Necroscope: The Plague-Bearer

by Brian Lumley

  “She looked to the sky, intending to draw strength from her mistress moon, but all there was was a pale yellow crescent. In her panic she clawed at her attacker—and thought she saw how his eyes lit like dull lamps! What’s more, he seemed to be trying to bite her! That is how it appeared to her: that this…this animal was intent on fastening his teeth in her neck!

  “Ah, but in order to do that he must first release his grip on Kate’s throat, where he held her with only her toes touching the pavement. When he did that her feet found purchase, and she was at last able to deliver that kick. It was a blow that would have felled most ordinary men; it should have sent him groaning to the ground. But he merely grunted and reached for her again.

  “At that moment a car’s headlight beams flooded the street. It was a police vehicle: They patrol this area, however infrequently. Kate’s attacker was startled. Releasing her, he uttered a low curse and ran across the street into a narrow alley where the police car couldn’t follow.

  “The vehicle stopped, and an officer got out to ask Kate if she was all right, was everything okay, and who was the man who had run off? She lied, said her attacker had demanded cash, and she was a little shaken but otherwise all was well. She pointed to the bar’s hanging sign, said she was on her way to work, and that she’d be safe here. But no, she had never seen the prowler before, and it had all happened so fast that she couldn’t describe him. Well at least that last was more or less true, but as for the rest: how to describe the entire experience? What could she say without having to answer more questions?

  “Do you understand, Harry?” Again B.J. paused. “Kate didn’t want to attract too much attention to herself, not to mention to me and the other girls! Now tell me—do you know what her attacker was or might have been? Answer me.”

  The Necroscope’s reply came almost at once: “He might have been a vampire,” he said, as if that was the most natural thing in the world. While deep within him some facet of his subconscious mind recalled the beach and his nagging, almost obsessive preoccupation with vampires—their many species, from Nature’s myriad parasitic creatures to those half-human fiends with whom he’d already had far too many dealings. So then, had that been some kind of precognition? Possibly a side-effect remnant of the brain-dead—now entirely dead—Alec Kyle’s oneiromancy? The last vestige of his talent, like an echo lingering on in an empty conch, still extant in the whorls of a brain which now housed Harry’s metaphysical mind? Had it perhaps been an inkling of something to come…or rather, of a thing that was now here?

  It was only an idea, a vague and momentary thought from the innermost recesses of Harry’s mind, which was quickly occluded as Bonnie Jean confirmed what he had said:

  “Yes! A vampire! An agent of my Master’s enemies, it has to be! I believe this morning’s newspapers have confirmed it. Some poor woman—a prostitute, or her remains at least—were found late last night in the blazing ruins of her gutted place in the red-light district. She had been beheaded and an accelerant had been used to burn her to a crisp! Now, what do you say to that? Answer me.”

  And sounding completely detached, disinterested, the Necroscope said, “Little wonder you sounded so anxious when I called you.”

  B.J. frowned and her mouth fell partly open. She had expected, demanded some kind of answer, but not quite this one. Oh, he was deep, this Harry Keogh! Even hypnotized, still his mind retained something of its integrity, a fact which she had noted on several previous occasions.

  “Yes I was anxious,” she nodded. “For my girls, myself, and for you. Oh, I know how well you can look after yourself—mah wee man—” (that again, with its special emphasis; but in dealing with a mind like his it was surely prudent to reinforce her hold over him from time to time.) And having done so she continued: “Yes, I know that you are fast and strong and clever; sometimes I think too clever!” And again she frowned. “But I didn’t want you coming here all unprepared, only to run into something like that. That’s a measure of how much I care for you…”

  And suddenly aware of the truth in those words, and finding herself sidetracked, she couldn’t help wondering out loud: “But how much do you care for me? Answer me, Harry.”

  “As much and more than I ever cared for anyone,” the Necroscope immediately replied. “That’s how much I care for you.”

  Now B.J. smiled. “Oh, and what of your Brenda? Answer me.”

