Necroscope: Defilers

by Brian Lumley

  But now, as they made to walk inland toward the main coast road, there came a diversion: the glare of headlight beams and the roar of revving motorcycle engines.

  “Oh, dear!” sighed Malinari drily. “Didn’t I warn you not to play up to them? The island’s bad boys are back.” It was, of course, the three young men from the taverna.

  “They seem full of high spirits!” Vavara played their game, clapping her hands as the three leaned back in their saddles to perform wheelies in the middle of the harbour concourse.

  “High spirits?” said Malinari. “If you’re speaking of ouzo, then I have to agree! But the tall one with the long black hair—the one who waved at you—his thoughts are dark indeed.”

  “Can you read them?” she said, as the three bikers skidded to a halt, got off their machines, and lifted them up onto their stands.

  “I don’t want to,” said Malinari. “My head is still aching from their racket! But he fancies himself, that one. And that’s not all he fancies.”

  “Hallo,” the man in question grunted, as he walked casually towards the pair. With a cursory glance at Malinari, he came to a halt facing Vavara.

  “Hallo!” She smilingly greeted him, until her smile turned into a sneer. And then: “Hallo—and goodbye,” she said. “Goodnight.”

  “Goodbye? Goodnight?” He answered her back in the English that she had employed, cocked his head a little on one side and smiled his version of a worldy smile. “But is not late. I think maybe I walking with you. I want … talking with you.”

  “Walking and talking?” said Malinari, stifling a yawn. “Is that what you want? Is that all? Very well then, so now hear me talking. Go away. Go now, at once, while you can still walk and talk.”

  “Go away?” The other scowled, his unruly eyebrows meeting in the middle. “You go away! Is my island. I am man of Krassos. You thee stranger here.”

  “Indeed I am a stranger,” said Malinari. “Just how much of a stranger you’ll never know.”

  Meanwhile the other two men had approached and stood grinning where they leaned against the sea wall. One of them made a point of cleaning his nails with an Italian switchblade.

  “She not liking you,” said the tall one, his looks growing darker by the moment. For taking Malinari’s indifference—his lackadaisical attitude—as a sign of uncertainty or cowardice, he felt very sure of himself. “I see you doing thee argues, see her not doing the smiling. I see her shouting … at you! Now I shout at you!” He prodded Malinari’s chest, as if expecting him to flinch and cower back.

  Malinari didn’t flinch but merely grinned a wicked, barely controlled grin which made the corners of his mouth twitch, and said: “Young man, you are a very rude, very stupid person.” And where before Malinari had appeared merely tall, now he was very tall, very strong, and incredibly fast.

  Without seeming to move, his hands were clasping the young Greek’s temples. And for two or three long seconds—while the other stood there paralysed—the vampire Malinari fastened on his mind like a leech, sucking at his thoughts …

  … Thoughts mainly of Vavara, naked, writhing, panting out her lust on a beach somewhere, with her legs wrapped round him. And others of his home in Astris, not Skala Astris on the coast, but its sister village in the mountains. And of his mother, and the road home uncoiling under the whirling wheels of his motorcycle, just as it did every night.

  Then of his work in the quarries, where be sawed out those mighty blocks of pure white marble. And then again back to sex: an English girl he’d seduced last summer, and a German girl the summer before that …

  Thus Malinari familiarized himself with the man’s mind, its signature, and knew that in future—within certain strictures of distance, and given an uncluttered psychic aether—he would always be able to find him again.

  Quite the little seducer, this one, but ugly with it. There was nothing of romance in it, only lust; much like vampirism in its way, and this Greek might even make a useful thrall or lieutenant. But no, for where women were concerned he would always be untrustworthy …

  Malinari released him. For a moment the man staggered, then recovered and tried to lash out with an arm that felt heavy as lead and a clenched fist made of rubber. Almost without effort, Malinari caught his arm, twisted it into an armlock and turned him about, grabbed his belt at the rear, and hoisted him up and over the sea wall, out into the water. Lucky for him that there were no sharp marble boulders this close to the harbour.

