Necroscope - The Lost Years, Vol II Part 25

Francesco sighed and narrowed his eyes. His jet-black nostrils gaped a little. But then he grinned - which would be fine except that his grin widened, and widened. Until fi nally: 'Vincent,' he hus ked. Tour grandfather was a Don; he is dead. Your father was a Don; he's dead, too. So who knows, maybe it's something that runs in the family? All that power and they still wind up dead! And now you. More power coming your way than your ancestors would ever believe. More to live for, a lot more. And longer, much longer to live and enjoy it. Yet now and then, the way you talk..." He shook his now terrible head. A bad sign.

'Hey, Francesco, I'm sorry,' Ragusa saw his error. 'Like, no offence, right? I mean, I know this Radu is something big, but...'

Francesco stopped grinning, stuck his face forward across the small table where they sat, snarled, "Vincent, let me tell you something. This Radu could drive a hand through your navel, grab your liver and pick you up by it, and before you had time to start screaming bite your f.u.c.king face off!" His jaws gaped wide and his eyes were the colour of blood. "Yes, and for that matter-' he said, his voice dyin g to a hoa.r.s.e whisper, '-so could I.'

'I... I didn't mean ...' Ragusa's face, always pale, was now white as chalk.

'You don't mean f.u.c.k!' Francesco said. 'So, that's it - it's dealt with.' He slapped his hands together in a slicing, dismissive motion. "YouTl do exactly as I tell you. But just to be absolutely sure: are there any more questions?'

'Nothing,' Ragusa shook his head, held up his hands placatingly, palms facing outwards. 'No questions, no - nothing - uh-uh!'

Francesco scowled, sat back, and as if Vincent Ragusa no longer existed said: 'Luigi, you know what your job is. What's this problem with the, the... what are they called?'

The CAA,' Manoza answered. 'Civil Aviation Authority. I have to

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register with them, that's all. They'll issue a temporary licence. Anyway, we have a contact on their exec. I can buy him if we're pushed for time. No problem.'

'Sort it out,' Francesco told him. "We're going to need a chopper and soon. And it has to be able to carry more than our machine back in Sicily.

'Now listen everyone, I want you to remember our "reason" for being here. We're scouting a location for a movie. A climbing movie, probably in the Scottish Highlands. The British will stand to make lots of money from it - and the British authorities are worse than Americans when it comes to money. Likewise the Scots, and not only by reputation. So, if you want co-operation, try flas.h.i.+ng some high-denomination dollars! It'll work here like an ywhere else.' Grinning a normal grin t his time, he turned again to Manoza.

'When you've got a plane - and if I'm still in London - well fly up to Scotland. The rest of us, that is. But first I have a little business here. It's possible we have a real line on the intruder. We may finally find out who he is and why and how he hit our vault at Le Manse Madonie. And then 111 make sure he can't do it - can't do anything -ever again.'

And lastly, to Guy Tanziano: 'Dancer, you stay with me.'

Tanziano - bullet-headed, six. foot tall and sixteen stone, yet light as a dancer on his feet - a common thrall with an uncommon appet.i.te and reputation for brutality, merely nodded.

The meeting was over...

Darcy Clarke took Harry to King's Cross in the greyest, ghostliest hours of morning when the ragged ones are out: discarded pages from yesterday's newsprint, drifting aloft on the draughts from canyon street-junctions.

Those ragged ones, and the other sort the stumbling kind, with their bottles of nameless stuff in paper bags.

Both sorts were thinning out, however, and disappearing wherever they disappear to. London was coming awake, however slo wly, and the station already noisy, thronging with people. The Necroscope caught the first train north.

He had seemed irritable, a nd Darcy himself wasn't entirely awake yet, or he might have simply dropped Harry at the station and returned to E-Branch HQ. Finally, on his way back, suddenly he realized what the problem had been - and felt like kicking himself. The Necroscope would have preferred to go home by his own route, maybe, but he hadn't been able to because Darcy was in the way. Oh well, too late now.

But in fact it wasn't The train was barely fifteen minutes out of the station before Harry bought himself a paper cup of vile coffee in the buffet car. Then, swaying right on through the cramped buffet area into the first-cla.s.s coach, he checked the pa.s.sengers.

There were only a handful of them, reading newspapers and magazines, all facing forward and away from him. And no one in the buffet car behind him.

Perfect.

Without thin king about it (because he knew that if he did he wouldn't), he conjured a Mobius door and stepped through it and o ut again into his study in Edinburgh...

... Where he dropped his coffee from nerveless fingers! And before he was capable of rational thought he thought This has to be my punishment for using the Continuum!

