Necroscope - The Lost Years, Vol II Part 8

well?'

'As well as it can be.' she answered. And before he could question that, too: 'John, we have - He has - enemies here. I hope you were careful not to be followed. Are there any strangers up your way? Have you noticed anything odd?'

'No one, and nothin',' he answered. 'But ye know me. Ah'm no the one tae take chances. Why, even when Ah answer the door, mah gun goes wi' me! Ah reckon it was sheer luck they picked ye up that time. And as for mahsel' - why, Ah'm just a cranky old gillie, as anyone hereabouts will be pleased tae confirm!' And sensing her grin, he smiled. Then she said: Take care, John. Well talk soon. But don't you call me, 111 call you. Look after your... wound. Make sure it heals.'

'Oh, it will. But it was only mah duty, ye ken...'

And after he heard the click as she put the phone down, Auld John sat and listened to the purring receiver in hi s hand, and stared at his bandaged wrist where a thin red line was showing through even now. His duty, aye - but it hadnae gone unappreciated. And then he remembered what else Radu had told him, which he hadn't dared repeat to Bonnie Jean: You are second in line, John, after the Wee Mistress. Ah, but she is only a la.s.sie after all, and weak as all women are. I fear that when my time comes she may bend, or even break. So mark these words, which are for you alone: keep my secrets and serve me well, John, as your ancestors before you. And who can say?' ...

One day you could be first in line! The dog-Lord's promise! It ran through Auld John's veins like wine and sang to him! It gave a new meaning to existence, and was well worth every extra drop of life's blood that he'd let flow down the funnel to the great hound-like thing in the vat. Worth, too, the lie he'd been obliged to tell B J. - but that had be en on the orders of Radu himself, and who was Auld John to defy Him in His high place?

Aye, for Radu was quickening and He had needed that extra drop Brian Lutnley 86.Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. II 87.or two. Up in a six-month? Ah, no ... try four! But Radu had told John that he couldn't tell Bonnie Jean; indeed, that he must l ie to her! For John was to be His confidant now that the Wee Mistress had shown herself to be ... well, just a wee la.s.sie after all.

It wasn't her fault, though, John was sure. (And he frowned and felt concerned for the ex-Wee Mistress.) More likely it was all down to that Harry Keogh, aye! Ah, but the dog-Lord had plans for him, too. Up in just four more months, and then we'd see about this Harry! And here's B.J. worrying about John contacting h er. Well, he wouldn't. But Radu would, be sure!

Three moons from now - just thirteen weeks, that was all - and then she'd hear His call. That silent howling in her head, that drew her like a magnet. She'd get her instructions then, aye. And a month later, the one who'd caused her to stray from the path... he would get his comeuppance!

'His wound?' Harry had overheard one or two things after all.

'Hmm?' B J. looked at him.

'You told him to take care of his wound.'

'He cut himself on the rock face,' she lied.

'Oh?'

'Is this the real talk you wanted?' She began unb.u.t.toning her blouse. For there are other ways to beguile a man, and better ways to ease his pain, too. And hers.

'You tell me,' he said.

*Very well, you can think and speak normally.' And at once he was himself, those warm eyes disguising a cold and calculating brain.

'B.J.

., did something happen that time, when we were up in the Highlands? We went up to Auld John's place in Inverdruie to climb an d hunt, but you cried off. And this last weekend, again you cried off going. Well, OK - for after all it's the middle of winter now - but what about the last time?'

'Have you been reading the newspapers, Harry?'

'No,' (but E-Branch had contacted him that time three months ago, about some weird s.h.i.+t in his neck of the woods?) *Why? Was there something I should have read?'

BJ. shook her head. She'd cancelled the episode from his mind and didn't want to let it surface now, which obviously it was trying to do. 'Have you been having bad dreams, Harry? You said on the phone that you'd been dreaming.'

. 'Dreams, half-memories... anxieties and feelings I don't understand. You name it.' He shrugged, despairingly she thought. And then, out of the blue: 'B.J., why don't you level with me?' 'Level with you?' Her blouse was off now, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s proud and stiff-tipped where they begged for Harry's attention. Almost automatically, she wriggled out of her skirt 'Ask your questions. If I can answer them, I will.*

'I don't know all of it, do I?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'I can only tell you what h.e.l.l let me tell you.'

'Radu?'

The dog-Lord, yes.'

'But he's a liar!' Harry snapped, his voice suddenly harsh and full of hate. 'He's Wamphyri, and they're all liars!'

A.

gain B J. was taken aback. 'But... did I tell you that, that he's Wamphyri?' Had she? Well of course she had, that time when she'd 'explained' her purpose - and Harry's eventual role in things. She'd been thrown, that was all, by the veheme nce in his voice, the knowled ge in his eyes. But d.a.m.ned if she remembered telling him that the Wamphyri were all liars!