  “I used to love her…I think,” he answered. And still he retained his totally relaxed, hypnotized expression, showing no feelings whatsoever. “But Brenda has been gone a long time, and I can’t find her.”

  “And does that pain you?” B.J. found herself fascinated now. “I mean, how are you affected? You may continue to answer me.”

  “No, it no longer hurts me,” Harry answered. “But it frustrates me—because I don’t know where they are, Brenda and the little fellow, or even if they’re safe and well.”

  “And you love no one else, just me?” B.J. felt herself softening. This serious business she’d commenced didn’t seem nearly so serious now. Oh, it was—yes of course it was!—but so was her relationship with Harry.

  “No one else,” he replied. “Just you…now.”

  “Oh?” And as quickly as that B.J. was frowning again. “Just me…now? Was there some other woman beside Brenda, then?”

  “Before Brenda, yes—and since Brenda.”

  B.J. was suddenly hot and flushed; she felt her concentration slipping. “You’ve never mentioned this before! Who else was it, or is it, that you love or loved? Who is she?”

  “My mother,” Harry replied. “My Ma. She’s dead, you know.”

  And feeling foolish, Bonnie Jean sighed her relief, letting it wash right over her before telling him: “Yes, I know. You’ve told me before. And you remember her, and love her still, after all this time?”

  “Of course…because she loves me.”

  Ah, the faith of the man! thought Bonnie Jean. He dreams of his Ma in heaven, looking down on him and loving him still! For of course she couldn’t know the truth of it, and Harry couldn’t enlighten her; he had told her as much as he could tell anyone.

  Then, finally, it was time to finish this.

  “Harry, mah wee man,” she said. “I want you to remember all I’ve told you about this threat to me and mine, and to yourself. Not on the surface of your mind but deep inside it. Will you do that for me?” It was more a demand, a command, than a question.

  And the Necroscope responded: “Yes, I’ll remember, but deep inside.”

  B.J. felt satisfied at last. She smiled…then pursed her lips, nodded, and added one last thing. “Harry, I expect you to watch out for me and mine, but not so much that you’ll put yourself in harm’s way. Is all understood?”

  For long moments he was silent; and then unusually, indeed uniquely in B.J.’s experience, a frown had crept onto his brow! It seemed that even hypnotized he could be puzzled, concerned.

  And: “How am I to watch out for you, and stay out of harm’s way?” he queried. “What if I come face to face with a vampire?”

  Ah! Now B.J. understood the problem. Her fault, for she had issued what appeared to be contradictory instructions; at least to Harry’s way of thinking. And now she corrected herself. “No, Harry! I only meant that you should look after yourself as best possible. Is that understood?”

  And as the frown disappeared from the Necroscope’s face, so he answered, “Yes.”

  “Well then,” B.J. said, sitting back from him. “Now you may get up on your elbow—blink your eyes and yawn—stretch your limbs and come more properly awake. And you may want to give me a kiss before I go down to the bar. You might also want to tidy up a little before you come down. You may begin to do all those things now, Harry.”

  Harry began to do exactly as ordered, of course; but before B.J. could go down to the bar her telephone rang, and she commenced a long angry argument, in fact a harangue, against one of her suppliers who was trying to apologise for the late delivery of
various wines and spirits.

  And so it was Harry who was first downstairs…

  After sitting at the bar with a small beer, reading the evening paper and talking to one of the girls—conversing in fact with young Kate—Harry was on his way out into the Edinburgh night when finally B.J. came downstairs. She asked what he was doing, and without preamble he told her he thought he’d go out for an hour or so, take a walk in the warm night air.

  Immediately alarmed, she leaned close and whispered: “Ye’ll do what? Take a walk in streets so poorly lit?” And shaking her head, “That’s no a good idea, Harry!”

  He raised an eyebrow and for a moment looked surprised; and trying not to frown, B.J. wondered, Is he just putting it on or what? But just a moment later he answered, “If I remember correctly, B.J., they were also poorly lit in London that time. Are things any different now? I don’t think so.”

