But vampires are vampires, children of the night, and this was midday. It wasn’t the dog-Lord’s time, no, but neither was it theirs. And so it was worth the risk.
He scanned far, wide and faint, fanning his probe over the far horizon, the curve of the world remembered from a time six hundred years in the past; but never lingering too long in any one spot. All those years ago, the world had been a vast place in which a man might easily lose himself. Now … it seemed so much smaller. But while the world had grown smaller—at least to the people in it—and while the dog-Lord’s body must have lost something of its substance through the long, lonely centuries, still his mentalism was sharp as ever, perhaps even enhanced by his physical isolation. What Radu had denied himself of human sensation, he’d got back in psychic sensitivity, and in his telepathy.
And from due south, over a distance of more than six hundred miles—at the other end of the land mass, the moor districts of Devon and Cornwall—he sensed a faint response from his present-day thralls. Just two of them, yes. Moon-children, like Auld John, their long-awaited destiny was now clear.
… Pausing in whatever they were doing, in their everyday pursuits as men, they lifted their heads, looked north, blinked suddenly feral eyes and held their breath. They were preparing to join him, yes.
And: Two weeks, (he used the probe as a carrier). Be sure to come to me then … And despite that there were no alien emanations—no covert or inimical thoughts that he could detect in the psychic aether—still, without waiting for confirmation, Radu moved on …
… To Bonnie Jean and the pack. They were much closer and the risk that much greater. But even if some vampire mentalist were searching for Radu at this very moment, and even if there were more than one and they had worked out a system of triangulation, still they’d have to find a way to conquer the mountain heights, these Cairngorms, to get to him. And anyway, Radu had to know what was happening, if only to deaden the feelings of desertion and isolation building up in him.
Bonnie Jean’s mind, her mental scent, was so familiar to the dog-Lord that he could find and converse with her—or at least make himself and his wishes known to her—anywhere in the world. She was no telepath, B.J., or at best a mere beginner, so that while she couldn’t read Radu’s mind without that he sent directly into hers, he could be into hers in a moment, even when she tried to keep him out. And she’d certainly done enough of that since discovering her Harry!
Right now, at this very moment, Radu’s Man-With-Two-Faces was with her. Good! Also, at this moment … the dog-Lord Radu was the last thing on B.J.’s mind. Not good! Ah, but what they were doing—that was very much on her mind, leaving room for little else! Sex was on her mind, and the rest of her thoughts were clouded by a swirl of confused and contradictory emotions.
The gigantic emotions of the Wamphyri! She had definitely ascended, and was a Lady!
B.J. hated what she was doing to Harry. Not the love, for she loved that, but the lies. She feared for him, for herself, for the future. And the dog-Lord didn’t come into it. Or if he did, it was only at the back of her mind, where she had pushed him. And this—the act of love—was her way of keeping Radu there, for she did not want to think of him. Not while she was with Harry.
She sat astride him, sucking him into her core. She wanted his seed, wanted to feel it spray her hot innards. She desired to see his face tighten up in that oh-so-sweet agony, the momentary “little death” reflecting the release of life, its genesis, when swarming minescule hordes leap to seek out the egg. Except they would not find it, for B.J. ’s system was geared to their destruction.
Oh, she would bear him children if she could, if she dared, but what would be their future? And how would she care for him, for them, for herself, once she had littered? Perhaps, one day … who could say? And perhaps by then he would have an egg of his own: a vampire egg, spawned of her leech and vented in the passion, the burning lust of a moment such as this.
Radu saw through her eyes:
She looked down on him, on Harry Keogh, where his shoulders were propped on pillows and his hands gripped the fancy scrolling of the headboard. His feverish eyes were on her breasts and taut nipples where B.J. lowered them to his face, his lips. And as she rose and fell on him ever faster, so he panted, gritting his teeth and meeting thrust with thrust.
He was near his time—B.J. too—and as their bucking grew more frantic yet he released a hand that fluttered like a crippled bird, finding its way behind and beneath her to stroke her slippery anus. She crushed to him in a frenzy; her breasts flattening to his chest; her mouth kissing, sucking at his neck …
… And her teeth pausing, then poising there!
