The Last Aerie

by Brian Lumley

  She began to turn away, until Nestor stepped forward and on impulse caught her hand. Then, immediately, she turned to him … and deliberately fell into his arms! Her eyes beneath the scarp on her forehead were ablaze, firing the figured bone with red. She half-shuttered them, but not so much as to subdue their scarlet allure. The ropes of her robe parted to display first the tips, then the quivering globes of her proud breasts, and her breath was sweet as Nestor lowered his mouth to drink from hers—but sweet as blood, not honey. It made no difference; there was no difference, not to Nestor, not now. Indeed it seemed entirely possible that honey would be bitter by comparison.

  And as he kissed her and fondled her breasts, the furious heat inside him threatened to overflow and boil him from within. So hot indeed that Wratha felt it, too, and knew her danger. She would not be raped up here on her own roof, not with all the fading stars peeping down … and not with a huge and empty bed in her room below! But all of that must wait. She had no desire to appear easy meat.

  So that finally, when his kisses and fondling threatened to engulf her despite her feigned reticence: Come! She pulled herself breathlessly away and issued her mental command. Protect me!

  Being so close to her, Nestor heard her mind-call-and witnessed its result. Her creature came.

  It was one of the warriors Nestor had seen in Wrathspire’s great hall: nine feet tall when upright, yet squat for its height. A thing of inch-thick, blue-grey chitin armour. A thing of claws, jaws, and dagger teeth. Its face was huge and slate-grey, ratlike, flattened and sloping from chin to forehead; yet almost human, too. What, almost? Nestor knew better than that: that indeed the thing had been human, upon a time. But its eyes were set too far apart, at the sides, giving it a wide angle of vision. It had short hind legs, long reaching arms, and a shambling but energetic gait—as Nestor now saw.

  For roaring like a rutting shad, but five times louder, the creature bore down on him where he backed off from Wratha and turned to run for his flyer. He might even have made it, but in his haste tripped and went to one knee. And Wratha’s warrior was on him! Then …

  HOLD! She sent a mind-blast. Do him no harm but simply detain him!

  The thing stopped snorting and bellowing at once; it grabbed Nestor around the waist and by his shoulder, and picked him up—literally, as if he were some Szgany child’s toy! It drew him close and gazed at him, turning its loathsome head this way and that the better to observe him. And holding him in midair while Wratha approached, it breathed upon him.

  The stench was awful! Nestor held his breath; he also held still and made no move or protest, but simply waited for death. For if that was Wratha’s purpose, certainly no one could deny her now. But it was not her purpose.

  She approached and looked up at him almost curiously. He gradually eased his head to one side, away from the face of the monster and its gaping jaws, and stared down at her whey-faced. He was totally defenceless; he knew that he was at her mercy, and death only a bite away. But he was also Wamphyri.

  “So it looks like … like I’m not going to live for two hundred years after all,” he said. And if it had been possible, he might even have shrugged.

  For a moment Wratha said nothing but merely smiled. And he saw how cold that smile of hers was. But in another moment she brightened, gave herself a shake, and said, “Men have always been my problem. As a Szgany girl, as Karl the Crag’s thrall in Cragspire, even as Wratha the Risen in the dark and rocky gorge of Turgosheim. Why, it was because of weak and malicious men that I fled west to this last great aerie, where even now they’re the bane of my life, these dullards with their manses in my stack. But you … are not a dullard, and I think I prefer you alive. It could be I’m making a mistake, but—” Take him to his flyer.

  Her warrior obeyed, stood Nestor on his feet close to his mount, and pushed him in that direction. Stumbling, he caught up the reins and hauled himself up into the saddle. And as he urged his beast to flight:

  Visit me again, sometime, Wratha sent. Amazingly, there was never a hint of enmity or malice in her voice.

  What, of my own free will? he replied, sarcasm dripping from his mind. A moment later, his flyer’s thrusters uncoiled, sending mount and rider skimming down the gentle slope of the plateau.

  She laughed in his mind. Well, then, invite me down into Suckscar. For I’ve only ever been there the once. And we are neighbours, after all.

  But I’m the one with warriors, in Suckscar, he answered.

