by Brian Lumley
Meanwhile:
Finally Fletcher had reacted to the thing that had used a sucker hand to wrench a pane of glass from the window and send it shattering down into the street. He’d reacted—drawn back a pace and gurgled a barely articulate warning—before the hand, now recognizable as a hand, reached in through the empty frame and groped for the catch. But the window was jammed, literally glued shut, locked in position by multiple layers of paint and preservative, and Vavara’s patience was all used up.
A warty something—a body as hideous as the head and face it supported—drew back from the window to swing like a pendulum against the latticework of brittle mullions and transoms, showering glass and splintered wood into the room. And shaping herself in an alien contortion, Vavara followed the debris and flowed erect before Fletcher where he staggered back away from her.
By then, in the doorway, Malinari had lashed out at Cliff Angel, a backhander with a difference. For where just a moment ago Malinari’s hand had been a mass of writhing tubules, crimson with Joe Sparrow’s blood, now it was a hamlike fist whose knuckles had formed into inch-long chitinous thorns. And with the right side of his face gouged to the cheek-and jawbones, its flesh hanging loose in a crimson flap, Angel had issued a bubbling, agonized shriek and gone hurtling across the room.
All of this had happened more or less simultaneously, and Vladimir Androsov, having moved to a spot that was central in the room, had seen, accepted, and finally reacted to it. Cursing and snatching out his Tokarev TT-33, he aimed it at Vavara and jerked off a shot…a bad mistake. For as Cliff Angel had pointed out less than twenty-four hours ago, the Tokarev was an outdated weapon and as such it was liable at times to malfunction. Times such as now.
The gun might have been in perfect working order, but the ammunition definitely wasn’t. Perhaps (Androsov thought, when his weapon made a damp-squib phut! sound, and the bullet stuck in Vavara’s forehead between her eyebrows, making her jerk her head back in shock, but without penetrating to any significant depth), perhaps the ammo was made at the same time as the gun! And after he’d squeezed the trigger a second time it seemed he must be right, for this time there wasn’t even a phut!—just a click as the hammer fell on a dud.
But there was a snarl of fury from the outraged Vavara, as she hurled Fletcher aside, reached up and plucked the offending bullet from her thinly sheathed, bone-plated skull, and headed for Vladimir with blood streaking her leathery, wizened face.
“This one,” she gurgled, batting Vladimir’s gun aside and grasping his throat, “this one is a dead man! I sincerely hope he is not the one you desired to interrogate, Malinari? For if so you’re too late. He has caused me an inconvenience, and now must pay for it.”
“Be my guest,” Malinari answered her. “He’s merely a mentalist, a locator from an outside organization. But the E-Branch locator is that one!” And he made for Fletcher.
So far unscathed, Fletcher saw the leer, the nameless lust, on Malinari’s face and in his flaring eyes. And uttering a cry of sheer terror, he took two staggering steps toward the shattered window. The locator’s intention was obvious: since a hand-to-hand fight with Malinari—or with any of the Wamphyri—was out of the question, he would vault out into the night, risking a broken neck rather than give himself up to whatever this monstrous being held in store for him.
But even as he put a hand on the naked windowsill, Malinari gripped the back of his neck, bringing him to an immediate, abrupt halt. And:
“What?” said Malinari the Mind. “Would you desert me, then, and disappoint me? But no, little man, for there are questions only you can answer. Well, for the time being at least.”
Fletcher felt the iciness of Malinari’s hands, their alien cold, and it was as if his brain had frozen. Turning around in what felt like slow motion, he stared petrified into that leering face, its furnace eyes, and though his life depended on it he couldn’t do a thing to avoid what came next. Vaguely he was aware of a nauseating crunching, and, on the very periphery of his vision, saw the hag Vavara biting pieces out of Vladimir’s broken skull. But by then Lord Malinari’s hands had shifted to Fletcher’s head and an involuntary, agonizing transference had already commenced.
