by Brian Lumley
And in a little while Vavara said, “You paint pretty pictures, Nephran. Let’s hope that’s not all they are. But in any case, it will be worth it just to take possession of that girl again. I had such plans for that pretty face of hers, ahhh!”
“But remember,” said Malinari, hurriedly, “that she is to be the bait in the trap, the lure to bring Jake Cutter out of hiding. You may not harm her. Only damage her—vampirize her—and the game is over. This Jake kills vampires; that is his purpose, his reason for being. Yes, and I am sure that he and E-Branch would kill Liz, too, if she were one of ours, one of us.”
“And so he’s in hiding, then, this Jake Cutter?” said Vavara. “And does he hide from us? Not much of a threat there, I think!”
“Oh?” said Malinari. “And did you see him on Krassos? No, but he was there. At the end, I sensed him. His signature…it’s quite unmistakable. And that girl, Liz: you thought that she must be dead—locked in the boot of your vehicle, which you saw plunge into the sea after you’d been thrown free. Now tell me this: how do suppose she survived? Who do you suppose saved her?”
“I understand your reasoning,” Vavara answered, her voice purring now, not from pleasure but from anticipation and vicious, unnatural lust, “and you needn’t fear on my account. No, for we shall make one last bargain, you and I. You shall have this Jake Cutter—all according to your plan, yes—but the girl shall be mine. In return I shall promise not to harm her…at least until we’re back on Starside. As for these powers which you say you’ll share with Szwart and myself: well, make sure that you do. Only renege on your promise and you’ll have both of us on your neck. You may have my measure, Nephran Malinari, but Szwart’s? And the two of us together? I doubt it.”
“So be it,” said Malinari. And with a slight bow from the waist, he swept towards the timbered stairwell.
Vavara watched him step down into the gloom below, step by step lowering himself from view. But just before he disappeared their scarlet gazes met, and she read nothing in his thoughts to belie the things he’d said and promised.
But then again, he was Malinari—called Malinari the Mind—and his mind was quite unique.
Uniquely devious, too. And:
Aye, so be it, Vavara echoed him, while doing her best to keep that thought and the next one to herself. But let me down one more time and you may be sure it will be the last. That is my vow, Nephran Malinari. Mine…and the vow of every creature yet to be invested with my many eggs. I shall see to it…
But a little while later, when she slept:
Aye, sleep, Malinari thought, knowing that his thoughts at least were impregnable. Sleep, Vavara, Szwart, and leave me to scheme in peace. What, you Vavara, with your hidden horde, all waiting on your flesh to give them birth—and you, amorphous Thing, Lord Szwart, you with your love of darkness and dread—I should gift to such as you what is rightly mine? No, I think not. I who have discovered the truth of this Jake will keep it for my own, and I’ll use it to put all such as you from my sight. In the past, since time immemorial, Sunside/Starside has suffered a surfeit of feuding Lords, and Ladies, too, in excess of requirement. Just the one master, Nephran Malinari, would have been sufficient. And will be.
And then he sent out his mentalist probes once again, this time to try and fathom something that was singular and strange beyond measure: the fact that the E-Branch signature was mutating, growing stronger, changing by the hour.
It could be, of course, simply that they girded themselves up, preparing the way mentally for the effort to come, the inevitable showdown. Or again, perhaps it was that together in a group their talents were multiplied, their metaphysical skills magnified.
Whichever, their shields were stronger…certain of them, anyway. The girl Liz, and the other woman: they were telepaths, and their minds should be more easily accessible, yet this was no longer the case. In Xanadu’s casino Pleasure Dome, Malinari had probed Liz’s mind, sending her disinformation which caused her to fall into his trap. Alas, but this was no longer possible; even sleeping her shields were up, and if her love dreams had not been so powerfully centered on Jake Cutter, then Malinari doubted his chances of reading anything of significance in them. And likewise Ben Trask’s woman, this Millicent. She, too, had thrown up this—this what? This mental mist, this fog?—against outside interference. Malinari could read the identities of these women and separate out their signatures, both the women and the entire group, but their minds were near-closed.
