by Brian Lumley
The coastguard vessel made smoke where she lolled port-side on to the narrow strip of sandy beach that fronted Jethro Manchester’s island. Apparently crippled, she rocked this way and that in the gentle wavelets of the night surf. On her starboard side, hidden by the cabin, an SAS man aimed his flamethrower at the sky and fired short-lived bursts of flame above the cabin’s roof. As viewed from the island, it would seem for certain that the ruddily lit boat was on fire; even as her keel bit into the sand, so a signal flare made a starburst high in the sky.
Also in the sky, but not so very high now — indeed, wheeling in low over the ocean’s horizon — Chopper Two’s pilot saw the starburst and told his crew:
‘We’re over the island. I can see the boat “burning” down there, and the lights of the villa in the trees. So this is it. Jump to it as soon as we touch down. I’ll be airborne and waiting for you when you get done. You can whistle me down. I mean, you know how to whistle, don’t you? Good luck, guys!’
Dark figures were running up the beach as the chopper came down, and a faint waft of garlic tainted the night air…
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO The Storming
Situated one hundred and sixty yards from where the coastguard vessel had beached, and set well back from the high-water mark behind massively thick, fortress-like rock walls in four acres of landscaped rockeries and gardens watered from a small desalination unit, Jethro Manchester’s two-storey villa was a luxurious, custom-built dwelling.
Standing central on a jutting promontory, the house was of timber and natural stone, mainly fossilized coral. It had been built from imported teak and dynamited rubble from a channel blasted through to a rocky inlet on the other side of the promontory. In style it was part sprawling Roman villa, part Austrian chalet. Manchester’s yacht — by his standards a ‘modest’ thirty-five footer — was moored in a roofed-over lock in the artificial channel, midway between the villa and the sea.
These features were visible from the air, where at five hundred feet Chopper Two’s pilot stood his machine off like a hawk and viewed them through its eyes, sensitive night-vision scanners. Every few seconds he would flip a switch to convert his screen to infrared and thermal imaging. All of the men on the ground were wearing headsets; the pilot was able to talk to them individually or as a group.
All subterfuge had been thrown to the wind now; the airborne party was safely down, and the boat had landed its
crew without hindrance. Now the task force would deploy into a semicircle to isolate the promontory, and move in on the house. If the target group had seen the boat’s ‘fire’ or emergency flare — or if they had heard the chopper’s low, prowler-mode throb and came out of the house to see what was happening or perhaps to take defensive action — then the men on the ground would be able to answer the threat without fear of firing on each other.
With his machine on autopilot, the pilot’s attention was rapt on his viewers. For now, in addition to the central, gently fluctuating orange glow of the house, the dark-green terrain of his screen was lit by smaller blobs of human heat.
He saw two figures, fast-moving and crouching low, about to leave the narrow strip of beach and enter an area of landscaped rocks and foliage east of the villa. They were heading for one of the regular breaks in the wall. And the pilot knew that the four-man boat party had split into two two-man teams. This was one of them; they would be equipped with their usual weapons, and one of them would be carrying a flamethrower.
But as the pilot scanned ahead of them, suddenly, as if from nowhere, he picked up two more figures. They were in the shrubbery or under cover of the trees, but they were making a lot of heat! The writhing, blob-like shapes on the screen merged, drew apart, melted together again… a repetitious, oddly sexual-looking activity. The men from the boat were heading directly towards it and at some speed, and the pilot was almost too late to advise them:
‘Boat party east of the house. There’s some fucking thing directly ahead of you!’ He couldn’t know it but he was absolutely right.
On the ground, the NCOs spied sudden, apparently startled movement. It was dark, but not that dark, and the almost luminous tangle of flesh on a blanket under the bower-like branches of a tall, flowering shrub was unmistakable: the naked figures of a couple making love. Or they had been but now sprang apart.
‘What the… P’The man sat upright, and the girl tried to cover herself and gave a small, warbling cry. The scene was so authentic and natural, and the couple seemed so vulnerable, it was the SAS men who were taken by surprise.
