by Brian Lumley
But paralyzed, frozen? At close quarters like this, it had to be Malinari’s telepathic influence that kept Goodly immobilized, anchored. And if that were so, then the precog knew what to do about it.
Malinari was battening on Goodly’s knowledge, his thoughts—thoughts of the past, and certainly of his fearful present—battening on them in preparation to siphoning them off. But the precog was a man with a special skill, who on occasion saw more than the present and remembered more than the past. Sometimes, in order to boost his talent, he emptied his mind of all knowledge—which he did now—leaving nothing for the vampire to leech from him. Or rather, nothing but blood!
But while the blood remained, the telepathic “ice” at once melted away out of Goodly’s veins and mind, and he was his own man again. As for Malinari:
Snarling his frustration, scarlet-eyed and gape-jawed, the Great Vampire was almost upon his intended victim. And forcing a twisted smile he hissed, “Well then, Mr. Goodly, if you won’t let me do this the easy way, there’s always the hard way!” And his fingers elongated into writhing, blue-veined worms as they extended themselves towards Goodly’s face.
While the precog had a gun in his inside pocket, he knew he wasn’t the best shot in the world and was fairly certain that a flesh wound just wouldn’t suffice. So since this time it had to be final, he dropped his stick of dynamite and snatched another with a shorter fuse from his pocket. And striking fire from his cigarette lighter—which finally worked—and applying it to the fuse, he deliberately featured his actions in his thoughts, showing and even telling Malinari exactly what he was doing.
“Clever, ah clever!” said the monster, falling back a pace, then another, and shrinking a little as Goodly stole backwards up the stone staircase, holding the dynamite with its sputtering fuse out towards him. “But tell me—isn’t it obvious that you’ll destroy yourself as well?”
“Perhaps, perhaps not,” the precog croaked from his tinder-dry throat. “But if the blast brings this entire place down on you, then I’ll be satisfied either way.”
Malinari’s furious burning gaze went this way and that; all about him he saw shrivelled timbers and rotten rock, everything in a state of decay. It wasn’t going to take much of a blast to bring about a complete collapse. And so:
“In the unlikely event that you survive your own incredibly daring but stupid act, Mr. Goodly,” he snarled, turning from the precog and flowing back into his mist, “remember this—”
—That I shall certainly remember you!
“But only if you survive it, too,” said Goodly. And climbing faster, scrambling for his life, he let the dynamite fall.
Then upwards, ever upwards he fled, climbing like a madman; and mirrored in his flinching mind’s eye, the spitting and sputtering of the short fuse as he counted the even shorter-seeming seconds to the most doubtful future that he’d ever imagined …
At the other end of the Little Palace, the locator, David Chung hadn’t descended nearly so deep into the earth; for his way had been more difficult and dangerous yet, where the timbers of the upper staircases were eaten away and every other tread prone to instant collapse the moment he planted a foot on it. Yet slowly but surely he had managed to make his way down to the basement, and despite that he was hampered by his talent—the fact that the atmosphere was so permeated by mindsmog that he felt he was suffocating—still he had searched about until he’d discovered the dark mouth of a stone stairwell so choked with fallen rocks and cobwebbed debris that he hadn’t dared to proceed farther.
At which point he’d heard the sobbing …
Palataki’s basements were extensive, and at first the locator hadn’t been able to determine the source of the sound—an odd circumstance in itself, for he was a locator! Obviously the mindsmog was so thick here that it was deflecting his probes in the same way that powerful magnetic currents deflect compasses. Indeed, it was warping them all to hell! But he didn’t need his talent to tell him that someone (some female? Liz Merrick, perhaps?) was distraught down here. And as the sobbing grew louder his principal purpose in this place was temporarily forgotten.
After all, Liz had been taken by Vavara, and by Chung’s own reckoning Palataki’s underground was Vavara’s domain, where she nurtured her loathsome garden. That being the case … mightn’t Liz be imprisoned down here?
