by Brian Lumley
“For the last time, take it easy!” the Major yelled. “Do as I say or I’ll shoot you and drive the fucking thing myself! The bats won’t attack us. They’ll just … follow us along the way.” At least, that is, I mean … if that bastard Drakesh is good as his word.
Great white bats—two or three dozen of them, and two and a half feet across wing-tip to wing-tip—flitted, swooped, and side-slipped directly overhead. Their excited staccato chittering was clearly audible; they communicated with each other. And perhaps with someone else? For certainly that someone had communicated with them!
“But what in all that’s … what the hell are they doing?” the Corporal shrilled, when a pair of flapping pink-eyed nightmares danced for a moment or so in front of his windshield and caused him to swerve. “What do they want?”
“Nothing,” the Major shouted back, and prayed that he was right. “They’re just seeing us away from here, that’s all. They … they’re our escort.” Which sounded like something a madman might say, but Chang Lun believed it anyway. He couldn’t rationalize it, but he had to believe it. For his sanity’s sake.
And apparently he was right.
For even after it started snowing, still he and the Corporal knew that the bats were with them. They could feel, sense, occasionally sight them through the slanting, stinging, softly hissing snow, and when the wind was right they could even hear the whup of membranous wings in the whirling air all around …
Something less than two hours later—when the snow stopped at last and the wind eased off, and the dully flickering lights of Xigaze and the garrison blazed on the horizon—their “escort” fell back, seemed eaten up in distance and darkness.
Then, finally, Major Chang Lun felt he could begin breathing again. He’d been breathing, of course, but it scarcely felt like it. Likewise his Corporal driver: he, too, eased up a little and relaxed his tense, nervous grip on the controls.
Which was entirely the wrong thing to do.
They came up from nowhere, as if out of the very earth, a white, shrilling, sentient cloud of them. The bats! The vampire bats! Pink-eyed and needle-toothed, with their convoluted noses wrinkled back, flat to their wet-gleaming leathery faces. Three of them whirled, hurled themselves in a suicide attack directly at the windshield.
The screen was of clear plastic which cracked on the first impact, splintered on the second, flew apart as the third great bat came right through it in a welter of gore-spattered fur and torn leather, straight into the driver’s face! Two more hit the Corporal from the side, while behind him another pair attacked the Major. Their massed impact was such that the cat rocked on its skis and teetered, so that the driver must yank on his handlebars in an attempt to straighten up. But at the same time he was fighting for his life as the great bats clung to him, wrapped membrane wings about him … and bit!
One of them was biting at his face, his lips, nose, eyes! He screamed and let go the controls, heard, Crack!—Crack!—Crack!—like explosions in his ear, as the Major sobbed, cursed and pumped shot after shot into the things that were battening on him, then rammed the snout of his gun into the white-throbbing creatures clustered to his driver’s head and upper body and blew them away, too.
But the snow-cat had slewed aside, and now its riders saw where the bats had come from, that indeed they had come up out of the earth: up from the chasm that yawned directly ahead!
The Corporal cried out and yanked on the handlebars. The cat slewed again, then toppled sideways in a seeming slow-motion. And over and over the wildly revving machine went—and down and down—with Chang Lun and his man hanging on for dear life, and for death, all the way to the bottom.
But in the seconds before they hit:
Farewell, Chang Lun, said that faint, mocking voice in the Major’s mind. You’ll go no more a-spying for Tsi-Hong, I fear! Oh, ha-ha-ha!
“Liar! Liar!” the Major sobbed, still twirling.
And coldly: Always, Chang Lun, the voice agreed. Always!
With which the Major’s world went out in a single tearing shattering roar that lasted the blink of an eye …
II
THE FRANCEZCIS
THE RITUAL AT LE MANSE MADONIE HAD BEEN SIMPLE AND SOLEMN. THE funereal weather—a damp, blustery breeze off the Tyrrhenian, that snatched the women’s veils this way and that, first obscuring or masking their pale sad faces in black net, then framing them in stark, monochrome relief—had seemed entirely in keeping. Frequently disturbed, but never quite disrupted, by Julio Sclafani’s agony—his pitiful but entirely forgivable bouts of wailing, and wringing of sweaty hands—so far the interment of his daughter had gone smoothly, entirely as planned. Its organization had been immaculate in every detail.