‘Bloody hell… I’ said one of them, his jaw falling open. And his companion actually turned aside the barrel of his weapon a little, deflecting it from the pair and easing his finger off the trigger. Surprise, yes — momentary disorientation and confusion — the only advantage a vampire could ever ask for or require. And:
‘Oh, thank God!’ cried the girl, as she threw herself forward and sprawled at the feet of one of the soldiers. ‘Help me! Please help me! He was raping me!’ A lie, which of course fell naturally from her lips.
But at the same time the naked man’s arm swept up, to aim and fire a short-barrelled, compressed-air speargun. The spearhead was a trident with four-inch tines; all three of them took the off-guard soldier in his throat. And gurgling, clawing one-handed at the short spear in his crimson-spurting neck, he fell over backward and let loose a burst of automatic fire uselessly into the sky.
The other soldier had reached down almost instinctively to lift the girl to her feet. But even in the act of gathering her up he saw his colleague shot, and simultaneously the feral yellow fire in the naked man’s eyes as he flowed sinuously upright and drew back his arm to use the speargun as a club.
No further reminder was necessary. The soldier cursed and put the naked girl aside, then opened up with a burst of explosive shells that lifted the vampire from his feet, ripped into him in mid-air, and threw him backward into the shrub. There he hung in a tangle of crushed foliage, until branches snapped and he fell to the ground. And as he sat there — groping among his own intestines and mewling his undead agony — so the gibbering NCO cursed again and put a single shell right between his eyes.
The contents of the vampire’s head went every which way as the shrub collapsed on him.
Meanwhile the downed man had stopped writhing and tugging at the spear in his throat; he lay dead still, dead of shock or from choking on his own blood.
And the girl had disappeared into the night…
Fleeing, sobbing, gasping for air — with her sliced feet leaving a trail of blood on the often jagged stones — Julie Lennox somehow managed to avoid the second pair of men from the coastguard vessel, and came across Jake and Lardis instead. With her night eyes, the eyes of a vampire, she saw them before they saw her: an old man and his younger colleague, in the garden, keeping low and making their way silently toward the house. And she remembered some advice that she’d been given:
‘When they come, and they will come,’ (Martin Trennier had told Jethro Manchester and his small family group just an hour or so ago), ‘there won’t be any mercy. They’ll come to kill you. And while you might not believe it now, you won’t want them to! For you have a Great Vampire’s blood in you, and in its own way it is alive, too. It wants to live, and it won’t let you commit suicide — which means that you can’t simply give yourselves up to these men. Ergo, you’ll fight. And the more of them that you kill, the longer you’ll stay alive.’
With which he had rammed a handful of shells deep into the magazine of an ugly pump-action shotgun, and jerked once on its heavy wooden stock to arm it, before continuing:
‘Now, while I know that some of you are still fighting the good fight, the fact is we can grow strong on our enemies — on the blood of our enemies — and the stronger we grow, the better our chances of survival. So that’s it, now you know what to do. I have nothing more to say, except that I for one intend to survive. So go on, get busy. Prepare yourselves with whatever grit or cunning
your vampire blood has bestowed, arm yourselves with whatever weapons you can find, and wait. It’s just as simple as that.’
But in fact it wasn’t simple at all. Simple, perhaps, for Martin Trennier, one of the first taken by Aristotle Milan and utterly in thrall to him, but not for Julie; not now that Alan Manchester, Jethro’s son, was dead. Julie and Alan… how they had loved each other, and how desperately hard they had fought to cling to their humanity. But all in vain.
Alan had turned first, and now he was dead and gone, taken from her, and these merciless invaders were responsible — weren’t they? Deep in her heart, she knew they weren’t; and yet, as moment by moment Trennier’s words made more sense, so the vampire essence in Julie’s system worked on her, turning her, too.
Trennier had done it to her, done it to them all: a simple bite was all it took — and time. For Trennier was barely a lieutenant himself, and a weak one at that. Made by Milan, he had been given a minimum of essence, and so he’d been a thrall for long and long. But as the evil had grown in him, so he’d taken on stature, guile, strength. And thus he’d become Milan’s lieutenant, to watch over the Manchesters on their island retreat. Or as it was now, their prison.
