by Brian Lumley
Tuesday, 8:40 A.M. middle-European time, the airport in Bucharest.
Alec Kyle’s flight was due to leave in twenty-five minutes and the passengers had just been called forward. Kyle would be in Rome in two-and-a-half hours; given that there would be no problems with his connection, he’d be into Heathrow around 2:00 P.M. local time. With a bit of luck he would reach his destination in Devon with half an hour to spare before Guy Roberts and his team went in and “cleaned up” at Harkley House. Even if his timings were wrong, Roberts should still be in situ at the house when finally he did arrive. The last stages of his journey would be by MOD helicopter from Heathrow down to Torquay, and on to Paignton in an air-sea rescue chopper courtesy of the Torquay coastguard.
Kyle had made these final arrangements by telephone from the airport via John Grieve in London as soon as he’d discovered that he couldn’t get a flight until now. And mercifully, for once, he’d got the call through without too much difficulty.
On hearing the call for embarkation, Felix Krakovitch stepped forward and took Kyle’s hand. “A lot has happened in short time,” the Russian psychic said. “But to know you has been … my pleasure.” They shook hands awkwardly but both men meant it. Sergei Gulharov was much more open: he hugged Kyle close and kissed his cheeks. Kyle shrugged and grinned, he hoped not too sheepishly. He was only glad he’d said his farewells to Irma Dobresti the previous night. Carl Quint nodded and gave him a thumbs-up signal.
Krakovitch carried Kyle’s hand luggage to the departure gate. From there Kyle went on alone, through the gates and out onto the asphalt, finding a space in the jostling line of passengers. He looked back once, waved, turned and hurried on.
Quint, Krakovitch and Gulharov watched him go, waiting until he rounded the corner of the massive air control tower and so out of sight. Then they quickly left the airport. Now they were ready to commence their own journey: up into old Moldavia, where they’d cross the Russian border by car over the River Prut. Krakovitch had already made the necessary arrangements—through his Second in Command, of course, at the Chateau Bronnitsy.
Out on the airfield, Kyle approached his plane. Close to the foot of the mobile boarding stairway, uniformed aircrew saluted him and checked his boarding pass one last time. A smiling official stepped forward, glanced at Kyle’s boarding pass. “Mr. Kyle? One moment please.” His voice was bland, conveyed nothing. Nor did Kyle’s inbuilt warning system. Why should it? There was nothing outside of nature here. On the contrary, what was coming was very down-to-earth—but terrifying for all that.
As the last of the passengers disappeared into the body of the aircraft, three men emerged from behind the stairs. They wore lightweight overcoats and dark grey felt hats. Though their clothes were intended to lend anonymity, they were almost a uniform in their own right, an unmistakeable mode of identification. Even if Kyle hadn’t known them, he would have recognized the cases one of them was carrying. His cases.
Two of the KGB men, unsmiling, restrained him while the third moved up very close, put down his suitcases and took his cabin luggage. Kyle felt a stab of fear, a moment of panic.
“Need I introduce myself?” The Russian agent’s eyes bored into Kyle’s.
Kyle found his nerve, shook his head and managed a rueful smile. “I think not,” he answered. “How are you this morning, Mr. Dolgikh? Or should I simply call you Theo?”
“Try ‘Comrade,’” said Dolgikh without humour. “That will suffice …”
Whatever Yulian Bodescu’s intentions had been, he had not left Harkley House at dawn.
At 5:00 A.M. Ken Layard and Simon Gower arrived to relieve Darcy Clarke, who then returned to Paignton. At 6:00 A.M. Trevor Jordan joined Layard and Gower; the three split up, formed points of triangulation. An hour later there were two more men, reinforcements Roberts had earlier called down from London. All of these arrivals were dutifully reported by Vlad, until Yulian cautioned the huge dog and ordered him down to the cellars. It was broad daylight now and Vlad would be seen coming and going. The Alsatian was Yulian’s rearguard and no harm must come to him just yet.