  Controlling the urge to remind him how she’d saved his life that time, she said: “Ye’re a contrary man, Harry! Did I no see ye drinkin’ that wee beer after tellin’ me ye fancied a glass of mah wine? What, has the thirst gone off ye then? And even if it has, still ye’ll be better off here in the bar. For there’s all sorts o’ weird folk out in the streets this time o’ nicht!”

  The Necroscope grinned and thought: Ah, that false Scottish brogue of hers! Which he knew was mainly for the benefit of the handful of local lads in the bar. And the reason B.J. whispered was because she didn’t want those selfsame customers wondering at her concern for this “bleddy sassenach,” this Englishman who always seemed to be hanging around the bar these days.

  But anyway, it was nice to know she worried about him. And:

  “Hey, I’m a big boy now, Bonnie Jean,” he told her. “Surely you know that? But anyway, I promise I won’t talk to strangers, okay?”

  Since he was already headed for the exit it seemed it would have to be okay, and B.J. made no further protest. But after he had gone she took Kate aside to ask her what they had been talking about.

  “Oh, just the local layout,” Kate answered in all innocence, “About mah wee flat, and the route I take tae get here; no that I’ll be walkin’ it again! No, from now on I’ll be takin’ a taxi here and back! But he says he likes tae walk the streets—more fool him!” And then, remembering B.J.’s attachment, “Er—but a verra nice yin for a’ that! I told him he should call in at the garage doon the street, or maybe a stationery store tae pick up a map o’ the area. That should satisfy his curiosity, should it no?”

  To which B.J. nodded, saying, “Aye, I should think so.” But in her heart she suspected that Harry’s “curiosity” wouldn’t be satisfied quite so easily.

  Which was just as well, she supposed—as long as he remembered to look after himself “as best possible.” For B.J. had to admit that so far, and with that one exception in London, Harry had been pretty good not only at looking after himself but just about everything else! Pretty damn good, for a mere man…

  …Aye.

  VI

  It was 10:30, and night’s cloak had long since settled on Edinburgh’s ancient streets and historic buildings. The last faint flush of a departed sun loaned low western hills a fast-fading afterglow, and likewise silhouetted the famous outlines of the city’s towering Castle-on-the-Rock against the deepening black velvet of a sky full of stars.

  It was night and the vampire Mike Milazzo’s time. And only when he rose from his bed in the grubby room where he had languished through all the hours of day in fear and loathing of the yellow curse, the monster whose seething rays on the building’s outer walls—indeed the very knowledge of those rays, of their proximity, with only eleven inches of fragile brickwork to ward them off—had caused his flesh to creep; and only when he had crossed to the room’s small window, half-shuttered his eyes and cringed as he cautiously lifted a corner of dank and mouldering curtain to glimpse beyond the fly-specked pane only the dark of night and sense something of its balming coolness…only then could Mike feel truly secure and breathe more easily—

  —At least until dawn, when the sun would rise again…

  It had not always been this way. In more familiar Sicilian surroundings after those Francezci bastards had taken his blood and turned him, and when the change had taken hold, he’d had at least a little time to get accustomed to the dangers of his condition. But since visiting Bulgaria on the orders of the brothers, and having met “The Chemist,” who was one of their agents, those dangers had not only multiplied but were much more imminent. And even after a week and a half Edinburgh was new to him and strange, while the work he had been tasked to perform was not without its own hazards.

  Getting dressed by the window and continuing to look out on the night, Mike scowled and cursed the fates—but in the main, and for all that they had appointed him their thrall, he cursed the Francezcis. And Mike’s thoughts were poisonous as he remembered the events leading up to this: his punishment, his reason for being here. Mere thoughts, however, could never be as lethally poisonous as Le Manse Madonie’s vampire brothers—nor for that matter as monstrous as the man they had sent him to see in Bulgaria…

  Mike remembered how he had struggled awake in the confines of a cellar under Le Manse Madonie; how he’d surfaced from a drugged stupor to find himself hanging in chains against a damp, nitre-streaked stone wall. And despite that in those first moments of returning awareness he ached in every fibre of his being, still Mike’s first dull reaction before his situation fully dawned on him had been one of relief—that he was still alive!