For several breathless minutes Chung had remained absolutely motionless listening to the sobbing—as pitiful and heartrending a series of sounds as any he had ever heard—unti) he couldn’t stand it any longer. By then, too, he’d discovered its origin: the choked stairwell. But moving closer to the mouth of the shaft and aiming the beam of his torch down into the tight, seemingly impassable space below, so he’d inadvertently stepped on a piece of rotten timber, causing it to snap underfoot—
—At which the sobbing had ceased on the instant, and he’d known that someone was holding her breath!
“Who is it?” he had whispered into the darkness down there. “Is it you, Liz? Is that you, crying?”
No answer, but Chung believed he’d heard a gasp.
“Liz, it’s me, David,” he raised his voice a little. “Can’t you move? Has Vavara got you trapped down there? Give me a signal if you can. Some kind of movement, maybe?”
And at last a voice answered his, but it wasn’t Liz’s. “Go away!” (Almost a little girl’s voice, on the edge of hysteria.) “I know who you are, and what you’ll do to me if I should come out. You’re Vavara’s man, or that false Father Maralini.”
Chung saw movement deep down in the hole, a white feminine face, and a hand that covered her eyes from the bright beam of his torch.
“I’m neither one,” he said then. “I’m here to destroy Vavara and … and that false father. But who are you?”
“I’m Sister Anna,” she answered, and he heard the sound of rubble shifting, hands clawing. “I am—I was—a nun at the monastery. But then Vavara came, and later that wicked father. Since when I’ve been hiding out where they can’t find me. This place is Vavara’s, yes, but she doesn’t come this way.”
“But … how long have you been here?” Narrowing his eyes, Chung took out his gun and cocked it.
“Too long. But now I can’t live like this any longer—in dark holes in the earth, only coming out when it’s daylight—so even if you’re not who you say you are, I give in.” And the sobbing and scrabbling came louder yet.
Hands that once were white came up over the rim; now grimy, with broken nails, they were streaked red where sharp rocks had cut them. Chung turned his torch a little to one side as an oh-so-pretty face, similarly streaked, came into view.
“I … I’m stuck,” she husked between sobs. “Please help me up out of here.”
“Show me your face,” he said then, as the mindsmog suddenly thickened.
“But the light from your torch … it’s blinding,” she answered, emerging a little farther, dragging herself up until she sat on the rim of the steps.
“Your face,” Chung insisted. “I need to see your eyes.”
At which there sounded muffled footsteps from behind, and a rending of rotten wood as a stair tread collapsed. And starting massively, the locator glanced back over his shoulder.
That was all the diversion that Sister Anna needed. Batting Chung’s gun and torch aside, she came to her feet … her feral eyes like lamps in the dark. And, “This is from my master!” she hissed, lifting a long curved knife on high.
But her triangular eyes made for a perfect target, too, and Manolis Papastamos’s torch beam found them just a single moment after his bullet, which made a very small hole between them and a fist-size hole where it blew out the back of her skull.
“Jesus! Jesus!” Chung gasped, rearing up and away from her, as Anna’s mouth yawned open and her feet left the floor and she flew backwards into the stairwell. Flopping from view, she went thundering into darkness, taking half a ton of rocks and rubble with her.
“Are you all right, my friend.” Manolis gra
bbed Chung’s arm to steady him. “I couldn’t see too well, but well enough, thank God! But tell me, did that vrykoulakas bitch touch you? Did she perhaps … claw you?”
“Yes, no—I mean I’m okay,” the locator babbled. “And no, she didn’t touch me. But she would have. Oh, Jesus—she would have!”
“Very well,” said Manolis. “And now for thee dynamite. Give it to me, for I see that you are shaken. Three sticks, I think, right down that hole. And whatever else is down there with thee dead bitch, we send it to hell, too, yes?”
And the locator was only too glad to agree and comply …
Up above: while Manolis had gone after Chung, Ben Trask had run to the southern end of the Little Palace, entered the ruins, and commenced a descent along the same route taken by Goodly. Stavros, Andreas, and Lardis Lidesci had remained on the surface to keep watch for anyone trying to escape from the doomed building.
