Necroscope - The Lost Years, Vol II Part 48

'I probably can't but you can.' And again Harry explained his meaning. 'He's on the edge, you said - so why not push him right over? I would very much like him to do it himself - do it to himself-but if not, then you'll be there to finish it'

And if I should fail, or something should go wrong?

'Nothing will go wrong. And I know it's going to work, for I've seen it. It's just waiting to happen, there in my future or as it now seems, in all our futures. What will be has been.'

Except we don't have futures, said Zahanine of herself and Chang Lun, and so nothing to lose. So let's do it.

And as coincidence would have it At the vampire monastery, Daham Drakesh's albino familiars reported back to him that a large contingent of military vehicles at Xigaze had commenced forming up in his directio n. They were coming by night, doubtless to surprise him. Well, surprise was on his side. They would be in radio contact with each other and with the garrison, of course, and the garrison with Red China; and if anything were to happen in the outside world, more specifically Chungking, they might yet be diverted. If they weren't ... then Drakesh would let the soldiers into the monastery, but of necessity their vehicles, and most of their firepower, must stay outside. And in the monastery: His bats would fight, of course; likewise his 'priests' - fight with the strength of vampires - and win. But even if they lost Drakesh would not lose. There were refuges in the outside world where he would be welcome, where he could start again as the planet devolved into chaos.

And if he won, then he would stay here and finish his work with 454.little or no threat of outside interference. Indeed, Tibet would be the last bastion of mainly radiation-free, air- breathing man, and the first whole nation with a new ideology: vampirism. Enough! They had forced his hand.

Hurrying through the monastery, issuing orders as he went, Drakesh climbed to the transmitter room in the hollowed dome of the skull - and found Major Chang Lun, his old enemy, waiting for him there, where Harry Keogh had left him...

At a little after 8:20 p.m. GMT, the American Air Force Base at Greenham Common was a quiet place. It was a weekday and people had to work in the morning. Security and other duty posts were filled, of course, but the bomb-proof underground storage facilities might just as well have been tombs. Which would make the Necroscope a ghost where he emerged from the Mobius Continuum at a coordinate remembered from his one previous visit.

A short Mobius jump took him into the container with the combination safe. He kneeled, frowned at the knurled, numbered k.n.o.b, and said, 'Harry, this is it.' But he wasn't talking to himself. And Harry Houdini answered: OK, I see it. But now I need to feel it - through your fingers.

The Necroscope blanked his mind, let the other Harry take over, felt his fingers thrill to the weird magic of Houdini's entirely different talent. The k.n.o.b twirled this way and that, spinning through a seemingly endless sequence of combinations. But to the dead magician it was as easy as turning a key in a lock. When a final sharp click! sounded, Harry's hand left the k.n.o.b to yank on the safe's handle - and the door sprang open. 'd.a.m.n, you're good!' the Necroscope said.

But Houdini only chuckled. Tell that to my agent the next time you stop by his way, he answered.

Har ry took the harmless-looking receiver and antenna from the safe, made a second short jump into the container with the bomb on its trolley. But the floor of the container was wired, and as it took his weight alarms were triggered. As the first distant sirens started to sound, he placed the receiver on the trolley, conjured another door, and wheeled the entire contraption through it and right out of there. And out of this universe.

Taking his deadly cargo with him, he followed the instantaneous M6bius route to Zahanine ...

While in Daham Drakesh's transmitter room: Chang Lun was a lumpish, broken, scarecrow caricature of the man Drakesh had known and killed, but he was unmistakably Chang Lun. Splintered bones stuck out of his torn, dishevelled uniform; 455 sagging to the right from a crushed spine, he threatened to crumple to the floor. His left shoulder hung awkwardly askew, but his right arm and hand seemed to be in good working order - especially the hand, and the pistol that followed Drakesh's every move.

Not that the last Drakul was moving much; spreadeagled to the wall, his blood-red eyes bugged and his split tongue wriggled like a crippled snake, uselessly in his gaping mouth. But Chang Lun stood between Drakesh and the transmitter's console, and as Drakesh gradually recovered from his shock, he knew he would have to move die Major in order to finalize his plan.

