Defilers

by Brian Lumley

  “Me neither,” said Jake, and then added, “I mean, I’m still getting used to it. But will you be okay driving home?”

  “I’ll be okay, yeah,” said Red, still unsteady on his feet. “But in any case a damn sight safer than with you, I reckon! So you can take the high road, Jake, and I’ll take the low road—every fucking time!”

  “But I’ll be in Scotland—or wherever—before ye!” Jake grinned.

  “And yer welcome,” said the other. “But just you be careful that’s all. Be sure not to get lost in … in that place, where or when or whatever it is.”

  He got into his car, turned her round, and drove out through the gates. Jake closed them after him. Outside, Red applied his brakes, turned in his seat to look back and wave. He was barely in time to see a swirl of leaves and dry debris spinning like a miniature dust devil, drawn up from the garden by the vacuum of Jake’s door and already beginning to settle.

  But as for Jake himself, it was as if he’d never been there at all …

  Jake went back to his Paris hotel, booked his room for an extra night, then threw himself on his bed. It was a little after one in the afternoon in France, yet still he felt tired.

  “Jet-lagged,” he mumbled to himself, as he fell asleep. “Or Möbius-lagged. Or something.”

  And for once Korath left him alone. Jake’s shields were now stronger than ever, and his mind completely impenetrable. There was no longer any possibility of taking up permanent habitation in either his conscious or subconscious psyches—not without he first invite such an invasion and deliberately open his mind to it—and Korath’s only remaining hope was that some situation would arise where Jake simply couldn’t refuse him.

  He knew that Jake wouldn’t grant him total and irrevocable access in order to get himself out of trouble (that had become obvious during the abortive episode in the bank vault), but he might be persuaded if a loved one was in difficulty. There was only one such loved one that Korath knew of and chances seemed slim … but who could say?

  The future was ever a devious thing—a difficult thing to gauge—and with E-Branch still in pursuit of Malinari, Szwart, and Vavara, Liz might yet find herself in dire straits.

  After all, it wouldn’t be the first time …

  Jake woke up at 3:30, shaved and showered, ate a light, early evening meal, and went out to find a barber.

  All sweet-smelling and dandied up, said Korath later, when Jake was getting a little exercise by returning on foot to the hotel through the evening streets. Live fast, die young—

  “And leave a handsome corpse,” said Jake. “Yes, I know. No need to be so morbid.”

  In my position it is difficult to be anything else! Korath answered. Tonight will certainly be our most dangerous mission so far—yet you make preparation by prettying yourself up!

  “The pigtail keeps my hair out of my eyes,” Jake answered. “And the wash and shave leaves me smooth, so that when I apply my makeup it will take more easily.”

  Your makeup?

  “Camouflage,” said Jake. “To help me merge with the night. I was once a soldier. As a career it didn’t last too long, but I did learn a few things.”

  That’s as may be, said Korath, but all these cosmetic preparations, they serve to remind me of the way a certain Starside Lady would decorate her thralls-with garlands of flowers, and honey rubbed into their skins—before serving them up screaming to some favoured warrior creature!

  “With friends like you,” said Jake—then paused as he felt a warm splash on his neck. Rain! That was why it was dark early tonight: the sky was overcast, and he had been so busy with his own (and Korath’s) thoughts that he hadn’t noticed. The weather was breaking at last, storm clouds rolling down from the north.

  And as the fat, heavy drops came faster, Jake took the Möbius route the rest of the way to the hotel …

  It’s barely dark, said Korath, as they set out for San Remo.

  “Barely dark here,” Jake told him, “but it’s an hour later in Italy. And if their weather is anything like ours, it’ll be even darker.”

  It was, and as Jake stepped from the Continuum at the precise coordinates where yesterday he had stopped the taxi—on the Imperia road where it had been blasted from the sea cliffs—he stepped straight into the teeth of a thunderstorm!