  And now he sensed her shrug, but also her frustration. So be it, my handsome Lord Nestor. But I’m sure we’ll meet again sometime.

  He shot out over the precipitous rim of the last aerie, and ordered his mount home. He had women of his own there, a gaggle of them. What need had he of Wratha the Risen? But on the other hand … the needs of the Wamphyri are great, and Wratha shone in his mind like some strange dark jewel. How could his thralls compare with her? The promise he’d felt when he held her in his arms had been … limitless. He knew that her fire could match his anytime.

  All of which were thoughts that Nestor kept hidden as well as he could, but perhaps not well enough. For as his flyer dipped below the rim, so Wratha’s tinkling mind-laughter came to him again. And in the cup of his burning hand the feel of her silky breasts, and on his lips the taste of her tainted kiss …

  In Suckscar, Zahar was waiting on the return of his Lord. When Nestor landed his flyer in the yawning weathered socket of his personal landing bay, his first lieutenant was there to take the reins and guide the floundering beast to its pen. Nestor could see that the man wanted words with him, and so waited until his flyer was penned. Then:

  “Lord,” said Zahar, joining him and entering Suckscar proper, and following him to his rooms. “There is a matter …”

  “Oh? And what is it?” Nestor turned on the sweeping stone stairs and stared at him. And read trouble in his feral eyes. “Out with it, Zahar.”

  “It is … the Lady Carmen, Lord.”

  Nestor gave a start. “The Lady Car … ?” And he paused with the name unspoken. But he knew well enough what—and whom—Zahar was talking about. “Carmen,” he finally said. “Yes. And what of her?” And again he knew the answer before it came.

  “It is sunup, Lord. It’s unlikely she’ll rise up from her bench through sunup. But when the sun goes down, as the last light fades on the crags of the barrier mountains, and their shadows creep across the boulder plains towards the Icelands, then …”

  “We shall have a Lady in our manse,” Nestor finished it for him, and slowly nodded. “And for now—how goes it with her?”

  “How goes it?” Zahar raised an eyebrow. “She is dead, Lord. Or undead, as we say. She sleeps her sleep. Afterwards—perhaps even a long time afterwards, when she is risen up—she will suffer the Change That Shapes, just as you are suffering it. Then she will be a true Lady, and mistress of Suckscar.”

  “On whose authority?” Nestor snapped.

  “Why, on yours, Lord! For there’s no denying it, you have brought her into being. And she will be Wamphyri.”

  Nestor pulled at his right earlobe. “I had forgotten her. No, I had put her from my mind. It seemed a cruel way to use her: to use her, even unto undeath, and then destroy her.”

  “But that was then, Lord, and this is now. Perhaps you see things differently … now?”

  Nestor stood tall, gritted his teeth. “I cannot have a Lady in my house. My women, yes, but not a Lady. The provisioning is the answer. See to it.”

  He made to turn away, but Zahar said, “Lord? The provisioning?”

  “Yes. Is something amiss?”

  “Very much so! She is Wamphyri, Lord. If your thralls eat of her … it could be problematic.”

  “Grind her down, fool!” Nestor snarled, as the growing but inexperienced thing within sent him conflicting messages. “For be sure she won’t be up to infecting anything in the smallest of small pieces!”

  “But indeed she will, Lord,” said Zahar, very quietly an
d grimly. “On Sunside, the Szgany stake vampires through their hearts; they cut off their heads and burn them to ashes. And they are only vampires, not Wamphyri!”

  Nestor knew all of this. He remembered it the moment his lieutenant was through speaking the words. He had known how the Szgany would have dealt with him, if they’d caught him after he left Brad Berea’s house in the forest; or how, at that time, he had thought they would deal with him. And now he felt a fool in front of Zahar. But if his lieutenant was so full of knowledge, perhaps he might have ideas, too. So Nestor asked him, “What, then, do you suggest?”

  “Take her to the barrier mountains now.” Zahar was eager; he didn’t fancy serving two masters, or one master and one mistress, in Suckscar. “Lay her down in a place where the sun will strike in just a few hours’ time. After that … your work will be done.”