They came, together, their souls dislocating, bodies shuddering—and still B.J.’s teeth were brushing Harry’s neck. And she thought: If I do it now, the dog-Lord will not want him!
It was only a thought, surely? She would not carry it out. But still:
NO! Radu sent, in a sudden panic. DON’T EVEN THINK IT! His mental howl, directly into B.J.’s mind.
Lost to the moment, spent, and giving in to her conscience and commonsense (for surely that was all the cry had been?) she collapsed, rolled onto her side and drew Harry with her, locked into her. But then—as the ringing went out of her ears—and the singing from her sex, she wondered:
What? Her conscience? Was it possible to have anything of conscience in moments as hot and fierce as those had been? But of course it was, else Harry were a vampire from the first.
Yet still—and still as a stone—she listened. But all she could hear was her lover’s thudding heart, his panting, and finally her own as she, too, began to breathe again …
Radu had got out just in time. But still his probe lingered in the psychic aether, ready to stab down again, link-up with her, and act as a carrier as he berated her for her treachery. Upon a time he would have done it in a moment, but to threaten B.J. now … would be to threaten himself, his very existence. She was Wamphyri! In thrall to him now, yes, but for how much longer? If he were to let her know he’d found her out, what then? She would leave him to rot here, that was what then! Leave him, and run off with her Harry—except the bastard was not hers but his! And she was his, too, or would be. And:
So she “loves him, does she? She ruts with him, eh? But I shall rut the bitch to death! the dog-Lord swore, if only to himself. And then—because suddenly he realized what his rage was about: damaged pride and jealousy, and because his need to strike out was so great—Radu opened his mind to the full and sent forth a howl of frustration into the psychic aether …
… And knew at once that he had made a serious mistake.
Bonnie Jean couldn’t hear him, no, for his rage had been about her, not directed at her. B.J. herself hadn’t heard him … but at least one other had.
It was like a taint to his metaphysical sixth sense. The touch of something slimy, or the smell of something rotten. A gurgle of sewage, or a bitter, poisonous taste. Worse, he recognized it at once and knew its name:
Ferenczy!
Francesco was aloft over the Cairngorms. It was late February and would soon be March, but the snow was holding off, perhaps finished for the season. The streams running off the mountains were black and swollen, foaming grey with slush where they fell sheer. And the scarred domes of snow-capped summits and jumbles of craggy plateaux were rounded as outlines on Christmas cards, modelled by the slow melt. From up here it all looked very serene, and very treacherous, too.
“Not the Madonie, is it?” Luigi Manoza, Francesco’s pilot looked sidelong at him in the cockpit of their helicopter. They were alone; a reconnaissance flight sixty miles to the west from their base at a decommissioned North Sea gas facility in Aberdeen; the first of several such flights, planned to survey the mountains for a likely location. Not a film location, however, but the location of a lair.
Finally in answer to his pilot’s wry question, Francesco gave a grunt and said, “No, it’s not the Madonie. But wolf territory … ye
s, I think so. As it was six hundred years ago, so it is now, pretty much.” He glanced at a map in his lap, and as Manoza brought them swooping about in a low turn from the north said: “That place down there with the skiers, that is Aviemore. Famous, so they say. They seem to be making the best of what’s left of the snow. Across the river, that handful of cottages—there, you just flew over it—is Inverdruie, where this bastard dog-Lord has a thrall or thralls.”
Manoza was climbing now, skimming the mountains that were rising ahead. “Well,” he said, “there shouldn’t be any problem sniffing them out. Not in a place as small as that.”
“Correct,” Francesco nodded. “Our people are on it right now. And through Radu’s thralls, we get to him. But the thing is, we don’t want to take him out too soon. If we can discover his approximate location, we’ll know when he’s set to make his comeback: the moment his thralls and the Drakuls all start heading in that direction. Then we go after them, and get him, his people, and the Drakuls too.”
“And he’s here, you think?”
