“Some secret society must ’ave ’ad this place,” said Wally. “Them Romans—sect members—would come darn ‘ere to worship. But they ’ad their fads; their gods came an’ went; an’ event‘ally them Romans went with ’em. This is all that’s left.”
“And no one else knows this place even exists?” Despite her circumstances, Millie found it fascinating. “And you … you’ve been to the British Museum, to research all of this?” It seemed incredible.
“Plenty of times,” Wally answered. “But not durin’ hopenin’ ’ours, you understand. See, I knows other ways of gettin’ in.”
“And you know the way up from this place, too,” said Millie. “You could show me the way out.”
“Could,” said Wally. “Won’t. ’E wants you ’ere. An’ come to think of it, so does I.” That sly look was on his face again as he took a step closer. Millie backed off until the backs of her knees struck against something and she sat down … on a raised slab of cold stone.
“That’s a sacrificial dais, that is,” Wally grunted, and he was speaking low, no longer wheezing. “Them Romans did a bit o’ that, now an’ then. ’Specially in a secret place like this.”
“Yes,” she gasped, quickly standing and putting the massive slab between them. “I can see how they might have. But tell me, why doesn’t anyone know this place is here?”
Wally shrugged. “What good is a secret place that everyone knows abart? An’ it was a long time ago. Since then, all kinds of landslides, small quakes, collapses. I was a ftusher—been all through the underworld, I’ave, every sewer an’ tunnel an’ waterway—an’ I never found it. But Szwart, er, Lord Szwart, ’e ’as a thing for deep, dark places. An’ they don’t come much deeper or darker than this.”
He had begun edging round the sacrificial slab towards her when Millie noticed something: a strange, flickering glow from a place where the cave bottlenecked under a natural rock arch. And as Wally reached for her—as for the first time she noticed the great width of his shoulders, and his hugely muscled upper arms—she said, “Perhaps that’s Szwart coming now.”
“Eh? What?” Wally literally danced in sudden fright, twirling like a grotesque ballet dancer, his head and eyes jerking this way and that.
“That light,” said Millie. “From beyond the arch there.”
“Eh?” Wally panted, his breath coming in foul wheezy gasps again. And then, with a sigh, “Oh, that!” But the sly look was gone now as he said, “Come on, then, an’ I’ll show you. Arter all, ’e said I was to show you what ’e’d ’fashioned’ darn ’ere. Me, I’d ’ave said ‘grown,’ but ’e said ‘fashioned.’”
Following the little man to where the hexagonal flags gave way to dry, crumbly earth, and passing under the natural arch, Millie saw what Lord Szwart had “fashioned.”
She no longer needed the oil lamp (but held on to it anyway if only as a weapon) for Szwart’s garden had its own illumination: a blue bioluminescence covering an area some twenty feet in diameter in the even greater cavern beyond the archway. The light was given off by what was growing there, in that sunless loam half a mile under London: a subterranean garden of black, vampiric fungi. Black mushrooms clustering there, their domes glistening with what looked like sweat; their distended gills heavy with spores. Deadspawn, as E-Branch had come to term it!
But while the mushrooms were rooted in that lifeless soil, it couldn’t possibly be the source of their nourishment. Then, when Millie saw what was: that pair of black, hooded garments, nun’s robes, habits, lying crumpled to one side where they had been strewn with a small pile of undergarments …
… For a moment her mind went blank, so that she scarcely heard what Wally was saying to her, or to himself, in a small, awed voice. “‘E reckons as ’ow they don’t really need to feed,” murmured the little hunchback, “but that this lot will be just like mother’s milk to her babies, an’ their issue will be that much stronger. As for meself, what would I know? I says as ‘ow ’e’s probably right. But Gawd, haint it a mess?”
And Wally was right, it was a very terrible mess indeed …
22
JAKE—HIS CALL IS ANSWERED. E-BRANCH—THE ASSAULT ON THE MONASTERY.
Scarcely able to accept the evidence of her own senses—not daring to believe her eyes—Millie’s hand flew to her mouth. Stifling a scream and suppressing the rising of her gorge, she stared in horror first at the pile of discarded clothing, then at the fungi, but especially at that bloating mushroom garden, and prayed that she wasn’t going to pass out again.
