Defilers

by Brian Lumley

  What, and put yourself in jeopardy yet again? And not only yourself but me, my entire future?

  “You don’t have a future, Korath,” Jake answered. “You’re a dead thing. But Liz is very much alive. So show me those equations, and I do mean now. She’s in bad trouble.”

  Oh, I agree! said Korath. She is in the very worst possible trouble, for Vavara has ber. And Vavara is Wampbyri!

  “So what’s your problem?” Jake had no time for this. “Luigi Castellano was Wamphyri, too, wasn’t he?”

  Indeed he was, but be didn’t know it. He had no one to show him the way. He followed the ways of gangland fools, instead of his true nature. As a result of which he is dead, when be might have been the ultimate master of your world. Vavaaara, however, is a different being entirely, and moreover she has your Liz-which makes this a very different situation.

  “You’ve been thinking it out.” Jake was becoming desperate now. He sensed something coming to fruition in Korath’s incorporeal mind, felt the ex-vampire lieutenant’s sudden presence as a real entity and not just as an undead cypher. “All very well and good, but this isn’t the time for thinking. We’ve got to go to Liz, and right now.”

  Ah! So now it’s “we,” is it? Korath answered. Moreover it’s the “we” as in you and I, close colleagues in this venture. The “we” as in if and when it suits you, and no longer the “I” that I’ve been obliged to suffer when it doesn’t.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” (Jake didn’t believe it. Some kind of contrary argument or word game, at a time like this? Just what did this dead creature think he was up to—or shouldn’t he ask?)

  Oh, you know very well what I am up to, said the other, his deadspeak voice darker than ever, like the glutinous gurgle of the subterranean sump where by all rights he should have lain trapped forever, and not just his polished bones but his loathsome intelligence, too.

  That last thought was Jake’s—unshielded and irrepressible as the anger he felt rising within himsetf—and Korath read it without even trying. Wherefore:

  You would have me trapped there still, wouldn’t you, Jake? he gurgled. But too late now for that. For when you needed me, I answered your call. You the master, and poor dead Korath the slave, the obedient genie in a bottle … until you let me out. Ah! Finally the truth strikes home. Oh yessss! You’ve bad your last wish, Jake, and now the genie has the upper band!

  “You crazy bastard!” Jake raged. “I need those numbers now. What does it matter who has the upper hand? Liz in is trouble!”

  And how do you plan to save her? the other sneered. You, a mere man, against Vavara? Why, you don’t even know what kind of trouble Liz is in! Also, you have no weapons: your gun is lost, and your bombs used up. And the most important question of all: How will you get there, those many miles away across the sea?

  “I’ll send you back to your sump!” Jake clenched his teeth.

  By all means, said Korath. And let Liz die—or worse!

  “You bastard!” Jake panted, but much more quietly. “Why did you wait until now? You could have done this before.”

  But not so surely, Korath chuckled. And never so enjoyably. And as his chuckling slithered off into the deadspeak darkness: Make up your mind, Jake. His voice hardened. What’s it to be?

  “Damn you to hell!” Jake growled. “I’ll conjure the Möbius equations myself.”

  He tried. The numbers came; they swirled, began to form a maddeningly familiar pattern, commenced their mutating, dizzying scrolling down the screen of his mind. But just when Jake thought he had it … the formula abruptly fell apart, collapsing to a pile of shattered symbols and crumbling cyphers.

  Not so easy, is it, Jake? said Korath.

  “You’ve bluffed me before!” Jake cried.

  Indeed I have, but not this time. Korath was very sure of himself. Before, it was your life that was in jeopardy. And in order to save myself I must save you. Since when I’ve seen bow much you love this Liz; why, she’s in your every thought, your dreams, your very heart! So now the boot is on the other foot: in order to save her, you must give me what I want-innermost access to your mind, so fused with you that you may never more return me to my sump!

  Jake found it unthinkable. “You, part of me, forever?”

  Korath sensed the refusal on the tip of his host’s tongue, and knew that Jake was just stubborn enough to issue it. Before that could happen, however: Not forever, the vampire said. I am not without honour, and I shall hold to our original compact. I said that I did not want you to have the power to reject me and send me back to my sump. I did not say that I wouldn’t go of my own free will.