“My father thinks so,” Francesco frowned. “And my brother. But be quiet now and take it slowly, slowly over the mountains. I want to concentrate. It’s not so much what I can see as what I may feel. Angelo, that damned Thing in his pit, says that we should know without seeing, without touching or smelling; says the Ferenczys and dog-Lords have been enemies for so long that it’s bred in them, that the knowing is in our blood. And while I’ve always been suspicious of anything my father says, I have to admit that in this place … I do sense something. Hah! And I’m the one who is supposed to be insensitive! So maybe Angelo is right and at short range like this, I might even be able to … Ah! Ahh! Ahhh!”
“Wha—?” The squat Manoza, hunched over his controls, instinctively leaned away from him. “Francesco, what the fuck … ?”
The Ferenczy’s eyes were suddenly red, bulging, staring out and down, this way and that, through the curved, clear plastic panel of his door. He clasped his ears; he seemed crushed down into himself, as by shock or astonishment, as if he’d seen the starburst of flak and heard the howl of shrapnel. But it was a different kind of howling he’d heard, while Luigi had seen and heard nothing at all. And:
“Again!” Francesco husked. “Turn her around, now. Fly over that same spot again. Do it!”
Manoza complied. And again, and again. But whatever it had been it was gone now …
Later, on their way back to Aberdeen, finally the bulky, toad-like Manoza’s curiosity got the better of him. He had to know. “Well?” he queried. “I mean, do you want to talk about it? Was it him?”
Francesco had been silent, lost in his own thoughts ever since ordering their return. But now: “It’s time we moved into Aviemore,” he grunted, mainly to himself. “All of us—for the skiing, you know?” Then, as if he had only just heard Manoza’s question: “Yes, it was him. Somewhere back there in those mountains, the dog-Lord hides in his lair. But not for much longer, Luigi, because he’s awake. Radu is awake—and making ready!”
V
RIVAL FACTIONS. THE DARKNESS CLOSES IN.
HARRY WASN’T “SWITCHED ON,” NOT ANY LONGER. AFTER DEALING WITH THE situation at his place, he had gone to B.J. full of anxious doubts, urgent questions and demands; “disturbed” simply didn’t convey his condition. So that she had immediately “down-loaded” him of the cause: she’d struck the most recent, most horrific events from memory. And what the Necroscope had been left with was a series of “facts” that were so disjointed, disconnected, it felt as if half of his life had gone missing.
He “remembered” in some detail, however blurred and unreal, his all but abandoned search for his wife and infant son; even places he’d never visited except in his mind, at B.J.’s hypnotic command. But he did know that he had been there, definitely; for if not, then he was simply insane. He knew, too, all of his early life—his time at E-Branch, the powers he had once mastered, and how he had once used them—and, since quitting the Branch, his time with Bonnie Jean. But that last … was a huge jumble, a monster jigsaw puzzle with no borders and most of the pieces missing or refusing to come together.
And thus his memory was as B.J. wanted it … more or less. But there were things in there that she didn’t know about, that she’d forgotten or hadn’t had time or inclination to ask about, which were Harry’s alone. And because he was restricted by previous instructions—the post-hypnotic commands of someone who had been there before B.J., that he must not divulge his powers to anyone—he wasn’t able to tell her about them. For example: he couldn’t tell her what he had discovered about Le Manse Madonie—about the Thing in the pit—because in fact he didn’t know, or “knew” on a lower level of consciousness. For right at the beginning of their relationship she had ordered him to forget anything she told him or that he might learn about the Wamphyri, because it was for her ears alone. Harry couldn’t refamiliarize himself with this stored information until she or the dog-Lord actually switched him on all the way and sent him out against their enemies, the Drakuls and Ferenczys.
Thus this was a level that was hidden even from the Necroscope himself—but on another level he couldn’t even tell her that Le Manse Madonie existed! For then B.J. would want to know why—and far more importantly how—he’d gone there, and how he had got out again unscathed. Yet even now, if only she would say the right words and turn him on all the way, she could have instant access to much of this hidden information.
