by Brian Lumley
For a moment the pilot of Chopper One saw him: the jet-copter’s thermal-imaging highlighted a shifting, flattening, morphing blob of a figure that at first plummeted, quickly adopted a manta-like shape, and finally glided from view. The pilot might even have taken a shot at the thing, but powerful updrafts from the blazing hell that was Xanadu were rocking his machine, forcing him to take action and climb out of danger.
And as Jake and the others left the pool, so Nephran Maliniari shot like an arrow overhead. He might easily have been some primal pterodactyl out of Earth’s prehistory, but was in fact a predatory creature from an alien, parallel world. Trask saw him—his crimson eyes, the dark blur of his passing—and a moment later heard his taunting laughter echoing from on high.
Hearing that laughter, and remembering Zek—unable to forget her, ever—all Trask wanted was to stand there and let his hate out, and will this monster to a terrible death. He knew he couldn’t, but he had never wanted anything so much in his life.
In close proximity like this—so intent upon each other—Malinari had “heard” Trask and sent back:
Hatred such as that is catching, Mr. Trask. It breeds hatred! As for willing me to death: we must see whose will is the strongest, eh? Not here and now, no, but in another place, another time. This was nothing but a skirmish, to get your measure. But if you would live to fight another day, first you must survive the night. Alas, I don’t think so. If you survive, however, do not despair. For I shall be waiting, Mr. Trask, I shall be waiting … .
All of them with Trask heard it—that dark voice in their heads and its taunting message—but especially Liz. She heard it, and saw beyond it. Malinari’s plan: flight, to safe haven in another place, another country.
She might even have discovered which one, but Nephran Malinari recognized her presence and withdrew snarling into mental obscurity. Where his evil telepathic voice had been, only mindsmog remained, spiralling after him into a mental void.
And Malinari was gone.
But to Trask and the others it seemed the danger was still present. Xanadu was burning end to end; a series of devastating explosions continued to rock the place; Malinari’s bubble aerie on top of the Pleasure Dome was no more, and showers of plastic and glass were still raining to earth. Scraps of blazing debris drifted across the night sky, and clods of earth and grass were fountaining in the garden where Chopper One had made its initial landing. A lucky mistake on Malinari’s part, that last. One of his few errors.
But the Pleasure Dome itself, the casino, was still standing, and now the precog Ian Goodly cried, “The big one is still to come. It’s the casino. A set piece of delayed action—like the pause before the last big firework at the end of the show!”
Fortunately W.O. II Bygraves had taken the initiative. Thinking he’d lost his commanding officer when the major’s radio had gone down, he had called the rest of the platoon out of the casino. Now they came running, gathering at the pool. But from the pool on outwards to the perimeter of the resort, it seemed that the whole of Xanadu was an inferno. Even if there were no more explosions, the sheer heat would certainly kill everyone before they made half the distance. And meanwhile the precog, in a fit of delirious anxiety, was turning this way and that, repeating, “It’s going to blow! It’s going to blow!”
Then a piece of burning debris from the bubble came drifting like a kite, weighed down by and trailing a length of electrical cable. No one noticed it until it struck the monorail’s overhead power grid. There was a flash that sent blobs of molten copper skittering, and the kite and cable fell to earth.
Trask and the major glanced at each other, headed for the boarding platform no more than fifty feet away. The rest followed them, and Jake quickly caught up. “What are we doing?” he asked Trask breathlessly.
“The elevated monorail,” Trask gasped. “It has power. Maybe we can drive out of this, or over the worst of it, at least as far as the main parking lot and the big ops truck.”
His idea was as good as any other; in fact, it was the only idea, for the armoured car had been blown over onto its side by the blast from the garden. Fortunately the locator David Chung, along with Bygraves and his men, had already vacated that area; like Jake they had seen the pool as the only sanctuary from the bomb blasts and the fires that licked closer with every passing moment. And by now the heat and smoke were suffocating.