Malinari sucked at him—not blood but thoughts, memories, secrets—and the contents of Fletcher’s brain weren’t simply duplicated but downloaded, removed, and wiped clean. Gone from Fletcher forever, they left a void as bitter cold as the hands that stole them. And absorbed by Malinari, they compressed the contents of his mind into ever tighter corners. The brain is a marvellous vessel that no entirely human being has ever filled to overflowing. But Malinari the Mind was no mere man, and his was a terrible power. Yet even he had limits.
He had the memories of many dozens of men; he “remembered” what they had known, and also recognized them as the source of his fits of madness—those spells that rushed upon him out of nowhere—those shrieking rages that ever more frequently lay outside his control. In Starside that hadn’t mattered too much, but here on Earth it was a problem.
Only give himself over to his furies, his enemies would at once take advantage. Aye, and not only his human enemies. Vavara hated him with all her black heart, and as for Lord Szwart…but who could fathom him? Then again, who could blame them? They were after all Wamphyri; like all their kind, they sought power over others and would destroy “friends” and foes alike—murder them out of hand—if the opportunity presented itself, the time was right, and the means to hand.
But here in this man Fletcher…such secrets were his as to frustrate the efforts of any and every enemy—the secrets of E-Branch and its members: of Trask, Goodly, Chung, and especially of Jake Cutter—and Malinari must have them. It may well cause him almost as much pain as it caused his writhing victim; it was causing him pain, a pounding in his temples that threatened to explode them outwards—but he must go on!
And yes, yes, there it was! Jake Cutter—Necroscope? But what was this? A man who could converse with the dead and call them up out of their graves? A man who knew the runes of space and time, who had the power to move instantaneously from place to place without physically covering the distance between? Not a magician, no, for there was no such thing, but a man who…a man who…what?
Until now engrossed in his own hideous absorbing of Fletcher’s knowledge—with his vibrating pseudopod fingers groping deep into his moaning victim’s ears—suddenly Malinari became aware that something had gone dangerously awry. Halfway across the room the witch Vavara was half woman, half thing where she hunched like a great black bat over the broken corpse of Vladimir Androsov. But beyond her against the wall, another figure was getting to its knees, rising up from the floor.
It was the minder Cliff Angel, his ravaged face a mass of wet redness where Malinari’s blow had flensed it to the bone. But in his hands a deadly weapon, the Keramique with which he was a marksman.
“I don’t know who or what you are, you fucking thing,” he choked the words out, along with blood from the torn corner of his mouth, “but the man who hits Cliff Angel like that has got to expect a reply! Nothing gets me back on my feet faster than being knocked down. So I hope you’re ready for this, fuckface, ’cos here it comes.” And he squeezed the trigger.
Vavara had become aware of Angel even as he spoke; seeing his gun, she gasped aloud, flattened herself down, then hurled herself headlong in his direction with her taloned hands reaching for him. It was self-preservation on Vavara’s part—pure instinct—but hurtling below Angel’s line of fire, her action had left Malinari completely exposed. And in the frozen moment of Angel’s shot he had made a perfect target.
But in that same moment he’d reacted to the threat, and in a lightning-fast movement—with all the savagery and cunning of the Wamphyri—he’d turned Bernie Fletcher’s head directly into the path of the bullet.
And once again Cliff Angel had been right: the Tokarev was no match for the Keramique.
The bullet passed through Fletcher’s right eye, destroying his
brain in its passing, and taking out the back of his skull in a fist-sized chunk. Blood and brain matter spattered Malinari’s face, and his probing fingers felt the projectile’s heat as it turned the subject of his investigation to so much jelly, cutting short the stream of information.
The locator Fletcher was now a “dead weight” in Malinari’s hands. Thrusting his flopping body away, he gave a wild cry of rage and frustration and clapped his slimed hands to his head. Then:
“No, no, no!” he cried, his voice shaking with his passion. “Such knowledge—such secrets, Vavara—all gone now! These stupid…stubborn…people!”
And then, calming himself and pointing a trembling hand at the minder Cliff Angel, lolling in Vavara’s taloned hands, “Is that one finished? For if not, I shall do it myself—but oh-so-very slowly!”
