Necroscope - The Lost Years, Vol II Part 37

And Clarke: C-3, L-3, A-l, R-2, K-2, and E-5. A seven: a mystic, occultist, and dedicated dehrer!

So, E-Branch - or Darcy - knew something but couldn't tell him. It couldn't be explained. Or perhaps they daren't even try to explain it E-Branch? The dirty tricks brigade?

Harry heard a growl - and it was himself. He was growling deep in his throat! Quit it! He told himself. Quit it note!

And one six hundred to go.

Six hundred... 'since the mark of pestilence, entered his soulless soul.'

But whose soulless soul? And six hundred what? Days, weeks or years? Surely not years? Oh, really? A pestilence, six hundred years ago ... the Black Death!

And something stirred at the back of Harry's mind, or in the secret mind he wasn't given to know. It stirred, and reached to make c onnections with the rest of him. He felt it l ike a small flame burning in him, waiting to catch hold and become a roaring fire, a conflagration.

The sweat was dripping from him now, and his mind felt as if it were in a vise, being slowly crushed. And yet he felt he knew.

'I... Christ, I know these f.u.c.king things!' Harry cried to no one. There's a part of me that knows them!'

'He knows, yet may not know until set free by the kennel-maid; sees, yet may not understand, until this Pretty's eyes search out the treachery in the dog that bites its keeper's hand...'

This Pretty? This Bonnie? This Bonnie Jean? Oh, G.o.d.' 'Stop it now.' A voice warned from deep inside. The Necroscope's voice, he knew. 'Stop it, or you're going to push yourself right over the edge.' But Harry couldn't stop. No way. He had to know. Had to know who Bonnie Jean was.

Had to know what she was.

'She is her Master's kennel-maid. His castle is a hollow place and high Harry? His Ma called out to him from the river, dark now under non-reflective clouds. Harry, come to me now! Come to the riverbank and talk to me this minute! Her voice was filled with a tangible terror, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with the need to distract or divert him. But Harry wasn't about to be diverted. Shielding his mind, specifically against her, he shut her out. Other channels were still open, however, and: Harry? (It was Sir Keenan Gormley, in no less of a state than the Necroscope's Ma.) What the h.e.l.l are you trying to do, son? Destroy yourself?

'No,' he answered, 'I'm trying to find myself!' He closed his mind to Sir Keenan.

'Her name is Pretty, but her thoughts are dark. Hers is to choose where no choice fits her role in his survival...'

Necroscope, man, you has some bad enemies! (It was R.L Stevenson Jamieson.) But right now your worst enemy is you! Can't you see we is only tryin'to help out here?

'OK,' Harry went for it. 'OK, so help me out Do you know where they are, R.L? My enemies? Like the Madonie Mountains of Sicily? And what about Tibet? Or how about up there in the Highlands? Am I getting warm, R.L?'

All those places, Necroscope! And they knows you, man!

'Which means I daren't stop, because I have to know them. And now, before they're all over me!'

But there's bigger dangers in you knowing, Harry! Big dangers, Necroscope! 'Cording to your Ma at least.

'And there's more in my not knowing. You're out of here, R.L' And he shut him out They are of one blood, one and all, composed of blood, inheritors of life, which was not theirs to take. Their fall is possible: the stake, the fire, the knife!'

Necroscope : The Lost Years - Vol. II 349.348.

Wamphyri!

'She is her Master's kennel-maid. His castle is a hollow place and high; his bed is yellow, glowing where he laid himself to rest who would not die.'

Radu! Radu Lykan! A wolfs head laid back in a protracted howl, against the bloated yellow disc of the full moon...

Harry's barriers were firmly in place, his mind closed. He had shut out the frantic voices of his teeming dead friends and was alone with his reasoning, or unreasoning. The two halves of his psyche were merging again.

Nostradamus's quatrains, and some which were the Necroscope's, swept in disarray across the narrowing screen of his crumbling mind, until- -where once his formulae held sway, worlds in weird collision were left. With his magic numbers blown away, the Magician was... bereft!

