Defilers

by Brian Lumley

  And Trask spent several frantic minutes coding and sending:

  I read you good! I have a request for tonight. Is HMS Invincible in range of Krassos? Plan B refers.

  The fax lit up again; Trask fed it a blank sheet; out came the message, asking him to wait while the duty officer got hold of a tech. He fed in another sheet, and waited … eventually a coded message … the usual rigmarole, and:

  No go on Plan B. Don’t send coordinates. Two reasons. The Min Res [meaning the Minister Responsible] is here. Grttpxxgggeek radar and early warning systems are operational but functioning badly. They might blame Turkey. War in the Med. Two: Invincigtttx ble has satellite coordinated targeting. No good in darkgggttoh ggness unless previously programmed or guided in by satellite. Do you read? If so, more to follow …

  And: “Yes, God damn you, I read!” Trask rasped, as he used the fax. He was so busy that he barely noticed that the precog Ian Goodly had come in and was sitting at the foot of the bed, reading the messages where he’d thrown them down.

  After that it was five everlasting minutes before the last, short, enciphered text was delivered and decoded:

  Bad news. Sorry to report. Half anxxgj hour ago. Special Branch man down. He was hkkygg Millicent Cleary’s escort. Not serious. He was able to call it in from King’s Cross underground. But Millie is missing. Every available agent on it. We’ll find her, but you had to know. JG/DO.

  And Trask just sat there reading the thing, over and over and over. But Ian Goodly, precog that he was, had seen it coming and was already out of the door. To hell with caution now. Plan B was a goner and they must revert to Plan A—which had always been that they would deal with things themselves if they had to, working it out as they went along.

  So thank God for Manolis Papastamos and his men!

  That was how things stood, and when Trask woke up from his current daze, his disbelief—and when his rage was on him in full—that’s how things would be …

  21

  CONVERGENCE—HELL ON EARTH, AND UNDER IT

  Jake wore a thin strip of adhesive plaster under a black headband that served a dual purpose in keeping both the plaster and his braid in place. With charcoal stripes on his face and hands, and dressed in black from head to toe, he was almost as dark as the night itself.

  He carried a black sausage bag containing three bombs, each made from three pounds of plastique, plus Major Tom’s haversack devices, the thermite bombs that he’d picked up in the Gibson Desert in Australia. In addition, he’d fashioned a lanyard for his Browning, which he carried tucked snugly into his trousers; this was a lesson he’d learned from his temporary loss of the weapon following the firefight at Le Manse Madonie. The nite-lite binoculars completed his equipment; he wore them with their strap around his neck.

  At 12:30 A.M. local time he emerged from the Möbius Continuum at previously noted coordinates between Trabia and Bagheria less than a quarter-mile south of Castellano’s headquarters. It was the same vantage point from which he’d studied the place on his earlier visit, and the same problems waited to be resolved: he still had no notion of the internal layout of the house, and no way of knowing how many of Castellano’s people were in situ. The one thing in Jake’s favour (other than the Möbius Continuum itself): the night was dark under a slow-moving cloudy sky, and all good men and true should be in their beds. He hoped so, anyway.

  Which I’ve heard before, said Korath, and which I answered. This is no ordinary man, Jake. Nor is be good and true. I can’t help but worry that this is your most dangerous venture yet.

  “Mine and yours both,” Jake answered under his breath. “For without me there’s no you.”

  You don’t have to remind me, said Korath. And of course I’m worried for both our skins, despite that mine is an empty one.

  Kneeling in the cloud-cast shadows behind a clump of rocks, Jake frowned at the scene presented by his binoculars. Downhill and downwind from his location, Castellano’s stronghold looked even more forbidding than it had in full daylight. In the dense olive groves surrounding the house, four evenly spaced blobs of ghostly grey light floated along narrow paths winding under the trees. Made visible by Jake’s nite-lites’ thermal-imaging, they were Castellano’s men keeping watch on the perimeter.

