Avengers

by Brian Lumley

  Jake’s tone and expression hadn’t changed, as now he said, “So, you’ve read about the shots.” Then, wanting them to know, he dropped his shields and looked at Liz, Millie, and Paul Garvey. Since it was an invitation, they looked and saw what was on his mind.

  Millie turned pale in a moment, but in the next she said, “It still doesn’t prove a thing, Jake.”

  And Liz took his hand and told him, “Don’t even think it!”

  “Don’t think what?” Trask growled, knowing that something was very wrong here.

  Jake opened his mouth to speak, but Millie at once cut him off and said, “Jake, let me tell him.”

  Shaking his head, he answered, “I’m the one who could have a problem. So it’s my place to talk about it.”

  “But you’re not the only one who might have it,” she said. And as simply as that a great weight was taken from his shoulders—the weight of loneliness, of being on his own—for he knew what she meant, which until now he’d scarcely considered.

  “What the hell is everbody talking about?” the Old Lidesci snapped. And Trask said:

  “For pity’s sake, spit it out!”

  Millie looked him straight in the eye and said, “Those jabs or shots or whatever, and the itching blisters they’re supposed to raise? Well, mine didn’t.” And:

  “Nor mine,” said the Necroscope.

  Finally Trask saw the “truth” of it and supposed he’d understood what they were saying all along but hadn’t dared admit it, not even to himself. And even now—now that it was out in the open—he didn’t intend to let it interfere with what they were doing here.

  “So what’s that supposed to mean?” he blustered. “What does it change, eh? Nothing. So you believed you had a small measure of protection and now it’s gone. So what? Nothing can guarantee complete protection against these ugly bastards!”

  “That’s not it, Ben,” said Millie. “Not all of it, but only a small part of it. And you know it.”

  And that was true, too. After she and Jake had taken their first trip together in the Möbius Continuum, they’d been informed of their immunity as a result of the shots they’d had, Jake in Australia and Millie in London. That had given them peace of mind. But now…now it appeared their shots had been invalid. Likewise their peace of mind. And probably everyone else’s.

  Trask sank down in his chair a little—also in his soul—and said, “Jake, what’s the damage? Have you checked it out?”

  Jake nodded. “On my way here,” he said. “It didn’t take any time at all, not in the Möbius Continuum. I stopped at a future-time door, looked through it, saw my blue thread winding out of me into tomorrow.”

  “And?” said Trask.

  “And…I don’t know,” Jake’s hands made an ambiguous gesture. “My thread’s still blue. But the taint, the red stain…I couldn’t be sure. It might have gained a little ground. There isn’t any sure way I can measure it.”

  “Well, you were sure enough that you felt safe to come here to us!” Liz burst out, clutching at his arm.

  And Ian Goodly said, “You didn’t actually go in through the door, did you? You didn’t venture into the future?”

  “No,” Jake shook his head. “I accept now that you know what you’re talking about, you and Harry Keogh both. What’s the good of looking for trouble if you can’t avoid it?”

  “Exactly,” said the precog. “No good at all.”

  “But of course there is a way to put your mind at rest once and for all,” said Millie. “Or if not yours, mine.”

  At which Trask, knowing what she meant, immediately came in with, “We’ve tried that once and it proved absolutely nothing.” And now, for all that his voice was rough, there was fear in it and even desperation.

  “But that was then,” said Millie, “and enough time has gone by that it might be worth checking again. I was trapped down in that underworld a lot longer than Jake, so it’s far more likely I would get infected than him. Another short trip in the Möbius Continuum with Jake could put everyone’s mind at rest. We could go take a look through that future-time door again—this time paying particular attention to my thread—and if I’m still in the clear then surely Jake must be.”

  At which Goodly uttered a small inarticulate cry and rocked back in his chair, which promptly gave way beneath him. He went sprawling, and Garvey, closest to him, was quickly at his side, helping him to sit up.

  “What is it?” Trask was next to kneel beside the dazed precog. “What did you see?”

