by Brian Lumley
She had maybe ten seconds’ start but wasn’t much of a driver, and despite her more powerful vehicle Stavros was soon catching up with her. “Her car is bigger and heavier,” Lardis said from where he sat beside Trask in the back. “Do we really intend to ram it from the road? Who will be ramming whom, I wonder? It’s a very long way down to the sea, and quite a few sharp rocks to bounce off before you get there.”
“The sharper the better,” Trask growled. And to Manolis in the front passenger seat: “Can Stavros handle it?”
“If anyone can, Stavros can,” Manolis answered, hanging on for dear life as his man wrestled with the steering and took a sharp right-hand bend. Stavros was trying to hug the cliff wall on their right, but centrifugal force slid the car out into the oncoming lane. Fortunately in the dead of the Krassos night the road was empty, and for a mile ahead it was straight before the next series of bends.
A hundred or so yards in front, Vavara was doing no better; she hadn’t regained control after taking the bend, and the limo was all over the road. A stream of sparks trailed the big black car where a dangling muffler skittered like a crippled snake.
“Now’s your chance!” Trask gripped Stavros’s shoulder.
Stavros accelerated, slowly closing the gap between himself and the battered vehicle in front. Vavara saw him coming in her rear view and moved in closer to the cliffs rising on her right. Determined to keep her pursuers from the inner lane, she would let them overtake her, then do to them what they planned to do to her. But she hadn’t reckoned on Manolis, three-times champion marksman of the Athenian police force.
“Hold her steady now, Stavros, my friend!” Manolis barked, as he leaned out of his window and took aim with his automatic. Now Vavara saw him, and began weaving this way and that across the road. Then, brilliantly inventive—acting before Manolis could find his target—suddenly she slammed on the brakes!
Stavros recognized the mechanics of the thing: her limo was by far the more massive machine; he would bounce off it, and if he bounced in the wrong direction—
He stood on his brakes, and the four-wheel went into a long slewing skid, coming very close to running out of tarmac on the wrong side of the road—the sea-cliffs side—before stalling and jerking to a standstill. Vavara’s limo, however, had slowed but not stopped. Now, stepping on the accelerator, she put distance between. The chase was on again, and minute by minute the time and the miles were steadily ticking away.
In a little while Palataki became visible as a dark silhouette on its knoll perhaps half a mile ahead. “We don’t know who or what’s in that place,” Trask yelled over the snarling of the car’s motor. “We don’t know what she might activate if she gets there. But we do know she’s desperate—and that the other team isn’t expecting her!”
“Got you,” Manolis shouted back. And to Stavros, “Get right up behind her again, but this time be ready for thee tricks.”
Stavros obliged, was assisted by the fact that the road had started winding once more and Vavara couldn’t handle it.
And as Manolis again leaned out of his window: “Aim at her tank,” Trask yelled.
They were almost through the winding stretch; the last bend was a righthander; the side road to Palataki was less than 250 yards ahead, when Manolis took a deep breath, held it, and squeezed off three quick shots.
The limo was swinging into the bend, sliding out across the road to the left, when one of Manolis’s shots missed the petrol tank but took out the left-hand rear tyre. The rubber tore like paper, the wheel rim sparked where it chewed into the road, and almost in slow motion the limo turned over onto its side, sliding across the road and through a flimsy wooden fence. A moment more and it had nosed down out of view.
“We got the bitch!” Trask shouted, thumping Manolis’s back as Stavros brought their vehicle to a halt. And even before the car had stopped moving, the Head of Branch was out of his door, running to look over the edge of the road.
Down there, the descent to the rim of the actual sea cliffs was steep but not sheer. Somehow the limo had rolled over again and righted itself, and it was plunging headlong down the rocky slope in a fall that all the small, stunted pines, kindling-dry undergrowth, and the best brakes in the world couldn’t hope to halt. Gravity simply wouldn’t be denied.
Manolis joined Trask in time to see the end of it. And: “I know exactly how thee vrykoulakas bitch is feeling right now,” he said. “And I’m glad!”
