Necroscope - The Lost Years, Vol II Part 12

The yak's nerve-rending shrieks had now risen to an almost human pitch. And the Corporal gasped, That creature must soon strangle itself! See how it leaps, kicks, hauls on its tether. Surely you were right, sir. The thing is mad or diseased - or something is tormenting it, driving it out of its mind!'

But Chang Lun only thought Or the yak knows, senses, is somehow aware, of something that we can't possibly understand. Or maybe the Major did understand.

And trying to hold his binoculars more firmly in suddenly trembling hands, he followed the line of flight of the weirdly purposeful cloud; not heading his way at all, or only roughly so. But very definitely heading for the boneyard.

'Kill the stove,' he husked at o nce, as he felt the short hairs stiffening at the back of his neck.

'Eh?' The Corporal didn't move; fascinated by the frantic activity of the yak, he couldn't look away.

'I said kill the f.u.c.king stove!' the Major elbowed him in the ribs. 'Put the fire out And do it quietly - do everything very quietly!' His last few words were a hiss, as he fixed his line of sight on the leadin g flyers. And without knowing why - or not exactly why - Chang Lun found himself terrified. Not of the flyers so much as the/ferf of them, that they were here at all, and the fact that Daham Drakesh had... what, called them up? Up from the depths of his blasphemous monastery.

Flyers, yes: great bats! The way they swooped and flitted, they could only be. But white bats, albinos, and by the Major's lights far larger than any bat has a right to be. With or without binoculars, these things were just too d.a.m.n big! Chang Lun knew something about zoology, was fairly sure that these monsters were way out of place here. They were like the giant Desmodus bats of middle and South America, and...

... And Desmodus was a bloodsucker, wasn't he? A d.a.m.ned vampire, yes!

Meanwhile, the Corporal had killed the stove's chemical fire. A final wisp of smoke - real smoke - went up, which he dispersed by flapping his arms. Then he returned to his place at die waO of stones, took up his gla.s.ses, and quickly focused them on the tethered yak. But in a hoa.r.s.e, uneven whisper Chang Lun warned him: 'It seems to me you're a sensitive man. That being so, don't watch.'

'Don't watch, sir?' What could the Major mean?

Chang Lun himself didn't know just what he meant But he had this idea in his head and it wouldn't go away.

He would do anything if it would, but it wouldn't And now the Corporal was training his binoculars in the other direction, to see if he could spot whatever it was that Chang Lun was concerned about The Major felt him give a jerk as he too saw the bats. "What the devil... ?'

And Chang Lun nodded and answered. The devil, indeed!'

Both men shrank down, huddling low behind their wall of stones, staring a moment at each other, wide-eyed and fearful. And as their eyes went back to the yak, each felt his own private pang of relief to note that the poor animal had given up the ghost; or if it wasn't dead, that it had collapsed in exhaustion. And as the stream of great albinos flew overhead not too far away, for a moment they heard the leathery flutter of membrane wing s.

While in the ancient city...

... Lights were comi ng on. Dim lanterns were being lit in windows in the walls and towers, and pale faces were flitting as eerily as the bats themselves from window to window. Drakesh's women had come to... to what?

They're watching!' the Corporal whispered, as if in answer to the Major's unspoken question. Those women are going to watch!' He was omitting his 'sirs' again, but his superior officer no longer cared. Chang Lun knew that no less than himself, his driver had guessed what was about to happen. Anywhere else, it would be... unthinkable to even think such dungs, but not in this place. Here in 125.

124.

this place - which both men had come to loathe - it seemed the only thing to think.

And those women: the way they ghosted about the city smiling their sick smiles. But what could they have to smile about in a place like this? Oh, they were under their master's spell, no doubt about it But what sort of spell? Criminals, convicts they might well be, but what could have happened to them - to their spirit, their humanity -that they could watch something like this?

The column of great bats spiralled down, plummeted out of the night sky to their unprotesting target, fell as forcefully as stones and clamped like leeches to the head, neck, body and limbs of the yak where it lay shuddering on its bony deathbed. They cl.u.s.tered to it, turned the grey ma.s.s of it white... and then red!

Red in a moment! From the blood that escaped their ravenous mouths, or spurted from arteries bitten through!

'Sir!' the Corporal choked, turning his gla.s.ses away.

'Didn't I tell you so?' Chang Lun growled. That b.a.s.t.a.r.d in his b.l.o.o.d.y nightmarish "monastery," he breeds things. Even as he's breeding things now, in those h.e.l.lish women. I suspect he even bred these bats! And for no good purpose, you can stake your life on it' With which it suddenly dawned on him that in being here they may already have staked their lives on it But no, that hideous travesty of a man on the roof of the monastery didn't know they were here, didn't know what they had seen. Viciously, the Major swung his gla.s.ses back to their original angle and quic kly realigned them on the dome of the carved skull. The stick-figure was still there, and Chang Lun supposed he'd be looking in this direction. And: You can't see me, Chang Lun thought to himself, but I can see you. And I promise you this, Daham Drakesh: that if the day ever dawns when I can bring you down, then III do it. And with pleasure! Then... the air was suddenly electric! In the next moment Chang Lun remembered that earlier feeling: that weird sensation of some Other peering back at him through his own gla.s.ses. Utterly impossible, of course, and yet- It was as if the figure on the dome of the monastery grew large in a split-second, as if Drakesh expanded in Chang Lun's binoculars -and in his mind - to a giant! They stood face to face, and Drakesh's eyes were blood red, fuelled in their pupils by the molten-sulphur fires of h.e.l.l.