  Then Malinari stepped to the man’s bike, picked it up as if it were a toy, whirled and lobbed that into the water, too.

  The other bikers were no longer leaning on the wall. They had come erect, their jaws hanging slack and their leather-clad frames as stiff as poles. They looked at each other and then at Malinari. They had seen his speed, his effortless strength; now they saw his fixed grin—not quite a rictus—inviting them to try their luck, and perhaps join their friend where he splashed about in the sea.

  The one with the knife looked at it as if he didn’t recognize it, folded its blade, and pocketed it. And without saying a word, the pair backed away, heading for a break in the sea wall where steps went down to the water. But:

  “Ah, no!” said Malinari in their own tongue. “Your friend got himself in trouble, so let him get himself out. Best if you leave now, for if you don’t, I shall deal with your machines the same way I dealt with his—and perhaps with you, too.”

  They didn’t argue. And as they got astride their bikes: “I don’t expect we’ll be seeing you again tonight,” said Malinari. “Or any night, for that matter …”

  “Bravo!” said Vavara sneeringly when they were gone.

  “Thank you,” said Malinari. “Since I kept myself in check, I deserve every bit of your praise.”

  “I could have handled it myself,” she answered.

  “Now there’s no need to,” he told her.

  “Huh! But they were only boys.”

  “And they are still boys. But far more importantly they’re still alive, and there won’t be any repercussions …”

  By Greek standards, the coast road east of Skala Astris in the direction of Limari was a good one, with a metalled surface and very few potholes. But over the distance of one-third of a mile from the lay-by where Vavara had left her vehicle and driver to Palataki’s neglected old service road, it was serpentine in its winding.

  Vavara’s driver-black-hooded, servile, and occasionally shivering, but never looking back at her passengers—drove at a carefully measured pace; the drainage ditches at the sides of the road were deep, and where it had been cut through spurs and steep slopes there were stretches where the cliffs on the right fell sheer to the sea.

  As they rode, Malinari looked out of his window, down into one such abyss of air and ocean, and asked, “Would this, by any chance, be the place where you, er, gave our visitors a nudge?” It was the first time he had been out of the monastery, and all he knew of Krassos was what he had seen of it on the night of his arrival and tonight’s excursion.

  “No,” Vavara shook her head. “For that would have been too close to Skala Astris. I chose a place remote from the island’s villages, a spot midway between Palataki and the monastery. The tides around Krassos aren’t much, the sea is deep in that location, and the coast very rugged. When I saw the car go over the rim, I knew that if anything of the wreckage should drift away, it would not be found for some days. Ah, but then again, I also ‘knew’ that there would be no survivors! Yet—”

  “Yet there was one,” Malinari nodded. “And a policeman, at that. Did you read the report in the newspapers? It seems we’ve been very fortunate.”

  “My reading skills are rudimentary,” she answered, tossing her head. “I have nuns to read for me. Are you referring to the fact that the policeman, this Manolis Papastamos, has no memory of the event? Yes, we are probably fortunate that he was banged about. But on the other hand, it was very quick … I doubt that he would have realised what was happening. He was mu
ch too busy trying to keep his car on the road to have time to wonder about what was pushing it off! And in any case, even if he remembered anything about it, why should he believe it was something other than an accident? Lying broken in that hospital in Kavála, I am sure he has other things to worry about. Also, in Krassos town, which is where I bought this limo, there are several other cars just like it; when they can afford it, the Greeks are very vain and inclined to show off. Such transports are status symbols on an island as small as this. And anyway, in a world such as this one, a world of religious fools, who would ever think to accuse a nun or nuns?”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Malinari shrugged. “But still, you should never underestimate these people.”

  “You sound as if you speak from experience,” she answered. “Your problems in Australia, no doubt.”

  “Exactly,” said Malinari. “And in answer to your question: Who would accuse a nun? But who would have thought to search me out—a Lord of Vampires—in a casino, in a mountain resort in Australia? Yet they did.”