  “No,” said Nestor, “your work will be done. Should I keep dogs and do my own barking?”

  Zahar bowed. “As you will, Lord.”

  “Then be about it.”

  “Yes, Lord.” He turned to go, but Nestor caught his arm.

  “Wait! Take me to her. I would look upon this Carmen one last time. If I’m to destroy a thing, it’s as well I know what I’m destroying.”

  And Zahar took him to where Carmen lay in state.

  Looking at her on the cold, raised stone slab where she lay, Nestor felt no pity. He had thought he would—had remembered that once long ago he’d known how to—but no longer knew how to. Carmen was … she was flesh.

  But for all that she had lain here for more than one hundred hours—where a massive window ten feet deep had been cut through solid rock to face east, and the winds blew in without hindrance—she was not “cold” flesh. Or she was, but not the clay-cold of death. She was the grey, unwrinkled, undecayed, and unending flesh of undeath.

  “If you had—” Zahar started and paused. “If this situation had been initiated twenty-four hours earlier, Lord, by now she would be up and about. This close to sunup her rising is delayed.” He fell silent.

  “I have made love to this woman,” Nestor mused sombrely.

  “You loved her to death, Lord.” Zahar reminded him.

  And Nestor made up his mind. “She is dead,” he said. “Do with her as you have described.”

  And to Carmen, placing his hand upon her brow: Farewell.

  Whaaaat? Her answer rang in his mind like a cracked bell, sending him staggering. Fareweeeelllll? But I’m not going anywhere, Nestoooor —I’m coming baaaack!

  “Ahhh!” he cried out loud, lurching like a drunkard. “She speaks to me!”

  “But that can’t be.” Zahar’s jaw fell open as he took his master’s arm. “See, she still sleeps, and will continue to do so until the change wakes her. Or until the sun finds her wanting. Carmen is dead, until she wakes or dies the true death.”

  “Fool!” Nestor ranted, pointing a trembling finger at the shrouded figure on the raised slab. “I tell you she spoke. And she … knows me!”

  And: Oh, yesss. I know you now, Carmen told him inside his head. You are Nestor of the Wamphyri—my would-be muuurderer!

  No would-be about it! “Take her!” Nestor gasped, as he was sent staggering yet again. “Take her now, to the barrier mountains. You do it—you, Zahar. Do it now, and make sure it’s done well!”

  And Zahar did it.

  That was how it had started …

  And in his fevered dreams where he lay in a dark, damp cave under the bank of a Sunside river, Nestor shuddered as he often shuddered in his sleep. Proof, perhaps, that something of the old Nestor lingered on deep inside.

  Or perhaps not. Perhaps he shuddered simply in recognition of his own monstrousness.

  Whichever, for a while after that he dreamed no more. And slowly, so laboriously slowly, his metamorphic vampire flesh worked to heal his wounds. While beyond the low mouth of the cave, the river water sparkled, and Sunside’s dawn grew to a full day …

  PART THREE:

  THE OPPOSITION

  1

  Perchorsk

  It had been snowing heavily in Moscow when the disklike British Airways VTOL Hawk stooped down through its landing window and Ben Trask, Ian Goodly, and 110 other “businessmen” disembarked. Turkur Tzonov himself had met them off the plane; bypassing customs, he’d seen his guests out of the airport and into a brand new, Moscow-built, Ford-Volga Premier, their transport to a small military airport ten kilometres out of the city. From there they’d travelled by jet-copter all the way, with a fueling stop in Kirov before the streamlined wasp of an aircraft turned onto a more nearly northerly heading over Berezniki, and set out to parallel the snow-capped Urals for a further two hundred miles. In all, the journey from London to Perchorsk had taken two hours fifty-five minutes, and it was six P.M. local as the aircraft switched back to hover mode, sidestepped between gloomy peaks under lowering clouds, and gentled down into the dull grey Perchorsk ravine.

  Back in Moscow, at the airports and between them, Tzonov had been a courteous, efficient escort. Full of mainly solicitous inquiries—about the weather in London (the winter was proving to be a hard one all over Europe), the physical well-being of his guests following their flight from England, the quality of service in-flight, and so on—the head of Soviet ESPionage had made an energetic but paradoxically empty or at best ephemeral host. Ephemeral because his comments and questions were mainly meaningless, and empty because he studiously avoided mentioning the real reason why Trask and Goodly were here.