But what would he be moving? A corpse? A figment of his imagination, his conscience? Ridiculous! He had no conscience. And whatever this thing was, it was real, it was happening.

Facing him, Chang Lun faced a dilemma of his ow n. He was here to 'drive Drakesh over the edge' - b ut the master of the monastery was already past that point; he wanted to press the b.u.t.ton, to press it twice.

Once to arm his bombs (as he imagined), and once again to detonate them. But Chang Lun couldn't let him, not until the Necroscope gave him the word.

Harry, where are you? Chang Lun's dead thoughts went out; and the Great Majority were 'breathless,'

keeping the psychic aether clear.

Right here, Harry answered, where at that very moment he and Zahanine wheeled the trolley out through a Mobius door into the bowels of the monastery; indeed, into the temple" of self-flagellation with its b.l.o.o.d.y trough and terrible sluices. None of Drakesh's people were there now, but from his conversations with ex- priests and initiates the Ne croscope knew well enough where he was. And it was as good, or bad, a place as an y.

Drakesh was a hugely talented telepath; while he couldn't intercept or read the incorporeal thoughts of the dead, or the Necroscope's thoughts while he was using that medium, st ill he sensed t hat something - some form of communication - was happening here. And putting out a vampire probe, he at once found a second intruder, Harry Keogh, in the guts of the monastery. And his crazed mind immediately flew to the wrong conclusion, or a conclusion that was only part-right He was under attack! His plan was known! They would stop him, destroy the monastery, his works, even Daham Drakesh himself! He couldn't be sure who 'they' were, but it was definitely time to give them something else to worry about Advancing on the dead man, his clawlike hands and arms elongated towards him. And the pistol in Major Chang Lun's dead hand went click! Click! Click! The weapon was empty.

Drakesh swept Chang Lun aside like a tailor's manikin. The Necroscope: The Lost Yea rs - Vol. II456.

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Major's broken spine collapsed, his legs gave way and he crumpled to the cold stone floor. And Drakesh stabbed at the b.u.t.ton once... and paused, blinked, reconsidered, as he saw - what? A smile? -transforming Chang Lun's face. Alive, the Chinese Major would be in agony.

Dead, he wouldn't be feeli ng anything - but he was. It was a smile of satisfaction, yes. Of triumph!

And again Drakesh's probe went out to the Necroscope, and read, and saw, what was on his mind! Instantly, he s.n.a.t.c.hed his skeletal hand from the console, staggered, turned and ran - out of the room, up the last flight of stone steps to the bald dome of the skull carved in the mountainside - ran like the grotesque parasite he was from a terror beyond anything he could ever dream to conjure. From a man who called up dead men from their graves, to enact their own vengeance!

And high on the moonlit dome of the skull he threw up his spindly arms to the night and willed metamorphosis. That greatest of all the skills of the vampire Lords, at which every Drakul before him had been past-master.

While in the room of the transmitter, Chang Lun still had a job to do. And dragging himself inch by inch back across the floor, he somehow managed to heave his wreck of a body upright at the console. And: Necroscope, he said. I'm too badly broken. I can't keep it toge ther.

I can still do it, but don't wait t oo long.

That's OK, Harry answered, for by now he had told Zahanine what she must do. On a count of five, Major. And thanks.

And he conjured a door and stepped through it ... and immediately removed himself far from the monastery, a little over two miles, to a spot close to Zahanine's car. Then: Harry knew what was coming. With no time to spare, he dug through the crusty snow and buried himself in the softer stuff beneath. And in the monastery Zahanine extended the aerial and made the connection; and buckling at the knees, Chang Lun fell facedown on the fatal b.u.t.ton. Daham Drakesh flew! Like some monst rous man-lizard - like primal pteranodon - he spiralled up, up into the night sky above the monastery. And his retinue of pink-eyed familiars with him.