As for Trask himself: he should be the easiest of all. His mind knew the “truth” of things. Because truth was instinctive in him, he was inclined to lay himself bare. Whether he willed it or not, it went against his grain to cover anything up. For incapable of accepting lies, he found it irksome, even odious, to have to protect himself in that respect. Yet now he, too, was shielded.
And then there was that Other—that old, unfathomable one—whose signature was like wood smoke that drifted this way and that, disguising his identity and even his very being. The last time Malinari had come in contact with anyone like him had been on Sunside during the hunt. Aye, for the Vampire World’s Szgany were possessed of these selfsame skills. Well then, perhaps he was a Gypsy, descendant of thralls out of Sunside.
Which left just two others: the locator—whose signature was new; doubtless he was a replacement for that fool now dead in Sirpsindigi—and the one who scried on future times.
As for the latter: oddly, his signature had not changed at all! Neither his signature nor Malinari’s inability to comprehend its message. There was nothing of the past there, to hint of Goodly’s beginnings, nothing of the present, which might at least be indicative of current trends, but only a swirl of inchoate, half-formed images that failed to coalesce except when they occurred. And they only occurred when they caught up with the future.
But even for Goodly, how could it be otherwise? The future has ever been a devious thing.
Three of these pursuers, these avengers, then, had somehow been changed. Even four of them, when one included Jake Cutter himself. For while presently he remained distant in the purely physical sense, still his aura—his psychic signature—was alive and more vibrant than ever in the psychosphere.
It was a puzzle with several possible solutions, and Malinari would be blind if he could not at least visualize one such. But rather a fool than stretch his imagination to that extent—surely? For if that were so…it would make a total nonsense of this chase, and the leaders of E-Branch would have far more important matters to attend to…
One of the girls stirred, moaning in her sleep.
Malinari reached out a hand to stroke her naked thigh and whisper calming words. His leonine head lay in another thrall’s lap, and he could smell her sex like a rare sweetmeat roasting in a Starside oven. For a moment he thought to have her—even to have all of them—but then thought again.
He might after all need his strength for what was still to come. The trap he had laid for E-Branch…problems that might arise at Perchorsk…others that would very definitely arise later, with Vavara and Szwart.
No, it were better that he slept now, while the cursed sun sank ever deeper in the west. Time to sleep, recoup, and dream of Starside and all the time and the power still to come.
A time of conquest—perhaps of two worlds—and then of a vampire empire spanning both. And Powers beyond belief which would be his and his alone…
Three hours later:
Malinari woke up with a start, sniffed at the air and sent a brief but powerful telepathic message stabbing in the direction of Vavara and Szwart: Darkness falls, and they are coming!
Then, sensing his so-called colleagues stirring, their mental awareness focussing, Malinari roused up the sleeping girls. Only six of them remained; the others had been left for undead along the way. Known as “Val’s Vamps” upon a time—albeit in a very different world on a beautiful ship called the Evening Star—now they were common vampires fending for themselves in Turkey. As for these others, he dou
bted they’d be so fortunate.
And when the six were awake: “Listen,” said Malinari. “That time I warned of has come. You know what you are—what we have made you—and also that the ones who pursue us will kill you if they can.”
His words were greeted with sighs, groans, hisses of alarm. Naked flesh moved in the gloom; they pulled on rags of clothing and stood up among the debris of rotten sacks and mouldy grain; stood there like six strange dolls waiting for their puppeteer. And their triangular eyes glowed a feral greeny-yellow, confirming their vampire-thrall status.
“They will kill you,” Malinari said it again. “But only if you allow it. Ah, but you are stronger now! As dancers you were fit and strong, and now even more so. For our strength is yours, given to protect you. Remember, the blood is the life and likewise the strength. If you would live and stay strong, it is the only answer. And these pursuers…they are filled to brimming with good strong blood!”