Only an hour or two had passed since Millie had seen these terrible women in a London tube station. It could only be Lord Szwart’s incredible metamorphic power, something in his monstrously alien nature, that accounted for such as this in so short a time.
For now, in the middle of the cluster, Millie saw a mound or tangle of pale, throbbing, pinkish blue flesh! Human flesh! A rounded thigh was clearly discernible, and a slack face with one eye closed while the other stared vacantly; also a lolling breast, with its large nipple standing weirdly erect!
And in and around those slumped not-quite-corpses, a writhing nest of protoplasmic conduits—bloodily pulsing, external arteries of monstrously mutated flesh—was siphoning nutrients from this fresh human compost, and feeding them in a thin spray to the dead soil and so to the deadspawn mushrooms. The living, beating hearts of these once-nuns were pumping out the liquids of their own bodies!
“God!” Millie gasped then, as she felt her senses begin to slip away. But Wally caught her, held her up, led her stumbling to a boulder and leaned her against it.
And as he took the lamp from her and lifted it high: “Listen!” he said, cocking his head on one side. “Listen!”
“What?” said Millie sickly. “What?”
“The flue,” said Wally. “E’s finally got it open. A passage to the overworld, for the wind to blow, an’ carry ’is plague to mankind. That’s ’ow ’e says it’ll work, anyway.”
And now she could hear it—a wind coming up, as if out of nowhere—and see it, too, in her mind’s eye: a flue, a shaft, an ancient chimney to the overworld, now unblocked by Szwart to create a draft and carry his deadspawn up into the world of men … into the heart of London!
Resilient lady that she was, finally Millie’s legs couldn’t any longer support her. She remained conscious, but only barely so. She felt the hunchback halfdragging and half-carrying her, back into the lesser cave. But massively built as he was, still it took time. Time to get her up onto the slab, not as a sacrifice, no, but as a sex toy; time to fumble her blouse open, and wrench her bra loose, and time to lift her lower body, yanking her trousers and panties down to her ankles, thus exposing her to the lamplight and his own bloodshot eyes.
And there he stood in all his triumph, masturbating wildly, and mumbling, “Better than pictures! Much better than any dirty fuckin’ pictures!” But why play with himself when, for the very first time in his life, he could be into a real woman? Szwart’s orders were entirely forgotten now, as Wally dragged Millie to the end of the slab, opened her thighs and got between them.
Millie knew what was happening; looking into Wally’s warped mind, she knew he would do it!
But as he leaned over her and as one hand slid under her: Ah, no, my son! came that voice in Millie’s head—and also in Wally’s. She knew it from the way he suddenly stiffened, his hands jerking back from her. And as finally she forced her eyes to focus, she saw what Szwart did to him.
That great head with its crimson, burning eyes! That night-black shape standing there, silhouetted in faltering lamplight! That outstretched arm and hand—or was it a hand?—reaching for Millie’s tormentor, hovering over his misshapen back. For a single brief moment it looked like a hand, and then didn’t. For incredibly its digits had reshaped themselves and melted into a two-pronged claw! And while it was fluid one moment, that crablike claw, in the next it was plated with blue-gleaming chitin, with one sharp stabber and one serrated cutting edge. And fina
lly:
My son, Szwart gurgled, I treated you fairly and have been good to you. I, Szwart, who am not much known for my goodness, have been good to you as none before me. But you … have been bad. My orders are for obeying, my son, and he who cannot obey them cannot live with me. For the miserable thing that you are you have served me well, but your service is now at an end … in one respect, at least. Ah, but the garden which I have made also has its needs, especially now that the way is opened …
“No!” said Wally, just once, as the claw descended. Millie heard a rending schluck! sound, and, as Wally was dragged away from her, the crunch of his malformed backbone being severed.