Or more properly he flew like an ill-fated moth, and only for a single instant recognized his fate when the biggest candle in the world burst into flame directly beneath him. A candle brilliant as the solar orb itself, made of the same deadly energy.

It was a mighty, merciful singeing...

At first, the Necroscope was surprised; it seemed such a small thing, a small beginning - a shudder felt or sensed deep down under the snow, in the earth, and then a moment of stunned silence - following which it became something else. The crust of snow overhead was ripped away, then the softer stuff, peeling in layers, and finally Harry himself: s.n.a.t.c.hed up and whirled head over heels like a leaf in a gale, and hurled down in the drift that had piled against Zahanine's car.

And overhead, a wind, a storm, a hurricane! The crackling of ma.s.sive bursts of electricity; a tracery of electrical fires racing across the sky; the sky itself turning dirty-red, and an awesome rumbling that grew louder and louder until it was deafening. In short it was his vision all over again.

And briefly, s.n.a.t.c.hes from Nostradamus's qua trains pa.s.sed before his mind 's eye: The means is in the sun, as it transpires... With numbers and with solar heat and grave-cold, with mordant acids, and his friends in low society.' Most of it had meaning, but the mordant acids were yet to be explained...

When the ground stopped shaking, Harry sat up in the hole his hurtling body had made in the snow. He looked across a dirty-grey desolation at a low, flat-topped mushroom cloud bulging upwards and still expanding. He looked at it for long moments, and then no more. Because for all that the Necroscope had seen in his short life, still there were some things that were just too terrible to contemplate.

And this was one of them.

Another was the squadron of Red Chinese bombers that was pa.s.sing overhead, releasing their napalm payload some distance away on the forbidden walled city.

Which was one job, at least, that Harry wouldn't have to deal with.

Napalm... Was this the 'mordant acid' he wonde red.

Shaken, Harry conjured a door and almost fell through it And in the eternal peace and quiet of the M&bius Continuum, in his own time, he went back to Sicily, the Madonie, and the dog-Lord Radu Lykan...

Radu ha d done with ravaging - there was nothing left to ravage - and he gave his a.s.surance that the plateau of the Madonie was clean. 'I've played my part,' Harry told him.

Time now to fulfil your end of our agreement'

'Bonnie Jean?' the dog-Lord growled. "She is a treacherous b.i.t.c.h. We don't need her."

' "We" doesn't come into it,' Harry said. There is no "you" and T. There never can be. The way I remember it you gave your word.' He was standing close to Radu - would have to be, if he wanted to convey him via the MObius Continuum.

'And you trust the word of a Lord of the Wamphyri?' Radu caught 458.Harry's jacket, his shoulder, and drew him closer still.

'Do I have a choice?'

"You could try searching my lair for her on your own. And with luck you might even find her in time.'

*Before what?'

'Before my creature is up and about I left her as a tidbit, to break his long, long fas t!'

Harry took a gasping breath. 'In which case, it could be too late even now!'

'Oh, ha-ha-ha!' The dog-Lord's barking laugh. And then his snarled: 'No, for my warrior needs me to bring him forth.'

'In the Mb'bius Continuum,' Harry said, gritting his teeth, 'I could transport you instantaneously to the other side of the world, into brilliant sunlight'

'And if I thought you would,' Radu answered, 'I could grip your scrawny neck and squeeze your head off!'

Harry looked into his lantern gaze, then looked away, let himself cool off. And finally: "You'll take me to Bonnie Jean?'

'Such was my word,' Radu nodded his grinning wolfs head. 'But first you must take me to my redoubt'

And there was nothing else for it...

Harry knew the precise co-ordinates - but so did Radu. As they emerged at the foot of his dais, the dog-Lord beat Harry to it, reached down and took up B.J.'s crossbow, bent it out of shape and tossed it aside. 'One of us might be tempted to cheat' h e explained, knowingly.

And then they went to B J.