“Ahhhh!” came their reply, their teeth gleaming white where once-sweet lips drew back, turning their faces to sallow, snarling masks.
“Now I go up to the others,” said Malinari. “If our enemies get past you to us, then we will know that you are dead. But do well and you shall earn your freedom. Freedom, aye—to go out into the world and make it your own! Is all understood?”
“Yesss, Lord,” came their answer, in a concerted hissing as from one deadly throat.
“Very well,” said Malinari. “Good! And now you must hide as best you might. Drape yourselves in those sacks there, or merge with the shadows and cobwebs in dark corners, wherever you may. You should find it very easy, for you are now and forever—or for as long as you may live—creatures of the night. And so I leave you, but you should know this: that you have my blessing. Long may the night and the darkness be with you.”
Then, as they melted from view and their feral eyes blinked out, he went to the rickety stairwell and ascended to the uppermost level. But in his black heart of hearts Malinari knew that his blessing was a worthless blasphemy, and also that the night and the darkness would not be with them for long…
24
Tilting at a Windmill
ALMOST UNNOTICEABLY, THE SHADOWS HAD been creeping, lengthening for an hour or more, until finally they had merged into a smoky twilight. In the minibus all conversation—slight and muted as it had been—had fallen off completely as evening drew in.
Karnobat was just a mile or two ahead. To the north a range of purple hills paralleled the road, seeming to float on a fine mist. Traffic was very light, and what few cars there were came up from behind, flashed their lights, pulled out and ghosted by in a weird silence. Even the clatter of the noisy engine seemed muffled, and at the wheel Ben Trask was driving ever more slowly, instinct telling him that they were very close now.
“Take the next left,” said Millie, suddenly alert where she sat beside Trask. “They’re somewhere up in those hills.”
“Then take the next left and stop!” grunted the Old Lidesci from the back of the vehicle. “Just another half-mile and we’ll be into that mist. But there are mists and there are mists, and I want to check this one out.”
“And now we should call for Jake,” said Liz, her voice conveying the shivers that she felt, despite that it wasn’t at all cold. “We should definitely call for Jake.”
Glancing back at her, Trask raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Indicating his intentions, he turned left across the empty oncoming lane onto a rutted farm track, bringing the minibus to a halt under a row of gnarled and ancient olive trees. The mist coming down off the hills was thin here, forming swirls of vapour about their ankles as they got out of the vehicle and stood in the gathering dusk with the light of day fading in the west.
Millie was flushed, Liz, too, and Trask enquired, “Is everything okay with you two? Maybe the sun got to you. You’re looking a bit pink…or perhaps simply rudely healthy?”
That was a new one on Lardis. “Rudely healthy?” he queried. “Is that when you fart a lot? If so, I have been rudely healthy for years now.”
“I think maybe the sun did get to me a little,” said Millie. “Back there where we stopped, in that pine glade, I did my best to keep out of it. Actually, this cooler air is very welcome.”
Liz said nothing, but Trask couldn’t help noticing that the two women had glanced at each other…what, speculatively?
Paul Garvey helped Lardis get down on one knee, and the Old Lidesci sniffed at the ground mist like a suspicious bloodhound before inhaling a great lungful. But then, standing up again in a creaking of bones, he shook his shaggy head and said, “Just a mist. But when I see mist rolling down off the hills like that, well, it brings back memories. Best to be cautious where these bastard things are concerned.”
Ian Goodly was looking at the low hills about a mile ahead. “Windmills,” he said. “And fairly large ones at that. Derelict, most of them. At least by their looks.”
Trask followed the precog’s line of sight and nodded. “They look typical of windmills in Greece,” he said. “Not surprising, really. We’re still very close to the Med.”
“And closer still to the Black Sea,” said Goodly. “They are ideally placed to catch the easterlies off the sea—which they would if their sails weren’t in tatters. It looks like only one of them is actually working. The closest one of the four.”
