Necroscope - The Lost Years, Vol II Part 46

But mysterious no longer...

And: 'Now, Necroscope, now,' Radu growled, a low rumble in his great throat, as his ey es grew large as lanterns in Harry's trapped perspect ive. Tell me: is there room in that marvellous mind of yours for both of us? Well, for however brief a time?'

'Radu!' The shout snapped like the crack of a whip in the great cavern, s.n.a.t.c.hing the dog-Lord upright from his gargoyle crouch - all seven feet of him - and jerking him to face the one who shouted. But his great paw remained fastened on Harry's shoulder, and the Necroscope could only hang there, like a rabbit snapped up by a hunter, dazed in Radu's grasp; dazed mainly by his telepathic encounter, which had had the effect of draining him.

And at the foot of the dais Francesco Francezci - or more properly, the Ferenczy - aimed his machine-pistol and grinned as he squeezed the trigger. Radu read the other's mind, whined: 'Ah! No! Not now! Nooooo.r But the bullets paid no attention whatever.

The staccato coughing and spanging of that stream of lead and silver would have been an obscenity in itself, without the amplifying, echoing qualities of the labyrinth; but the liquid spattering that accompanied it was far worse, for it signified hits on Radu's flesh. Not that Harry felt any sympathy for the dog-Lord, but the huge, hairy, twitching, shuddering body that gave him cover had only so much resistance, and any one of the bullets might find its way right through!

Radu was. .h.i.t a dozen or more times as the Ferenczy hosed him down, waving his clamouring weapon to and fro in a criss-cross over his half-human target. Harry saw bright splashes of red against the side of the sarcophagus, and gobs of red sent flying during the frantic seconds of the machine-pistol's mad chattering, and he wondered if in fact he, too, had been hit. But then it was over and the dog- Lord's weight - Radu's dead weight - came down on him. Trapped as the werewolf was thrown back against him, jammed down into the ragged jaws of a broken slab, between Radu's quivering, slumping frame and the side of the sarcophagus, Harry was still trying to recover his orientation following Radu's invasion and near- occupation of his mind. Indeed the roots of that contact were still there and the pain he imagined he felt was the dog-Lord's death agony, but it was ebbing very quickly now.

And realizing he was still alive and apparently unharmed, the Necroscope began struggling to free himself, all the time aware that a scarlet-eyed vampire Lord was climbing the rocky jumble towards him.

Francesco, however, was taking his time. For Radu was Wamphyri, too, and there might yet be a few surprises... as there doubtless would be, when he set fire to his body! But no great ruckus as yet, so maybe he'd got Radu's leech, too, crippled by a silver bullet. Or perhaps he'd been right to suspect that the dog-Lord was on his last legs, and his vampire leech with him. Hah! But after six hundred years in a bath o f resin, wasn't it only to be expected?

Thus Francesco rationalized, as he climbed warily towards Harry and the monster pinning him. But in the Necroscope's metaphysical mind: Necroscope: The Last Years - Vol. II 439.438.

Dead! (Radu couldn't believe it). Murdered by a Ferenczy!

Killed, Harry corrected him silently. Executed. Not murdered, but put down - like a mad dog.

So close, Radu whined. So very close. We could have been great together, Necroscope.

No, Harry answered, it doesn't work that way. No partnerships, not with your sort.

And well you know it!

But in death the old wolfs mind was as agile as in life, and he saw a way to prolong his existence even now. Obscuring his true thoughts, he said: You are eager to insinuate, quick to accuse, Necroscope. But did you ever see me do wrong? What evil act, pray, have I per formed against you - how have I mistreated you - that you should so misjudge me? No, don't tell me what you think I have done, but what you know / have done, which you have seen with your own eyes.

How to answer nun?Harry had forced himself half-way out from beneath the dog-Lord's body, but the pouches on his belt were caught up on sharp edges of rock. 'I only know what B J.

Mirlu told me,' he finally gasped out loud. 'But I also know that she... that she's a liar just like the rest of you! All of your "glorious" b.l.o.o.d.y history: a handful of truths, a few half-truths, but mainly d.a.m.ned lies!'

'What?' Francesco Francezci, his head and shoulders level with the dais's platform now, looked to see who the Necroscope was talking to. Harry's top half was sticking out from beneath the dog-Lord's carca.s.s, and he made the mistake of looking directly at Francesco - who could no longer doubt the evidence of his own excellent eyesight Before, the Ferenczy hadn't even considered the possibility. But now: 'What the... ?' he said. And, 'How... ?' For the man trapped under Radu's riddled body was the same one he'd had thrown out of the helicopter! For a moment it stopped him dead in his tracks.

The dog-Lord read the fact of it right out of the Necroscope's mind, also the absolute certainty that Francesco wouldn't miss this seco nd opportunity to kill Harry. And: What? he growled. Do you give in that easily?