But then, in the company of such esteemed fellow mourners, in such a place, and since the Francezci Brothers were themselves responsible for the arrangements, perhaps this was only to be expected. It had been out of necessity, of course—in order to avoid untoward complications—that the brothers had settled for stark simplicity. And thus far no complications had arisen.
Only at the end—when gaunt Francezci bearers in black-banded top hats and tails took up the young, beautiful and now tragically deceased Julietta in her box, to carry her from the courtyard into the darkly shadowed manse—only then did her father, Julio, lose control completely.
“I must see her!” he cried, staggering forward, squeezing his way into the house proper through the varnished Mediterranean pine doors, and putting himself in the path of the bearers. “I must!” he implored. “I’ve seen her but once in a whole year! But now, this one last time, I must! Oh, God! Her sweet mother in heaven would never forgive me, if I let her go to her grave without seeing her one last time!”
“Julio!” The Francezcis were on him at once, each holding fast to an arm. The rest of the mourners had been left outside, and the doors were now closed on them. “Julio, Julio!” Anthony Francezci said again, shaking his head and sighing.”Please try to believe me, we know how it is for you, how it must be. Julietta, in these—what, four years? But the time has flown!—she has become a little sister to us. Why, just look at Francesco! How gaunt, how sad! No one was more fond of her.”
“But …” Julio turned to him, clung to him, fat, weak and trembling against Tony’s lean, implacable strength.
“But … this is Le Manse Madonie!” Francesco Francezci’s voice was harder, and Julio glanced at him through red-rimmed, tears-blurred eyes. “It is what it is and what it has been for generations,” Francesco went on, but in a gentler tone now. “A private place, Julio. And your Julietta had become like one of us. You could even say she was … family. Which in turn makes you family. That being so, please don’t make things any harder for us than they already are.”
“But to see her. Only to see her this last time. Why not? I beg of you! Before she goes down to the vaults?”
The brothers looked at him, then at each other, and came to a mutual, unspoken agreement. Then, letting Sclafani disengage, they nodded silent instructions to the six bearers where they stood patiently waiting. And:
“On the long table there,” Tony told them. “But be gentle, be careful. Don’t … disturb her.”
The great hall was suitably still and shadowy. The walls with their arched-over recesses or entranceways into secondary rooms—the stairways, fixtures, furniture and hangings—were barely visible in the gloom. If Julio Sclafani noticed this at all it was only to find it well in keeping. He scarcely remembered that on the two or three occasions when he’d been invited to visit Julietta, Le Manse Madonie had always been gloomy. He couldn’t know that it always was, or why it was that no chink of sunlight was ever allowed to filter in here, where even the sullen light of Sicilian winters was held at bay behind thick, dusty curtains …
As the draped box was lowered to the polished table, Julio gave a strangled cry and stumbled forward. The brothers at once got in his way and again took his arms. “We … we supposed you would want to see her.” Tony explained. “That is why the
coffin has a window of glass. But Julio, you know the circumstances of her death …”
“A wasting disease, yes,” the fat man moaned. “A … what did you call it? A pernicious anaemia. ‘Pernicious,’ indeed! A dreadful, terrible, murdering anaemia, more like! Your private doctor, the very best, could do nothing.”
“All true,” Tony nodded. “Which means that … well, that she isn’t the Julietta you knew. This thing was like a cancer. It ate at her. It had its own peculiar odour that can’t be … masked. And Julietta may not be touched, or kissed. Hence the glass.”
“But … I will know her?”
“Of course. Our only wish was that you should remember her as she was.”
“Still, I must see her.”
“So be it,” said the brothers together, and released him.
Sclafani wobbled to the head of the coffin, slid back the grey silk cover, looked down on the face beneath the glass. It was dim; the glass was touched with a trace of dust; its sheen obscured the features of the pallid face within the frame. Sobbing, Sclafani clung to the edge of the table for support, and blinked his puffy eyes to improve their focus. And as the Francezcis silently took up flanking positions beside him, his Julietta’s beloved features seemed to swim up at him. Being short, his face was quite close to hers; on the other hand, the Francezci Brothers were like trees, shading him and Julietta both.
