Avengers

by Brian Lumley

  Jake had limped forward a pace—and disappeared! Stepping out of the Möbius Continuum slightly to Garvey’s rear, he snatched the machine-pistol from him in a move that was one continuous blur, the incredible speed of the Wamphyri! And taking out the magazine he looked at it, frowned, and growled, “Empty?”

  “That’s right,” said the telepath, as he backed off a pace. “Because I was afraid I might use it without giving any of you a chance to…well, to explain.”

  “What’s to explain?” said Jake. “But what I would like you to explain: how come you’d fireman’s-lift me out of trouble if you were only going to kill me later? And incidentally, that’s why I haven’t killed you!” And then, looking at the gun again, “Do you have a full clip?”

  “Yes,” said the telepath, reaching into his pocket to show Jake a full magazine.

  “There, then,” said Jake, giving him the gun back. “No good having the ammunition if you don’t have a fucking gun!” Then he groaned, went to his knees, put a hand to the back of his head, looked at his sticky crimson fingers and said, “People—and I really do mean people, all of you—I think you’ll have to get by without me for a while.”

  With which he fell flat on his face…

  Concussed, the Necroscope lay in the back of the minibus, cared for by Goodly, with Garvey looking on, while Lardis sat hunched in a corner looking dour. Apparently drained of energy, Premier Turchin slept where he sat, his head lolling on his chest.

  Ben Trask, ever the indefatigable leader, drove through the night, locked-on like a missile to the hearse and its alien occupants—how many miles ahead?—and guided by Millie who sat beside him.

  After a while, the five who were still conscious conversed, tersely at first, but gradually falling into old routines, patterns of long-accustomed speech that sprang automatically from years of knowing each other, friendship, and…mutual trust?

  That was how it had used to be, anyway.

  And while they weren’t forgetting—couldn’t possibly have forgotten—the desperate nature of their situation, they certainly tried their best.

  As if from far, far away, Jake could hear them…but then, he could hear diverse things, discernible to no one else. Deadspeak whispers came rolling in off a sea of fog, and there was a constant pounding in his head and faint cries of frustration, despair—even of mental degradation, madness—from somewhere deep inside…but not Jake’s pain and not his despair.

  His madness, then?

  No, not that, either, though certainly his psyche felt like it was being torn in half, with both halves pulling in opposite directions.

  Seeming to recognize various ethereal voices, Jake listened to the dead awhile. The ones he knew were muted, shouted down—or whispered down—by the Great Majority, who were actually in the majority now; for all of those who had been undecided about the Necroscope were now convinced, satisfied as to his failure, witnesses for the prosecution. And Jake the one on trial, about to be convicted. For all of their worst fears had been realized and the one light in their everlasting night, the single thread connecting them with what had gone before—the world they had known—had lost its blue glow and now burned red.

  Yet still Zek—Zek Föener—Zek Simmons—Zek Trask—stood up for Jake. And Keenan Gormley, and George Hannant, and the gravel-voiced ex-soldier called Graham “Sergeant” Lane, who at different times had also stood up for Harry, and for his son Nathan; they all stood up for Jake. “All” of them, yes…pitiful handful that they were, compared to the Great Majority.

  And among them a small but determined voice—a tiny, tearful whisper—from far away, a graveyard in Hartlepool, in the northeast of England where Harry Keogh had grown up:

  The Necroscope was my friend, she said…Cynthia, who had died a child, and remained a child despite that five cold years had slipped by. Jake didn’t know her—

  —But Nathan knew me, Cynthia told him, and all the others had fallen silent now, listening to her. He was the Necroscope, she went on, and I was a nobody. I would have cried forever but for him. My mom and dad, too; they couldn’t know there was this place, couldn’t know I’d go on, and would wait for them always. But Nathan knew, and he told them. And they stopped crying, and so did I.

  He played at God! The multitude erupted then.

  It was the only thing he could do! (Zek’s voice.)

  And anyway (Graham Lane’s rough voice), where is this God? And more to the point, where’s His heaven?

