Defilers

by Brian Lumley

  He looked, saw what she meant. One by one, the black-capped domes of the mushrooms were flattening out, their gills opening, and the first red-coloured spores beginning to drift free. “Dim the lamp,” Jake told Millie then. “Put it out, then wait for me back at the dais.” And to Wally: What do I have to do?

  I ’ave a nose for such things, Wally answered. ’Ad to ’ave a nose for ’em, else I couldn’t have been a flusher. Yer put a foot wrong darn ’ere, yer a goner! So when Szwart first showed me this place, I sensed the gas and told ’im where it was.

  Where? said Jake.

  Be’ind the wall o’ the cave there, said Wally. I s’pose ’e thought it would stunt the growth o’ ’is mushrooms, so ’e used rocks an’ mud an’ … an’ other stuff to block it up ’cause it kept leakin’ in ’ere, see? There’s a whole chain o’ caves darn ’ere—a bleedin’ labyrinth—an’ the one next door is full o’ gas.

  Other stuff? said Jake.

  Eh?

  You said he used other stuff, to block the hole?

  Mud an’ crap an’ … oh, all sorts o’ stuff (Wally seemed reticent.) But you can pull ’is wall darn again, Jake. Pull it darn an’ let the methane flow through into ’ere. Excep’ by now there’ll be a ’uge body o’ gas—a whole bloody cave full! An’ when it mixes with the air in ’ere—an’ arter you applies a flame to it …

  Boom! said Jake.

  Yers, said Wally. But a damn sight louder than that!

  Putting out his flamethrower’s pilot light, Jake let Wally direct him to the wall in question. And sure enough there was a walled-up area beneath what had been a natural archway like the mouth of a cave. It is a cave, Wally insisted, but all blocked up now, as yer can see.

  Jake’s torch picked out the rocks where they’d been piled, and the black mud mortar that Szwart had used to seal the gaps between them. He was pretty sure he could pull the whole thing down again, and letting the nozzle of his flamethrower dangle, he set about to do just that.

  He started at the top of the arch, got his fingers into the mud and gave a yank on something soft in there—

  Then went flailing backwards, tripping and almost falling, as a human hand and arm lolled into view! The limb was followed by the rest of the body, which came slipping and sliding, stiff as a mummy where it slithered sideways and came to a halt half-in, half-out of the wall.

  For a moment startled, finally Jake’s Adam’s apple stopped bobbing, and he gathered spit to gulp, “G-God almighty!” Then :

  You can say that again! a new yet oddly familiar voice sobbed in the deadspeak aether. Bad enough being dead, in a place like this, without having you come to gloat over me!

  Gloat? What in hell (who in hell, for that’s where he was, most certainly) was this person? And what was he talking about?

  Jake’s thoughts, his questions, were deadspeak, of course, and they were answered at once: Oh, we’ve met before, said Alfonso Lefranc. Like maybe, at Luigi Castellano’s place, in Marseilles?

  Jake stepped in close again and wiped dried black mud from a face he would recognize anywhere: the shifty-eyed, weaselly, pockmarked death-mask of the last of Castellano’s men. And now he knew for certain that his vendetta was at an end, for there was no one left to track down.

  But still he wanted to know, What happened to you?

  As in life, so in death, and Lefranc spilled his guts for the very last time. I saw you out in Australia, he said. Luigi told me to follow you and those E-Branch people, back to London, find out what I could about all of you. I couldn’t know it, but while I was watching E-Branch, someone was watching me! Shit! I should have figured there couldn’t be that many fucking nuns in London! They seemed to be all over the place! So, I don’t know, maybe they thought I was some kind of minder for E-Branch. Anyway, they took me and when I woke up I was down here—wherever “here” is! I was questioned by … Jesus, by something I can’t even describe, and when he, it, whatever, was done with me—

  “He bricked you up in his wall,” said Jake out loud.

  Yes, after he’d pushed his hand into my chest and squeezed my heart until it stopped! So that’s it, no nice carved marble tombstone for me. But what the fuck? What good is a stone with a legend that says “Here Lies Alfonso Lefranc—a Truly Great Nark?” Anyway, Luigi Castellano would have taken me out in the end, I’m sure.

  “Alfonso,” said Jake, very quietly now, “consider yourself lucky that I didn’t get to you first.”

  And knowing what Jake had done to the others, Lefranc felt obliged to admit, Oh, I do, Jake Cutter. I do!

  And as a matter of fact, so did Jake …

  “Jake!” came Millie’s warning cry from the arched entrance to the abandoned Roman temple. “Jake, he’s here!”

  He turned to look where she was pointing, into the unknown darkness at the far, unexplored end of the cavern, well beyond the reach of his torch. A stream of red spores was beginning to waft in that direction, carried on a draft of foul air from the abyss. Also from the abyss (but a different abyss, called Starside), a black shapeless something was flowing like a sentient, mobile carpet across the floor of the cavern towards him!

  With no time left to spare, Jake gasped, “Sorry about this, Alfonso,” and yanked the corpse bodily from the wall. And tearing frantically at the crumbling black mortar and ill-balanced rocks, he quickly brought the whole thing tumbling down.