Still, Julio could see her fairly clearly now. And though her eyes were of course closed, she was—
“—Smiling?” The word trembled from his lips.
“The pain-killers,” Francesco murmured. “At the end there was … oh, a deal of pain. Mercifully, we were able to relieve some of it. But at the very end, your Julietta spoke of you … and smiled! Ah, yes, she died with a gentle smile on her face, Julio, just thinking thoughts of you!”
Sclafani’s eyes had made the adjustment now. They saw more clearly. But in all honesty, he couldn’t say he liked what they saw. “Thinking of me? But … this smile is like a grimace!”
“The pain,” Francesco said again. “Despite the medication, she …” And he paused. “But she hid it well.”
Sclafani kissed the glass over her lips; his tears fell on the dusty surface, acting like tiny magnifying glasses to blur and diminish the detail. “Just four short years ago, she looked like a girl!” he groaned. “She was—she is—a girl! Yet now she looks like some strange pale woman.”
“Four years,” Tony repeated him. “She grew up, Julio. Your Julietta grew up, and was changed …”
“Changed, yes. So waxy and sunken in.” Sclafani hugged the top of the box.
“Depleted,” said Tony. “The anaemia—like a cancer.”
“And yet her lips are full and red!”
“And all wasted,” Francesco put an arm around the grieving Sclafani’s shoulders. “Our efforts, I mean. Still, you have the comfort of knowing she never shamed you, never knew a man.”
“A comfort? It scarcely comforts me, Francesco! Where are my grandchildren? And would it have been so shameful? What, in this day and age? Her mother loved to love, even a man unworthy as myself! But Julietta, she is untried, denied such knowledge. Wasted, you are right. To be beautiful, and never have a chance to give of your beauty!”
“There, there,” said Francesco, clasping his shoulders and turning him away, while Tony slid the silk back into position.
Sclafani struggled for a moment, then finally surrendered to the inevitable. “But I will be able to visit?”
“This place, where she spent her last years?” (Francesco seemed unsure.) “Well, we shall see. To walk where she walked, in the grounds of Le Manse? Perhaps. But the vaults? Alas, no. Not even now. The Francezcis are there, Julio: private in life and death both. We were ever proud, and proud to have Julietta, too. We had hoped that you would be proud knowing she is here. Perhaps in this we have elevated ourselves, but …”
“No, no!” the other protested. “I didn’t mean to—”
“ … But if so, then we elevate Julietta, too. Not to mention your good self.”
“You have been … too kind to me and mine throughout.”
Francesco saw him to the door and outside into the courtyard, hugged him, shook his hand and gave him over into Mario, their chauffeur’s care. He watched him driven slowly away in the stretch limo. By then the other mourners, mainly Francezci people, had already dispersed.
Then Francesco returned to where his brother was speaking to the bearers.
“Quickly, now,” Tony told them. “Take her down to the pit and wait there for us. But don’t go in until we’re there.” And as they left he turned to Francesco. “That all went very well.”
“Hmmm? Do you think so?” Francesco seemed distant, absent-minded; his thoughts were elsewhere.
“What?” Tony frowned at him. “But what’s this? Don’t tell me you’re actually missing her!”
The other stood straighter. “Perhaps, perhaps not. I don’t know. But one thing is for sure: she’s sleeping the last sleep, the Sleep of Change. My fault, I know. But whether I ‘miss’ her or not isn’t relevant. What is relevant is that we can’t afford another Ferenczy in the house—and certainly not a Lady!”
“Good!” Tony nodded, and his eyes were feral in the gloom and glowed red in their cores. “For a moment there … why, I thought you’d gone soft on me!”
Francesco smiled, however grimly. “Soft? Ah, no. Julietta was just … so accessible. Having her here made it all so very easy. I suppose I’m basically lazy, that’s all. But miss her? I shall miss fucking her, be sure. She was so very good at it!”