  Moments later, as his painful stirring caused his chains to clank, a Francezci servant had appeared, nodded his acknowledgement of Mike’s awakening, and moved silently off again into the shadows. Following which, within just a few minutes, the Francezcis had come to visit.

  Barely conscious, Mike’s thoughts had been confused, whirling. His only emotion: that soothing sensation of relief for his continued existence, however precarious that might yet prove to be. So that when at last Anthony had spoken to him, it almost seemed to Mike that the “youthful,” centuried vampire had read his mind:

  “Oh, what’s this? Do I see fear, terror in your eyes, Mike? Now why is that, I wonder? Did I not tell you that we have work for you, a job for which you seem eminently suited? But perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps you’re not the man we took you for, not suited at all! For to find you here, so very weak, strung up in your chains…and afraid?”

  At which Francesco had taken it up. “And so you should be afraid, Mr. Milazzo! How many warnings did you expect? Knowing who we are, and what we are—and what we guard, succour, and feed down there in its pit at the roots of Le Manse Madonie—and for all that you are or should be one of ours, a Francezci thrall, still your behaviour has been intolerable!”

  Anthony had moved closer, narrowing his smouldering yellow eyes and cocking his head a little to one side where he stared as if in fascination at Mike dangling from his chains. Finally he had nodded. “Yes, my brother is quite right: utterly intolerable behaviour! And here in this very house of ours at that! You attempted a second attack on several of our very best men! Either incredibly brave, or unutterably stupid! For unlike you we learn from our mistakes.”

  And at last Mike had found his voice, which sounded from a parched throat and emerged as a strangled croak: “I thought…thought I was a dead man. And it seemed…seemed to me I had no choice but to fight. So I fought, or tried to.”

  “Yes, which gave us no choice!” Francesco had then growled. “Except to knock you out. But in fact we did have a choice: We could have killed you outright and thrown you into the pit…or not killed you but thrown you in there anyway! Which in the end would be the same but even more…unpleasant. Thank your lucky stars that you’re not down there even now!”

  At which, once again, Anthony had taken over from his twin. “You see, Mike, we’ve decided to give you one more chance—one last chance—which is why you’re chained instead of suffering the worst true death that any undead man c
ould possibly imagine. So then, you’re still alive, at least for now, but nevertheless shackled. Why? Because you are too quick off the mark and there may still be a little fight left in you. And if you continue to give us trouble…but no, for we have taken measures to ensure that can’t happen.” From a pocket in his long black coat he had then produced a hypodermic syringe, tapped it twice with a sharp fingernail, and squeezed the plunger to eject a few droplets of glistening fluid.

  And: “No,” Anthony had continued, stabbing the needle into Mike’s arm through the expensive materials of his soiled jacket and sweat-stained shirt, “we can’t afford to have you fight us, for then we’d be obliged to kill you and be done with it! Which would ruin our plans for you. Wherefore, this:” And he had held up the hypodermic again, to let Mike see that it was empty now. “You scarcely felt it at all, did you? A mere bee sting, right? From which you feel no ill effect whatever. Not yet, anyway…”

  Then it had been Francesco’s turn. And his voice had gurgled like thick oil draining from a sump—gurgled with perverse pleasure—when he asked, “Do you recognize the word ‘bubonic,’ Mr. Milazzo? And, in relation to that needle, can you guess the word’s significance? Oh yes! Indeed you can! I see by your suddenly bulging eyes and twitching lips that you know exactly what I’m telling you! But are you also aware that the bubonic plague is yet another way, one of the cruellest ways, for the likes of us, or rather, on this occasion the likes of you, to suffer the true death? What, you didn’t know that? Well now you do!”

  At which Anthony, not to be denied some measure of the sadistic pleasure enjoyed by his twin, had explained that Mike had less than a fortnight to seek an antidote in Bulgaria; to visit their agent there, a man known only as “The Chemist,” who would supply him with the cure and certain instructions, before sending him off to complete his assignment in Edinburgh, Scotland.