  Following the heat trail of one of them, Jake saw him go to the outer wall, watched as he climbed stone steps, saw him look out into the darkness in Jake’s general direction.

  Jake wasn’t too concerned, for unless the man was equipped as he was equipped he wouldn’t be able to see much of anything. And yet—

  —The short hairs at the back of Jake’s neck prickled. He took a sharp breath, ducked down, took cover. It was a feeling, that was all. No, it was more than that: it was the very deliberate way the guard had looked out across the wall, turning his head as if to slowly scan the rough, gradually rising ground in the direction of Jake’s position. That was what had caused Jake to take cover: the fear that he might be seen! But bow seen, in this darkest of nights? Maybe this one had nite-lites after all, but Jake didn’t think so. And the hairs at the back of his neck were still prickling.

  Having seen what Jake had seen, through his eyes—and having felt his apprehension—now Korath said, There’s something wrong here. Something strangely familiar about the feel of this place. And it isn’t simply that we’ve been here before. Frankly I don’t like it at all.

  “You and me both,” said Jake under his breath. “This isn’t a good place to be. I sensed that the last time we were here. But it’s where I have to be if I want to get the job done. And I do want to get it done.”

  Yes, I know that now, said Korath. And since I can’t dissuade you I’ll give you my fullest assistance. But still I say to you, this place has dangers more than we perceive.

  Jake nodded, eased himself into a more comfortable position from where he could look out again between the rocks, and eventually answered, “An old—or perhaps that should be new—adage continues to apply. Just as you were a cautious one in life …”

  Had to be, Korath cut in, in order to survive in Malinari’s service. Well (a deadspeak shrug), for as long as I survived.

  “ … So you go on in death,” Jake finished.

  But this time it isn’t like that, Korath tried to explain. This time it’s very different. This place is … too quiet. No, it’s unquiet! Why, even the teeming dead are silent here!

  Jake remembered what Humph had told him at the site of the original Manse Madonie. “This is Sicily,” he said. “And as I’ve just reminded you, what the dead did in life, they continue—”

  —And I continue to tell you, said Korath hotly, that this is different! Why don’t you listen to me, Jake? Surely you can feel it for yourself? The silence here is … absolute! Haven’t I told you how I eavesdrop on the dead in their graves? But not here. Ob, they may well be listening to us, but they’re not saying anything. They’re not saying anything at all—not even to each other!

  And now, as Jake saw the grey anthropomorphic blob get down from the wall and continue on its patrol through the olives, he felt it, too: the utter silence in the deadspeak aether. And he suddenly realized that he had become used to the whispers of the dead, so much so that unless he concentrated they were less than a hiss of background static in the receptors of his metaphysical mind. But in this place even that hiss was absent, as if the teeming dead held their breath …

  Exactly, said Korath. As if they are waiting for something. For you to join them, perhaps? I hate to sound morbid, but your future isn’t looking too bright, Jake.

  “My future?” said Jake, slowly lowering the nite-lites. And again, but more thoughtfully, frowningly, “My future …”

  Eh? said Korath, unable to read Jake’s mind, because as yet his thoughts weren’t fully formed.

  “Past and future!” Jake breathed the words out, as his dead familiar began to get the idea.

  You intend to look through a future-time door, said Korath. You’ll trace your blue life-thread a
nd so witness your survival … or whatever. Which in turn will determine your next step.

  But Jake shook his head. “The future’s a devious thing that can quickly lead a man astray,” he said. “Harry Keogh rarely if ever risked looking at the future, not in any great detail. But the past is there and there it will stay, utterly immutable. No need to fear what’s already happened, for it can’t be changed.”

  Neither can the future, said Korath. The thought is crystal clear in your mind.

  “For which reason I daren’t look at the future,” said Jake. “For if I did I might try to change it, and the future—”

  Would resent and resist it? said Korath.

  “Something like that, yes,” Jake nodded. “But what is past is past, and it just might help us to know what we’re going up against. So roll those numbers, and we’ll go down to the gates of that house.”

  The house? But you’ll be seen!