When they had known their end was near, Julie and Alan had come out into the night, into the garden, to make love just one last time. They hadn’t reckoned on being found so quickly, that was all. Not in their own secret place, in the garden, on their prison island. Their prison, yes… indeed, their death cell.
Or perhaps not. For as the blood is the life, so there was plenty of hot blood in these two men. And without warning, suddenly Julie caught herself licking her lips in anticipation. At which she knew that it was too late for her, and that it always had been. But strangely — and as swiftly as that — she no longer cared, for she was now awake! As for what had awakened her:
Perhaps it had been the sight and salty smell of Alan Manchester’s blood, or that of the soldier whom he’d shot with his speargun, or both. Which-, or whatever, it had acted on Julie as a catalyst, and now the ‘good fight’ was over. She was what she was and would do what she must do. She moved like a wraith towards the two men, got behind them where they crept carefully forward, making for the villa’s lights.
She got closer and closer to them, her hands raised, with nails like poisonous claws — indeed, they were poisonous claws — poised and ready to strike…
… But in that same moment Julie found herself betrayed, and by three things:
One, the full moon, emerging from behind fleeting clouds, to sweep a silver swath over the sea and the land. Two, by the sharp stutter of automatic gunfire, sounding from a short distance to the west. And three, by a watchful, dragonfly spy-in-the-sky, hovering on high as it sent an urgent message to Julie’s would-be victims:
‘Central team. Why are there three of you? Do you have a tail?’ Fading in and out, the pilot’s words were hard to read.
Lardis didn’t understand the message, but Jake, startled by the gunfire and the near-distant cries that accompanied it, turned and saw…
… A girl? A distraught, naked girl?
For seeing him beginning his turn, Julie had drawn back, shrunk down into herself, begun to sob and scream. ‘I was in the house,’ she sobbed, trying to cover herself as if ashamed of her nakedness. ‘They kept me prisoner there. But when they heard your helicopter they stopped watching me, and I… and… I… oh!’
She feigned a swoon, and Jake — forgetting all that he’d seen, all that he’d been told — put up his weapon and stepped forward.
She clung to him for a moment, this beautiful girl, who was naked and frightened and so pale in the flooding light of the moon… so pale and so cold. This girl whose grip on his combat suit was like iron, and whose nose was suddenly wrinkling suspiciously as she smelled garlic, and whose eyes were a reflective yellow, sulphurous in the night!
Julie held the front of his jacket bunched in one hand, drew back the other hand until Jake saw its nails, sharpened and bevelled to gouges that would cut bloody channels in his face as easily as a routing machine! And her awful smile: the way her lips curled back from gleaming teeth.
Jake tried to bring his machine-pistol to bear, to centre its muzzle on Julie’s body. But she was faster; she knocked it away, out of his grasp. And now her ‘smile’ was a fixed, nightmarish grimace — but whether of horror or of pleasure in her own terrible strength, Jake couldn’t say. Nor could he do anything about it.
But Lardis could.
An ‘old man,’ Lardis Lidesci had been ignored and almost forgotten by the girl. A mistake, for he was an old man with a difference. He was the Old Lidesci, and not nearly as naive as Jake. Not in the ways of vampires.
Jake saw that slender, incredibly strong hand lift up before his face, tried to draw back from it and couldn’t. He saw the fingers crook, could almost feel their rake, and knew that he was going to feel it. But then, in a moment, the look on her face changed. And she sighed.
She sighed, then smiled again, but a real smile now. And a dribble of blood spilled from the corner of her mouth. Her hand straightened out — reached out to touch his face — but just a touch, almost a caress. Then her grip relaxed, her eyes rolled up, and she toppled away from him.
Lardis Lidesci stood ten feet away, but his machete stood much closer than that; it stood up from the girl’s back, where it had split her spinal column.
‘Get your gun,’ Lardis growled, and Jake began to breathe again after what had seemed like an hour of holding his breath. ‘Get your gun and put it in her mouth… and finish it.’
Jake was numb; his hands were numb as he took up his machine-pistol. ‘But…’ he started to say.
‘But nothing!’ Lardis snarled. ‘Do it, and be sure to turn your face away.’