  Trask believed he knew why: when Tzonov required to know anything really important, he would probably pick it right out of their minds; at least, he would expect to be able to do so. But in any case he wouldn’t attempt it until after they’d seen Perchorsk’s prisoner; it would be pointless to try to discover their opinions before they’d had sufficient time to form them. Which meant that for the time being the Russian would continue in his guise of companionably disarming escort and guide.

  Nevertheless (and despite that the British mindspies had taken certain precautions against Tzonov’s probing), they deliberately avoided thinking about Harry Keogh. This required an effort of mental vigilance which would not be easy to maintain over a protracted period of time, but short term it wasn’t too difficult: there was, in any case, more than enough to focus their minds upon without concerning themselves with any conjectural connection between Perchorsk’s alien intruder and a man who had been dead for all of sixteen years.

  From Moscow to Perchorsk, Tzonov had been mainly silent. Having explained how his work had kept him busy the previous night right through until the early hours, immediately after takeoff he’d stretched out his legs, reclined in his seat, and fallen asleep—apparently. Thus his guests, the only other passengers aboard the small, short-range, military reconnaissance aircraft, had been left to their own devices. For Trask this was no problem: following Tzonov’s example, he slept for an hour, leaving the precog Goodly awake to read what he dared of their immediate future. While up front in the bubble cockpit, the pilot and copilot in their dowdy, ill-fitting army aviator jumpsuits would glance back every now and then, nodding at Goodly and smiling blank, ostensibly affable smiles.

  But now, as the jet-copter descended into the Perchorsk ravine and Goodly shook Trask awake, so Turkur Tzonov stirred and a few seconds later sat up without so much as a yawn. And all three stared out through clear wraparound flexon panels in the cabin’s walls and floor, down into the depths of the gorge, and watched its slate-grey scarps and crags floating up around them towards the fading light of the bitter cold Urals night. While down below:

  There were lights in the pass; a helicopter landing zone was marked by a circle of yellow strobes rotating clockwise on the concrete plateau of a dam’s wide wall; searchlights illuminated the chopper’s vertical descent, their glare mirrored in a weaving silver lattice on the surface of an otherwise leaden lake. All of which was reflected from ice-sheathed rock scarps, and made scintillant in the refraction of freezing sp
ray from the shining arcs of four huge spouts of water erupting from conduits in the lower dam wall.

  Shading their eyes, Trask and Goodly glanced at each other and thought much the same thought: that there were far too many lights, a veritable dazzle of them! Perhaps someone had decided that they shouldn’t see too much: a futile exercise in camouflage at best; American spysats had had the Perchorsk ravine mapped out in fine detail for close on twenty years now. Impossible to hide something as big as this from electronic eyes-in-the-sky capable of reading headline newsprint from orbits a hundred miles up! And in any case, what was there to hide? Nothing, not any longer. Or if anything, a potential pesthole of truly gigantic proportions, but one which the Russians had well under control … didn’t they? It had always been assumed that they did. Until now …

  A “defensive system” which had backfired from day one, the Perchorsk Projekt had been intended as the USSR’s answer to America’s SDI or Star Wars scenario. The object: to create an impenetrable dome of destructive energy twenty miles high in the sky, which would “kill off” any and all incoming enemy missiles. An umbrella, so that no one in the whole wide world could ever again threaten to rain on Mother Russia’s parade. As soon as it had proved itself in an exhaustive series of tests, a device such as this would on its own elevate the USSR to an unassailable position as the planet’s Number One Superpower.

  That was what Perchorsk had been all about … until its epic failure had jeopardized not only the USSR but the entire human race. As Trask came more fully awake he started to think back more clearly on what he knew of the whole can of worms:

  The Russians had built and tested the Projekt—tested it just once, and disastrously—back in the early eighties. But despite their best efforts at technological camouflaging, the results of that test were seen and recorded not only by American spy satellites but also by friendly forces on the ground. And when all of the reports had been processed …