His coffee had splashed the naked thigh of the black girl, the black and red girl, where he had stumbled over her. Zahanine... One of BJ.'s girls!... Dead!... Here! Still without thinking what he was doing, numb, he went to the kitchen and came back with paper towels, got down and wiped the cold coffee from her thigh - then slowly balled the towels, tossed them aside, and jerked spastically to his feet Coffee? Jesus G.o.d in heaven - coffee? A black bullet hole gaped in the girl's left breast; her skirt was bunched up round her waist, and her blouse was stuck to the throw rug with dried blood! Indeed, the rug was drenched in blood! Worse, Zahanine's head lay under Harry's desk where it had been kicked, three or four feet from her body. A b.l.o.o.d.y meat cleaver lay there, too.

And this charnel house was his study.

The Necroscope stumbled back from the girl's body - from everything - and fell into his chair; and sprang out of it at once as he heard a car pull up out front.

In the corridor, still not knowing what he was doing, but trying desperately hard to pull it all together, Harry went to the door and found it shut but unlocked. As he reached to engage the security catch, he heard footsteps that paused beyond the door, a double knock, and a breathless: 'Harry?'

B.J.! He yanked open the door, fell back against the wall of the corridor. She stepped inside, took one look at him ... and his expression must have said it all. Then: 'BJ.,' he sighed and wrapped his arms around her. But as he hugged her, so she felt him tense up again, felt the relief, the tenderness, the welcome, turning to something else.

'Harry, what is it?' Her eyes were as wide and staring as his had been just a moment earlier. But now, as he pushed her away, held her at arm's length, and l ooked at her as if he were trying to look right through her, those oh-so-deep eyes of his had narrowed to become part of a frown, or even an accusation.

'What is it?' he repeated her. 'Maybe you can tell me. And B J., this 249.

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Brian Lutnley time I do mean tell me!' Catching her wrist, he half dragged her along the corridor, past the front room, stairwell, and kitchen, to his study - where she saw what it was.

'Zahaninef It came out of her as a wail, a very small cry, a gasp. 'Oh, Zahanine!' Then she was down on her knees, fluttering her hands inches over the body - wanting to touch it here, there, everywhere - and touching it nowhere.

'I got in fifteen minutes ago,' the Necroscope lied. This is what I found.' He got down beside BJ., and at last was able to look at the body and see more than blood. 'She was shot, and -1 don't know, tortured, raped? - before she was beheaded. But why, B.J.? Why? And I know you know! Oh, I'm sure you're an innocent wrong-headed but innocent, but you do know what's going on here. And you have to tell me.'

'Harry, I-'

This is why you wanted me out of the way, right? Because something like this could have happened to me?'

'Harry-'

'Yellow men,' he stood up, pulled B J. up with him. "What about the Asiatics? Tell me about them.' (For if she could, it might also explain how those red-robed 'monks' fitted into his future: some connection with the device they'd planted in Hyde Park? It seemed more than likely. But if they were also responsible for what had happened here, then they most certainly had a place in his future ... or would have when he caught up with them!) But why this aching sensation deep inside? This burgeoning feeling of something waiting to cut loose, like a word on the tip of his tongue that try as he might he couldn't remember. Was it simply the need for action, revenge, justice? ... Or someth ing else?

'Harry!' B J. snapped, trying to pull him out of it. But: 'No!' he snapped back. Tell me now, BJ.!' He was angry; angry and impatient; his lips were tight, showing a narrow bar of gritted teeth.

B J. saw the warning signals, reading them like a threat in his eyes, his voice and att.i.tude. Tilting her head a little - perhaps warningly in her own right, maybe even threateningly - 'Haaarrry,' she began to growl..

... And he gasped, reached to cover her mouth with a hand . But too late, as B.J. finished in something of panic: 'Mah wee man!'

The moon ... the wolf's head... the howling! And at last the calm, descending like a blanket over his troubled mind.

Harry blinked, and the anger, the questions, and the fear went out of him. For BJ. was here to put things back in order again. And she did, by telling him, 'It's OK, Harry,' and by hugging him to stop him reeling and maybe falling. 'Sit down.'

He bl inked again, shook hi s head, waited for her to go on as he obeyed her and sat in his chair by the desk. 'It will be ... OK,' she said again, trying to believe it herself. 'But, oh, where've you been?' And before he could answer: 'No, never mind that now. Just let me think.' She had come within an inch of learning the truth, his truth at least, and by her own command had thrown it away.

B J. looked at the body on the floor, its head beneath the desk at Harry's feet, and grimaced. And almost or wholly to herself: They were making sure,' she said.

He wondered, Of what? But inside knew of what. Except that couldn't be because BJ. and her girls were innocent How could they be ... what she was suggesting they were, when she herself wasn't? He reeled again, swaying in his chair, and BJ. saw her mistake.

'Making sure she was dead,' she told him. That she wasn't going to be able to talk to anyone about... about this.'