  “But you also said that we’d be fused.” Despite that Jake was shaking with anxiety for Liz, still he was hesitant.

  A mere mode of expression, Korath brushed it aside. Fused only in the sense that we would act as one against our mutual enemies, in perfect and seamless collaboration. But come now, Jake. Time is wasting. Hurry, before it’s all used up!

  “And when this is over, you promise you’ll get out?”

  My word on it, yes. When Lord Malinari, Vavara, and Szwart are no more—when I am avenged—then I’ll return of my own free will to that watery sump and you can lock me out forever.

  There was no way round it; even knowing the danger Jake had to accept it, for something told him that Liz was in worse danger still. And so he gritted his teeth, nodded his consent, and groaned, “How do we go about it?”

  Simply invite me in, Korath breathed in his mind, like the gasses rising from a swamp. Simply let down your shields, open your mind, and of your own free will accept meeee!

  Jake could no longer resist. Without further pause, lowering his shields, he opened his mind to its very core, inviting the dead yet undead Thing that was Korath-once-Mindsthrall in. And finally, as he felt that swift cold flow, that nightmarish oozing in the innermost conduits of his being:

  Ahhhhh! said Korath …

  In the trunk of the big limo, Liz had somehow managed to brace herself against the worst of the buffeting that she’d suffered. But when the limo had struck the outcrop at the edge of the sea cliffs and spun sideways, then her skull had made sudden, sharp contact with something hard and metallic, and for a few minutes she’d lost consciousness.

  On coming to, and feeling the teetering or gentle seesawing motion of the car—not knowing her situation but sensing that there was no longer any forward motion—she had searched about in the darkness and found a heavy car jack strapped in position in one corner of the large trunk. It had taken a little time to loosen the straps, but after that—aware by then that her movements somehow governed the inexplicable motion of the car—she had set to work. And she was still banging on the curved lid of the trunk near the lock when Jake arrived.

  His coordinates hadn’t let him down; it was as if he’d been listening to an echo of Liz’s cry for help as he’d zeroed in on her. And as he emerged from the Continuum at the rim of the sea cliffs, the first thing he heard was the clamour from the trunk of the black limo, while the first thing he saw was how dangerously the vehicle was perched on the edge of oblivion.

  For the space of a single heartbeat he froze. For it was as if he’d been here before, with Natasha. But no, he wasn’t about to let it happen again.

  It took just a moment to release the catch—and there she was: bruised and awry, wild-eyed and shivering, but Liz for all that. “His Liz,” as Korath had had it. She held the car jack to her chest, clutched in her white-knuckled hands, and for a second Jake thought she would try to throw it at him. But then she let it fall as her eyes went wider still.

  “Jake?” she gasped. “Jake?”

  “Yes, it’s me,” he said, not knowing what else to say.

  “Jake?” she repeated herself, louder now as she reached up her arms to him.

  “That’s right,” he stepped closer, reaching for her. “But Liz, for God’s sake stop moving about!”

  If he could have seen himself as she saw him, silh
ouetted in starlight against the dusk of the Aegean night, he wouldn’t have been in the least surprised at her expression. He was hot, grimy, dishevelled. He stank of thermite and man-made thunder. And blazing in his charcoal-streaked face, his eyes were just as wild as her own.

  She tried to stand up, fell into his arms, and as the car tilted he took her weight and lifted her out of the trunk. The rim of the trunk scraped her knees as the limo groaned a final protest, lifted its rear end and went sliding out of view. But they heard its grinding metallic death cries as it crashed its way down the face of the cliff, and the splash when it hit the sea before sinking at once to a salty termination.

  “Jake,” she sighed again, as he held her.

  “Are you okay?” He held her tightly, looked all about, saw their predicament: the precipitous slope above and the edge of the cliffs in front.

  “Yes. No. I don’t know!” she answered. “I don’t think anything’s broken, but I’m aching in every joint, dog-tired, and bruised to bits.” And with a small hysterical laugh, “In fact, you could say I’m totally knackered! How about you? I mean, I barely recognized you.”