The enemy’s numbers had penned Yulian in; but just as bad from his point of view was the fact that the day was cloudless, the risen sun bright and strong. The mists of the night had soon been steamed away, and the air was clear and smelled fresh. Behind the house, beyond the wall that marked the boundary of the grounds, woods rose to the top of a low hill. There was a track through the woods and one of the watchers had somehow managed to get his vehicle up there. He sat there now, watching the house through binoculars. Yulian could easy have seen him through one of the upper storey rear windows, but he didn’t need to. He sensed that he was there.
At the front of the house were two more watchers: one not far from the gate, standing beside his car, the other fifty yards away. Their weapons were not visible but Yulian knew they had crossbows. And he knew the agony a hardwood bolt would cause him. Two more men guarded the flanks, one at each side of the house, where they could look into the grounds across the walls.
Yulian was trapped—for the moment.
Fight? He couldn’t even leave the house without them seeing him. And those crossbows of theirs would be deadly accurate. The day wore on through midday and into the afternoon, and Yulian began to sweat. At 3:00 P.M. a sixth man came on the scene—driving a truck. Yulian watched carefully from behind the curtains at his garret window.
The driver of the truck must be the leader of these damned psychic spies. The leader of this group, anyway. He was fat, but in no way clumsy; his mind would be hard and clear, except he guarded his thoughts like gold. He began to distribute indeterminate items of heavy equipment in canvas containers, also jerrycans, food and drink, to the other men. He spent a little time with each of them, talking to them, demonstrated with certain pieces of equipment, gave instructions. Yulian sweated more yet. He knew now it would be this evening. Traffic rolled as usual on the autumn road; couples walked together in the sunshine hand in hand; birds sang in the woods. The world looked the same as it always looked—but those men out there had determined that this would be Yulian Bodescu’s last day.
Using what cover he could find, the vampire risked his neck making excursions outside the house. He used a rear ground floor window where it was shrouded by shrubbery, also the cellar exit through the out-building. Twice, if he’d been fully prepared, he might have made a break for it, when the watchers to the rear and at one side of the house went down to the road for their supplies; on both occasions they returned while he was still calculating the odds. Yulian grew still more nervous, his thinking becoming very erratic.
Back in the house, whenever he crossed tracks with one of the women, he would lash out, shout, curse. His nervousness transferred itself to Vlad and the great dog prowled the empty cellars to and fro, to and fro.
Then, about 4:00 P.M., suddenly Yulian was aware of a weird psychic stillness, the mental lull before the storm. He strained his vampire senses to their fullest extent and could detect … nothing! The watchers had screened their minds, so that not even a trace of their thoughts—their intentions—could escape. In so doing they gave away their final secret, they told Yulian the time they had planned for his death.
It was to be now, within the hour, and the light only just beginning to fade as the sun lowered itself towards the horizon.
Yulian put fear aside. He was Wamphyri! These men had powers, yes, and they were strong. But he had powers too. And he might yet prove to be stronger.
He went down into the cellars and spoke to Vlad: You’ve been faithful to me as only a dog can be, he said, facing the great beast, their yellow eyes locked, but you are more than a dog. Those men out there might suspect that, and they might not. Whichever, when they come, you go out first to meet them. Give no quarter. If you survive, seek me out …
And then he “spoke” to the Other, that loathsome extrusion of himself. It was the implanting of suggestions in a blank space, the imprinting of an idea upon a v
oid, the burning of a brand into a beast’s hide. Floor flags buckled in one dark corner, the ground underfoot shifted and dust fell in rills from the low vaulting. That was all. Perhaps it had understood, and perhaps not …
Finally Yulian returned to his room. He changed his clothes, put on a neutral grey track-suit and shoved his wide-brimmed hat into the waistband. He neatly folded a suit of clothes into a small travelling case, along with a wallet containing a good deal of money in large notes. That was that; he needed nothing more.
Then, as the minutes ticked by, he sat down, closed his eyes and pitted his own dark nature against the great Mother Nature herself in one final test of his now mature vampire powers. He willed a mist, called up a wreathing white screen from the earth and the streams and the woods, a clinging fog down from the hillsides.
The watchers, tense now and taut as the strings of their crossbows, scarcely noticed the sun slipping behind the clouds and the ground mist creeping at their ankles; as a man, their attention was riveted on the house.