Just before Jake did it, Julie stopped her fitful, agonized writhing, saw the weapon’s muzzle approaching her face, said something that Jake couldn’t hear, just a breath of air. But he was sure that her lips formed the words, ‘Thank you…’
By then there was plenty of shouting and shooting, the hissing of flamethrowers, great gouts of fire and columns of smoke, all of it towards the centre of the promontory, at the villa itself. And full moon or none, it would have made no difference; bright orange and yellow flames were leaping, and all the shadows cast back in Jethro Manchester’s gardens and rockeries.
Lardis and Jake were the last to get there, but two of the SAS men would never get there. Close to the house, itself burning, they came across W.O. II Joe Davis and one of his men. The NCO had a flamethrower and was watching the house. Davis was on one knee, looking at a pair of crumpled figures. His hands kept reaching, and drawing back without touching. And his hands were trembling.
‘Get up from there,’ said Lardis. ‘Back away. Let me see.’
Davis looked up at Lardis through moist eyes; he was holding on, but only just, to would-be runaway emotions. His Adam’s apple rose and fell, rose and fell, as he fought not to betray himself. ‘Old man,’ he said, his voice on the point of breaking. ‘I trained this man, this boy. He was one of mine. But I didn’t train him for this.’
Lardis pulled him away, muttering, ‘What could anyone have taught him? There is no training for this kind of thing, except on the field of battle. The trouble with that is we only learn when we lose.’
He looked at the mess on the ground. Part of it, the body of a mature woman in a once-white dress, was a mound of raw red flesh. Riddled with bullets — some of which had exploded — she had been torn apart from within. Her face wasn’t there, and her lower body seemed to have burst outwards. Lying under her where she’d fallen, a young soldier in combat clothing stared blindly up into the sky. His brains had been split by a bright shining cleaver that was still buried in his skull.
But even as Lardis looked, the woman’s arms twitched where they clasped her victim, and one foot shuddered and vibrated in a shoe with a broken heel. Jerkily, spastically, her chest rose and fell, as bubbles formed in the liqu
id red mask of her face.
‘Did you touch… any of this?’ Lardis looked up at Davis. The other shook his head. Then Lardis stood up, stood back, and turned to the man with the flamethrower. ‘Burn it,’ he said.
The man looked at his leader, who in turn looked at Lardis almost pleadingly. And Lardis said, ‘Their blood is mixed. Your man’s corpse is contaminated. Take no chances. Burn it all…’
As they moved away from the heat and the stench, Davis got hold of his emotions and said, Tve got men on both sides, in front and at the back of the house. No one’s getting out of there. As far as I know that woman was only our second kill. My kill. God help me, I did that to her!’
‘No/ Lardis shook his grisly head. ‘Don’t ask your god for help. She needed help, and you gave it to her. Also, it was the third kill. We’ve done one, too. A girl, back there in the garden. So you’re not the only one who’s feeling sick.’
And Jake said, ‘Who was the other?’
‘When I killed… that one,’ Davis answered, with a glance over his shoulder, ‘there was a scream from the house. A man in a gable window; he ranted and raved at us, tore his hair like a madman. Can’t say I blame him. I think the woman must have been his wife. One of my lads fired a grenade in there with him, and it blew the gable to hell. Whoever he was, I’m guessing he went with it. But if he didn’t he’ll burn anyway. Look.’
They looked back, and by then the front of the villa was an inferno. ‘It’ll be the same at the back,’ said the Warrant Officer. ‘They have orders to raze it.’
‘But that still leaves three to go,’ said Jake.
‘Two/ a voice called out, as a man came stumbling from the shadows. He was very pale, and he was carrying his own weapons, someone else’s, and a flamethrower. ‘I got a young guy — I blew the fucker’s head off! — but not before he got Bill Powers. My old mate’s dead!… But there was a girl, too. She got away.’ ‘No/ Jake shook his head. ‘She didn’t.’ And: ‘Two to go/ said Lardis. ‘But where are they?’ Right on cue, their radio headsets came alive in a crackle of static like frying bacon. And: ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ a frantic voice called. ‘Can’t anyone fucking hear me?’