  “Still,” Vavara said, “I’m not overly concerned about this man’s survival. What, a simple policeman? What could he make of the leech? But as for the female, the pathologist—she had to die. We couldn’t afford to let her report what must have seemed to her a very strange anomaly: a thing like a leech, a parasite in a human body, and in peculiar circumstances at that. Granted our situation would be somewhat more secure if both of them had died, but what’s done is done, and the matter can’t be improved. But tell me, what is all this nitpicking? Your way of diverting responsibility, perhaps? Do not think I have forgotten, Nephran Malinari, that but for your weird appetites I wouldn’t have had this problem to deal with in the first place. Be satisfied with what I have achieved.”

  “You are argumentative tonight,” said Malinari. “It wasn’t my intention to be critical. I was merely stating facts. But if you insist on harping on my appetites, then I would remind you of your own. That Gypsy girl, for instance. You must have known that in taking her you placed yourself in jeopardy. And then to have let her escape … !”

  For a moment Vavara was sullen, silent. But then she said: “As I have already admitted, that was an error. But the girl was beautiful—so fey, so innocent, and so Szgany—and after all, it wasn’t as if I deliberately lured her. No, for she sought me out! She came to the monastery of her own free will. But once I had seen her … I couldn’t turn her away.

  “Her people, caravans and all, had come over on the great ferries from the mainland. They danced for the tourists in the tavernas, played on their drums, fiddles, and tambourines. They sold paper flowers and other nonsense knickknacks door-to-door in the villages, earning what few drachmas they could. She told me these things, when she brought her flowers to the monastery. But she was the loveliest flower of them all. For a day or two I actually thought that I loved her.”

  “A beautiful bloom, eh?” said Malinari. “And so you sipped her nectar.” However wry and unsympathetic, his remark was only very slightly caustic. Each to his own.

  But in any case Vavara wasn’t offended. And with a negligent shrug she said, “I took a little, and I gave a little back. I thought she was enthralled—indeed she was enthralled, to a degree—but the call of her kinfolk was stronger. A few days more, she would have been mine forever … but it wasn’t to be. I tell you, Malinari: Szgany blood out of Sunside ran strong in that one! And as for her escape: it wasn’t so much an escape as that she simply walked away. Mazed—but in control of her own mind, her own will—she left me. Which I suppose was just as well; by which I mean that things would even out in the end. If she had stayed, the time would surely come when I would find her presence … offensive? And in leaving, she simply hastened her own end. So there you have it. And all said and done, I make no bones of it: she was a mistake, yes.”

  By now they had left the main road, turned right onto the old service road to Palataki, and were climbing the steep hill on a narrow, zigzagging track that could scarcely be called a road at all. Flanked on the inside by undergrowth and covered with slippery moss—with grasses, roots, and creepers thrusting up through its crumbling surface—it was as well that the limo’s nun driver took it in first gear and with great caution. And as the dark silhouettes of Palataki’s cupolas soared above, Malinari saw at once what it was that kept the locals away from the place.

  The air was made luminous by fireflies; glowworms appeared to burn like discarded cigarette-ends in the shrubbery; despite that the summer had been a long one, and the first rains yet to fall, still there was a sense of dankness, of mouldy rottenness about the place. And where before Malinari had said Palataki the structure was “out of place” on Krassos, now he saw that its grounds—even the hill on which it stood—looked and felt exactly the same. It was a place apart.

  “On an island of the sun, such as this one,” Vavara smiled at him from the darkness of her corner seat—a flash of gleaming teeth that could so easily transform into a cave of knives—“this is one of the few places where I feel comfortable.”

  He knew what she meant and answered, “It definitely has a unique atmosphere. There’s nothing like it on Starside, and yet I’ve never felt so close to home. Well, perhaps in Romania. But that is understandable.”

  “When I first saw it,” said Vavara, “and found it deserted and for sale—and when I explored it, discovering its cellars and old mine shafts—then I knew I had to have it.”