Dragging Liz behind him, Jake was the first into the leading carriage of two articulated, open-sided cars. Climbing into the driver’s seat, he hit the red power button and, as the motor throbbed into life, grabbed the drive lever.
The system could scarcely be simpler: push forward to go, pull backward to stop. And ahead the single overhead rail climbed and curved outwards towards the perimeter parking lot, the reception area, Xanadu’s gates and safety. But while the motor warmed up, still the precog was shouting. “It’s going any minute now!”
Men ran, limped, or were carried; they bundled each other into the cars. Until finally Trask yelled, “That’s it. Now get us the hell out of here!” And Jake pushed the lever forward.
Slowly—agonizingly slowly, or so it seemed—the cars climbed to their elevated height and started along the spiralling, pylon-supported rail. Fifty feet, a hundred, and gathering speed. And then the Pleasure Dome went.
The blast was awesome as the casino literally lifted into the air, sank down into itself, split asunder under the irresistible pressure of expanding gasses, and blew apart in red and yellow streamers of flame. The whole thing disappeared in dust, rubble, and gouting fire, and in the next moment the hot blast of its passing reached out and rocked the monorail’s carriages, causing its passengers to grit their teeth and hang on for dear life. But then the cars steadied up and the danger was past.
So everyone thought—
—Except Ian Goodly. “There’s one bomb left!” he suddenly cried. “Its in the reception area, the gatehouse!” He was right—and just like the bomb in the Pleasure Dome, this too was a delayed action device. When it went it took a good man, their rear guard, with it—but it also took out the last elevated section of the monorail!
Liz was behind Jake, shouting, “Look! Look!” and pointing ahead. But he was already looking. All he could see through the smoke and the fire was a mass of slumping, buckled metal—the wreckage of the tower that had borne the weight of the monorail—beyond which there was empty space and a drop of some thirty odd feet into a red, roaring death!
Jake slammed the drive lever into reverse … and nothing happened. The power had gone along with the overhead gantry and power line, and the cars were freewheeling down a gentle gradient at some thirty miles an hour.
But Ian Goodly’s talent was back in force. Suddenly he was there, leaning over Jake and shouting, “Jake, listen! There’s a way out. I can see it. We’re going to make it!”
And he told Jake what he had seen, shouted it into his ear as the articulated cars went lurching into empty space, heading for the inferno that waited below.
Korath knew what was required and set those fantastic formulae rolling yet again down the screen of Jake’s mind—until Jake froze them and conjured a door that even Harry Keogh would be proud of. Then:
Darkness surrounded the cars—the Ultimate Darkness of a time before time—and in a single moment which might yet be as long as forever, light, gentle moon, and starlight, blinked into being as Jake made his first perfect three-point exit from the Möbius Continuum at well-known coordinates.
The cars were boat-bottomed. They didn’t dig in but rode across the dry grass and sandy soil of the safe house’s garden, quickly slowing until, with scarcely a jolt, they were brought up short by the stout wall. Then the rear car slewed a little—but not enough to spill anyone—and both cars rolled sideways through forty-five degrees and came to a rocking standstill.
For a long time there was silence. Until Jake and the E-Branch people climbed out of the lead car and, as a man, collapsed or plumped down on the withered grass and began to br
eathe again.
Then someone (it sounded to Liz like Red Bygraves) said, “Holy fuck!” And everyone started talking at once.
EPILOGUE
In Xanadu, Jethro Manchester had built a Pleasure Dome. Now it was gone, and Manchester with it, to an end as undeserved as it was brutal and horrific. Likewise the alien author of Xanadu’s and Manchester’s ruin; he, too, was gone. But Lord Nephran Malinari was fled, not dead. And it grieved Ben Trask’s heart that he must admit it: that the chase wasn’t nearly over yet, but if anything was now more needful and deadly than ever.