  Heaven is waiting for those who believe! The Great Majority cried out against what sounded like blasphemy—though many of them had long since stopped believing.

  I believe! Keenan Gormley shouted back at them. And I would like to believe that the Necroscopes are His angels! Don’t deny Jake as you denied Harry. Don’t you go making that same mistake again. For if you deny Jake…He may deny you! And your children. And their children!

  Keenan is right! (Zek again.) And Cynthia, too. What? And has it taken the eyes of a child to see light in this eternal night? You wonder, all of you—you have your doubts, just like Graham Lane—but unlike him you keep them hidden away in your secret hearts. That’s where you ask about the hell that we inhabit, instead of the heaven we were promised. But maybe it’s a test, the final test, and only the worthy will succeed and go on while the rest stay here.

  But again the Great Majority cried out against her. No! No! It isn’t so! We cannot side with vampires. They are a plague on the living and a curse on the dead. We accept of life and death…but never undeath! We can’t place our trust in vampires!

  But I can, said little Cynthia, still only seven years old, and never to grow a day older. I’ll place my faith in this one, anyway. And reaching out of the dark—reaching for Jake—she asked, Necroscope? Are you there?

  He couldn’t resist her. Maybe when it came to it she’d turn her back on him and run—perhaps, face-to-face, it would prove too much for her; she’d sense the darkness stirring there, back off and deny him like all the others—but in a way she was his last hope. And for a fact she was their last hope. And:

  Yes, Jake answered, I’m here. But you really don’t know me, and perhaps they’re right and you should be afraid of me.

  You’re the Necroscope, she said, drawing closer. And so was Nathan when he was here. I can’t be afraid of you. You feel the same as Nathan felt. I don’t care about the cold that’s in you. It isn’t your fault, and what’s warm in you will smother it.

  Cynthia, listen to me, said Jake, warningly…then paused, lost for words. Because suddenly he knew her, remembered little Cynthia without ever having met her!

  And the Necroscope’s head whirled, painlessly this time, as a kaleidoscope of characters—Harry, The Dweller, and Nathan—merged within, briefly embodying every Necroscope avatar in the selfsame moments, and also their memories, yet at the same time strobing in fragmenting, overlapping patterns of day and night, dark and light, so that almost everything was forgotten even as it flew apart again. Almost everything.

  But one of those memories remained, and Jake clung to it.

  This one is for Nathan, said Cynthia, and Jake felt it like a butterfly brushing his hollow cheek. And this one is for you. She kissed him again, and was gone. But Jake knew that he would always remember—even as he “remembered” it now—the soft sad scent of soap and tears and innocence.

  And he also knew how things were going to be, felt his injured psyche mending, bringing him back on course, saw clearly now how easy and wrong it would have been to surrender, and how hard and right to follow a child’s suggestion:

  To use whatever remained of that vital spark of warmth, the spark that made him human, to suppress and defeat what was cold and alien in him.

  It was only a matter of will—free will—and no one more free-willed than Jake Cutter.

  It was like a vow, the Necroscope’s deadspeak vow, and he’d vowed it with such determination that the Great Majority backed off, fell silent, drifted out again into that great mental fogbank,
and retired to wait and see. Their verdict wasn’t in, not yet awhile.

  But the teeming dead weren’t the only ones who were waiting to see…

  Jake moaned, turning on his side where he lay on the vehicle’s benchlike seat, held against falling by Ian Goodly. But he was still hearing things, vague voices that found their way through to him—mainly the muted conversation of his “fellow” travelers, like echoes in a tunnel—but also the pounding and wailing of something or someone else.

  The latter was the work of Korath-once-Mindsthrall, and the Necroscope had had more than enough of it.

  Opening the window in that special door in his metaphysical mind, Jake said, Korath? What the hell is it with you? I’m suffering enough already without all this racket.