  Instantly a wave of stinking gas enveloped him, shimmering in the light of his torch. And as Jake turned away, choking and gasping, Lord Szwart was there, rising up in the rough shape—the very rough shape—of a man. A huge, black blob of a man. But a man with far more eyes than nature had ever intended, and all of them as red as the fires of hell!

  Szwart was a scene out of madness and nightmare, a sight to freeze the blood of most men—to immobilize them and root them to the floor—but Jake wasn’t most men. Having conquered his own nightmares, he wasn’t about to succumb to this one.

  Korath was in Jake’s mind—gibbering as he proffered the Mobius equations—but Jake used his own numbers, his own door, and even as Szwart flattened to a blanket and flowed forward to envelop him, he was no longer there!

  Under the archway to the old Roman temple, Jake put Millie behind him, took a grenade from his belt and called out, “Lord Szwart, do you know what this is?”

  Szwart was already on the move, rushing at breakneck speed over the floor of the cavern, and even cutting a swathe through his deadspawn garden in his crazed, murderous eagerness. But as Jake armed the grenade and its deadly ch-ching! sounded, so the monster came to an abrupt halt. For on Starside he’d known just such a man—one who appeared and disappeared like smoke—and he had seen just such weapons as the one that now came bouncing and clattering across the cavern’s dusty floor towards him!

  “Count five, Szwart,” Jake called out then. “And wave whatever you have that functions as an asshole goodbye!”

  Szwart reshaped himself, seethed into a stain on the floor, became a shadow that fled at unbelievable speed in the opposite direction. And conjuring a door, Jake started the countdown himself. But on the count of four he and Millie had already departed that place.

  As the door closed behind them, they were given a hot heavy push into the now friendly primal darkness of the Mobius Continuum. And the seismographs at Greenwich registered a mild tremor with its epicenter deep under London, as the entire cavern system and its forgotten Roman temple ceased to exist …

  EPILOGUE

  Three mornings later, in Trask’s office at E-Branch HQ, Goodly and Chung finished off briefing their boss on the current state of affairs. As for why Trask needed bringing up to date: according to John Grieve, the Officer on Duty, the Head of Branch had been AWOL for the past twenty-four hours. And by some odd coincidence, so had Millicent Cleary. This tidbit of information was of course all very tongue-in-cheek; for discretionary reasons—however unnecessary—Grieve had reserved it for senior agents only. But in fact there wasn’t a single E-Branch member, ma
n or woman, who would have begrudged the pair their time together.

  Now Trask was back, however, and the updating session was coming to a close.

  “That’s about it,” Goodly finished off. “Our ex-Australian team is on Krassos now with Papastamos, doing a cleanup job on the monastery and Palataki. Especially Palataki.”

  Trask nodded. “And the Greek authorities? You say they’re buying Manolis’s story?”

  “Hook, line, and sinker!” Chung came in. “In fact Manolis is a hero—er, not to mention a very convincing liar! He laid the foundations of the thing, and after we’d got Jake’s side of it we were able to build on it. You have to admit, it’s a wonderful story! Manolis is highly respected, and Krassos is remote enough that no one in mainland Greece is much interested anyway—and Interpol is absolutely knocked out that Luigi Castellano and his organization have been taken out of the picture by Jake Cutter. As they’re now aware, Jake was, er, working as an agent of E-Branch throughout. Lord, but that must have been some kind of mayhem! And it all fits in beautifully.”

  And Goodly came back in with, “The story in brief: Castellano was trying to expand his empire in the Med. After playing the philanthropist and infiltrating the monastery, he was able to purchase Palataki as a way station for his drug-trafficking activities. But the nuns got wind of what was going on, and to complicate matters a joint British and Greek drugs operation—a crackdown on drugs entering Europe from the Med—was putting pressure on Castellano on his regular turf. Seeing their opportunity, rival gangs began picking off his properties and people in Marseilles, Genoa, San Remo, and finally Sicily. So just when the Greeks—namely Manolis and Company—were about to close down his operation in Krassos, Castellano decided to cut his losses, cover his tracks, and get out.”

  Chung took over. “While Castellano had his own problems in Sicily, his people in Krassos stole a load of avgas, bombed the monastery, then dynamited Palataki, destroying every last trace of his hand in things. But Manolis is still out there with our ex-Aussie squad, trying to ‘dig up’ further evidence—in fact putting a load of thermite down into Palataki, making sure that nothing survived down there …”

  And again Trask nodded. “So Jake’s role in all of this—?”

  “—Was as an undercover agent provocateur, obviously,” said Chung. “Which is enough to clear him with all the European agencies. He’s a free man.”

  “And I no longer have a hold on him,” said Trask, frowning.

  “But you didn’t anyway,” said Goodly. “You promised, remember?”

  “Right,” said Trask, albeit noncommittally. And before they could say anything : “Which leaves just one question unanswered, and it’s the big one. While we’re all here patting ourselves on the back, just how effective were we out there in the Med? Oh, I know we did damage, both home and abroad, but did we get what we were after? I doubt it.”