  Clouds boiled on high and jagged veins of lightning pulsed, patterning the sky out over the Ligurian Sea. Overhead, jutting from the cliffs on stanchion supports, the modern reincarnation of an ancient house of evil—Le Manse Madonie—loomed like an updated aerie, brought into sharp relief and made prominent not only by the lightning but also by illumination from within. The high, ocean-facing balcony was flooded with light, and just for a moment Jake thought to see someone up there on that wind- and rain-swept platform.

  But the rain was slanting against the cliffs, making everything a blur, and he couldn’t be sure. Already soaked, stepping soggily into the shadows, Jake looked up again at a sharp angle and saw nothing; but inside the house itself vague figures were on the move, their rain-blurred outlines appearing on the patio windows, their faces peering out, then drawing back and disappearing. These were Castellano’s people—drug-running bastards just like him—using and looking after the place in the boss’s absence, and on this occasion perhaps defending it. But tonight, in weather like this, surely they would be a little lax? Surely they wouldn’t be expecting trouble on a night such as this?

  Well, whether it was expected or not, trouble was coming.

  Jake had three charges, one for each of the stanchion supports. Take those out and the entire house would be a write-off, and most likely the people inside it, too.

  It wasn’t his intention to cut through the stanchions themselves—massive steel I-sectioned girders, that would take acetylene cutting gear and lots of time—but simply to blast them loose from their seatings in the cliffs. To which end his charges were each half as powerful as the one he’d used on the place in Marseilles: enough to fracture and dislodge the entire face of the cliff, let alone the support girders.

  Now he had to get onto the narrow maintenance ledge at the base of the stanchions, but in the downpour and the darkness he could barely see the ledge; his angle of observation was acute, and the coordinates were very uncertain. The access road had to be safer, so Jake made a Möbius jump a hundred yards back along the main road to a lay-by where the narrow one-lane access road branched off and climbed steeply toward the house. From there a second jump carried him up level with Le Manse Madonie itself, enabling him to see the ledge from above.

  Now the coordinates were lodged firmly in Jake’s mind, but in the moment before he jumped he thought he saw, yet again, a furtive movement in a shaded area of the balcony; someone moving there, and the glint of dull metal as lightning flashed to throw back the shadows. Whoever it was—if anyone at all—he must be sheltering under the tasselled canopy of a porch swing in one corner of the balcony.

  Which was why, as Jake emerged from the Continuum onto the rainwashed service ledge directly beneath the suspect area, he did so with extreme caution, crouching down as his eyes scanned the boards of the balcony just fifteen feet overhead. He could see very little, only bars of light slanting through the inchwide spacing in the boards, but was fully aware how those bars must be lighting on him, picking out his movements and banding him like a zebra. If there really was someone up there, and if he took a pace forward, leaned on the rail, and looked over …

  Jake worked as fast as he could, cursing under his breath as every bright flash of lightning silhouetted him against the slippery rock face, and managed to plant the first two charges in the Vs where the stanchions had been concreted into sockets which had been drilled deep into the cliff face. But then, as he put down his sausage bag beside the final stanchion and yanked out the third and last charge, his haste let him down.

  A pocket torch lying loose in the sausage bag was dragged free along with the charge. Before Jake could stop it, it fell … bounced … switched i
tself on … went twirling down into the darkness, flashing like a beacon as it spun!

  The clatter had been heard, the light seen, and from overhead the lookout barked, “What the fuck …!?”

  Holding his breath, Jake rammed the last charge into place and set the timer button. The task had taken no more than sixty seconds; the timers were set respectively at eighty, sixty, and just twenty seconds for the last one. This way Jake had allowed himself a comfortable twenty-second window of escape before the first blast, which would be followed in short order by the second and the third.

  No problem at all, if he hadn’t been seen.

  But he had been seen!

  And as Jake straightened up from his task in too much of a hurry, so his feet skidded on the wet rock surface and he only just managed to keep his balance. It was time he was gone from here, and Korath was already rolling the numbers.

  Feet clattered on the boards overhead; there came the well-known ch-ching! of a small-arms weapon being armed, followed by a blast of deafening sound—not thunder but the obscene clamour of an Uzi firing down through the overhead boardwalk—and Jake heard the splintering of wood and the angry-insect buzzing of bullets passing too close by.