  “No, for we won’t be there long enough. But I want to know who—how many people—have passed through those gates in the immediate past. And the only place I can find the answer is in the past! Proximity, Korath. Having passed through those gates, that’s where their life-threads will show up in Möbius time.”

  While explaining, Jake had used his nite-lites and chosen a spot under the wall close to the gates. And he’d made sure that the fuzzy grey blobs were nowhere near.

  It took but a moment, or no time at all, to go to the coordinates that Jake had chosen, and one more moment for Korath to roll the numbers a second time.

  Entering the Möbius Continuum, Jake relocated to the coordinates of a past-time door. On the threshold it was NOW, but in the far distance the blue nebula of mankind’s birth was brilliantly lit and its myriad neon streamers or threads writhed outwards to the past-time door itself. And one of the threads had a manlike cross section—Jake’s shape—where it merged with him on the threshold, seeming to push him ahead of it.

  My past, Jake said then, mindful that speech wasn’t needed, that even thoughts have weight in the Möbius Continuum. Only go back far enough, and everything that I’ve been, that I’ve done, will be found somewhere along this thread.

  I too bad a thread upon a time, said Korath, his deadspeak voice very small.

  Which came to an end when Malinari and Company broke your bones and crushed you into that pipe under the Romanian Refuge, said Jake. If you were to fall through this door, that’s where you’d end up, back in the sump, to “relive” everything that has happened to you since you died there, over and over again, forever. But my thread is a lifeline—literally—that we can follow into the past, returning along it to the NOW when I’ve learned what we’re up against.

  Korath was nervous. Are you sure about that, Jake? I mean, that we can get back safely? You wouldn’t be thinking of forcing me out back there … would you?

  Yes, I’m sure, Jake answered, speaking with all the authority of the original Necroscope. And no, I won’t force you out. You’re not thinking straight, Korath. I need you, tonight more than ever. And:

  Of course, the other sighed his relief. Of course you do.

  Without giving it a second thought (for if he had he might well have abandoned the idea) Jake launched himself through the past-time door, willing himself backwards down the time stream. The blue threads, the time-trails of mankind, appeared to accelerate towards him, and the single-note Ahhhhhhhhh sound of a celestial choir rose in pitch—tike a temporal Doppler effect—as he sped into the recent past.

  And it was then that the truth became known … but such a truth!

  Some of the blue threads racing towards him, apparently on a collision course, were rapidly changing colour. A good dozen of them, merely tinged with pink at first, were quickly losing their blue neon tints, fading to azure with carmine cores, and then—

  —And then turning a very distinctive, a very uniform red. Bloodred!

  At first Jake was stunned, but then he reversed his plunge into the past, turned and sped for the NOW. There, leaving the past-time door behind him, he went directly to the coordinates of his vantage point and emerged, shaken, with Korath clinging to the rim of his mind.

  The dead vampire’s voice was full of anxiety as he “breathlessly” inquired, Did you see? But of course you did, for I saw through you.

  “Oh yes, I saw,” Jake answered, his throat dry as dust and his own voice harsh and croaking. “We go up against your kind, Korath. Vampires!”

  Then for your life’s sake—and also for what I have come to know as life, in you—don’t do it.

  “But I have to,” Jake told him, believing that he now knew what this was all about—or some of it, anyway. “I can see it now. This is what Harry left undone. He told me that he’d seen scarlet vampire threads crossing mine in future time. The same thing we’ve just seen in the recent past. They haven’t crossed mine yet, because that’s still to come. Tonight.”

  You can avoid it if you want to.

  “But I’m not going to,” said Jake. “What will be has been, and in this case vice versa. Without that Harry understood it, he knew he was responsible, that something had survived—that something lived on—from the time of his lost years. This is it. It’s what he was doing at the original Manse Madonie: destroying vampires. But one of them escaped his notice—”

  And came here?

  “—And put himself about, certainly! He survived, Korath. Anonymity is synonymous with longevity. He hid himself away in his own evil underworld, a monster taking the shape of a drug-running murderer. But isn’t that one and the same thing?”