The last thing she saw before fainting was the great black shadow moving away, dragging Wallace Fovargue after it towards the blue-flickering archway …
As fate would have it, Jake Cutter’s assault on Luigi Castellano’s principal residence and headquarters in Sicily commenced only a few minutes before E-Branch’s two-pronged attack on the Krassos monastery and the Little Palace east of Skala Astris.
“I want to do the cellars first,” Jake told the dead Russian, Georgi Grusev. ’The way I see it, what with these vampire bodyguards patrolling the grounds of the place, the last thing Castellano will expect is an attack from within, and certainly not from below. And anyway I want to level the house, bring it right down to the ground. You’ve told me the cellars are extensive? That’s good, for when the walls start melting the entire house should go down—what’s left of it.”
Ah! said Korath, seeing what was in Jake’s mind. Then you intend to follow my advice after all. You’ll plant your plastique bombs outside the walls of the house.
“Now that I know what we’re up against, that has to be the safest way,” Jake answered, nodding absently as he trained his nite-lites on the house in the olives and took one last, calculating look at it. “But the thermite must come first, to make sure it gets good and hot in those cellars before the bombs go off all at the same time. That way, when the house implodes, I can be sure of reducing it—and everything in it—to so much smoke.”
And Grusev came in with: But will your thermite charges—just three of them, as I understand it—be sufficient? Those cellars are fairly extensive. I was given a guided tour of the place before they got to work on me, and I can assure you it’s a warren down there, easily as spacious below as it is above.
“There’s heat and then there’s heat,” Jake answered. “I’ve seen this stuff in action, as used by the Australian military, and this is real heat! Just an ounce of this stuff in the nose of an armour-piercing shell will scour out a tank, set off its ammo, and weld its turret shut. And when it’s cooled down, you won’t even be able to find the crew. Twenty-first century warfare—ugh! Which reminds me I’d better leave the other stuff, the plastique, right here for now, in case of accidents.” And he took his prepared bombs from the bag and placed them carefully on the ground.
You’ve convinced me, said Grusev.
But not me, said Korath. What if Castellano has positioned some of his men down there? I mean, what if he’s there himself—for whatever reason?
“I can’t see it,” said Jake. “He may well have lookouts at the windows, but surely he won’t be looking inwards? And if he or some of his creatures are down there … so what? We can be out just as quickly as we’re in.”
Now see how heavily you rely on me, said Korath.
“But not nearly as heavily as you rely on me,” said Jake. “Or rather, on my continued existence.”
Korath offered a deadspeak shrug. So, since there’s little to gain in arguing the point, I suggest we get on with it.
Jake spoke to Grusev. “You told me there’s a big storeroom down there for all kinds of designer- and micro-drugs?”
Yes, the Russian answered. Three billion dollars’ worth, as Castellano boasted when he showed it to me. Of course he could afford to, because he knew—or thought he knew—I wouldn’t ever be talking to anyone about it.
“Right,” said Jake. “So we’ll start there. And then, if for some reason we’re not a hundred percent successful, still we’ll know we’ve hit this bastard in the second-best place—his wallet!”
There was nothing left to be said, so Korath set the Mobius equations scrolling down the screen of Jake’s mind again, and a moment later Jake conjured a door and stepped through it. Then, homing in on Grusev’s coordinates, he (or they) went there—
—Into the darkness of Castellano’s cellars.
Feel for the wall on your left, Grusev advised. You’ll find a shoulder-high light switch.
“Got it,” Jake whispered, switching on the lights. But what he didn’t know was that as well as making an electrical connection, he’d also broken one.
And in the house overhead:
“Luigi,” said Garzia Nicosia, as a red light began flashing on a security display panel in Castellano’s study. “Something’s wrong downstairs, in the cellars …”
“Oh?” Castellano glanced up from a pile of paperwork on his desk. “So some clumsy fool has managed to trip a switch. Who do we have down there?”
“That’s just it,” Garzia answered, checking the panel again. “Nobody’s down there. Not in the storeroom, and not anywhere in the cellars. No one that I have sent down there, anyway!”