  Goodly shook his head as if to clear it, blinked at Garvey and Trask, managed to get to his feet. Millie helped steady him into her chair, and Trask sat down beside him, with his hand on the precog’s arm. “You saw something, I know you did,” he said. “What was it, Ian? What’s the future got in store for us now?”

  Slowly the dazed, disoriented look left Goodly’s face, and he gripped Trask’s hand tightly. But before he could speak the waiter came running with a tray of sandwiches and drinks.

  “Ah, the accident!” he said, putting the tray on the table. “I am seeing it! The faulty chair! I am so sorry!”

  “It’s okay,” Trask told him. “He’ll be okay.” And when the waiter had left: “Ian, you did see something, right?”

  “Yes,” Goodly nodded, still visibly shaken. “I saw the end of things, Ben. I saw what was…what was probably the end of me!” Naturally pale, now the precog was as sallow and sallower than Trask and his people had ever seen him, his face as gaunt as a funerary mask stripped of its gold.

  “The end of things?” Trask repeated him. “Of you? What are you trying to say, Ian? Describe what you saw.”

  There were other tables out on the lawn; a number of travellers had seen Goodly’s fall and were beginning to look interested in Trask’s team, in these strange, serious-looking people at the crowded table.

  “We should take the food and leave,” said Liz. “Too many of these people are starting to wonder about us. I can hear them.”

  “Me, too,” said Millie. “Over there—that group of four—it’s a Bulgarian policeman and his family. The man doesn’t much care for foreigners. He’s off duty right now, but he’s thinking about coming over and checking us out anyway. Things could get complicated.”

  “Damn it to hell!” Trask muttered. “Okay, leave some money and we’ll go.”

  “Money?” said Garvey, looking at Liz and Millie curiously, but without putting a strain on his ill-matched features. “You mean Bulgarian money? We haven’t changed from our Turkish liras yet! And paying in plastic will only slow us down.”

  But now the waiter was back, and he saw Trask staring at a bundle of Turkish banknotes in his hand. “Is good,” he said at once, taking the notes, counting off some small denominations, and handing the was back. “Is no problem the exchanging.”

  “Thanks,” said Trask, giving him a little extra.

  And in a few breathless moments—which seemed to take as many hours—they managed to bundle the precog out of the beer garden and across the parking lot to the minibus…

  Paul Garvey drove, with Jake and Liz sitting alongside and the others in the back. And again Trask asked Goodly, “Now can you tell us what that was all about, Ian? What knocked you off your chair like that? The end of things? That sounds pretty ominous to me. What exactly did you see?”

  “Exactly?” said the precog, more in control of himself now. “It doesn’t work like that, Ben, not always. Anyway, we were in a dark place—or maybe not so much dark as confined. To me it came over as dark. As to what I saw: oh, I saw things, alright! But there were sounds, too. And despite that it was jumbled, it was all so real that I could almost…almost smell them!”

  “Them?” Trask grasped his arm. “The Wamphyri?”

  Goodly nodded. “But especially him, Malinari!”

  “Go on,” Trask urged him. “I promise not to interrupt.”

  And the precog began telling what he remembered of it:

  “It was dark and enclosed, or t
hat was my perception of it. But don’t rely on that; it could be figurative, or symbolic. I sensed that we were all there together—wherever—in close proximity. But so were the Wamphyri, all three of them.”

  “What about those sounds?” said Trask, his promise already forgotten. “What did you hear?”

  “Screams,” said the other, “from not too far away, but distorted by…by angles? Shapes? Anyway, they were death cries, Ben! The sounds of people dying in agony. It was like…like the gloom was alive, but alive with death? It sounds insane, I know that, but that’s how it felt: as if we were trapped in an unlit madhouse, and all the maniacs running loose.”

  “Go on,” said Trask, as Goodly paused to moisten his lips.

  “Then things quickly changed,” said the precog, glancing at Liz and Jake in the front seats. “There was gunfire…but not ordinary gunfire. It was loud, deafening, devastating. Malinari had Liz; she was struggling with him, desperate to get away.”

  “And where was I?” said the Necroscope, turning to stare at Goodly wide-eyed and apprehensive. “Was I there at all?”