Aha! said a voice in the Major's mind, and there could be no denying that he recognized it immediately and knew its owner. And so you spy on me. A mistake, Chang Lun, for I too have my spies, my watchdogs; but greedy dogs, such as they are, and ever hungry. Eh? What? You think I am threatening you? Ah, no! For my dogs are obedient and would never harm you - not without my permission. Indeed I shall have them see you home, back to Xigaze. And when you report the result of this, your latest mission, to Tsi-Hong in Chungking, be sure to give him my best regards... With which Drakesh's sinister, sibilant telepathic "voice" ra pidly devolved to a peal of fading laughter, an d was gone. Likewise the spindly red-robed figure on the dome of the carved skull.

'Sir... sir?

Chang Lun snapped out of it, and knew his driver had been yelling in his ear for several long seconds. He closed his gaping mouth, blinked his eyes and said, 'Eh? What?'

'Sir, a wind is coming up, blowing stronger now. It might bring a little snow. And those bats are on the move.'

The Major scarcely needed his binoculars to know that the Corporal was right. He could feel the wind and see the albinos rising up in a spiral from their feast Also, the dim lanterns in the windows of the ancient city had been smothered, put out so that now t he place resembled nothing so much as some vast, sprawling necropolis; in which instinctive or auto matic a.n.a.logy Chang Lun was very nearly correct, except a necropolis is a city of the truly dead.

'Quickly now,' the Major husked. 'It's time we were gone from here.'

The Corporal needed no urging; he was on his feet, making to collect up the stove and any other evidence of their having been here. But: 'Leave it be,' Chang Lun told him. 'It doesn't make any difference. They'll know we've been here anyway.' And the moment he'd said it he knew it was so, that he hadn't just been dreaming it when he'd heard Drakesh speaking in his mind. What was more, he knew that Drakesh's threat' - to have him escorted back to Xigaze -hadn't been an idle one.

Those bats,' the Major's driver muttered. He was directly ahead of Chang Lun where they went sliding and b.u.mping down the frozen slope of the hillside. They seemed to be heading-'

'-This way,' the Major cut him short 'I know.'

And then they both knew, for certain, as the air overhead thrummed with the whup, whup, whup of leathery wings.

'Oh mother! Dear father!' Fearfully, the Corporal looked skywards, tripped, went tumbling head over heels to the bottom. But by the time Chang Lun was down he was up on his feet again, stripping the camouflaged canopy from the snow-c at 'Easy! EasyF Chang Lun t old him, with a lot more bravado than he felt as his driver yanked again and again on the starter. 'Don't flood the f.u.c.king thing!'

But soon the cat was ticking over, then purring into life, and the two men were clambering aboard as if the vehicle were a life-raft and126 127.

their s.h.i.+p was going down behind them.

The bats! The bats!' The Corporal moaned, and slewed the cat dangerously, tiltingry, as he turned her about 'For the last time, take it easyf the Major yelled. 'Do as I say or 111 shoot you and drive the f.u.c.king thing myself! The bats won't attack us. They'll just... follow us along the way.' At least, that is, I mean... if that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Drakesh is good as his word.

Great white bats - two or three dozen of the m, 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 h.e.l.l are they doing?" the Corporal shrilled, when a pair of flapping pink-eyed nightmares danced for a moment or so in front of his winds.h.i.+eld 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 oft 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, wit h their convoluted noses wrinkled b ack, flat to their wet-gleaming leathery faces. Three of them whirled, hurled themselves in a suicide attack directly at the winds.h.i.+el d.

The screen was of clear plastic which cracked on the first impact splintered on the second, flew apar t 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 C orporal from the s ide, while behind him another pair attacked the Major. Their ma.s.sed 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 cl.u.s.tered 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-spyingfor 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...

Necroscope: The Lost Yean - Vol. // 129.

II.

THE FRANCEZCIS.

The ritual at Le Manse Madonie had been simple and solemn. The funereal weather - a damp, bl.u.s.tery breeze off the Tyrrhenian, that s.n.a.t.c.hed 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. Tve seen her but once in a whole year! But now, this one last time, I must! Oh, G.o.d! 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 bear ers 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 c.h.i.n.k 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 gla.s.s. But Julio, you know the circ.u.mstances 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 130.

131.

be touched, or kissed. Hence the gla.s.s.' 'But... I mil 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 glas s. It was dim; the gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s over her li ps; his tears fell on the dusty surface, acting lik e tiny magnifying gla.s.ses to blur and diminish the detail. 'Just four short yea rs 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 s elf.'

'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.