At the very edge of the high sea cliffs there were several upthrusting outcrops—future sea-stacks, like the ones standing out to sea—where tortured strata had buckled and broken in the Mediterranean’s frequent geological upheavals. The limo clipped one of these, spun off, and came to rest with its front wheels over the rim. The limo came to rest, but Vavara didn’t. Hurled out by the impact, she formed a tattered, spinning kite-shape as she vanished beyond the horizon of the cliffs, and her croaking shriek echoed up to Trask and Manolis for long seconds where they stood watching … until finally it was cut off by a far, faint splash. Then:
“Good,” Manolis grunted. “Thee water is very deep here. And I do know what I’m talking about!”
“But you survived,” said Trask. “And God damn her—she’s Wamphyri! She might survive the fall and the water, too!”
“Possibly,” Manolis answered. “But nothing we can do about it. There’s no way down. And even if there was, one wrong step in thee dark …” He let it trail off and shrugged.
“I hope she sinks and sloughs away!” Trask snarled then.
“But meanwhile there’s Palataki,” Manolis took his elbow. “Come, my friend. Thee time is wasting …”
Looking east from Palataki, Ian Goodly, David Chung, and Manolis’s Number Two, Andreas, had seen the sudden flare-up on the horizon, and moments later they’d heard the rumble of man-made thunder. In combination, these things were the signal they had been waiting for. And now it was their turn.
Shored up in the knowledge that Trask and the others would soon be joining them, and each of them armed with half-a-dozen sticks of Andreas’s dynamite in addition to their more conventional weapons, they had driven their vehicles up the crumbling, overgrown ramp and climbed to the knoll’s plateau. There in the grounds of the Little Palace, well back from the gothic-looking building itself, now they prepared for the work of demolition.
Before that, however, the two espers wanted to know exactly what it was they were destroying. In close proximity like this—closer to this place of dread than ever before, and knowing that their presence on Krassos had been discovered and they no longer required to remain secretive or anonymous—now was the ideal opportunity.
“Ah, but what if it’s Malinari?” said Goodly. “David, your talent is probably more accessible to him and makes you vulnerable. Mine isn’t—at least, I don’t think so—so let me use it first, now, before you take any unnecessary risks. Let’s for once try to fathom exactly what the future has in store for us, without galloping headlong into it.”
“Be my guest,” said the locator, with a small shudder. “But to tell you the truth I’ve already tried, and all I got was the creeps! This place is wall to wall mindsmog. It’s in the Little Palace, it’s under us, and all around us. But it isn’t specific to any one spot, and its source must be heavily shielded. Which can mean only one thing: it’s definitely Wamphyri, and probably Malinari. So be my guest—only for God’s sake be careful!”
While they talked, the third member of their team, Andreas, could only look on; perhaps he wondered what the two were going on about, but he remained silent. Manolis had told him to do exactly as they said, and that was good enough for him. But the sooner they got some action going the better; this place had to be the last place on earth where anyone in his right mind would want to be, especially doing nothing.
And Andreas, as down-to-earth a man as might be round—but a man who trusted his own natural instincts—was exactly right in his feelings and apprehensions.
The gloom under t
he tall, spindly pines seemed full of some alien sentience; the three men felt watched, sensed unseen eyes upon them. And a sickly ground mist swirled about their ankles, barely drifting aside when they moved but clinging to them, for all the world as if wanting to know them. In a place like this, however, and the espers as preoccupied as they were, the writhing of the mist so suited the scene that neither man recognized its significance.
Then there was Palataki itself, standing tall, gaunt, mist-wreathed, and rotten to its heart and subterranean burrows; its hollow windows like rows of soulless eye sockets, as if it were the unseen watcher. And the silence like a suffocating shroud—a silence that hurt the ears, because they strained in vain to catch a sound—beneath which nothing moved except the ground mist and the three men themselves …
Looking more cadaverous than ever in this fraught setting, in the dappled shade of the pines and the almost luminous glow of the ground mist, Ian Goodly closed his eyes and lowered his head to his chest. And leaning against one of the cars for support, he pressed slender, sensitive fingers to his temples and forced himself to think … of absolutely nothing!