Castellano took a sharp breath, stood up, and leaned forward in that mantislike way of his, with his knuckles turning white on the desktop where they took his weight. For a second or two he remained in that position, glaring at nothing in particular, apparently listening for something beyond Garzia’s range. Until at last his eyes focussed and turned bloodred. And:
“Ahhh!” he hissed. “As I have sensed him before, so I sense him now but closer than ever. It’s our ghost, Garzia. Or rather E-Branch’s ghost, Jake Cutter, who comes and goes as sly as … yes, even as sly as a vampire, without leaving a trace. Ah, but this time he’s been caught out by a simple gadget. Come—come quickly now—and bring grenades!”
“Grenades?” Garzia’s jaw fell open. “But what of the damage they’ll cause? And why would you need them anyway? If he’s here he’s trapped, and he’s only one man!”
“You’ll never learn, will you, Garzia?” Castellano growled, loping out from behind his desk. “He’s one very dangerous, very deadly man! As for damage: he’s done enough of that already. If it means we get him, we can afford the loss. And now we’ll find out who is the deadliest, this Jake Cutter or Luigi Castellano. So bring two of our men, Garzia, and grenades—stun grenades, for I want this man alive—and meet me in the cellars. But be quick, oh-so-quick, before this crafty Jake Cutter fashions his own brand of hell and slips away again …”
In the cellars, Jake was almost finished. The thermite charges were fitted with six-minute-delay fuses, and with ample time to move from room to room without invoking the Möbius Continuum, he had let Grusev show him the secret doors to several hidden chambers. All of these had low, vaulted ceilings supported by once-sturdy walls or columns, but the stone was old and nitrous, the mortar rotten, and Jake was satisfied that his thermite charges would completely incinerate the place and bring down the entire house—or its debris—into the resultant inferno.
Jake had left his first device in the drugs storeroom, his second in a virtual Aladdin’s cave of treasures from the quarry under the Madonie, which Castellano hadn’t yet released onto the antiquities or precious-metals markets, and was in the process of planting the third in a room that Grusev had identified as a torture chamber. He might well have chosen a different location for this third charge, but as he had passed quickly through the cellars Grusev had insisted that another vault, adjacent to the one in which he’d been brutalized, should be left alone.
It is a burial chamber, the dead Russian had explained himself, a mausoleum—the catacomb of the Arguccis, a once-great family—whose occupants have suffered enough of interference. I share it with them, and when Castellano’s house comes down we shall be buried properly and forever. However,
the Arguccis and I would prefer that our bones were not calcined in thermite. If it must be, then it must, but we think there are better choices. This torture chamber, for instance. It is a terrible place, and one that richly deservers to burn!
Jake had agreed at once, at which Korath had commented:
Previously, you haven’t seemed especially respectful of the teeming dead—certainly not of Castellano’s henchmen, of whom you so ruthlessly, ingeniously disposed—yet now I sense your reverence increasing by leaps and bounds. Is this an additional effect of Harry Keogh, do you think? Is it possible that you’re succumbing to his greater influence, his, er, implant? Just how long do you suppose you’ll remain your own man, Jake?
“I don’t know,” Jake had answered in a hoarse whisper. “But as long as it’s Harry’s influence and not yours, I don’t especially give a damn! So stop distracting me.”
All of which were deadspeak thoughts that went out into the metaphysical aether. And despite that as yet the Great Majority remained silent, still they were privy to them …
Stealthy as cats, and as silent, Castellano and his lieutenant, Garzia, accompanied by two vampire thralls, had descended a central staircase into the cellars. Now, as Jake Cutter yanked the ring-pull activator on the third thermite charge and backed off from it, they heard the echoes of his movements coming from the torture chamber.
What they didn’t hear was Jake’s deadspeak, as he told Korath and Grusev: That’s it, the last charge is set, and the others have been fermenting for maybe two and a half minutes now. Three more and this place will start cooking—and there’ll be no stopping it.
But while Jake’s deadspeak went unheard, his movements were more than enough to advise Luigi Castellano of his whereabouts. And with a finger to his lips, cautioning his creatures to silence, the Sicilian master vampire accepted a stun grenade from Garzia, armed it, and without pause lobbed it through the open door into the torture chamber.