  Caught off balance, Jake’s old-fashioned, outmoded survival instinct found him reaching for his own weapon, stupidly ignoring the numbers that were even now scrolling down the screen of his mind; and all the while Korath shouting, Jake, make a door! Make it now! Jake! Jaaake!

  But Jake was skidding about on the slimy rock surface again, and a hatch had opened in the balcony’s boardwalk. Ladders were released, swung on oiled hinges, and slammed down; and legs came into view, followed by a body, and finally an arm and hand with an Uzi that jerked and shuddered as it hosed spurts of fire and a stream of bullets blindly in Jake’s direction.

  He fired back, the crack! crack! of his 9 mm Browning automatic almost drowned out by the stutter of the Uzi. But the man on the ladders gave a cry, let go his grip and was thrown backwards, and at the same time a white-hot something—a brilliant light—hit Jake in the head, dissolving everything around him and turning the night to a whirlpool of blinding pain.

  I’m hit! Jake thought, as everything slipped away from him, until all that was left was the Möbius formula, constantly mutating in his dimming mind’s eye.

  Make a door! Korath screamed again, and finally got through to Jake in his last few moments of consciousness.

  Jake had slipped from the ledge; falling, he felt the night air rushing past him and knew there was something he must do. A door, that was it. He must stop the numbers and conjure a door.

  And he did … he brought a door into being directly in his path … the path of his descent.

  From above and behind Jake as the first charge detonated, a huge hot hand reached out to fling him headlong into the primal darkness of the Möbius Continuum …

  Jake was a long time surfacing, and it seemed an even longer time before he realized he wasn’t just dreaming but floating, adrift in some unknown medium, and that someone was shivering, gibbering, and cursing where he hid in the smallest possible niche of Jake’s mind. But wherever Jake was it was dark—oh so dark—and as quiet as the tomb. Or quieter.

  It must be night, Jake thought, the very thought bringing a fresh burst of pain, like bright lances of agony splintering in his head. And:

  Jake? said the whimpering thing that clung to him like grim death, the thing that was grim death, the dead vampire, Korath-once-Mindsthrall, where he trembled at the rim of Jake’s gradually awakening consciousness. Jake? Is that you? Is it really you?

  Oddly enough, Jake had to think about that. He wasn’t sure it was worth it (thought itself was painful, and he would much rather simply float here) but he had to think about it. Was it him, really him, or was it someone else? Before, on that ledge under Le Manse Madonie, he’d felt afraid. But now he only felt sick. Sick with the pain in his head, and the stickiness where he put up a hand in the dark to gentle the place where he hurt. But he wasn’t any longer afraid.

  Afraid? No, not here in the Möbius Continuum. For the Continuum was his place, where he hadn’t felt afraid for—oh, for as long as he could remember! Not since August Ferdinand Möbius himself had shown him how … how to gain access? That had been in Leipzig, Möbius’s tomb there … hadn’t it?

  Tomb again. What the hell was it with tombs? “Quiet as the tomb” … and “Möbius’s tomb” … and the teeming dead in their “tombs,” all arguing the merits, the pros and cons, the differences between Jake and Harry. As if there was a difference. And as for Leipzig: Jake had never fucking been there … had he?

  Jake, wake up! You’re delirious! said Korath, with a catch, almost a sob of relief in his deadspeak voice. You’re not Harry Keogh; you are Jake Cutter! And you’ve been hurt. But there was nothing in there—in your head—and I thought you were dead. Take my word for it, Jake: being hurt is far better than being dead! So pull yourself together and get us out of here.

  Not Harry Keogh? But then why did Jake remember so much of what Harry had been, what he’d done and what he’d left undone?

  It’s only a germ of Harry! said Korath. The smallest spark of him. He gave you—hah!—a piece of his mind!

  But no peace of mind, said Jake, as he came out of it more quickly now. Just a jigsaw puzzle with too many missing pieces. And piece by piece, I’m putting it all together. I’m gradually … remembering?