But she wouldn’t, because she didn’t know he had it.
Which was why he had gone to her begging her to switch him on and tell him everything; which in turn was why she had switched him off and taken most everything away! And the only thing about the current status quo that he had been allowed to retain was the fact that they were in hiding from their enemies while waiting for some kind of call. That and the entirely indisputable fact of Bonnie Jean’s innocence. So that Harry no longer even bothered to ask himself: innocent of what?
It scarcely mattered at all that reality was a blurred and indistinct place somewhere outside himself, or that he was in a constant daze, little better than a zombie, confused in all his mental processes. What mattered most was that he was with B.J. And come what may, well, really that was all that mattered …
The first night they’d spent together at the inn, B.J. had made a mistake. Easily corrected, still it was the sort of thing she would have to watch in future. In their room she had started to ask him, “Harry, tell me about Zahanine? What did you—?”
—Until she remembered that he couldn’t tell her anything, because she had cancelled it from his mind. By which time Harry had been frowning, asking: “Zahanine? Your black girl? I didn’t notice her with the other girls. Is she OK?” Was she … was she at my place? He gave his head a small, worried shake.
And: “You’re quite right,” B.J. had quickly nodded. “My mind was wandering, that’s all. So don’t worry about it.”
But maybe it had continued to make connections somewhere in Harry’s head, because he’d still been frowning as he asked her, “Why can’t we hide out at my place? I know the area like the back of my hand, and it’s easily defended.”
Oh really? From the Wamphyri? B.J. had smiled to herself, however bitterly. Oh, yes, easily defended—but isolated, too. And: “Hey, you!” Despite her gloom, and the fact that she felt chilly within, she’d forced a “real” smile, and sat on the bed hugging her knees. “Lighten up, OK, Harry? We’ll be just fine right here. Why don’t you come over here and love me?”
And he had smiled sort of lopsidedly and gone to her. But even as they’d been making love Harry had been frowning inside. Something about Zahanine, and his house? … Something about a dark spot on the floor, in his study? … Something about that frozen plateau on the roof of the world? It came and went, disappearing into limbo. For on his current level of consciousness he wasn’t given to remember these things. They’d been erased—or should have been—and his reality reduced to a misty swirl far less
coherent than a dream.
In fact he might as well be asleep and dreaming! And for all that B.J. had been real, hot, and vibrant in Harry’s arms, still he had wondered if maybe it was so—that this was all a strange, jumbled dream. In which case it was way past the time when he should have woken up. Except … he was afraid of what he might wake up to.
That had been three days ago. Since when, among the rival vampire factions, there had been a deal of to-ing and fro-ing, a new arrival, meetings, much searching and surveillance, and a long overdue (and in its way “merciful”) death.
… In London, a certain “political refugee” had arrived on a flight from India. Ostensibly a wealthy ex-guru whose estate in Patna had suffered from an ever-increasing incidence of sectarian violence, he was in the UK to find a suitable home with a long-term view to leaving his “religious career” behind and starting a business in oriental carpets.
Since his credentials were impeccable—and he appeared to have all of the “necessary qualifications,” two hundred thousand of which he’d already transferred to a branch of Lloyds in London—he had been granted a business visa and made welcome.
In fact he was one of Daham Drakesh’s lieutenants, a long-time sleeper—and long-distance telepath—who several years ago had established a bolthole and base for Drakesh in Lucknow. But as the dog-Lord’s time loomed ever closer, the last Drakul was more in need of a lieutenant in the British Isles, or more specifically, Scotland, to contact and take control of his thralls there. Daham’s bloodson and chief lieutenant, Mahag, along with a common thrall, had been killed by Radu’s people; since when he’d had no contact with his four surviving “disciples.”
Drakesh was hopeful that since the death of his bloodson the four had realized that their mission had now changed. With their cover blown they were no longer incognito; they could no longer play agents provocateurs but must abandon all such plans and let the dog-Lord and the Ferenczys get on with it. But for all that his thralls were expendable, the last Drakul couldn’t simply leave it at that.