And he knew it, or thought he knew it that he was mad. He had no reality. What was real was unreal, maybe his whole life! Too many people had f.u.c.ked with his mind - and together they'd f.u.c.ked it up completely. 'All done,' said Harry in the voice of a little boy, with an almost glad sigh. Now all he wanted was a safe place that he could go to, where he might do and think ... nothing at all.

At Oakdeene Sanatorium, a white-clad orderly with a disbelieving, worried expression rapped urgently on the door of the Director's office. Then, entering - bursting in before Dr Quant could so much as look up from the paperwork on his desk - this previously unflappable orderly blurted, 'Sir...!' But that was all. He seemed lost for words.

'Willis?' Quant, squat and balding, brushed a few strands of red hair back behind his small ears and stared at the least of his subordinates through thick-lensed spectacles. 'I take it there's a reason for this abrupt intrusion?'

'Intrusion,' the other nodded, his Adam's apple bobbing. 'An inm ate ... an intruder, anway. And you're the Duty Officer on call, sir.'

'Well,' Quant sighed and stood up, all five foot three of him. 'And aparentiy a good thing, too! Trouble with an inmate, did you say? Or an intruder? An uninvited guest? Surely not'

The place was quiet No alarms going off, no telephones ringing, none of the controlled hustle and bustle of daylight hours. No distance- or insulation-muted cries of rage, frustration, or simple madness; and everything seemed quite literally 'sedate.' And most things were.

The Director was here tonight to kill two birds with one stone. It had become neccessary to review some of the asylum's administrative procedures, its many SOPs and security regulations. Oakdeene housed a good many extremely dangerous men and women; it made sense to check occasionally on their security, and ensure that they really were secure.

So tonight Dr Quant had put himself on duty to spend the evening with rules and regulations - sufficient to satisfy himself that unless something was radically wrong here, this simian orderly or so-called 'male nurse,'

Dave Willis, was in fact in error. Oakdeene's physical barriers were sufficient guarantee in themselves that no unauthorized person could ever gain entry. And yet 'In D-Ward,' Willis gulped again. At which Quanf s interest picked up apace. D-Ward? ('D' for Dangerous!) 'What about D-Ward?' the director queried, frowning. 'Are you supposed to be on D-Ward tonight? And if so why aren't you down there?'

But Willis wasn't about to be intimidated. *You'd better see for yourself,' he said. 'I couldn't get you on the phone.'

'I took it off the hook. Busy with the books, Willis. Now what is going on? An intruder? In D-Ward? But how could anyone get past you... if you were there, that is?'

'I was there, all right - and no one got by me.' Was that a sneer on the orderly's face, in reaction to Quant's insinuation? Three secur ity doors between me and the cells, and cameras and alarms on all of them.' He pointed at the book of SOPs on Quant's desk.

'But what am I telling you for?'

'And someone was in there, you say?' The Director shrugged into his jacket. 'Is,' Willis answered. 'Still in there, hi a locked cell! Of course he is. With all those doors and electronic gear, how would he get out?'

The question must surely be,' Quant answered, and slammed his office door behind him and the orderly, 'how did he get in? And how did you find him? Who is he, anyway?'

They went quickly down the rubber-carpeted corridor, took an elevator down through the three storeys to the ground floor, from where Willis must use a special key to command their descent to D-Ward. And as the cage lowered them silently into the realms of madness, Willis said: 'I've no idea how anyone could get in. He must350.

have been left in there by the day shift. Someone playing some kind of crazy joke? You tell me - sir. As to how I found him: I was doing the periodic scan of the cells on the monitor. I hit the number of an empty cell by mistake and got a picture. The list said "empty" - but the camera doesn't lie. This man was in there, sitting in a corner. I checked the computer and it said the door was locked. I checked admissions and no one had been booked in. The SOP says...'