Oh, really? Well, the Necroscope knew someone who Zahanine could talk to about it. But he couldn't or wouldn't - and certainly not while BJ. was here. And still he said nothing.

B J. looked at him and it was as if she were here on her own, or at best with a zombie. But that was all her own doing, too. "You can talk,' she said. Talk normally. Tell me what I should do!'

A new twist He should tell her what to do! But it was a genuine appeal, to Harry and not to what she'd made him. Turn me loose,' he said, with that certain something in his voice.

She looked at him, and he was no longer the zombie. He had that look: like the first time she had seen him, or in the Spey Valley when they had killed those Drakuls. The Mysterious One - Radu's Man-With-Two- Faces. Mysterious because he'd been trained to be that way, by these people he'd worked for, this E-Branch.

A man with two faces, yes. The one face a mask, to obscure the true na ture of the one underneath. The face of a killer in the na me of justice.

And now Harry was asking to be turned loose in the name of Bonnie Jean, or more properly in the name of Radu. And why not? For she had told him it might come to this, hadn't she? But no, she would not, dare not put him in that kind of dang er, not her Harry. And not when there were so many greater dangers ahead for both of them. *You don't know what you're saying,' she told him.

(But he did! Oh, he did! Only ask me! he screamed, however silently. For he couldn't tell her what he knew until she asked him! And even then he could never tell her how he knew, because that would be to endanger his secrets.) B J. saw the sweat break out on Harry's face and actually heard his teeth grating. It was something she'd noticed before in times of stress, and she thought: His mind is stuck in neutral where I've 250.

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jammed the gears! He knows we must do something, but can only act on my command.

'Zahanine,' she said. "We can't let her be found here like this. The Drakuls did this. They could be on a phone somewhere speaking to the police even now. They could be trying to corner me - or you, or us - and startle us to flight, cut down on our options. Then, when we run, they'll be right on our heels knowing where we're running to. Do you understand?"

To Radu,' he nodded.

'We have to get rid of Zahanine!' B J.'s hand flew to her mouth. 'I mean, we have to get her out of here. But I can't - d.a.m.n it - can't think! Zahanine thought it was you last night, but it was them. And I sent her here - she came here - of her own free will...' She was rambling; for one of only a very few times in her too-long life, B.J. knew she was actually panicking. 'Harry, I don't know what to do with Zahanine! And her car is parked down the service road near the bridge! What can we do with her, and the car? Do you know of anywhere we can... dump them? I mean - do you know any f.u.c.king thing?' She grabbed hold of his collar, shook his head to and fro. 'Do you have a single f.u.c.king suggestion?'

These were direct questions and he could answer them normally. And yes, he did know somewhere, and he did have some suggestions. "You get out of here,' he said. 'Right now, and leave this to me. But first tell me where to find you. Then, when I'm done, 111 join you.'

Just like that, delivered like a right to the jaw so that she jerke d back from him, her ey es wide, wild and disbelieving. There were depths here she still hadn't explored, still didn't understand. Harry got to his feet. "Where are you staying?'

She told him: the place where he and she had breakfasted, the first time they had gone climbing together, a roadside pub this side of Falkirk. They have rooms. The girls and I, we're supposed to be doing a local survey, a census of people living in the area. But most of the time they'

ve b een out looki ng for you. You're a hard man to find, Harry Keogh. And a hard one to follow. A hard act to follow, too.'

Yes he was, and he'd said he could handle this. Which was just as well because right now B.J. didn't feel she could handle much of anything. Will you need help?" She could at least make the effort For him. For them.

He shook his head. "You go. Ill follow as soon as I can.'

Tm going to turn you off now, Harry,' she said. 'But you will remember what you have to do - the things you do so well - and where to find me when they're done.'

'B.J.,' he said, and held her tightly while she whispered in his ear 'Harry, mah wee man..."

It was like waking up from a bad dream to a worse one. But B.J. had gone and the Necroscope knew what he had to do.

He placed Zahanine's head and the cleaver on the throw rug with her body, rolled the rug up and tied its ends with string, finally rolled the whole bundle again in a sheet of clear plastic packaging from the new carpeting in his bedroom. There was a place he knew where Zahanine would never be found. Or if she was, it wouldn't much matter.

Then he brought a carpet from the front room to cover the dark spot on the floor, and made a final check of the house to see if there was anything he'd missed. But no, the place would seem absolutely normal to anyone who didn't know better.

But Harry did know better, and there was a certain smell that the draught from the broken patio windows was having difficulty dispersing. Or maybe it was only in his mind. In any case, he used a deodorant spray which seemed to help a little.

Then he called a handyman he knew in Bonnyrig and told him about the damage to the window. 'I won't be here,' he said. 'So I'll leave the front door locked. You'll have to go to the back of the house on the river's side, and get in through the garden gate. When you're done, leave the patio doors secured.' As simple as that. And then the difficult bit.