  “You were there…and you weren’t,” said Goodly.

  “What?” Jake snapped. Fearful for Liz, his anger was mounting. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Either I was or I wasn’t. And if I wasn’t, then where the hell else would I be?”

  “Don’t take it out on me, Jake!” Goodly threw up his hands. “I didn’t see it all. And what I did see happened in—I don’t know—in a weird, fast-moving, kaleidoscopic fashion. It’s so easy to confuse the order of things. I mean, you can’t read the future like a book. The chapters can get all tangled, and occasionally the first few pages come last!”

  Jake calmed down and said, “Go on anyway. Tell us more.”

  “I…I think Szwart had got you trapped,” said the precog. “That was before you…before you weren’t there.”

  “You mean he’d taken me somewhere?” Jake was frowning, trying hard to understand.

  “Maybe,” Goodly answered. “Maybe that’s it. I think so, but I don’t know! It was all gunfire, madness, and mayhem—like a very bad dream.” Mentally exhausted, he sighed and slumped down in his seat. But they weren’t finished with him yet.

  “Hey, Ian,” said Paul Garvey, keeping his eyes on the road. “How did I figure in all this?”

  “I know you were there,” said Goodly, “and I think you were in some kind of trouble, but that’s all. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, great!” said the telepath, with a shiver in his voice.

  “And is that it?” said Trask.

  “That’s about it,” Goodly answered. “The only other thing I remember is Malinari again. He called me a ‘scryer,’ laughed at me and said that for all my alleged talent I hadn’t seen any of this coming! I think he may have been bleeding, but nothing too serious. And he slopped some of his blood on me. I think he hit me with something. But hit, or maybe bit…I just don’t know. And after that darkness, and then nothing…nothing at all. I must have passed out, and that’s when I toppled my chair.”

  “Christ!” said Trask, under his breath.

  But Jake wanted to know, “When you say Szwart ‘took’ me, is that ‘figurative or symbolic,’ too? Or are you really saying I’m not going to survive this?”

  “You can’t ask me things like that, Jake.” Goodly shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I won’t second-guess the future…”

  “When?” said Trask. “Tonight? Tomorrow? Any idea at all?”

  “I can’t be precise,” said the other, “but it would have to be soon. Yes, it would have to be very soon.”

  And Lardis, silent until now, said, “Was I there, precog?”

  Goodly looked at him and said, “Yes, all of us were there.”

  And now the Old Lidesci spoke to Jake. “Son, I’ve liked you from the beginning. You remind me of the other Necroscopes. Oh, you’re different, yet you’re the same, too. The dead asked favours of them, but apparently the dead don’t know you as well as they knew Harry, Nathan, and The Dweller. So it’s me the living asking a favour of you now. Since you’re the one who stands the most chance of surviving what’s coming, promise me this: if you do get out alive you’ll tell my Lissa how I’ve always loved her and always will. For that’s the way it is, isn’t it? What we’ve done in life, we’ll continue to do in death?”

  “But no one needs die!” Ian Goodly suddenly piped, his normally high-pitched voice even higher, shriller. “We can bring it all to a halt right now, turn around, go back the way we came!”

  “Oh?” said Trask grimly. “And is that the way it works? Did I really hear you say that, Ian? You, of all people? The precog himself? The one who has always insisted that what will be has been, and what has been seen will be? Or is this sheer desperation?”

  And in the front of the vehicle Paul Garvey said, “We can’t turn back now in any case. We’ve already managed to arouse this fellow’s suspicions more than enough.”

  “What?” said Trask. “What do you mean? Whose suspicions?”

  Looking out of the rear window, Millie answered for Garvey and said: “It’s the policeman from the guesthouse. Him and his family. They’re behind us in that beat-up Volkswagen. And he’s still wondering about us.”

  “I don’t have my passport,” said Jake. “And even if I did, it wouldn’t be franked.”

  “Time you were gone from here,” Trask told him. “If we get stopped we’ll plead ignorance about you. Let’s face it, if this nosy bastard counted seven of us and it turns out there’s only six—well, obviously he miscounted.”