'... Any extraordinary event - or any occurrence that may indicate a breach of security - is to be reported to the Duty Officer immediately. Yes, I know,' Quant nodded. 'But a joke? An error? Someone is in trouble for this. Deep trouble!'

They were down into D-Ward; the elevator hissed to a halt and the doors slid silently open. At this end of the corridor, in the security cell, two more orderlies from the less sensitive wards were waiting for them. 'I called them down,' Willis explained. 'I couldn't leave the place without they were here. The SOPs, sir.'

All four men looked through an unbreakable window down D-Ward's corridor to the first security door. None of the fail-safe indicators showed anything wrong. But to one side of the window, from the monitor screen above the security console - and from an allegedly empty cell - the face of a stranger stared back at them. An utterly vacant face, for the moment at least. The face of someone who might well warrant being where he was.

'Cell number?' The Director snapped.

"Well have to go all the way to get to him,' Willis answered. Three doors, three sets of keys. He's in C- Section, the very last cell.'

'Whoever he is,' one of the other orderlies grinned, then saw the look on Quant's face and dropped it, 'he's, er, taking no chances. I mean, er, you can't get any more se cure than the very last cell in C-Section. Right... ?'

IV.

IN THE MADHOUSE. THE OTHER.

HARRY.

BJ. had got Harry's message. He had said he would know when and where to find her. Of course he would; as the moon neared its full, he would be obliged to find her and would know where to look. As for the rest of his message: how did he know whe re their enemies were? Had he interfaced, working it out for himself that things were coming to a head, and where the ultimate venue must be? In which case he was even stronger and stranger than she'd thought But then, who could know it all about that one? Her mysterious Harry Keogh - or Radu's. But that remained to be seen...

And meanwhile, she had had to move on. If Harry was wrong and the Drakuls hadn't gone north, she couldn't have them knowing her location. And then there were the Watcher and the Ferenczys: she knew for certain that they were in the Highlands, in the Spey Valley, for they had tried to kill Auld John in Inverdruie.

So either way Harry was half-right: some of her enemies, at least, were up north, which in turn meant that BJ. couldn't be - not yet And trapped between two possible perils, BJ. had moved. But not too far, and not into the Highlands. If she had - with all three rival vampire factions concentrated in one location, a narrow valley with a handful of towns and villages -sooner or later they must clash. And with Radu's resurgence so close, B J. wasn't about to risk any further confrontations. Anyway, both the Drakuls and the Ferenczys were probably just as leery of her now as she was of them. In three clashes so far, they had come off the worst As for the fourth: well, poor Zahanine's death could scarcely be reckoned as part of any legitimate war. No, for that had been sheer murder! And so: It was a stand-off, and they were biding their time. Having divined Radu's approximate location - and knowing that B J. must travel north eventually, to attend him in the hour of his rising - they would 352.lie in wait for her. Then, if they couldn't take her out before she went to Radii, they would simply follow her and catch both of them at their most vulnerable.

Now BJ. and the pack were back in Edinburgh, in a small, backstreet hotel, never leaving the place except for absolute necessities... one of which had caused BJ. her biggest headache to date.

On the off-chance that Harry had tried to contact her at the wine bar (despite that he'd apparently chosen to stay away from her until the hour as yet to be appointed), B J. had ventured out one night and followed a circuitous route to the bar. There she had found some unimportant messages on her answering machine, and two that were very important Of the latter: one w as from a local police station in respect of Inspector George lanson and requested that she contact the police at her earliest o pportunity, and the other was from someone she had never expected to hear from. Or if not 'never,' then certainly not as soon as this.