But as Trask had reached the basement, so he’d heard Goodly coming up from below. Now, as the precog appeared in the stairwell, panting and gasping for air, Trask armed his Browning and prepared for the worst. No one or fearful Thing pursued Goodly, however—unless it was his own terror—and he finally managed to draw air and yell, “Get out, Ben! For Christ’s sake get out! Any second now, this place is going sky high!”
The precog couldn’t know it, but by all rights he should have been dead. He would be dead, if the short fuse on that stick of dynamite hadn’t been damp and decayed; and he would most definitely have been dead, if Lord Malinari had so much as suspected it! But even now, deep down below, that faulty fuse was fitfully sputtering, gradually eating its way to the sweating explosive charge.
And in a nightmarish ascent up swaying staircases—where handrails gave way at a touch, rotten steps splintered or fell into dust beneath their feet, and all thoughts of caution were abandoned as disaster loomed ever closer—the two men fought against time and gravity to make it back to the surface.
But as pale blue starlight gleamed above where it entered through Palataki’s empty windows and doorways, and the espers emerged onto the ground floor—Trask first, pausing to reach down, grab the precog, and drag him up the last of the steps—so the first stick of dynamite went off, which at once set off the second. The floor shook as the double blast front raced up through the stairwells and basement to the ground floor, while down below there commenced a rapid chain-reactive disintegration as everything collapsed in upon itself.
A moment more and dust and debris came jetting up through every crack and crevice, billowing into the ground floor rooms and spilling out into the night. And as Palataki shook, vibrating on its weakened foundations, window and door frames popped and groaned, and loosened tiles came sliding from the roof.
But staggering out of the wreathing dust clouds, Trask and Goodly coughed and choked their way into the open, backed away from the stricken Little Palace to a place of safety, and only then paused to witness the rest of the drama.
First: Manolis Papastamos and David Chung at the other end of the building, ducking out through a teetering door frame as more blasts thundered up from the bowels of the earth. Second: Andreas and Stavros, hurling sticks of dynamite in through the windows at Palataki’s midsection, then running off to shelter under the pines. And the trees themselves shaking as the earth underfoot commenced a jittery dancing.
And finally the explosions: one, two, three, four—but no longer muffled by earth and rock—and the ground-floor walls blown outwards, and the flames blossoming in Palataki’s heart, into which the old building subsided in a seeming slow-motion, while the trees shook more yet and deep cracks appeared in the earth.
Then: “Time we were gone from here,” said Ben Trask, when he and his six colleagues gathered at their vehicles.
“I couldn’t agree more,” Goodly wheezed, still getting his second wind. “We’ve done all that we can for now, and it feels like this place is coming apart at the seams.”
“Yet we still don’t know how successful we were,” Manolis said.
And Trask nodded, answering: “And we’ve still to count the cost. Poor Liz …”
“Oh? And what about me?” said a familiar, sweet but shaken voice from the shadows under the trees. And a moment later Liz stumbled into view. Right on her heels came Jake like a smoke-ghost, all dark and grimy.
“Liz!” Trask said. “Liz!” His knees were trembling so hard that he almost fell. His “little sister” was safe!
It all took a few moments to sink in, but any celebrations would have to bide their time. For the ground was shaking more violently yet as the chain-reaction of imploding mine workings caused subsidence in the upper terrain.
Then, as a handful of house lights flickered into life in Skala Astris along the coast and the group’s vehicles departed Palataki in convoy down the knoll’s quivering ramp, all unseen in the grounds of the shattered ruin, the last thing to go was Vavara’s—or more properly Varvara’s—shrine. Its customary candle had not been lit since the death or devolution of Zarakis at the hands of Malinari, and now the earth yawned open to swallow it in a single gulp.
Thus the holy place that Vavara had made unholy by claiming it for her own was no more.