  “I’m good,” he nodded. “At least I think so—physically, anyway.” He cranked his neck at a steep angle, and asked, “But is that a road up there? I have to get us out of here.” And to Korath:

  I need the Möbius equations.

  And answering him with a small, dark, deadspeak chuckle, Be my guest, said the other.

  Eh? Jake didn’t understand. More word games? Something else you want from me?

  No, Korath answered, for I now have everything—as do you. So by all means go ahead. Try to conjure the formula, Jake, and see what happens.

  Jake did it; set the numbers rolling in perfect order down the screen of his mind. They reached the point of collapse … and didn’t collapse! He stopped them, watched them form a door, walked Liz through it and took her up to the road.

  And as they emerged on high: “You lousy bastard thing!” he snarled out loud.

  “What’s that?” said Liz, dizzier than ever and unsteady on her feet. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” said Jake. Everything! This bloody creature has cheated me all the way down the line. I had the Möbius formula all along, but every time I tried to use it he fucked with my equations! I thought it was me—thought I wasn’t up to it—but it was him!

  His thoughts weren’t shielded, and this close she couldn’t mistake his meaning. Moreover, she knew he would explain everything to her now, because he would have no choice. Before that, however, there were more important matters.

  On the eastern horizon, that glow lighting the sky: it had to be the monastery. Liz’s head cleared; she reoriented, remembered what she and the others had been about here. And:

  “Palatakil” she said, looking west, where twin cupolas rose menacingly over the trees on a night-dark promontory. “E-Branch is at the Little Palace, and we have to join them there.”

  Now it was Jake’s turn to frown and ask, “Come again?”

  “Trask and the others,” she answered. “They’re at Palataki, that place on the promontory there. We did it, Jake—tracked down Malinari and Vavara. And that bonfire in the east: that’s Vavara’s place burning.”

  “And Palataki?”

  “We think that’s where she kept her deadspawn garden,” Liz told him, “and God-only-knows what else. We’ve got to go there, help them get done with it, finish whatever they’re doing.”

  “I don’t think I’m up to this,” he shook his head. “I mean, I don’t know what’s going on here!”

  “Then try this,” she said. “Link with me, Jake, but make it good, like never before.”

  She pressed herself to him—looked straight into his eyes—showed him a kaleidoscopic history of events. And Jake reeled as he took it all in.

  “We … we seem to be getting better at this,” he gasped.

  And Liz nodded. “Both of us, when we’re working as a team. We must be getting better else you wouldn’t have heard me. You wouldn’t be here, and neither would I. If I had managed to get that trunk open and tried to climb out … I could easily have gone down with the limo.”

  “This rapport thing,” he said, but Liz made no answer. She was clinging to him still, and gazing into his eyes.

  Jake was aware of Liz as never before, this most desirable woman. Her mouth was very close; God, how he wanted to kiss it, and be much more than just the other half of a team!

  Then do it, said Korath. Kiss her and be done with it. And I promise I won’t look, or feel, or let myself get too … er, excited? Oh, ha-ha-ha-haaaa!

  “Lousy bastard thing!” Jake snarled yet again, drawing back from Liz and putting her at arm’s length.

  But her expression didn’t change as she said quite simply, “It’s okay, Jake. I know now. And I think I understand what was wrong with our relationship … before.” And with a curt nod of her pretty head, “But now we have to go.”

  Perfect timing, for even as she spoke there came the rumble of a powerful explosion from the direction of Palataki …

  Five minutes earlier:

  David Chung had taken the landward descent into the Little Palace’s underground labyrinth, and Ian Goodly had entered via the stairwell under the ocean- or south-facing cupola. Both men were equipped with pocket torches, and the dangerous conditions of their work—the fact that Palataki was rapidly falling into decay—had been immediately apparent. The place was literally a death-trap where rotten floorboards threatened to give way at every turn, and wormy and crumbling staircases teetered beneath their feet. In addition to which they knew that a Great Vampire—indeed Lord Nephran Malinari of the Wamphyri—was down here somewhere, and that even with their dynamite, their weapons, and silvered ammunition, still they were taking the direst of dire risks.