  Which is good! said Korath. For knowing what Harry knew can only make us stronger. (But his voice carried no conviction.)

  It can make me stronger, said Jake, the pain gradually subsiding, but I’m not so sure about you. And there was something in his tone that warned Korath to tread very carefully here.

  I don’t know what you mean.

  I mean, said Jake, that there once was a time when the Necroscope had an unwelcome tenant, just as I have you. Harry was plagued by a dead vampire whose name … was Faethor Ferenczy!

  The memory came home to him out of nowhere, just like that. Wrenched loose from the ceiling of some inner vault where contact with the original Necroscope had lodged it—shaken free as the result of violent action, concussion, and pain—it drifted like a fall of dust, writhing into a recognizable pattern where it settled on the whorls of Jake’s brain. Paramnesia, yes. Not one of his memories, but a memory nonetheless.

  Of Faethor Ferenczy!

  Faethor, clinging to him (or to Harry?) like a leech where he sped down a future-time stream; their conversation as fresh in Jake’s mind as if it had taken place yesterday, or as if it were occurring right here and now:

  “You see this blue thread unwinding out of me,” Jake heard himself (or Harry) saying to Faethor. “It’s my future.”

  And mine, Faethor answered doggedly.

  “But see, it’s tinged with red. Do you see that, Faethor?”

  I see it, fool. The red is me—proof that I’m part of you always.

  “Wrong,” Jake/Harry told him coldly. “I can go back because my thread is unbroken. Because I have a past, I can reel myself in. But your past was finished where you died back in Ploiesti, Romania. You have no thread, no lifeline, Faethor.”

  What? The other’s nightmare voice was a croak. Then—

  —The master of the Möbius Continuum brought himself to an abrupt halt, but the spirit of Faethor Ferenczy hurtled on into the future. Don’t do this! he cried out in his terror. Don’t do it!

  “But it’s done,” the Necroscope called after him. “You have no life, no flesh, no past, nothing, Faethor. All you have left is the future. The longest, loneliest, emptiest future any creature ever suffered. And now, goodbye!”

  H-H-Harry? … Haaarry! … Haaaarrry! … HAAAAA—! as the Necroscope closed the future-time door, to shut Faethor out forever.

  But before that door slammed shut, Jake/Harry looked again at the blue thread unwinding out of him/them, and saw—

  Jake! … Jaaake! … JAAAAAAKE! Korath shouted. Get a grip of yourself!

&
nbsp; Reluctantly, Jake relaxed his hold on this pseudomemory—this fragment from the original Necroscope’s past—which disappeared as quickly and mysteriously as it had come. And as for what Harry had seen before the future-time door closed …

  … Let it go! cried Korath. For he, too, had witnessed the pseudomemory, and his dearest wish was that the entire episode should disappear forever from Jake’s mind. Be glad that you are yourself and forget Harry Keogh. He is no more!

  But the episode wasn’t disappearing, not entirely. Jake continued to cling to at least one part of the pseudomemory as strongly as Faethor had clung to Harry.

  He knew what he’d seen, and: I know how to be rid of you, he said …

  What? said Korath, thoroughly alarmed. You would do that to me? Send me screaming into a never-ending void?

  I didn’t say I would do it, Jake said. I said I know how to do it. As a last resort, of course. Until which time—

  “You can be absolutely certain that I will honour our contract to the full, said Korath.

  I know that you’ll have to, said Jake. For while you’re outside my mind—in contact with me, but outside me—I can ditch you any time I want to in exactly the same way as Harry ditched Faethor. Which means from now on you daren’t put a foot wrong.

  For several long moments there was a total, sullen silence in the Möbius Continuum while Korath thought about it, until he answered, But since it isn’t and has never been my intention to put a foot wrong, I’m not in the least concerned! Only that you persist in thinking of me in such terms. And now perhaps you’ll stop worrying about it?

  And his deadspeak voice was so sincere that Jake was almost convinced.

  Almost …

  20

  ZANTE—SAN REMO—AUSTRALIA—KRASSOS—LONDON

  Jake searched for the coordinates for the Paris hotel … and found nothing!