Radu had thralls in the country, moon-children, the sons of the sons of his people from six hundred years ago. Dwellers in lonely places, only two remained, but still they were aware of him. BJ. had visited them on occasion, when it was safe to do so, advising them of their duties at the time of His return. Her instructions between times had been simple to the point of elementary: they were never to contact her until the tim e appointed, and even then the probability was that she wo uld contact them first Yet now- -One of them, Alan Goresci, from his home on the edge of Bodmin Moor, had contacted her and left this message: 'Bonnie Jean. This is Alan-on-the-Moor.' (His accent was pure Cornish.) Tve spoken with young Garth, who is close by as you know. Both of us, we've heard the call. And we're restless. It's the high ground we're heading for. Well be on the way by the time you hear this. I wouldn't have contacted you, but if you were to do it, you've left it a bit late. So maybe there's a problem? And Auld John's no to house that I can see. Well look him up; doubtless through him we'll find you. Till then, we're hoping that all is well under the moon...'

End of message.

What was she to make of it? Alan Goresci and Garth Trevalin had heard the call? All the way back to her hiding place in the small hotel, BJ. had worried about it They had heard the call -Radu's call, obviously - and she hadn't? What was going on here? She had tried calling both men, but their telephones had just rung and rung. And the dog-Lord's return not scheduled for another two months. Oh, really? So why were the Ferenczys, possibly the Drakuls, too, up in the Cairngorms so early? What did they know, and Necroscope: The Lest Years - Vol. II 353 Radu's other thralls, that BJ. Mirlu didn't'

But her course was set and no changing it now. She, too, must wait for Radu's call. Until then there was nothing to do except worry over why she was the last to hear it and to wonder what was on the dog-Lord's mind...

And in Sicily, in Le Manse Madoni e: Anthony Francezci had never felt more alone in his life; never in his long, his too-lo ng life.

Despite that he and his brother were rarely in complete accord, still he missed Francesco.

Without him, Le Manse felt like some great stone tomb. A house of vampires, and the oldest of them all seething in his pit in the very bowels of the place. And the daily horror, when Anthony took to his bed, of never knowing what his dreams would be; but knowing quite definitely that when they came they would be nightmares, even to a monster. And knowing, too, what they wou ld bring with them.

I.

t had been only nine or ten days since the morning when Katerin had stumbled from his room clutching at her throat and vowing to tell no one what she had seen. Nor would she for her life's sake, he was sure. But what difference did it make that no one else knew of his condition, the onset of his mutation? None at all, for Anthony himself knew. Knew that however long it took, the day would dawn when he was as his father was now. And that fact alone - its certainty - paled every other eventuality to insignificance, bringing him ever closer to the living, frothing horror that was Angelo Ferenczy.

Ten days, yes, in which short period of time, out of all the centuries of his time, Anthony had become as a ghost Now he wafted through Le Manse Madonie much as a vampire thrall in the early days of conversion, spending most of his time in the cavern of the pit And those of his men who saw him - hardened vampires who yet feared him for what he was, Wamphyri - could only marvel at the change in Anthony: his sunken cheeks, slumped shoulders, and fevered eyes. But only old Katerin and his father knew what troubled him.

Ah, my son, Angelo told him one time, where he leaned on the wall of the pit. It puts all other problems to flight, eh? As it was far me, so it is for you. Terrible! Terrible! But can you possibly believe that your brother will be as accommodating to you as you were to me that time all those years ago? Did you think I did not know? Oh, I knew. If'notfor you - your vision, your foresight -1 would have been a dead tiling, a truly dead thing, a long time ago. And who can say, perhaps that were for the best. The Old Ferenczy was at his most lucid, and his most tantalizing.

'How do you mean?' But Anthony was listless, enervated; he was sleeping badly, as from now on he always would.

In these latter centuries, without my guidance, my advice - without354.

355 me as your 'oracle' - you would have been more like an original. You would have had to be Wamphyri! But now... ?

Anthony had offered a shrug. 'It's a modern world. In order to live in it, we had to be modern, too."

And sacrifice your vampire powers? I have thought long and long on it. Perhaps it was because I no longer had any real use for my powers that they started to overtake me. I was a dam and they were the water piling up withi n. W hen the press ure was too great, and they could no longer be contained, they burst forth. First the cracks, then the flood.

'Are you saying our pa.s.sions were pent? Too constrained?'