  If he’d expected an answer it wasn’t forthcoming, not immediately. Instead there was a snuffling, a weeping, an incoherent gibbering that even deadspeak couldn’t decipher. But since this was Korath, Jake felt little or nothing of pity. In fact he wondered if he was still capable of it. And:

  Korath? he said again. If you’re trying to get my attention you’ve succeeded. But I’ve got to tell you, the way I’m feeling right now I could do without it. And if I were in your position I’d think twice before pissing me off any more than you piss me off already. Do you hear me?

  The gibbering faded away—the snuffling and sniffing, with which it was interspersed, too—and for several seconds there was silence. Then Korath spoke, but his was no longer the voice of arrogance and incredible duplicity by which Jake had come to know him. Before, Korath had been a distraction, then a menace, a would-be voyeur…finally a creature bent on returning to a stolen life in Jake’s body, having first removed Jake from it.

  Now he was something else. A something broken beyond repair not only in life but in death, too. A creature of darkness immobilized and lost in the impenetrable darkness of a secret room in the Necroscope’s secret mind. Worse than any padded cell, it had no visitors. Darker than dark, it had no light, no colours, no odours, no tastes, no touches, no sounds. It was total isolation—it might as well be the Möbius Continuum itself—and when Korath “pounded” with his screaming, his screaming was all he heard. In other words his own thoughts. And when all one has is one’s own thoughts, it won’t take very long for them to turn inwards on themselves, and on the one who thinks them.

  Korath was going mad, and he knew it.

  Do you know, he said quietly, when at last he’d got himself under a semblance of control, did I ever tell you, that my once-master Malinari the Mind was wont to complain how he often felt that the tumultuous thoughts of others—their constant babble—would one day drive him insane? Well, he did, he did. And he had to control them, shut them out, else for a fact he would be a raving madman. With me…he got on very well with me, or so I prided myself, however naïvely. For being blessed with a modicum of shielding, a natural and most useful asset, passed down to me by my father, I had a measure of control over my thoughts. And it’s no mere coincidence that I lasted longer in Malinari’s employ than any other thrall or lieutenant; well, with the sole exception of Demetrakis, who was by any standard a dullard. But you saw him under the Pleasure Dome in Xanadu, and I’m sure you would agree that being crushed and drowned—which was my lot—was a far more acceptable fate than his.

  Having listened to all of this with increasing impatience, Jake now said, Let’s get something straight, Korath, I haven’t come visiting to listen to some interminable retelling of your life story. I came to tell you to be quiet—to stop rattling your cage. I have problems of my own, and you…you’ve never been other than a gigantic bloody nuisance!

  But it was as if he’d said nothing at all, or Korath hadn’t been listening. For as soon as Jake had finished:

  Yet now, the dead and miserable vampire continued, if only by virtue of my imprisonment in this place, at last I’m able to understand something of Malinari’s problem—though strangely, and even paradoxically, his is the very opposite of mine. We’re at opposite ends of the spectrum, do you see? For where my master suffered from the myriad thoughts surrounding him, I suffer from the lack of them! And where he was plagued by all of those mental voices, I hear only my own. I used to enjoy to eavesdrop on the Great Majority, but no longer. The walls of this room of yours are impregnable, thoughtproof. I used to argue with you, and found our word games most stimulating. But what stimulus is there now? None whatsoever, and so I argue with myself. Alas, I am my own equal and the arguments go undecided. In short, given just a little more time alone in this place, and I am sure that I…shall…go…insane! If I’m not there already.

  And the Necroscope said, Is it possible I feel some kind of proposition coming on?

  You have won, Korath answered. I almost had you; on several occasions I thought that you were mine, but I cannot any longer deny the fact that you have won. And all I want now is out. You feared that I would usurp you—and so I would have—but now my only desire is to be as far away from you as possible, preferably in that detestable sump in Romania. For there at least I shall have something, if only the cold murmur of water, and the miserly thoughts of the teeming dead…

  And now Jake actually felt something of pity. Didn’t I promise you something better than that? he said. To take your bones out of there and bury them in a field somewhere, before they’re washed away entirely?

