s reach? I fancy that Castellano has tried to do the same. And it seems to me he succeeded!

  Jake scarcely heard him. Furiously he paced the floor, his face grimly determined, his fists clenched. “The black-hearted bastard!” he muttered. “You’re right, he’s taunting me. But if he knew what I’ve got he wouldn’t be so damned cocky.”

  Nor do we know what he has, said Korath wisely. That place in Bagheria: Isn’t it his stronghold, guarded by his best men? Perhaps you are the one who shouldn’t be so damned cocky.

  “They don’t have the Möbius Continuum,” said Jake.

  But they will have bullets, Korath answered. It only takes one bullet in the right place, Jake, and that’s you finished—not to mention myself …

  “If I knew where the place was,” Jake grated it out through clenched teeth, “I’d do it tonight, right now!”

  Exactly what Luigi Castellano wants you to do, said Korath. He wants you to go rushing in, all unprepared. But no, let your head be your guide, Jake, and not your heart. And certainly not your hatred. Revenge is a dish—

  “Best served cold, I know,” Jake cut in. Then, frowning, he said, “But where did you hear that one?”

  In Starside, said Korath. Where else?

  “It seems we share a good many sayings,” said Jake.

  It’s hardly surprising (the other’s deadspeak shrug). Men are men in whichever world, and their darkest passions are the same—except in the Wamphyri, of course, in whom man’s vices are multiplied tenfold, and likewise his lusts and rages.

  “So how is it you don’t get all fired up?” Jake asked him. “You’re Wamphyri, or would have been. You say I’m infuriating, obstinate, always giving you a hard time. So why don’t you get mad at me? How is it that you’re always the coolheaded one?”

  But I do get mad at you! said Korath. Very. And you should consider yourself fortunate that you’ll never know how angry I get! But—

  “But?�
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  It is simply a matter of continuity, said the other. Where you go, I go, and what you suffer, I suffer. What of me without Jake Cutter? What becomes of me if you should die? I am nothing without you. And so, when you play the hotheaded fool, I shall remain cool. For as I’ve said, it’s a matter of continuity, and I simply can’t afford to let you commit suicide.

  “Thanks a bunch!” Jake growled. “But the way you tell it, I keep getting this feeling not so much of continuity but of permanency. So I think maybe I should remind you, when we’re done, we’re done.”

  I hadn’t forgotten, said Korath. But we’ve a way to go yet. First Luigi Castellano, then Lord Nephran Malinari, Vavara, and Szwart. That was our deal, and I shall stick by it.

  “Good,” said Jake. “Let’s leave it at that, then.” But deep down inside he was still very uneasy about this so-called “partnership,” and knew he always would be until it was over …

  Jake woke up at 9:00 A.M. Saturday morning, washed and dressed, pushed his sausage bag of plastique deep under his bed, and had a late breakfast in his room before calling for Korath.

  And how do you feel this morning? asked the vampire.

  “In a hurry,” Jake answered. “As always I feel driven, but not to suicide!”

  So I see, said the other. You’re much calmer than you were last night.

  “That’s because I’ve taken your advice,” Jake answered. “I was a bit hot under the collar last night, that’s all, but now I’ve cooled down. It’s probably a good thing that I don’t know where Castellano’s place in Bagheria is, otherwise I believe I really would have gone there.”

  Which would have been both dangerous and contrary to your original scheme, said Korath. For if memory serves—which it does, and extremely efficiently—you want Castellano to feel the noose tightening slowly, slowly, and bit by bit.

  Jake nodded. “Until the knot is pressing up tight against the back of his neck, yes,” he said.