And time moved inexorably towards the appointed hour …
Darcy Clarke drove furiously north. He had cursed aloud until his throat was raw and then silently until his cursing had come down to one four-letter word repeated over and over again in his fuming mind. What his fury amounted to was this: he wouldn’t be in on the kill. He was out of the attack on Harkley. Now, instead, he was to be minder-in-chief to a … a tiny infant!
Clarke was well aware of the importance of his new task and understood the purpose of it: with his talent it was unlikely that any harm would come to him. And so, if he was shielding the young Harry Keogh, the baby should likewise be safe. But to Darcy’s way of thinking, prevention was better then cure. Stop Bodescu dead at Harkley House, and you wouldn’t have to worry about the baby at all. And if he, Darcy Clarke, was at Harkley—if only he was there—then guarantee Bodescu would be stopped!
But he wasn’t there, he was here, driving north for that godforsaken hole Hartlepool …
On the other hand, he knew that every single man of them back there was equally dedicated to Bodescu’s destruction. Which helped a little.
Clarke had got back to Paignton before 6:00 A.M. and Roberts had ordered him straight into bed. Later, he said, he would have a big job for him and wanted him to get at least six hours’ sleep. Finally Clarke had dozed off, and though he’d feared the very worst dreams none had come. At noon Roberts had shaken him awake, told him what his new job was. Since when Clarke had been driving, and cursing.
He had joined the M1 at Leicester, then picked up the A19 at Thirsk. He was now something less than an hour from his destination, and the time was (he glanced at his watch)—4:50 P.M.
Clarke stopped cursing. God! What would it be like right now, down there?
“Where the hell did this mist spring from?” Trevor Jordan shivered, turning up the collar of his coat. “Hell, it was a nice day, from the weather point of view, anyway.” For all his vehemence, Jordan had spoken in a whisper.
All of the INTESP agents, at their various stations around Harkley House, had been speaking in whispers for the last twenty minutes. At 4:30, working to Roberts’s instructions, they’d formed pairs—which was as well, for the mist had thickened up and started to threaten their individual security. It felt nice to have someone really close to you.
Jordan’s “buddy” in the system was Ken Layard the locator. He was shivering, too, despite the fact that he carried seventy-eight pounds of Brissom Mark III flame-thrower on his back. “I’m not sure,” he finally answered Jordan’s question, “but I think it’s from him.” He nodded towards the house where it stood swathed in mist.
They were just inside the north wall, at a place where they’d found a gap in the stonework. Just a minute ago, at 4:50, they’d checked their watches and squeezed through, and Jordan had helped Layard into his asbestos leggings and jacket. Then they’d strapped the tank on his back and he’d checked the valve on the hose and trigger mechanism. With the valve open, all he had to do was squeeze the trigger and he could conjure up an inferno. And he fully intended to.
“Him?” Jordan frowned. He looked around at the mist. It crept everywhere. From here the rear wall up the hillside was invisible; likewise the wall fronting onto the road. Harvey Newton and Simon Gower would be making their way down from the hill, Ben Trask and Guy Roberts coming up the drive from the gate. They would all converge on the house together, at 5:00 P.M. sharp. “Who do you mean, ‘him?’ Bodescu?” Jordan led the way through shrubbery towards the dimly looming mass of the house.
“Bodescu, yes,” Layard answered. “I’m a locator, remember? It’s my thing.”
“What’s that got to do with the mist?” Jordan’s nerves were starting to jump. He was a telepath of uncertain skill, but Roberts had warned him not to try it on Bodescu—and certainly not at this crucial stage of play.
“When I try to find him in my mind’s eye,” Layard attempted to explain, “inside the house there, I can’t zero in on him. It’s as if he were part of the mist. That’s why I think he’s somehow behind it. I sense him as a huge amorphous cloud of fog!”
“Jesus!” Jordan whispered, shivering again. In utter, eerie silence they moved towards the small outbuilding, whose open door led down to the cellars …
Simon Gower and Harvey Newton approached the house from the gently sloping field of shrubs at its rear. There wasn’t too much cover so the mist was a boon to them. So they thought. Newton was a telepath, called down from London along with Ben Trask as reinforcements. Newton and Trask weren’t quite as au fait with the situation as the rest, which was why they’d been split up.