  You did so promise, upon a time, said Korath. And I gave it some thought. But in a field? In this world? Where I would feel the sun beating down on me eight or nine hours in every day? It would be worse than my sump!

  Then you must decide upon another place, said Jake. Instead of torturing yourself and annoying me, let that be your stimulus while you wait.

  Eh? said Korath. While I wait? Are you telling me you don’t intend to release me now, this very moment?

  Not just yet, Jake answered. And for a very good reason. We go up against the Wamphyri, Korath. Myself, Trask, E-Branch…a battle to the death, and you might yet be of some assistance to me.

  And if I refuse, if I have gone mad when all of this comes to pass—what then?

  But the Necroscope’s voice contained a deadspeak shrug, as he answered, Then what befalls me befalls you. But meanwhile I want you to be quiet. If you distract me, you’ll only be placing yourself in even greater jeopardy. So keep your wits about you, Korath, and wait.

  For how long?

  Not long, I think.

  Then I have no option, and I can but try, said Korath.

  So be it, Jake nodded.

  But as he closed the window in the door in his secret mind, already he could hear that oh-so-mournful gibbering starting up again…

  “Damn it to hell!” said Trask for the fourth or fifth time. “We know how it happened—knew that it could happen—yet still we ignored it.”

  “And we let it happen,” said Millie. “I let it happen. When I should have denied you, I wanted you all the more. I think it must have been fear. I swear I didn’t know, but I was so frightened…I just didn’t want to be alone.”

  “Ditto,” said Trask, gruffly. “And it was my way of denying that anything might have happened to you. Yes, and it was probably the same for Jake and Liz.”

  “Jake and Liz?” she answered. “They were young lovers; what they did was no one’s business but their own. I’m not responsible for them, but I’m certainly to blame for you.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “If blame is to be apportioned, it was both of us.”

  “It was neither one of you,” said the precog, from the rear of the vehicle. “It was Szwart. His spores. Yet you didn’t seem to sleep, Millie. It’s all very strange.”

  “I wanted to sleep,” she said. “In fact I did sleep, but we thought it was simple exhaustion following that nightmare under London. And anyway I was fighting it, determined not to sleep.”

  “And Liz?” said Paul Garvey.

  “Same story,” Millie answered. “She had been through a lot, too, so maybe sleep was perfectly nat
ural. And Jake and Liz…they’d be hard to keep apart. I wouldn’t have tried to come between them.”

  “But I should have,” said Trask.

  “It’s in the past now,” said Goodly, “but it was the future—then. So maybe it’s all one after all. Whichever, it can’t be undone.”

  “And now the future is all-important,” said Lardis. “And as for me, I can’t believe I move among vampires, lacking the will to strike them down. But I’ve loved you people! You are like—you have become—my own.”

  “When this is over,” said Trask, “assuming we win, that is, you and Lissa must return to Sunside/Starside through the Perchorsk Gate, before we close it forever.”

  “And speaking of Perchorsk,” said Garvey, “has anyone given thought to where these bastards are heading?”

  “I have,” Trask answered. “And it fits with everything that we know about them. Their plans for Earth are in ruins; they’re no longer worried about their anonymity, which is why they seem bent on leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake; and since they came through into our world via Romania—”

  “The only way back to their own is through the Gate at Perchorsk,” Millie finished it for him.

  “But many a mile to go yet,” said Trask, “and soon they’ll be into Turchin’s territory. If he’s still in contact with members of what used to be The Opposition, maybe we can arrange an ambush or two along the way and slow them down.”

  And Goodly said, “Assuming that you’re right, it’s odd that they’ve chosen this route.”

  “What route?” said Trask.

  “We’re heading for Burgas on the Black Sea coast,” the precog answered. “And that’s east, not north. So where land routes are concerned, this is probably the worst possible choice they could have made.”

  “Perhaps they intend to take another ship,” said Millie.

  “And if so they could be heading for Odessa in the Ukraine,” said Garvey. “That might make sense. Do you really think we’ll be able to follow them?”