Deliberately voiding his mind, albeit temporarily—wiping it clean of everything he had ever known or now knew, emptying it of all knowledge of times past and present—Goodly sought contact only with the ever-devious and unforgiving future …
… And touched upon something else entirely.
Down in the maze of mine shafts deep under Palataki, Nephran Malinari felt the tremors in the mist that issued from his vampire pores and uttered a long-drawn-out sigh. “Ahhhhh! They are here, and much sooner than I thought. Which means that you and I must stop this pleasuring now, for there’s work for us.”
He spoke to Sister Anna, as naked as a newborn babe—but no longer as innocent—where she sat astride him with her nipples brushing his chest and her backside wriggling deliciously, working at him with her womanhood and moaning her pleasure.
“What’s that?” she answered almost absentmindedly, and continued to jerk herself up and down on him, tossing her head to and fro more frantically yet. “There’s someone here?”
“Enough now!” said Malinari, lifting her from him. “We have other things to do. There are men up there who would kill me if they could. Indeed, it’s possible they have already killed your ex-mistress. But I know a way out, and we shall flee to safety, you and I.” It was a lie; it had never been his intention that Anna should “flee” anywhere, but that she’d remain here as his rear guard. And standing he told her, “Now dress yourself while I listen and discover what they are about.”
Pouting, Anna obeyed him, and Malinari turned from her and stood still, “listening.”
His probes went out, traced a path through his mist to the disturbance, and there found Ian Goodly, the precog, his weird mind empty of all thoughts except of the future. And:
So, Malinari thought. He seeks to learn the outcome of the venture in advance. A coward, this precog? No, a wise man. But by no means wiser than Malinari. He has emptied his mind until it is blank. Well, then, now let me see if I can put something back into it. Something for Vavara, I think, that greedy bitch vampire who in my hour of need offered me nothing! This way, I take my revenge while E-Branch takes the blame. Then, when the score is even, the scales balanced, and Vavara disadvantaged—if she yet survives—I shall find myself a new place in which to start over. But not, I think, in this world …
In short order, as quickly as he could, Malinari transmitted a series of telepathic scenes along his probe, and couldn’t help but laugh at the result of their impact.
Up above, Goodly straightened from his half-slumped position and his eyes shot open—but they were vacant, glazed, as if filmed over. Gasping for breath and shaking like a leaf, he threw his hands wide, slamming them up against the side of the car to steady himself.
The locator stepped closer, grabbed him and gasped, “Ian, what is it? What did you see?”
The glazed look drained from the precog’s eyes, and blinking rapidly—shaking his head as if to clear it—finally he answered, “It … it wasn’t the future, David. It was the NOW, and it’s waiting for us below!”
“The now?” Chung frowned. “But what is it?”
“It’s much as we suspected,” the other stood up straighter, subconsciously brushing himself down, as if he’d been lying in something unpleasant. “It was some kind of plot or garden—a spawning site, like the one Jake Cutter destroyed in Xanadu—and there were human remains in it. God, it was loathsome!”
“Show it to me,” said Chung at once. “Since E-Branch will have to deal with it eventually—even after we’ve buried it, if we can bury it—they’ll need to know its precise location. So show it to me now, and when we’ve brought the place down on top of it, still I’ll know where they have to drill to put the thermite right into the heart of that filthy stuff!”
The precog shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “I’m not the locator, David, you are. Yet I saw the now and the where of it! Someone showed it to me, as clear and much clearer than any picture from the future. And looking through his eyes, I saw that thing bloating down there under Palataki. As for who showed it to me—” Goodly’s voice shivered to match the tremors in his spindly frame, “—I can still hear his crazy laughter!”
“Malinari?” Chung’s eyes went wide. “Are you saying he got into your mind?”