“But then, you taught her,” Tony chuckled.
“Well yes, there’s that, of course!” Francesco laughed.
With which, they followed the bearers down to the pit …
In the lowest levels of Le Manse Madonie—in the very bowels of the place, mainly a natural cavern, but in part carved from the bedrock—the mouth of the pit was like a well, with walls of old hewn masonry three feet high. Indeed, it had been a well in the early days of Le Manse, many hundreds of years ago, when it had drawn water from an old cyst in the volcanic rock all of eighty feet deeper still.
Now the Francezcis stood at the rim of the pit and paused to consider what they were about. And quietly, a little uncertainly, Tony said: “Our Julietta—or rather, your Julietta—is hardly pure.”
“Pure?” Francesco shrugged. “Who is, these days? Show me a good-looking virgin in Palermo over sixteen years old, and I’ll show you a liar!”
“Well, true,” his brother mused. “But still, you know how he likes them. And she’s not even clean—not scrupulously—as he is used to them.”
“What?” Francesco was short-tempered at the best of times, and this wasn’t the best of times. “What are you suggesting? We should have purged her, perhaps? Put her through the usual ritual and chanced waking her up prematurely? I mean, in case you hadn’t noticed, brother, our Julietta—or mine, if you will—is Wamphyri! She could do severe damage! I’m not worried about us, you and I, but the men, our lieutenants. The last thing we want is to lose someone at this stage of the game.”
“What stage of the game is that?” Tony was suddenly pessimistic; unusual, for he was normally the optimist. “Has there been some subtle yet remarkable change in the last two or three years? Did I miss something?” … Pessimistic, and sarcastic.
“Yesss!” his brother hissed, rounding on Tony, glaring at him from eyes as red as hell. “The time has changed, narrowing down to his fucking time! Radu Lykan’s time! And the grotesque thing in this bloody pit has changed: Angelo, our dear father, more unreliable, and more demanding than ever. And our fortune has been depleted, which we still haven’t done anything about. And world-wide the Families are … they’re laughing behind our backs! I don’t know about you, but I can feel it! And since we started asking questions about this British E-Branch, and this Harry Keogh, and this fucking Alec Kyle—questions about dead men, for fuck’s sake—the CIA, and
the KGB, and everyone else we used to use don’t want to know us! Then there’s this Drakul ‘sect’ in England and Scotland, and our man’s report more than three months old now; and we still haven’t done anything about that either! What? And does it amuse you to ask has something fucking changed?”
“Calm down, calm down!” Tony sighed. “All right, so things have changed. But that’s not what I meant. Or maybe it is. It’s just that I’m sick of the inactivity … of that and everything else: all the things you mentioned. Yes, that’s right: I’m just as sick and frustrated as you! And as if that weren’t enough, I now have to talk to him, try to get some sense out of him!”
“Huh!” Francesco grunted, at least part-mollified. “Well, I have to admit I don’t envy you that. But that’s the way it is. He won’t even acknowledge me!”
“Which is why I wondered if giving him Julietta will do us any good.”
“Then stop wondering,” Francesco answered. “Instead, just ask yourself this: what good will she do us undead? For that’s what she’ll be if we let her wake up—and Wamphyri! So then, it’s settled: she’s Angelo’s. And all that remains—”
“—Is the bargaining,” Tony nodded. “Yes, I know.”
“And anyway, it’s probably best this way.” In a rare show of camaraderie—a show, at least—Francesco actually put his arm across his brother’s shoulder, which Tony at once shrugged off.
“What’s best?” he asked, suspiciously.
“That you’re the one Angelo talks to. I mean, he was ever difficult, our father, but never more so than now. Let’s face it: my temper is too short; I haven’t the patience to … well, play with him. But you were always good at his word games. And anyway, he likes you.”
“Huh!” Tony grunted. “That’s a compliment, is it?” Plainly he was nervous; the way he licked his lips, kept glancing into the deeps of the well, or more properly the pit. “That’s supposed to make me feel better about it, eh?”
Francesco narrowed his eyes and said, “What is it? You’re afraid? But what of? I mean, this is hardly the first time that you’ve—”