But you can stop him even now, and permanently. Or... we can?

The dead come up of their own accord,' Harry told him. 'I suppose I'm the focus, but their love is the true catalyst'

"What?" Francesco said again, frowning as he climbed on up to the dais. 'Are you a madman? Not that it matters, for you're certainly a dead one! But first I want to know how you did it'

Love? Radu growled. Human love? Hah! But that is something I left behind alon g with my "humanity.' Hate I understand, and greed, and l.u.s.t. Maybe I can use them instead? No? I thought not. So now it is up to you. If you, would live, call me up... or don't you ever want to see B.J. again? With whi ch he played his one trump card.

Harry dragged the upper half of his body to one side, out of Francesco's immediate line of fire, clawed his way just two or three inches to the edge of a tilted slab, and glanced over between his clutching fingers. And the Ferenczy rose up to face him, grinning from ear to ear, and pointing the ugly muzzle of his weapon directly into Harry's face.

'On the other hand,' Francesco grunted, 'don't bother telling me how, for it no longer matters. Maybe there were two of you, eh? Twins? Well - since my father has a.s.sured me you talk to dead men - give your twin my regards when next you see him, OK?' And: 'Radu,' said Harry. 'I... I think I may need you!' Which seemed to be quite enough. The dog-Lord's weight lifted off him and he at once rolled to one side, through a M5bius door - but not before he saw a ma.s.sive, monstrous paw reach out in a dark blur of motion to swat Francesco's weapon aside.

Then, materia lizing a third of the way across the floor of the great cavern, the Necroscope breathe d his relief and looked back on what he'd le ft behind. He saw, a nd heard it all... and then for a while wished that he hadn't: The Ferenczy's sobbing at first, then his pleading as Radu dragged him writhing and kicking up the last of the stone steps to his sarcophagus, finally his shrieking, and the sharp snap! of his arms as Radu broke them across his knee one after the other at the elbows. Up-ended, Francesco's cries were reduced to guttural gulps and gurgles as the great wolf plunged him headlong into the warm resin that remained in his coffin, only to drag him out again. And: 'But - you're dead!" A final explosion of disbelief from the doomed Francesco, his words coughed out in resin slops and yellow bubbles from gaping jaws. "You're only a f-f.u.c.king dead thing!'

Radu picked him up by the broken arms, whip-lashed him in an arc over his head and down onto the stone steps, and growlingly, joyfully answered: 'Apparently - but not nearly as dead as you are about to be!' And planting his feet on Francesco's shoulders - catching him under the chin and at the back of his skull, with several expert twists and turns of his hugely corded arms, and straightening his back in one smooth movement - he very quickly pulled his head off!

The pulpy sound as living flesh was literally torn apart would have been sickening in itself, but the sight of it was worse. The Necroscope had see n many horrific things i n his time, but this ranked among the worst of them. That incredible elongation of Francesco's neck, until his metamorphic flesh could take no more of it and came apart. And the upper part of his backbone, dragged out in a red spray like the spine of a gutted fish- -Except fish don't have leprous, corrugated, living flesh twined Brian Lumky

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about their spines! Francesco's leech - which Radu tore free with a howl of delight, and dangled into the red cave of his throat It was gone in two bites, two ma.s.sive swallows. And only then the real commotion!

One smoky torch still flared and sputtered at the base of the coffin. In a bound the dog-Lord leaped free of the lashing nest of grey and purple tentacles sprouting from the Ferenczy's shattered, erupting body, tossed his head up into the sarcophagus, and followed it with the torch.

Twirling end over end, the torch flared up with die rush of air, and came down on the warm resin. And blue fire lit the cavern as the semi-liquid surface was patterned with whooshing streamers of flame like some fine, fiery Greek brandy. Foll owing the trail of resin that spattered the rim, the fire leaped to Francesco's soaked, broken body. And mindless vampire protoplasm with neither the will nor the intelligence to escape the flames began to roast It went on for quite some time...

... Until the dog-Lord came loping in Harry's direction, calling: 'Necroscope, a proposal.'

'I don't think so,' Harry backed off, hastily conjured a door. 'It's time you rested from all this, Radu. For that one was right, you are a dead thing.'

*Wait!' The other skidded to a halt some thirty feet away. Tve rested long enough! And what about Bonnie Jean? Don't do it Harry - not if you would see her again.'

Harry hesitated; he more than hesitated; for the fact was that he didn't know if he could put Radu down again! When members of the teeming dead came up it was out of love or fear for him, as he had stated. And when they went back down it was because they were no longer needed. But Radu wasn't here out of love or fear but hatred, and the Necroscope wasn't sure he had any control over that His shields were up again, however, and Radu read nothing of his uncertainty.