Goodly nodded. “It had to be him—and I must consider myself fortunate there was nothing in there for him to steall But how to explain it? Why would he want us to see what’s festering away down there? It’s almost as if he were urging us to destroy it!”
“Perhaps he was,” said Chung. “For after all, it’s not Malinari’s garden but Vavara’s.”
“Then put it this way,” said the precog. “Since be is down there, too, why would he want us to destroy him?”
“He wouldn’t,” Chung shook his head. “It’s impossible. The tenacity of the vampire doesn’t allow for it.”
“Precisely,” said Goodly. “He wants us to destroy Vavara’s garden, but he himself … he must have an escape route!”
“You’ve got to let me see,” said Chung again, urgently now. “Lead me to him, and right now! We have dynamite. If he’s still down there, we might even be able to cut him off!”
The precog nodded, and without another word he emptied his mind of all thoughts … and the link was immediately reestablished. Now Malinari’s vampire mist worked against its author; he was taken aback to feel this deliberate, impertinent, even insolent contact! Goodly’s mind, when he emptied it like that, was a mental magnet to Malinari’s probes; they couldn’t resist it. Malinari saw it as a challenge to his superior skills, and sharpening his wits he waited to see what would develop.
Nor did he have long to wait.
Zeroing in on Goodly’s link, following it to Malinari, the locator’s very different probe lanced home. He didn’t actually see Malinari, or Vavara’s deadspawn garden, but he did “locate” them, and knew exactly where they were.
Then, as he felt Malinari’s awesome mentalist mind sucking at him like a telepathic black hole, colder than outer space: “There!” he gasped, quickly withdrawing. “I got it. Better still, I got him—and his escape routes! But it’s possible he got something from me, too, though I’m not sure what.”
“You know where he is?” Goodly had pulled himself together now. “Can we reach him?”
“He’s there,” Chung pointed at Palataki, dead centre. “And … and he’s down there!” Straightening his arm, he lowered his finger to an angle of maybe forty-five degrees. “A hundred feet or so straight down.”
“In an underworld of his own,” the precog said. “All those tunnels, crumbling mine shafts and caverns. I saw that much at least, when he showed me the garden. The place is as hollow as wormy cheese! But you mentioned his escape routes. Where?”
“At both ends of the place, directly under those cupolas,” Chung answered. “Way down below,
the stairwells are hewn from the rotten bedrock, with old wooden staircases coming up from the mine shafts and caves to the crumbling basement. Malinari can effect his escape from either end of the building.”
“So if we blast those basements and stairwells,” said the precog, “fill them with tons of rubble, he’ll be trapped down there.” He turned to Andreas, showed him a stick of dynamite. “After you’ve heard our explosions—coming from both ends of Palataki—then you can take out the midsection. Meanwhile, you wait here for the others, tell them where we are.”
Andreas understood well enough. “Is okay,” he nodded. “I ready. I waiting.” And he held up a stick of dynamite in a tightly clenched fist.
Goodly and Chung set off at once, went loping through the mist—Malinari’s mist, entwined with the crawling “sweat” of Vavara’s deadspawn—toward the old building, the locator making for one end of Palataki and the precog for the other.
And for the moment neither man found anything odd in what he was doing (not beyond the accepted weirdness of the situation) nor in the way he’d been inveigled into doing it.
While down below Malinari bayed like a moon-crazed hound—but kept it to himself, shielded in his mad mind—as he gave Anna her instructions before setting out along his real escape route: the one that would first intercept Ian Goodly’s descent, before taking Malinari to Vavara’s boat in a cave over the rim of the slumbering sea …
23
THE UPPER HAND—THE NETHER REGIONS
In the Sicilian Night, looking down at the seething, quaglike remains of Luigi Castellano’s razed headquarters—unaware that Ben Trask and E-Branch had carried out a similar, almost simultaneous attack on an alleged monastery on Krassos—Jake Cutter reeled from the sudden knowledge that Liz was in danger.
And from Vavara! Korath reminded him, seeming to relish the thought.
“I have the coordinates,” Jake gasped. “I have to go there, now!”