Harry went to Zahanine's car; the keys were in the ignition and he was able to drive it back to the house.

Back indoors he put a penknife in his pocket, hoisted the rolled-up rug and its contents to his shoulder, (it seemed to weigh half a ton!) took it out to the car and placed it as gently as possible in the boot All done, he checked that no one was about which wasn't likely for in this place no one ever was about. And the 'highway' - which was in fact a country road, and the only vantage point - was on the other side of the river on the far side of the house.

Finally, satisfied that he was alone, un.o.bserved, he got back in the car and d rove it very slowly forward in first gear. And as he drove, he set familiar Mobius equations rolling down the screen of his metaphysical mind, to conjure a broad , squat door directly in front of the car- -And drove through it!

Moments later he vacated the Continuum on the Roof of the World, the Tingri Plateau, Tibet... In a snowstorm!

The car stalled at once, sank through a frozen crust into a deep drift, gradually settled on compacting snow.

Harry wound down his window, slid out backwards onto the crust of snow, and flailed through the drift and the blizzard to the boot. Already feeling the intense cold, he dragged the bundle out and cut it open, men propped 252.Zahanine against the back of the car.

It was cold, so terribly cold, but the Necroscope knew she couldn't feel it. And he hadn't wanted to leave her locked away like that, in the stifling dark. The darkness of death, when at last she had accepted it, would be bad enough.

But just looking at her he knew it wasn't right. Zahanine wasn't complete. And shuddering - also from the cold - he took her head and placed it on the neck. In another minute it would be frozen there.

And he would be frozen here, if he didn't get moving!

But first- -There was something he must do. And somehow the sheer desolation, the utter isolation of the place, helped him to do it Not a conversation with Zahanine, no (Harry doubted if she would be ready for that a while, and he certainly wasn't), but he did know what would be on her mind. And here in this place - this icy, windswept, nowhere place - he dropped his mental barriers to let a different kind of cold come creeping in.

She would feel his warmth and know it for life. She would huddle to it, a frightened mouse. And in that moment the darkness would recede a little and Zahanine would remember. Cruel? Perhaps, but not as cruel as what had happened to her. For the Necroscope didn't know (or wouldn't accept) what she had been, only what she was now - a lonely, frightened dead thing, foresaken of life.

And he was right. Her whimper came to him and the feel of her wraith's arms around him, like the Little Match Girl crus.h.i.+ng to the tiny bonfire of her own worthless matches to draw a last ounce of warmth from it.

But he wasn't afraid, not of the girl. This was what he was, after all, and what he had used to do; and with the exception of his lost son he was the only one who could do it He was life and she knew it which caused her to remember her own life and how it had ended. And the Necroscope was witness to it The slant-eyed, l.u.s.tful yellow face leering down on her, and the feel of his cold member in her. Then his eyes widening and the look on his face changing, as she reached up trembling h ands to it; the feel of his skin caught up under her sc.r.a.pin g fingernails and torn away in ten red stripes!

And then this: the endless darkness that Harry had woken her up to. So that now Zahanine knew for sure.

That beyond any shadow of a doubt, she was- -But no! The Necroscope didn't want to hear it, what he had heard so often before. That sudden tortured shriek of denial. And he brought the barriers cras.h.i.+ng down on his mind so fast that it unbalance d him, sent him staggering back from the half-buried car, stumbling on frozen legs.

But he had seen what he'd needed to see: confirmation of her 253.

murderer, and now all he wanted was to be out of here...

It was still only 8:50 a.m. in London, in the disused dockside warehouse with its loading bay that jutted out over the river, where Dr James Anderson had spent the last terrified, agonized week of his life and slow death. But his torment was over now, and his vampire torturers were still baffled.

*You should have left it to me,' the Francezci told his thralls, Jimmy Nicosia and Frank Potenza. "What, did you think you were still under orders from Vincent? Did you think you were the Mob? You're mine, mine and Anthony's. You're Francezcis! And this... isn't us.' Shaking his head, he gloomed over the mess that had been a man. 'It's simple butchery. And worse, it served no purpose. You got nothing out of him.'

'Er, something. We got something, Francesco,' Jimmy Nicosia tried hard not to grovel. 'And we didn't have much choice. We couldn't be here twenty-f our hours a day, not and keep an eye on these E-Branch types. And that in itself is a problem. You follow those guys - you look at some of them for too long - sooner or later they turn and look right back at you!

These people are something else, Francesco. Not the kind you'd want to mess with.'

There isn't any kind I can't mess with!' the Francesci snarled. 'But... I take your point. I've heard the same sort of thing before, and from people who are supposed to know what they're doing! That's why we chose this Anderson.' He glanced again at the remains of a man. 'He isn't - wasn't - part of their organization, just someone they used.'