Yours especially, the other answered. Francesco gave vent to his desires. As a child I had to curb him. He and 7... were never close. Nothing strange in that: we are Wamphyri! But when opportunity presented, he went out into the world - perhaps to be away from me? And you were the home bird. You learned wi sdom while he ... learned! He was ever the more l ustful, avaricious, b.l.o.o.d.y! Which was why, in this 'modern' world, I must curb him. But the truth is that he was more the original, too. Even now.

'So, because Francesco "gave vent," as you have it,' Anthony replied, 'and still gives it, he has probably saved himself from this? But I had thought the opposite was true: that a muscle atrophies through rftsuse.'

In human terms, according to the physicians of this world, yes. But the skills of the Wamphyri are only ours by virtue of the creature beneath the skin. The leech is our strength, Tony, my Tony!

We are each two creatures; and we, the external creatures, believe that we hold the power. In this we are mistaken. We are the muscle that will atrophy, if our vampire leeches are not allowed to use us! But when the balance tilts too far, even the leech loses c ontrol.

'And when Francesco sees what is become or becoming of me?' Anthony tried to peer through the miasma r ising from the shaft "You hinted mat he'd be less accommodating than I was.'

I could be wrong, (and Anthony sensed a shrug). But even if I am, what is this for 'accommodation?'Is this what you want, my Tony? To be a thing in a pit?

'I would rather be dead, even truly dead!'

My sentiments exactly, said the other. And I have seen... I have seen... (He fell silent) "You've seen - what?'

Nothing! Nothing beyond the fact of the dog-Lard's return. Oh, and his coming here, of course! But nothing else, no.

'His coming here!' Anthony hissed. "You've made no mention of this before?'

But I did, I did! Those yean ago, before this Harry stole into your vault, and stole off with your money. I told you then that Radu would seek us out.

'When?' Anthony gripped the wall, leaned out a littie more over the black gulf of the pit. When will he come?"

He is awake even now.

'I know that,' Anthony barked, 'for I've spoken with Francesco. He s ensed him in the mountains, in Scotland. Radu's return will be soon now. But... you say h.e.l.l come here?

How can that be? Francesco will stop him, surely?"

/ think not. Oh. your brother is more like an original, be sure. But Radu is an original!

Then I've got to get out of this place!' Anthony was beginning to panic. He felt the oppression of Le Manse Madonie as surely as any previous prisoner.

He would find you, wherever you go. Commonsense says stay here, defend what you 've got. Have you strayed so f ar from your origins tha t even your territorialism has deserted you?

'I see right through you!' Anthony snarled. Finally galvanized, he shook of f his mood of morbid depression - or his terror did it for him. "You want me to stay here to defend you!'

No, for I see no future for myself. Now be calm, my Tony, my Anthony. Think what you have here: a veritable fortress, and men, your vampire thralls, to defend it. How may Radu come upon you without that you see him? From the rim of the plateau, from the walls of Le Manse Madonie; vampire eyes at night, searching for the great wolf! How can he come but across the plateau jumbles, or along your roads? Have you no watchmen ? Also, you know when he will come: when it is his time. One night when the moon is full.

'He will take Francesco - who by your own words is closer far to your d.a.m.ned "original" than me - yet fall before me and mine? Also, if Francesco is on the verge of destruction, as you have hinted, then why should I concern myself with how he might "accommodate" me?' Anthony's normally pale face had grown livid now and his eyes blazed red. 'You trip on your own tongue, Angelo Ferenczy. The things you say don't add up.

You are playing a game with me, which sooner or later will come to light!'

No games, my son, my dear sweet Tony, Angelo replied. The future was ever devious; how may we be sure of anything? Also, these matters are much too serious for games, and I am far too old for them... not to mention too hungry! Deprived, I cannot even think straight. You have not fed me in a while. Some tidbit, perhaps? Something sweet? Someone young?

'No!' Anthony snapped. Then changed his mind - apparently. Yes! - when you have told me all you know.