Vavara turned Angel’s body towards Malinari and showed him the pipes torn out of his throat. “Does he look finished?” She grinned with jagged needle teeth and black, leathery lips, and her hag’s features flowed like liquid as they morphed into the face of a beautiful young woman. “And what of us?” she went on. “What did you achieve, Nephran? Did you finish? I take it you did not.”
Malinari took a deep breath and stood up straighter. “Take up that one’s weapon,” he said. “We now have two such and they may prove useful. As for being finished: we are finished here, aye. But even though I failed to get what I wanted—and despite that these people are dead and useless now—still we can use one of them at least, if only as a lure for the others. For these were little fishes, and the big ones are still out there. You and Szwart, you shall yet have your revenge, Vavara, and I shall have what I want.”
“And for now?” She was fully transformed now, all aglow in her false loveliness.
“For now, let’s get downstairs,” he answered. “Lord Szwart will be waiting for us, and these E-Branch people are not very far away. I can sense them.” He sniffed the air. “Their signatures are heavy in the aether. They are using their shields but I can sense that, too. For I know them now, these people. Over the reek of these cadavers, still I can sense them. Very well, go quickly and fetch our vehicle, while I wait with Szwart and attend to things here. And when we go we shall leave our signatures behind, so that E-Branch will know who did this.”
“And so that they’ll follow us?” She curled her lip. “What logic is there in that?”
“Trust me, Vavara,” said Malinari, taking up Bernie Fletcher’s body, tossing it carelessly over his shoulder, and heading for the door. “I want them to follow us. Indeed, I want them to follow us all the way to hell!”
Some twenty minutes later, Ben Trask and his agents drove into the street where the Tundźa hotel stood central, set apart from neighbouring buildings by narrow cobbled alleys that wound away into dismal back-street regions.
But just as they entered the street, Ian Goodly was obliged to pull over to the right, climb the shallow kerb and come to a halt, when an antique fire engine went clanging by, followed by a police vehicle with its strobes flashing and siren blaring.
Down the street a handful of people had gathered; they were gesticulating and pointing excitedly across the road at a burning building. A sign hanging over the entrance to the dilapidated place said TUNDŹA in two languages, Turkish and English.
Coming the other way, and narrowly avoiding the fire engine and police car, a third vehicle—a black estate car—skidded past in a blur of rapid acceleration, careened around a corner, and disappeared into the night. But as it went by—
“What?” said Liz Merrick, frowning. “Can that be the Tundźa there, burning?”
“That’s how it looks,” said Trask, turning to smile at her.
And Lardis Lidesci, seated beside Liz and suddenly puzzled, his wiry black eyebrows coming together in a look of amazement, said, “Eh? Eh? Have you gone stark, staring mad, both of you?”
Liz and Trask—feeling oddly buoyed up—stared at him in surprise bordering on astonishment; likewise the precog, Millie Cleary, and Paul Garvey. And the selfsame thought was in everyone’s mind: what on earth was bothering the Old Lidesci?
Lardis saw it in their faces and snapped, “That must be the Tundźa, yes, and it’s where Bernie Fletcher and those bully-boy minders of his are supposed to be staying!”
“But it will be all right, Lardis,” Paul Garvey assured him straight-facedly. (For Paul’s face was always straight.) “Can’t you see? Everything’s just…just fine…here?” But then he stopped speaking, his eyes went wide and his jaw fell open.
And suddenly the atmosphere in the minibus was electric, as the six espers felt the gradual abatement of Vavara’s aura, and Trask gasped, “No, it damned well isn’t! Nothing’s bloody fine!” And he was first out of the minibus, hurrying past the deserted shops and dwellings toward the blazing Tundźa.
The rest of the team caught up with him when he was stopped by a uniformed policeman, by which time the firemen were breaking in the hotel’s ground-floor shutters, and the fire engine’s hoses were playing feeble streams of water in through the Tundźa’s door. But already it was obvious that the hotel was beyond hope. Flames were gouting from the windows on both main floors, and smoke pouring from gables in what was presumably the attic.