The shrine was no more, at least.
But as for Vavara herself …
Exerting all the great strength of a Lord of the Wamphyri, and yet grunting from the effort, Malinari single-handedly dragged Vavara’s boat—an elevenfoot caïque, with a typically Greek sun-shade canopy—down from the mouth of its cave and across a narrow, inaccessible strip of shingle beach to the sea. Vavara would have experienced no such difficulty; assisted by her man, Zarakis, launching this thing would have been the easiest of tasks.
But Zarakis was no more; along with his vampire mistress’s deadspawn garden (and for all that Malinari knew or cared, the hag Vavara herself) that long-lived lieutenant out of Starside was by now dead and gone, and for a little while at least Lord Nephran Malinari would be obliged to perform such menial tasks himself.
Straining to get the boat into the water, he thought back on the rush of events since he’d left the precog Ian Goodly to his presumed fate under Palataki …
Fearing to be trapped down there by the imminent explosion, he’d made for the safety of the boat cave. But the greater the distance he’d put between himself and that sputtering stick of dynamite, the more it had dawned on him that something must be wrong—or right! The fuse must have burned itself out, or the dynamite was faulty, or something. But by then it had been too late, and far too dangerous, to turn back. A pity, for despite that his survival was as ever uppermost in his mind, the Great Vampire had determined not only to destroy Vavara’s garden but also to cause E-Branch and its members as much damage as possible. He could only hope that Sister Anna had had more luck.
At the secret sea cave, Malinari had waited until he heard the first of the explosions before getting to work on the boat.
He had reasoned that the confusion overhead, almost 150 yards farther inland at Palataki, would help camouflage his own activity. Believing him to be trapped below them, the E-Branch agents would surely be too busy to probe for him; and with all the noise and disturbance, their talents would in any case be disadvantaged. Also, he would keep a tight rein on his presence, shielding his thoughts and deadening his aura as only Malinari the Mind knew how. The puttering of his outboard engine as he fled across the calm, night-dark sea would not be heard … or if it was they’d think it was one of a handful of small fishing vessels whose lights dotted the darkness between the shore and the horizon. But of course his vessel would show no lights at all.
And now, as more devastating explosions sounded, this time from on high, beyond the rim of the sea cliffs, finally Malinari floated the boat out upon the ocean and clambered on board. Using a short-armed paddle to straighten the craft up with its prow aimed at the open sea, he stepped to the stern and seated himself, took the tiller, and made to start the engine.
Which was when she came!
Her tongue was barbed, too, as she hissed: “Oh, you treacherous dog! What, a dog that bites the hand that feeds it? No, for Lord Nephran Malinari is more treacherous far! A wild dog, then—a great grey wolf—like the grey brothers on the Starside flanks of the Barrier Mountains. But no, for even they have honour while Malinari has none! Hah! I have done all canines a great disservice by linking them with such as you!”
Externally calm but boiling inside, Malinari started the engine, opened the throttle, jerked the boat into motion. And as Vavara sat down with a bump, he told her. “If you continue grinding your teeth like that, you’ll wear them to stumps.”
Shoulders hunched, with her eyes seeming to drip sulphur, Vavara came creeping along the floor towards him. Plainly she intended to attack him! “Madame,” he told her, “I’ve acted only in your service—and in my own, of course. Didn’t I wait for you until the last possible moment, even until they commenced blowing Palataki apart?”
“Liar!” Vavara answered, continuing to creep toward him.
Malinari saw how ravaged she was. “What happened to you?”
He seemed so genuinely concerned that Vavara blinked her surprise, holding back for a moment and explaining: “My vehicle was forced from the cliffs; I flew out, into the sea; I swam, climbed, crawled, swam and climbed again. My clothes are ripped to shreds, my flesh, too, and my not inconsiderable patience entirely used up. And it’s all down to you, Malinari the Warped and Treacherous Mind! Now the reckoning. I hope you are prepared.” Licking her leathery lips, great jaws chomping, again she came on.