  “Okay,” said Jake, ducking down a little in his front seat. “But the next time you have Liz call me, make sure it’s a secure location and I’ll bring the weapons with me.”

  “That’s agreed,” said Trask. “And however things go it will be before nightfall. And now you’d better get out of here. That car’s starting to overtake.”

  “Understood,” said Jake, crouching down a little more, into a Möbius door that he’d conjured under the minibus’s dashboard. Turning around as his body disappeared, he looked up at Liz who bent to kiss his face.

  Then she drew back as he passed beyond sight. And much like the Cheshire cat in Alice, the last thing to go was Jake’s half-grin, half-grimace.

  The ancient Volkswagen drew up alongside and began to overtake, its driver looking across, frowning at Paul Garvey in the minibus’s driver’s seat. Garvey looked back at him, pulled over a little, waved him on. And the car passed by, accelerated, and began to pull away.

  “Ease off, but gently,” Trask told Garvey. “Let him go.”

  And Millie said, “It’s okay. He’s satisfied that we’re not quite as weird- and suspicious-looking as he first suspected.”

  “So Jake needn’t have left us,” said Liz regretfully.

  But Trask, relieved that he’d gone, told her, “It’s just as well. We must be a big enough presence in the psychosphere without having Jake along. Anyway—and as Ian has pictured it for us oh-so-graphically—Jake will be with us for the Big One. At least part of the time, anyway.”

  “The Big One?” growled Lardis then. “I can remember another time when you knew a Big One was coming.”

  Trask nodded. “That was on Sunside/Starside,” he said gloomily. But then he brightened and added, “We didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell then, either, but we came through it.”

  And the precog said, “I’d be obliged if everyone would forget what I said about turning back. You’re quite right, Ben: it was fear, desperation. I panicked and felt like a cornered rat; I was instinctively looking for a way out, despite that I know it doesn’t work that way. What I saw is how it will be.”

  “Maybe sooner than you think,” said Liz from the front.

  “Come again?” said Trask.

  “Up ahead,” said Liz, “on a heading just a little bit east of north, perhaps—I don’t know—twenty-five or thirty miles in front of us? That’s where they are.”

  �
��You’re right,” said Millie, her eyes shuttered, eyelashes fluttering, and her brow furrowed in concentration. “It’s them, alright. And they’ve stopped moving.”

  “What?” said Trask, utterly perplexed. “What the hell is it with you two? Are you suddenly locators or what?”

  “Maybe it’s because we’ve done so much work in tandem,” Liz answered, looking back. And:

  “That could be it,” said Millie. “But whatever it is, we’re definitely getting good at it!”

  And Paul Garvey at the wheel said, “I can see I’ll soon be out of business. Just a second-rater compared to you ladies.”

  At which Trask felt a sudden chill—a sure sign or symptom of his talent in action—but he didn’t know where it had come from or what it meant. All he knew was that there was a “truth” here somewhere, and that he shouldn’t have missed it.

  But he had, perhaps because he really didn’t want to recognize it…

  In Jambol there was a major Y junction, with roads heading off in both northwest and northeasterly directions. This wasn’t a problem; Liz and Millie were as one in their decision, and when Garvey linked with them telepathically, he readily agreed their choice of route. “The northeast fork it is,” he said.

  Trask looked at his map and said, “Karnobat.”

  “Eh?” Lardis Lidesci grunted. “What’s that you say?”

  “The name of a town,” Trask told him. “And it fits right in with the distance Liz specified.”

  “Karnobat?” said Garvey, still driving. “Not only that, but it’s pretty descriptive, too. A carnivorous bat. In fact, three of them!”

  “Well, that’s where they are,” said Liz and Millie together. “And as for their mindsmog, they’re not even trying to hide it. They have to be laying a trail for us, it’s as simple as that.”

  “Ian.” Trask turned to the precog. “You said it was dark—in your forecast, I mean.”

  “I said it felt dark,” said the other. “But that might have been my interpretation, the colour of my mood, the sheer terror that the vision inspired in me.”