  “But on the other hand,” Malinari said, “if I were a young Greek lover, in search of a place in which to pursue my heart’s desire in private, it would suit my needs ideally.”

  “Just so,” said Vavara. “And indeed they used to come here now and then, some of the braver ones, anyway. But I long since took care of that. Come, and I’ll show you what else I’ve taken care of …”

  The car was up onto the level now, and its cowled, pallid driver got out to open gates in a tall perimeter fence of metal staves and rusting chicken wire. There was an ankle-deep ground mist which seemed to ooze—no, which in fact oozed—up from the earth itself. And Vavara nodded when Malinari looked at her, seeking confirmation of what he more than merely suspected.

  “Oh, yesss!” she sighed, her eyes glowing red now. “Everything is ripening down there. A few more weeks at most.”

  Then the car moved forward again, and now Palataki loomed up out of the night.

  Malinari’s mentalist probes went out as the limo drew to a halt before huge doors banded with iron. “There is a presence!” he warned … before recognizing the telepathic signature. “Ah, yes!” he said then. “It’s your man, er—?”

  “Zarakis, aye,” she answered. “My most worthy lieutenant, Zarakis Mocksthrall, out of olden Starside. He tends the place, and by simply being here keeps away unwanted visitors.”

  As they got out of the car—Vavara’s driver, too—Malinari noticed that the nun was still shuddering. Indeed, she was barely able to stand without leaning on the vehicle.

  “Madame?” said a deep voice from the shadowed archway that covered the door. And there stood Zarakis, tall as Malinari but feral-eyed as opposed to the Lord’s red. For here at Palataki, the vampires and lieutenant alike could relax a little and let themselves appear as their perverse “nature” intended.

  “Zarakis,” Vavara spoke to his bowed head. “Be easy now. I am here with Lord Malinari, to inspect the cellars and tunnels. Is all well down there?”

  “All is well,” he answered.

  “And are you hungry?”

  “Your women bring me food daily,” he told her. “For which I am grateful.”

  She shook her head impatiently. “No, you misunderstand me. I inquired of you, are you … hungry?”

  “Always, madame!” Looking at her, his eyes had widened in anticipation, until they burned like sulphur in the night.

  Pointing to the nun, Vavara said, “Then while we go below, feed yourself. And if you feel inclined, see to any other needs that might require attention.
We shall be a little while.”

  Now Malinari understood the woman’s fearful trembling, but he also appreciated Vavara’s concern for her lieutenant’s well-being.

  Then, as Zarakis grunted his thanks, moving eagerly towards the nun: “Zarakis!” Vavara brought him to a halt and cautioned him: “Be warned. Don’t take so much that you leave her weakened and fainting. For I, too, have need of her services. She drives this vehicle for me.”

  And with that she turned away and led Malinari in through the great doors …

  The place was a maze of rooms, most of them huge. The doors all hung askew on rusted hinges, the staircases sagged dangerously, and all other fittings had long since been stripped and stolen; even the panelling from the walls. Some of the good floorboards had been taken up, while others had rotted through. Great holes gaped everywhere, and as Vavara stepped ahead she warned Malinari of places where the floor was most likely to give way under his weight.

  “The upper levels are in even worse repair,” she told him, “and the attic is fit only for bats. Ah, but down below … the cellars are carved from stone, while the mine tunnels remind me of nothing so much as the basement of my aerie in old Starside. And since there was nothing to break or steal, only the ravages of nature are apparent down there!”

  And she led him down into darkness.

  The lack of light meant nothing. Night-seeing, to them it was like daylight. But still after several steep descents down stone-hewn stairways and some negotiating of places where the ceiling had fallen in, Vavara lit a torch and took it from its bracket on the wall.

  “See how it flares and the flame bends back?” she said.

  “A current of air,” Malinari nodded. “This shaft has more than one exit.”

  “In the bight above the sea,” said Vavara. “It is my bolt-hole, my escape route, if such should ever be required. And in a cave above the water level, I keep a boat. While just around this bend—”