  But there was no way round it; they must block these exits off and destroy Malinari’s escape routes, and once they had him sealed in down below, then they would be able to relax a little. Meanwhile, it was a very nervy time.

  The precog had determined to descend to as great a depth as he dared, light a stick of dynamite with a long fuse and let it fall into the stairwell—hopefully all the way to the bottom—then get out of there with all speed. Surfacing, he would light a second, shorter fuse, and once again let gravity complete the task while he put distance between. Of course, he had the dubious benefit of being prescient; he had not “foreseen” any harm coming his way as a result of this action. But as Goodly above all other men was aware, the future is a devious thing, and he had never been given to see everything. Indeed just recently he had considered himself fortunate to see anything! It was almost as if his talent had given up on him—which might in itself be a warning, and was in any case a very ominous circumstance …

  Pausing every half-dozen treads or so to listen for sounds of movement from below, and hearing nothing, Goodly had descended to Palataki’s basement down groaning wooden staircases. In that cobwebbed sublevel he’d found stone stairs hewn from the crumbling bedrock, whose spiral he’d pursued into the darkness. The good, strong white beam from his torch had shown him fresh footprints in dust lying inches thick on the steps, proof that this route had been frequently patrolled; which in turn served to remind him of Chung’s earlier warning that maybe Vavara had left a caretaker down here to manage her loathsome garden.

  At a depth that the precog calculated to be some fifty feet below Palataki’s basement, he thought he heard or sensed a slight movement—the merest waft of air, as if something had stirred in the gloom just beyond his torch’s range—and came to a halt on a level floor in a low-ceilinged man-made chamber. The place was shored up with mouldy timbers, and as he turned in a circle Goodly saw that he was at a junction of four tunnels uniformly cut through the rock, each of them descending at some thirty degrees into the sentient-seeming darkness.

  Since these tunnels must surely reach down to the old mine workings, it was more than likely they had been hewn as esc
ape routes for German miners and geologists searching for valuable mineral deposits in the shallow labyrinth which presumably lay fifty or more feet below; that last according to the locator’s calculations. In the event of tremors or cave-ins, the trapped workers would have have been able to flee from most quarters of the mine to this chamber, and from here on up into Palataki. A similar system would have been in use at David Chung’s end of the building. In which case Nephran Malinari was simply using bolt-holes that had been in use all of seventy-odd years ago—

  —Which in turn meant that were probably other entrances or exits …

  Other escape routes? For Malinari?

  But no time to dwell on these things, for suddenly the precog found himself shivering and very much afraid.

  At his feet a second stone stairwell yawned; it wound down into the nitre-streaked rock, and had a vertical central shaft that was ideal to Goodly’s purpose. Wherefore, this far and no further. Clipping his torch to the right-hand epaulette of his safari jacket and taking a cheap cigarette lighter and a stick of dynamite from a deep side pocket, his hand was beginning to shake as he thumbed the wheel to strike a spark—

  —And it shook even harder when nothing happened. It must be a misfire and nothing more. He was about to try again, when for a second time he felt that waft of disturbed air. Scarcely daring to breathe, clammy with dread, he turned his body, aimed the beam of his torch down each of the four tunnels in turn … and in the last one saw a writhing, knee-deep wall of mist expanding in his direction!

  Above, in the grounds of Palataki, this mist had seemed in keeping. But down here it was something else again. And so was the dark shadow that reared up and swept toward him out of the heart of it!

  Malinari! he thought, freezing. It’s Malinari!

  Yessss! a voice hissed in his head. Lord Nepbran Malinari, Mr. Goodly, so-called precog. Ah, but you did not foresee this, did you? Oh, ha-ha-haaaa!

  The wall of mist collapsed like a wave, flattening itself to a ground mist that drifted forward to lap at Goodly’s feet. Seeming to cling to him, it strengthened Malinari’s mentalist contact; and stepping toward the precog—seeming to flow no less than the mist he issued—the Great Vampire drew closer, his arms and hands lengtbening where they reached for his paralyzed victim.