“What a team we make, eh?” said Newton nervously as the ground levelled out and the mist billowed up more yet. “You with that bloody great torch on your back—and me with a crossbow? You know, if this stake-out is a dud, we’re going to look awfully—”
“God!” Gower cut him short, dropped to one knee and worked furiously at the valve on his hose.
“What?” Newton gave a massive start, glared all about, held his loaded crossbow out in front of him like a shield. “What?” He couldn’t see anything, but he knew Gower’s talent lay in reading the future—especially the immediate future!
“It’s coming!” Gower no longer whispered. In fact, he was shouting. “It’s coming—NOW!”
At the front of the house, where Guy Roberts and Ben Trask pulled up in Roberts’s truck, Gower’s shouting wasn’t heard over the throbbing of the vehicle’s engine. But on the north-facing side of the house it was. Trevor Jordan instinctively crouched down, then began to run at an angle towards the rear of the building. Ken Layard, hampered by his flame-thrower load, was slower off the mark.
Layard, stumbling through damp shrubbery, saw Jordan’s figure swallowed into a rolling bank of mist where he ran past the open door in the small outbuilding—then saw something erupt from that door in a snarling, slavering frenzy! Bodescu’s great dog! Without pause the flame-eyed brute hurled itself into the mist after Jordan.
“Trevor, behind you!” Layard yelled at the top of his voice. He yanked open the valve on his hose, jerked the trigger, prayed: God, please don’t let me burn Trevor!
A roaring, gouting stream of yellow fire tore open the curtain of mist like a blowtorch through cobwebs. Jordan was already round the corner of the house, but Vlad was still in view, bounding purposefully after him. The expanding, blistering “V” of heat reached after the dog, touched him, enveloped him—but briefly. Then he, too, was round the corner.
By now, at the front of the house, Guy Roberts and Ben Trask were down from the truck. Roberts heard shouting, the roar of a flame-thrower. It was still a minute or two to five but the attack had started—which probably meant that the other side had started it. Roberts put a police whistle to his lips, gave one short blast. Now, whatever else was happening, all six INTESP agents would move on the house together.
Roberts had the third flame-thrower; he headed straight for t
he main door of the house where it stood ajar in the shadow of a columned portico. Trask followed. He was a human lie-detector; his talent had no application here, but he was also young, quick-thinking and he knew how to look after himself. As he made to follow Roberts something caught his attention: a furtive movement glimpsed in the very corner of his eye.
Twenty-five yards away. between billowing banks of mist, a flowing figure had passed swiftly, silently inside the shell of the old barn. Who or whatever had gone in there, there would be nothing to stop it from clearing off out of the grounds once Roberts and Trask were inside the house. “Oh no you don’t!” Trask grunted. And raising his voice: “Guy, in the barn there.”
Roberts, at the door of the house, turned to see Trask running at a crouch towards the barn. Cursing under his breath, he strode after him.
At the back of Harkley House, Vlad came coughing and mewling out of the mist and attempted to spring at the three men he found there. The dog was a blackened silhouette sheathed in smoke and flame, burning even as he launched himself lopsidedly at Jordan’s back.
As Jordan had come running round the corner of the building, Gower had very nearly triggered his flame-thrower; he’d recognized Jordan only at the last possible moment. Harvey Newton, on the other hand, had actually drawn a bead on the misted figure and was in the act of firing his bolt when Gower cried a warning and shouldered him aside. The bolt flashed harmlessly off at a tangent and disappeared in mist and distance. Fortunately Jordan had seen the two men—saw them apparently aiming at him—and thrown himself flat. He hadn’t seen what pursued him, however, which even now overshot his sprawled body and arced overhead in a cloud of sparks and smoulder. Vlad landed awkwardly, gathered himself to spring at Newton and Gower, and discovered himself forging head-on into a withering jet of flame from Gower’s torch. The dog crumpled to earth, a blazing, crackling, screaming ball of fire that tried to run in all directions at once and ran nowhere.