“Yes,” said Millie, quietly, “but the one that interests me is the farthest away.” And:
“Likewise,” said Liz. And both women were frowning, staring narrow-eyed at the windmill in question: its broken vanes hanging like some disjointed scarecrow’s arms, the uppermost rim of its turret showing a last, rapidly fading gleam of watered-down sunlight, two high windows like a pair of blindly staring eyes, and a third like a socket nose in the tapering facet that faced them. But even as they watched the windmill became a silhouette in the fading light…
Like Trask, Garvey had also followed Liz and Millie’s seemingly rapt gaze. And now he agreed with them. “Yes, it’s them,” he said. “But best get out of there, girls. I sense their mindsmog thinning. They’re coming awake and automatically shielding themselves.”
“Get out now!” Trask rasped, taking the women by their arms and turning them away.
“It’s okay, Ben,” said Millie, gently freeing herself. “You don’t have to worry. We knew what we were doing.”
“And in any case,” Liz added, “if this is Ian’s Big One, what’s coming is coming and there’s no way round it. But as you yourself said, we must definitely prepare for it. So then—do I call Jake in on this now?”
“No,” said Trask. “If Malinari and the rest of them—and I suppose we have to include those girls now—if they are awake up there, they’ll know it the moment Jake gets here. Jake’s the one ace up our sleeve, and I want to play him last. When we get to that windmill, if the mindsmog is still present, that’s when we’ll call for Jake. But right now we’re just wasting time.”
They got back into the minibus, and keeping it in low gear, Trask took it jarring and bumping along the deeply rutted track to the foot of the hills, then branched off along another, rising, contours-hugging track to the flattened dome of the hill.
The windmill stood behind gapped fencing in some four acres of dilapidated outbuildings and windblown, weed-grown tracks. And Trask thought, There’s no sign of life—
“But plenty signs of undeath!” said Liz, as he put the minibus in neutral, bringing it to a halt in the long shadow of the derelict windmill.
“I know,” he answered, staring through his window, looking out and up at the grim face of the ruined building. “I feel it, too, except this time it’s not working, it isn’t fooling me. Or rather, she isn’t fooling me.”
“Benevolence,” said Paul Garvey then. “It’s radiating from that place in waves. You’d swear it was a holy place.”
“On the island of Krassos it was a holy place,” the precog reminded him quietly. “Or it had been. It was supposed to be a monastery,
which is how it felt to us. But in fact it was Vavara—her lying aura—a mental mask protecting the grotesque horror underneath. And that’s how this place strikes me now: a rustic country scene worthy of a pastoral canvas: Windmill at dusk, by the Lady Vavara. Huh!”
“She would kill you for saying it,” said Lardis. “Even for thinking it! Lady? No, for this one knows better and spurns all such titles. Vavaaara was her name, like the growl of some wild thing. But no Lady—never!”
“Your pastoral scene is a damned lie!” Trask spat then. And throwing the minibus in gear he circled the windmill in a cloud of dust, only to skid to a halt again on completing the circle. “Only one way in,” he rasped then, “through those leaning doors there. And judging by those broken windows, several storeys to climb to the top. But this is one big place with lots of space inside. So okay, Liz, Millie—where are these bastards hiding, and what’s on their bloody minds?”
“They’re up there in the loft,” said Millie at once. “It’s humming like a wasp’s nest up there. Behind the mindsmog I can smell…fear? Panic? Confusion? They’re like—I don’t know—like so many rats in a trap.”
“I agree with Millie,” Liz nodded. “It looks like we’ve got them exactly where we want them.”
But Trask shook his head. “No,” he said, “it’s too easy. I smell a different kind of rat here. Something is trying to tell me that all’s well, which in itself tells me that everything is far from well. Liz, you’ve been wanting to call Jake in on this for hours now, through two countries. I reckon it’s about time. We need him and our weapons both. Everybody out.”
They got out of the vehicle, and Liz called for Jake…
At E-Branch HQ, Jake heard Liz’s call as clear and clearer than ever before, almost as if she was in Harry’s Room with him. But the only ones with him were Gustav Turchin and John Grieve.