The dog-Lord took a loping, tentative step closer, prompting Harry to warn him: 'Stay right there, Radu!'

And, because he didn't know what else to do: 'So, what do you propose?'

'Help me and 111 help you,' Radu barked. 'Refuse me, and BJ. rots in h.e.l.l forever!'

Harry avoided his eyes. 'Help you? But you're beyond help. You're dead.'

Would you destroy an entire species?'

*Yes.' (Without hesitation). 'And BJ., too?' 'Is she Wamphyri?'

'A fledgling Lady, yes - but only a fledgling. I can stop it. She can be wholly human again. What is in her can be taken out of her.'

'I've heard such lies from the like of you before,' Harry answered, even as he felt his heart leap within him.

'No,' the dog-Lord laughed, coughed, barked, 'not so. For there never has been the like of me before. And I promise you, I can give the woman back to you clean of this contagion.'

"You see it as a contagion?'

'Perha ps - upon a time - oh, a very long time ago. But no longer. Now I see it as life. You see it as a contagion.

Don't bandy terms. Will you hear my proposal?'

'Where is BJ.? Is she safe?'

But Radu knew that the Necroscope was hooked. He laid back his head and howled to set the cavern echoing, then fell to all fours and pointed his terrible muzzle in Harry's direction. And his lantern eyes blazed as he said, 'For the last time. Hear me out or put me down -and kill that b.i.t.c.h Bonnie Jean, too, all in one fell stroke! What's it to be? One more bound will force your hand, Necroscope. No more arguing then, for it will all be over. For me, at least - and for B J.' His muscles seemed bunched to spring.

'Very well,' Harry licked his dry lips, nodded his agreement 'Let's hear it.'

Radu relaxed a little, sat back on his haunches and growled, 'In one way at least, our aims are much of a sort For the last six centuries I have dreamed a dream whose source lies two thousand years ago in Olden Starside in another world. But now, in this world, there is only one way my dream can come true.'

Without more ado, he told Harry what he wanted.

And he was right: their aims were much of a sort, for the Necroscope wanted it too...

ffecroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. II 443.

IV.

DEAD RECKONINGS.

Like some strange gaunt bird of prey, hunch-shouldered and sunken-eyed, the once-handsome Anthony Francezci stood alone - for the first time truly alone - beside the pit under Le Manse M adonie.

The current was off, and the wire-mesh cove r stood open on its hinges; the heavy chain hung stationary on its pulleys, its load delivered into the unknown; the sounds of furious seething - sounds like hard acid biting into bone - had died down and faded to nothing.

But there had been no sounds of rending, no screaming from the crone Katerin - or at best, only a brief period of gasping, an 'Ah! Ah! A-ahhh.r sound, almost of pleasure, then silence and, strangest of all, no cries of outrage from the Old Ferenczy, Angelo himself, the nightmarish inhabitant of the pit Then again, there had been nothing from him for quite some time now.

Which was why Anthony had come down here: because something less than an hour ago, at eight-thirty, he had received some sort of communication, a message, from his twin brother. Or not a message as such, but...

knowledge? Pain, momentary; there had been a brief aching in his arms, his back, his neck. A burning in his blood, and since then nothing. Except a dawning awareness that it was dark out there, and darker still in his mind. An awareness th at indeed he was quite alone. Except for Angelo.

For Francesco was dead.

And so Anthony had brought Katerin down here as an offering to his father, in the hope of soliciting a corroboration or explanation of his suspicion. For of course the mutant thing in the pit would know. Old Katerin, yes - but he hadn't told Angelo what he had for him, only that she was 'a tidbit' Hah!

The pit had been silent, just as silent as it was now, so that no amount of cajoling, threatening, or bribing could solicit an answer, and in the end Anthony had given in and lowered a mildly- anaesthetized Katerin down the throat of the pit. The pain would bring her out of it, of course, and that was important For not only did Anthony want his father to know what he was getting, but Katerin to know who was getting her! And when she was down, he had waited for her screaming, and for the Old Ferenczy's cursing.

But no, there had been only the unknown creeping (and the creeping of his flesh), and the seething, and at the end Katerin's 'Ah! Ah! A-ahhh.r cry or sigh, in response to what? Some weird s.e.xual pleasure, or perha ps exquisite pain?

And now this unbearable silence...

... Of which, Anthony had had quite enough. And: 'f.u.c.k you, Angelo!' he cried out beati ng on the old well wall with his fist. 'Are you beyond all this? Is that what you have become, what / shall become: a pile of slop in a stinking pit, not knowing the difference between a juicy young girl and a smelly old hag? Ver y well, then rot down there, if you will. But whether Francesco is dead or not, I live on!'