Radu led the way, loping like a wolf, but upright leaning forward. 'Once long ago,' he said, blinking his feral eyes, 'oh centuries ago, I had just such a hollow place, a crag in Moldavia. I built it so as to be able to destroy it utterly, in the event I must evacuate. This place is very much the same. A bonfire down here would crack these columns, bring down the rott en walls, floors, ceilings, destroy all evidence of my ever having been here. My plan for continuity. Longevity is synonymous with anonymity.'

'What continuity?' said Harry, hard on Radu's heels through the labyrinth. 'I see no continuity. Not any longer. You've fulfilled your ambition: to outlive all your enemies.'

Radu paused a moment to look back at him. 'All but one, as it now appears,' he said. And before Harry could answer he turned and loped on...

Closer to their destination, in a very dark place, Radu paused again. His eyes lit the walls of the narrow pa.s.sage. Time you were rid of your belt and munitions, Necroscope,' he said. 'My trust goes only so far.'

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Necmscope: The Lost Yean - Vol. II Harry released the belt, let it fall. 'Mine, too,' he said.

And in a little while they were there, at the place of the huge stone vat that housed Radu's warrior. There was the sound of rus.h.i.+ng water; the dim sheen of water, falling from on high. Also, from somewhere far below, the splash and gurgle of a subterranean sump. Apart from that it was a dim. smoky place. The torches in the base of the stone vat had long since burned out but one last torch stood fresh and unlit in its sconce on the wall of the cave facing the ma.s.sive stone 'staves' of the vat 'We could use a little light' Harry said, uncertainly.

'By all means,' Radu growled low in his wolf's throat . 'I gave my word that you would see her at least one more time. Or one last time."

And with his heart thudding, Harry fumbled the cigarette lighter from his pocket and brought the torch flaring to light And sure enough, BJ. was there, and alive, but only just. She was hanging by her feet, which were caught fast in a noose. The rope was wrapped around a k.n.o.b of rock and tied off. BJ.'s head hung level with the rim of a broad, zig-zagging creva.s.se, a crack in the floor that might go down forever, for all Harry knew, but at least as far as the underground lake.

BJ. was naked, unconscious. Blood had dried on her arms, which were hanging limply into the chasm, and more blood caked her hair. As she turned slowly on the rope, Harry saw the gash in her back where the dog-Lord had torn her leech right out of her spine. His legs numb, he stumbled towards her, went to his knees - from which position he saw another rope round her neck. A long length of rope, its other end was tied around a boulder that must weigh at least two hundredweights. The tenth part of a ton, balanced at the edge of the crevice. Radu stood grinning beside the boulder, and Harry knew what he would do and when he would do it Right now!

'No!' he choked the word out 'Didn't I tell you that what was in her could be taken out?' Radu growled. 'So it has been. And now, say goodbye to her!' And as the Necroscope's jaw fell open - as he reached out his arms uselessly, spastically towards BJ. - Radu gave a grunt and a heave, and rolled the great rock from the rim. It fell; the rope uncoiled; thirty-odd feet of rope, and the boulder hurtling faster and faster ...

... And then that sound that Harry knew he would hear for ever and ever. But not the sight of it, for he had closed his eyes. But the dog-Lord only laughed and said, "Well, now you can say goodbye to her. Indeed, you're the only one who can."

'b.a.s.t.a.r.d thing,' Harry gasped, whispered, choked, his face a frozen grimace, eyes tightly closed. "You lousy b.a.s.t.a.r.d wolf-thing! Why? Why did you have to... to... ?' Radu came close, caught him by the shoulder, drew him up. "You460.

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would have killed her anyway, because she was Wamphyri. I did it because it was my right, and she was treacherous. In my world - in our world - there will be no room for traitors. Especially Ladies of the Wamphyri!'

'b.a.s.t.a.r.d thing!' Harry said again, limp in Radu's grasp.

'I remember how it was,' the other told him, "when I was a man and lost loved ones. For a little while it made me weak - but then it made me strong. Right now you are weak, but / shall make you strong!'

'You are a dead thing,' Harry told him. 'A dead, soulless thing. Go back down into death, Radu.'