For if the others, if Vavara and Szwart, were trying to do what Malinari had begun to do in subterranean Xanadu—if they, too, were nurturing “gardens” of loathsome, plague-bearing deathspawn—and if a single red spore, all unnoticed, inhaled like a speck of dust, could write finis on a human life and replace it with undeath, how then millions or billions of spores—and what then for the world …?
On the second morning after the Australians cremated their four dead comrades in a quiet ceremony with full military honours—a ceremony which Trask and his E-Branch people felt privileged to attend, where in fact there were only three bodies in their coffins, for the fourth had burned on Manchester’s island, and was represented by a photograph, a scroll of honour, and messages of farewell from his closest colleagues only—the second morning after that, the major and his two stalwart warrant officers were at the airport in Brisbane to see Trask and his people off.
After the British team had received their regulation new bubonic shots—for the Australian authorities were insistent that no one be allowed to enter or leave the continent without first being innoculated—then, over drinks in the departure lounge, Trask and the major had a quiet word in private. Jake, Liz, and the rest of the team sat at a table with Bygraves and Davis, where for the better part they commiserated in silence. Something of an aftermath, it seemed there wasn’t a lot to be said. But Trask and the SAS major weren’t willing to leave it at that.
“And so it goes on,” said the major, “for you at least.”
“For us it never seems to end,” Trask answered. “Just when we think it might, there’s always something new. Not always as bad as what we’ve just been through, but always bad.”
“And you can’t give up on it,” said the major; not a question but a statement of fact.
“Never!” Trask growled. “This time, for me it’s personal. But personal or not, it’s always the same. We’ve seen all this before, and we’ll see it again. Yes, and we’ll see it through, all the way to the end. But myself … I for one will never be able to rest until this one is dead. Or until I’m dead. One or the other.”
“Malinari?”
“The same,” Trask nodded. “I want that bastard dead, dead, dead! And I intend to get him, no matter what it takes. As Lardis Lidesci might say, that’s my vow. Hub! My Szgany vow, aye.”
“Well, you have a good team to help you.” The major glanced across the room at the people sitting with his men. “Weird as hell, but good. That David Chung, for instance. Such a quiet little man—with his built-in radar dish. And the tall fellow, Ian Goodly, who I’d hate to play cards with. And Liz, who hears people thinking? I definitely wouldn’t play cards with her! And as for Jake … I just can’t believe what he does! It may have saved my life, but I still don’t believe it.”
“I know,” Trask answered. “And it doesn’t help that it’s something I can’t talk about. Or something we can’t talk about. But being what you are, SAS, I’m sure you understand that. Anyway—and if it makes it any easier—there are times when I don’t believe this stuff myself. Times when I wake up and think I’ve been nightmaring. And the hell of it is, I’m the only one who really knows that it’s true!”
The major shook his head and said, “Weird, weird people—but I’m glad to have known you.”
“Same here,” said Trask. “I’m only sorry that—”
“I know.” The other cut him short. “The only consolation lies in what we’ve achieved. For let’s face it, no sane people could ever suffer such as that to live. Those four lives might have saved thousands.”
But Trask shook his head. “Think again,” he said. “Thousands? There are over six billion people on this small planet. And that’s how many we might have saved. Or that we’ve started to save.”
And after a while the major said, “Hearing you put it like that, I know it was worth it.”
At which Liz called across and said, “They’re boarding.”
“It’s time we weren’t here,” said Trask, standing up. And as the major reached out his hand Trask looked at it, took it, and said, “I don’t even know your name!”
“It’s Tom,” said the other.
“Just Tom? Major Tom?”
“That’ll suffice,” said the major, grinning.
Trask smiled, too, and said, “Well, Major Tom, ground control is calling for us.”
The major had been carrying a fat, eighteen-inch-long parcel. Now he gave it to Trask. “This is for you,” he said. “The men found it when they went down and burned out the underground rooms, tunnels and conduits in Xanadu. It got burned, too, so I can guarantee it’s clean. I don’t believe in trophytaking, not after a job like that one. Maybe you’ll find a use for it.”