HE IS DEAD, came t he gale in Anthony's mind, so sudden it drove him back from the rim. HE IS DEAD, AND I... PREPARE!

Anthony came forward again, stabbed at the b.u.t.ton to work the hoist, to bring it up. Then, as the motor throbbed and the gears engaged, and the chain quivered as it wound on its pulleys, he said, 'Prepare? Oh really?' His voice dripped its sarcasm. 'And do you have something to prepare for, father? Death, maybe, the true death, when I plug this stinking hole?'

Life, said the other, the volume of his telepathic sending more nearly bearable now. Lives! And death, yes.

But Anthony, ah, my Tony. Haven't you learned anything? Don't you know that there is life in death?

Especially for such as you and I? Rot down here? But I've been doing that for long and long, and I tell you that life may spring even from corruption.

'Life in death? Undeath, you mean?' But Anthony was feeling very uncertain now; his father's tone was so doom-fraught so mournful. Undeath is one thing , the pit-dweller said. But there are others. I prepare for one of the others.

Whileyou.. .you have your own problems.

The platform was coming up into view - but old Katerin was still on it! 'What?'

Anthony's eyes bugged.

Several problems, his father went on. For one, he is coming, as he came once before. Only this time he isn't coming to steal from you. And he isn't coming alone...

'What?' Anthony said again, bringing the hoist to a jerky halt and, in his confusion, switching on the electric current The chain swung against the open cover, made contact- -Sparks skittered down the chain. And ten feet down the shaft, on

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the dangling platform, old Katerin's body swelled up like a grotesque balloon - and burst Burst open, revealing a part of Angelo! Hie old b.a.s.t.a.r.d would have tried to escape. Or something of him at least But escaped to where, to whom? Anthony believed he knew well enough to whom.

Not now, however, for Katerin's gutted body had collapsed back to the dried-out husk, or less than the husk, that it had been. And a corrugated nucleus of purple- grey protoplasm ten to twelve inches in diameter, with dozens of flickering cilia- like tentacles propelling it, was skittering down the sheer wall of the shaft like a crazed, alien spider!

'd.a.m.n you!" Anthony snarled. Was that your... your "preparation?" Did you intend that for me? To go on in me? A mutant leech from your own mutant body, to continue in me?'

Bringing up Katerin's remains, he switched off the electricity and swept the debris from the platform, to flutter in rags and tatters back into the pit Then, with the current on again, he let the wire-mesh cover fall with a clang, and watched the 'breath' of the pit-thing steaming and sputtering where it drifted up and made contact with the grid.

Tenacious, his father told him, and Anthony sensed the Old Ferenczy's irritation, his impatient mental shrug, but nothing more than that; as i f this were some minor setback. It's in our nature and we can't help it, in you just as it's in me. And oh I'm not finished yet, my Tony - not yet. But you are. For he's here. They are here!

'Madman!' Anthony hissed. 'Mad thing! Who is here?'

You grow more like your brother every day, said the other. For he never listened, either...

An alarm went off high in the wall; and from up above, the concerted clamouring of more alarms. Anthony stared at the silvery blur of the bell's hammer striking its dome, and back down into the pit 'He? They?' he mouthed. 'Do you mean that f.u.c.king thief- and Radu? But that can't be. It can't be!'

BUT IT CAN BE! Angelo's multi-minds screamed in unison, in wild excitement HE COMES TO DESTROY YOU, AND IE MANSE MADO.

N1E, AND ALL OF US - FOR WHICH WE HAVE PRAYED!.

At whic h Anthony was gone from there, rushing like a wind through the subterranean system, up into Le Manse Madonie where he was met in the great hall by the cadaverous Mario. "What is it?' He grabbed Marie's shirt front in claw hands. "What in the name of h.e.l.l is it? And w here is everyone?"

They're all at their pos ts,' Mario told him. 'On the walls or in the courtyard, or outside the walls. I sent them out And I set off the ala rms, because I didn't know where yo u were.' He led the way up the great staircase to Anthony's private rooms.

'But why? What's happening?' Anthony swept along behind his first lieutenant 'A man on the wall thought he saw something,' Mario answered, as Anthony let them into his rooms.

Thought?' Anthony was less panicked now. 'On a clear night like this, someone thought he saw something?

What is he going blind or someth-?' But there he paused, choking on the words.

They were through his rooms to the balcony. Out there, the courtyard; armed men scattering left and right taking up defensive positions on the walls or hurrying out under the wide arch of the main entrance. And in through that entrance, a mist came creeping. But such a mist! In the valleys and coastal villages, it wouldn't be too extraordinary. But up here in the high mountains?

Rolling in off the plateau, the mist seemed concentrated in front of Le Manse Madonie; a dense white bank of mist writhing at the high wall. And as Anthony gasped his astonishment...