'Ah, no, I think not,' said the other, holding the Necroscope closer still. 'You guarded your mind well, Harry, but little by little I pris ed it open. I have seen your greatest fear. You don't know i f you can put me down. Apparently you can't.'

Then you'll rot,' Harry told him, 'because you're a dead thing. Yours is just a semblance of life. Cling to it while you may, until your flesh is seething and all your bones separating at the joints. But it would be easier to go down now, Radu.'

'Look at me,' said Radu, and his voice was hypnotic now.

Harry must open his eyes, must look into the feral yellow gaze with its twin scarlet cores. Must swim in the fires burning in the centre of Radu's mind. And the dog-Lord said: 'I dreamed of a man with two faces, one who would be with me when I triumphed over death.'

'You merely dreamed of metempsychosis,' the Necroscope's voice was faint now, faltering. 'I ... I have already known it. I've had two faces. I don't want a third.'

'But you have no choice,' Radu said, as his eyes expanded in Harry's sight, and in his mind. 'I stand on your threshold, and I will enter. Of my own free will..."

No way! James Anderson told him, his mental gaze a furnace to match Radu's own. And: To heel, great dog! said Franz Anton Mesmer. The Necroscope's friends in low society, who were fa r more adept in death th an ever they had been in life. Their combined hypnotic power sliced into the dog-Lord's like hot knives through b.u.t.ter.

Radu pushed Harry away to arm's length, snarled, 'What?'

And there was sudden moveme nt - a surging of liquids - a mewling of some vast thing in terrible agony, from behind him. One of the stone staves o f the great vat cracked, buckled outwards, slopped resin. Others followed suit and a wave of resin came gurgling over the high rim, its stench sickening where it flooded the cave and flowed sluggishly over the jagged lip of the chasm. Radu's warrior creature had waxed at last.

'What!?' the dog-Lord said again, and was knocked from his feet as more staves collapsed and a second wave of resin drenched him, threatening to carry him into the depths.

Releasing Harry in order to save himself, Radu pushed him away.

Shaking his head to clear it, Harry backed off, got to his feet, stumblingly retreated to the wall of the cave.

And when Radu's feral glare had faded in his eyes and his mind, he took in the entire scene at a glance: That black lumpish misshapen wolf-thing emerging, flopping in agony through the shattering staves from its womb of stinking liquids! Living corruption in a shape from a madman's worst dreams! Vast, and vastly diseased - even as its maker h imself, with a plague six hundred years old - its sick red saucer eyes pleaded with the dog-Lord. But it was the Necroscope who put it out of its agony, the creature and its 'father' both.

The blazing torch was to hand, hissing, spitting and flaring brilliantly in the flow of gases from the vat Harry need only wr ench it from its sconce, and toss it in a lazy arc...

... He conjured a door, and was thrust through it by a huge hot hand. A jump took him to the far end of the tunnel - only to witness a roaring yellow fireball expanding along it in his direction. Anot her jump to Radu's sarcophagus, behind which he had depo sited his second sausage bag of high explosives.

Which now he would use.

But not until he had seen to Bonnie Jean - if that were at all possible.

And one last long howl ringing in Harry's mind, and a picture of the dog-Lord blazing bright as a star, 'gloriously,' as indeed he had seen himself in his visions of the future. Except as he remembered now too late and only too well, the future was ever an unknown quant.i.ty, ever a devious thing...

Certain members of the teeming dead talked, made their points, argued their arguments. But it was Nostradamus who won. / could not knout, he said. / could only say as I saw, and saw only what I was allowed to see. But it appears that I showed too much. If the Necroscope works it all out - which he will, given time - maybe he won't want to go on. And we're all agreed he must! And if he tries to change what will be, he can only damage himself. Wherefore you must limit the damage now. Harder still, you must e liminate it from your own minds, too. F or from now on, you can never so much as hint of it.

And the ones he spoke to - B.J., Mary Keogh, Franz Anton Mesmer, Keenan Gormley, James Anderson, and any and all of the Great Majority who had played their parts in the thing - they all agreed...