After that there was no time for anything other than handshakes all round, then Trask and his people went to board their Qantas VTOL Skyskip.
But as they queued at the boarding gate, Jake sensed someone’s gaze upon him and glanced toward the reinforced flexiglass wall that secured the boarding area from the viewing promenade. From the far side of the wall, distorted by the images of other passengers that moved across its reflective surface, a thin, pockmarked face looked back at him. And for a moment their eyes met before Jake looked away.
He looked away, but only for a moment …
… Until something went click in his memory and he gave a start and looked again. But the face was gone.
Standing just behind him, Ben Trask had noticed his reaction and said, “Is there something?”
Jake frowned, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so. But just for a moment then I thought I might have … recognized someone?”
Trask looked at him in a certain way, with his head cocked a little on one side, and said, “Or you’re concerned that maybe someone recognized you?”
Jake shrugged uncomfortably, said, “That, too. But here in Australia? Unlikely.”
Very unlikely, yes. For as Jake had said, what would that lousy, murdering, bastard thug—what would the face of a man who had featured in his worst nightmares for far too long now, one of Luigi Castellano’s soldiers, unforgotten from a certain monstrous night in Marseille—what would he be doing here?
Then he shrugged again and put it out of his mind. It was part of his growing obsession, that was all, when from time to time he would see those faces wherever he looked; this despite that several of them were no more, dead by his hand. But still Jake looked again at the flexiglass partition before moving on into the boarding tunnel.
And of course there was no one there … .
As the VTOL Skyskip was rising vertically into the air, lifting its nose, and accelerating into the sky, the man with the pockmarked face was in a telephone kiosk, speaking long-distance to Palermo.
“No doubt about it,” he said in Italian. “I’d know the guy anywhere. He’s alive and kicking, and there’s been all kinds of shit going down around here, yeah! That Xanadu thing: they said it was a plague spot, and an accidental fire burned it out down to the foundations. But I can tell you, Luigi, some of the crew who were up there clearing up afterwards—like, you know, military types?—they were here at the airport to see Cutter and these British people onto their plane. Like pals all round, you know? Me, I’d like to know how you knew this Jake Cutter would be out here in the first place … .
“You didn’t know? You were only interested in Xanadu … . ?
“And I … I
ask too many questions. Yeah, I know. You’re right, sorry. So what now?
“I should find out who the Brits were? Get after them, on the next plane? Sure, I can handle that. And I can use the account in England, have myself some fun? Hey, I like it!
“Er, yeah …?
“But if I don’t find out who they are, I needn’t bother to go back to Marseille … or anywhere. Right, Luigi, I got that. But say …” And there he stopped short, scowling at the phone. For it was purring away vacantly to itself in his hand, and the oh-so-dark voice on the other end was gone.
On board the Skyskip, when they were indeed skipping across the outer atmosphere, Ben Trask started to open the parcel given to him by the major. But as gleaming metal hooks appeared, flexible fish-scale plates and sharppointed gouges, he stopped, went pale, and wrapped the thing up again.
Having seen its like before, on Starside in an alien world of vampires, he knew exactly what it was: a battle gauntlet, as used by the Wamphyri!
But then, looking up and across the central aisle at David Chung, Trask’s colour returned and he smiled a mirthless, vengeful smile. And: “Lord Nephran Malinari,” he murmured to himself, under the subdued rumble of the Skyskip’s engines, “you can run but you can’t hide.”
And again, nodding to himself, “You can’t ever hide, Malinari—not for long, not from me—and definitely not from E-Branch.”
NEXT:
E-BRANCH:
DEFILERS
Jake and Korath struggle for supremacy. Vavara’s Sisterhood of Evil. Szwart’s Maze of Darkness. Malinari’s Madness—and more …
ALSO BY BRIAN LUMLEY
The Caller of the Black
Beneath the Moors
The Horror at Oakdeene