  “Malinari, Vavara, and Szwart?” said Chung. “Jake Cutter is fifty-fifty on Szwart. But if he had a flue or a chimney to the surface …” He shrugged.

  “And I can’t believe we got Vavara,” said Trask. “I saw her fall into the sea, true—but she’s Wamphyri! And the Wamphyri are tenacious. They’re survivors. As for Malinari …”

  “Well, I escaped from that place,” said the precog. “And if I could do it—”

  “—So could he,” said Trask. “Which means we’re not by any means finished yet.”

  A knock sounded at the door, and Trask said, “Come in.”

  Liz and Jake entered, and despite Liz’s bruises, she looked a lot better than the last time Trask had seen her. Then again, so did Trask look better. As for Jake:

  Trask looked at him … and wondered, couldn’t help wondering yet again what it was about him. Sometimes—if you looked at him quickly, a quick glance—you’d swear it was Harry Keogh standing there. Yet Jake and Harry, they were chalk and cheese, they couldn’t be more different. Maybe it was the sudden shocks of grey at Jake’s temples, and grey turning white, at that! But it might also be his eyes. Those eyes that looked on things outside common knowledge, those windows on a mind that knew magic!

  Trask caught himself staring and sat up straighter. “Hello, you two,” he growled. “What, are you a delegation or something? Or simply a team? And whichever, what can I do for you?”

  Jake looked back at him, also at Goodly and Chung, and said “The Big Three. Well, I suppose you might as well all hear it.”

  “And we’re all ears,” said Trask ingenuously. “But tell me, what’s Liz here for? I thought we were going to talk about your problem.”

  “No,” said Liz looking directly at Trask, “it’s our problem—E-Branch’s problem, all of us—because Jake’s one of us now and we look after our own. And the last time a similar question came up, you said—you said—”

  “You said that if you’d got the wrong answer,” Jake finished it for her, “then you would have shot me.” And with a shrug: “So she insisted on coming in here with me.”

  Trask’s frown was genuine now as he sat up even straighter.

  “I think I remember the question,” he said. “Wasn’t it, ‘What’s on your mind, Jake Cutter?’”

  “Exactly,” said Jake, nodding. “And when you’d asked it, we discovered it was the Necroscope, Harry Keogh, who was on—or in—my mind. He was there because he’d left a job undone, and I was perfectly placed to finish it for him. But since then … well, now there’s something else on my mind, and I don’t really think you’re going to like it so much this time around.”

  Trask glanced at Goodly and Chung, and said, “Gentlemen, I think this is between me and Jake—and Liz.”

  But as his oldest friends headed for the door, Trask’s intercom beeped, and John Grieve’s voice said, “Sir, the Minister Responsible has a message on the screen. For your eyes only.”

  “I’ll get to it in a minute,” Trask told him.

  “Get to it now—sir,” said the duty officer.

  Trask pressed a button and a monitor screen rotated up into view on his desk. He read the message, read it again, and suddenly his face was grey as slate.

  The door was starting to close behind Chung and Goodly when the latter staggered, quickly recovered, grabbed the locator’s arm and wheeled him back into Trask’s office again.

  “What?” said Chung, looking mystified. But then he saw that well-known look on the precog’s face—and another on Trask’s—and said no more.

  “People,” said the Head of Branch, standing up and reaching for his jacket, his eyes beginning to burn again in that leaden mask of a face, that oh-sovengeful mask. “Hold everything …!”

  TOR BOOKS BY BRIAN LUMLEY

  The Necroscope Series

  Necroscope

  Necroscope II: Vamphyril

  Necroscope III: The Source

  Necroscope IV: Deadspeak

  Necroscope V: Deadspawn

  Blood Brothers

  The Last Aerie

  Bloodwars

  Necroscope: The Lost Years

  Necroscope: Resurgence

  Necroscope: Invaders

  The Titus Crow Series

  Titus Crow Volume One: The Burrowers Beneath & Transition

  Titus Crow Volume Two: The Clock of Dreams & Spawn of the Winds

  Titus Crow Volume Three: In the Moons of Borea & Elysia

  The Psychomech Trilogy

  Psychomech

  Psychosphere

  Psychamok

  Other Novels

  Demogorgon

  The House of Doors

  Maze of Worlds

  Short Story Collection

  Fruiting Bodies and Other Fungi

  NEXT:

  NECROSCOPE: AVENGERS

  Take a luxury cruise into carnage. Follow a trail of terror to the Carpathians. Revisit Starside. Take part in the battle for Perchorsk. Get a precog’s-eye-view of tomorrow’s Vampire Earth!

  And more …

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and
events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS

  Copyright © 2000 by Brian Lumley

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  eISBN 9781429913270

  First eBook Edition : June 2011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lumley, Brian.

  Necroscope. Defilers / Brian Lumley.—1st ed. p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

  ISBN 0-312-87261-5 (acid-free paper)

  1. Vampires—Fiction. 2. English—Fiction, I. Title: Defilers. II. Title.

  PR6062.U45 N43 2000

  823’.914—dc21

  00-023325

  First Edition: May 2000