Trask was babbling to the policeman, “We have friends staying here. They could be inside!” And while he explained, Millie was tugging on his arm, trying to get his attention.
“Wait,” said the policeman, holding up his hand. “Please to wait.” Mercifully he spoke reasonable English. Then he shouted something to the closest fireman, who shouted back at him over the roaring of the flames. And:
“This fire she was set,” he said, turning to Trask. “Smell the kero? Plenty kero. These old places use the kerosene—er, for the generators? Bad electricity. Often the breakdown.” And he shrugged. “Your friends: if they there, I think they coming out the windows. No come, maybe not there. I hoping not there! You stay at Tundźa?” He looked at Trask enquiringly.
“No,” Trask shook his head. “We just got here, to meet our friends. We go to look at your…er, your ancient things?”
“Ah! The anti-tikkies!” said the other.
“The what?” Trask didn’t at first understand. But then he did, and said, “Oh! The antiquities! Yes—yes, of course.”
“Please excusing,” said the policeman. “Please be waiting here.” And he went to use the police car’s radio.
Finally Millie had Trask’s attention. “That black car, the one that skidded by us just after Ian stopped: Liz says it was them. She says it was Vavara performing one of her illusions.”
Trask knew immediately what she meant and said, “Of course it was, and who would know it better than Liz? She’s been there and done that on Krassos. As for Lardis: he’s Szgany. They have built-in protections against Wamphyri mentalism, and that’s why it didn’t work on him. But where’s Liz now?”
Looking back toward the minibus, he saw Liz leaning against the wall of a shop, apparently propping herself up. But when he saw how she held her hands to her temples, he knew at once what she was doing.
“Damnation!” he gasped, striding towards her.
But Paul Garvey and the precog got to her first, and Garvey said, “It’s all right, Ben—we’ll cover her, shield her. She’s trying to track those alien bastards.”
“I know damn well what Liz is doing!” Trask burst out. “And I also know that if she carries on like that she’ll get herself in a whole mess of trouble!”
Millie was hot on Trask’s heels. Applying her telepathy and adding her shields to Garvey’s, she said, “It’s okay, it’s okay…he’s not probing back. I can’t feel a thing out there, only back here.” She was talking about Malinari, of course. Wherever he was now, he wasn’t using his mentalism; there was no hint of telepathic intrusion.
But Trask picked up on something else that she’d said: that there was something “back here.” And now he snapped, “Mindsmog? Is that what you mean? Where?”
“Szwart?”
Millie nodded. “I couldn’t be mistaken. I’ve been too close to that dreadful thing once before. His signature is a stench!”
As she spoke, Ian Goodly staggered and uttered a small warbling cry. It was a momentary thing, and he quickly straightened up. But again Trask knew what it signified.
“What is it?” he barked, taking the precog’s arm and steadying him. “What did you see?”
“Fire!” Goodly gasped. “I saw Bernie’s face—a dead face, Ben—surrounded by flames. He was melting, burning!”
“The Tundźa!” Trask gasped, turning and making to run back towards the blazing hotel. But Goodly clung to him and said:
“No, not there. He’s not there, Ben. Not any longer.”
“Then where?” Trask’s face was ruddy, glaring in the light from the fire.
“I…I don’t know,” Goodly said. “It was like a scene out of a nightmare. And there were…there were girls behind him, back beyond the flames. Girls, Ben, and they were laughing and dancing a weird, frozen dance!”
“What?” Trask shook his head in dismay. “What in hell does that mean?”
But the precog had no answers; he could only offer a shrug of apology and blink those sad undertaker’s eyes of his, those eyes that shone with tomorrow’s light.
Then the policeman came hurrying toward them. “I Inspector Burdur,” he said. “Ali Bey Burdur. I needing descriptions your friends, their names and so on and so forth. You are coming to police station with me. But not worrying, is not the big problem. You will following my car? On the way we make one stop.”