  Castellano?

  “The very beast,” Jake nodded grimly. “Castellano, and now his men.”

  Yes, I see, said Korath. Recently, in these last few days, He has vampirized them as his undead bodyguard!

  “Exactly. We’ve seen them changing, from human to inhuman. But as yet we haven’t seen the reddest thread of all. The boss himself is hiding in that place down there … which in itself speaks volumes, tells me that he’s afraid of me.”

  Of course be is, for be has felt your wrath. But Jake, you can’t go up against them all. Not on your own. A dozen that we know of, and their master Castellano, and at least one lieutenant …

  “A lieutenant, such as yourself?” It gave Jake pause. “You think that Luigi Castellano is Wamphyri?”

  He’s no common vampire, be sure, Korath answered. Yes, and now I know what it is that has been troubling me so ever since we arrived here. Looking at that house … why, it was as if I looked at an aerie on Starside!

  “Then that’s all the more reason why we must stop him now,” said Jake. “We’ve forced his hand. He’s made vampires. And now, if he survives, he’ll put them to use. We can’t allow that.”

  Then let’s say our farewells now, said Korath. For this is surely the end of you—and of me! What? You’ll attempt to go into that house, knowing nothing of its mazy ways, prowling to and fro, planting your bombs, and hope to go undiscovered? And a house full of vampires at that, all of them on the alert, as witness these guards in the olive groves? But this is madness, Jake, and you—we—cannot possibly succeed on our own!

  But then:

  Jake, said a different voice—a once resolute voice, but now sad, tired, disillusioned—in the otherwise empty deadspeak aether. Zek’s voice, which Jake recognized at once. And:

  I tried, Jake, said Zek despondently. I, or we—for there are plenty of others on this side, on your side, who believe in you—we’ve tried. Indeed the argument is still raging on, but the Great Majority have come to no firm decision.

  “How did you find me?” he asked her.

  I know your mind now, she answered. I was a telepath, remember? And despite that you carry him with you, your presence lights the dark like a softly glowing beacon. I’m only sorry I couldn’t bring you any better news; sorry that the Great Majority—no longer so great in my eyes—seem intent on letting this thing play itself out to the end.

  Jake could only shrug. “Don�
��t worry about it. In my current situation, I don’t see that it matters too much anyway. I mean, what could they do for me except mess me about? My mind’s cluttered enough already—with Korath and with you, and with the shattered memories of another, Harry Keogh—without that the Great Majority should get involved. I don’t need their advice, Zek, and since that’s all they can offer …”

  But it isn’t all that we can offer, said another voice. And you do need our advice, our help, Jake. Yes, even as much as we need you, Necroscope.

  As if he had been tapped on the shoulder, unexpectedly and in a strange, dark place, Jake had started violently on hearing this new, previously unknown, unannounced voice; but in another moment he was more concerned than stairtled. For it was so brimming with pain, this voice, that it spilled over, and he winced at the unthinkable sufferings it evinced. But physical pain? In a voice from the grave, from one who should be beyond all such mundane miseries?

  And now Zek’s gloom lifted, and her voice was like a light shining in his mind when she said: Ahhh! Thank goodness! Someone speaks up at last! And see, you’re not alone, Jake. Didn’t I tell you it would be so? Here is at least one who is willing to help you, and he is not the only one. Indeed, he’s only the first of many. They’ll rally to your call, I know they will.

  “Who are you?” Jake spoke to the stranger.

  Ask who I was, said that one. My name is Georgi Grusev, and I was a Russian criminal who tried to redeem himself by working as a spy for Gustav Turchin. Alas that Turchin didn’t know what kind of danger he was sending me into, though he would probably have sent me anyway, and I couldn’t possibly know the nature of the creatures I came to spy upon.

  “Castellano?” said Jake.

  The same, the shade of Georgi Grusev answered, with a deadspeak shudder. A vampire—him and his man both.