B J. couldn't know it but Harry, too, had been thrown into a state of confusion. He'd almost trapped himself, tripped over his own tongue. For the Necroscope wasn't the only one who 'didn't know it all.' There were quite a few things that he hadn't, or couldn't, tell B J., too.

'Yes,' he said, "you told me. Radu is Wamphyri - a Great Vampire -and he has enemies opposed to his return: the Ferenczys and the D rakuls. And that they are full of lies.'

She nodded, and thought: He's sweating. Why does he sweat like that? What's o n his mind? That oh-so-deep mind of his?

Harry didn't know either - not what was on his mind - only that something swirled there beneath the surface, secret information hidden in its own mental limbo.

B J. had the power to unlock it But... he didn't want it unlocked!

If she knew he had been to those places, she would want to know when he was there, and why, and what route he'd taken!

She would want to know about the MObius Continuum: how he had discovered it, and how he'd used it to go to those places!

... But what f.u.c.king places?

Then it happened. For several seconds it was what his Ma and B J. had both feared, if not exactly as they had imagined it when suddenly Harry's two levels of consciousness and knowledge interfaced: He stood in the open, in bright daylight, and craned his neck to look up and up, at dramatically stark yellow and white cliffs and at the squat white-walled castle, mansion, or chateau that was perched there on the edge of oblivion. The scene was Mediterranean, and he knew it well! Knew the castle, too!

Le Manse Madonie!

Sicily!

Necroscope: The Lost Yean - Vol. II89.88.The Ferenczys!

Wamphyri! Jesus G.o.d!

His mind whirled ... and Harry whirled too. He was whirled away from there, whirled elsewhere- -To a frozen monochrome landscape, the Roof of the World, and a gaunt range of mountains marching against grey skies that went on forever. It was biting cold, and the snow slanting down like a million white spears, forming an ever-thickening, freezing crust on him where he leaned into the blast. And seen like a flickering old film on or through the dot-dash screen of hissing snow, the long snaking wall of a city like a small version of the Great Wall of China. While in the other direction, hewn out of a sheer cli ff at the foot of the mountains, a great carved face as grim and as cold as its location.

At the head of carved steps, the yawning mouth in the face was the entrance to ... what? A temple of sorts?

A monastery, yes, but dedicated to what ancient and evil religion?

There came a distant tinkle of tiny golden bells, growing louder even as the hiss of lancing snow faded.

The scene faded with it, but the bells were louder still, sounding sinister now, as the Necroscope was once again transported, moved by his mind to yet another forbidden memory...

... He seemed to be in a glade where the light was dappled as it fell through the trees. B.J. was with him, and they were standing beside a car, looking back along a track like a leaf y tunnel at a station-wagon standing some fifty feet away. Leaning on the vehicle's open front doors, a pair of red-robed Asiatics looked back at them. One of these 'priests' had a gun in his hand, and both had grins on their faces.

But there are grins and there are grins. In the dappling of the trees, their eyes were feral, full of yellow, s.h.i.+fting light. And their grins were vacuous, like those of crocodiles or hyenas, and full of malice!

Drakuls!

B.J. had a crossbow and knew how to use it. Her eyes were feral, too, as she aimed and squeezed the trigger.

There came a thok ! sound, and a feeling - entirely physical - with it...

... Then B J.'s worried voice: 'Harry! Harry!' - as he was jarred out of it, back into reality, however confused. His head had smacked against the bed's headboard when he'd jerked out of her arms and toppled over.

And: 'It's OK,' she told him. 'It's OK,' time and time again, as she lay his head back on the pillows, held his frantically if aimlessly waving arms, and riveted his pin-p.r.i.c.k eyes with her own hypnotic ones - until finally he began to believe her. That it was OK.

Then she was turning the lights down low - her voice, too - as she began to reverse the process that had started within him, to once more separate his two levels of being...

In a little while it was as if Harry had been asleep; indeed he had been in a deep s leep induced by B J., in a night-dark place where there had been absolutely nothin g except her voice insisting that it was OK. And as he came out of it, it was OK Her cool fingers were on his brow, soothing away the last traces of fever; her body scent - masked or mingling with some subtle hint of perfume - was in his nostrils; her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were within easy reach where she kneeled over him.

What- ?' he said.

She gave a little snort and said, 'Some talker, you!' Talker?' Harry was baff led, but he was him again. Or the him she wanted him to be, at least. As if to prove it, he instinctively lifted his hands and gentled the marble, hard-tipped globes of her free-hanging b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

She threw back her head, stretched to the sensation of his hands on her, and sighed, *We were to have a "real talk" - but you fell asleep! Some talker, you. And some lover!'

'Knackered,' he said . 'I must have been. But I'm OK now. Except...' He paused and frowned. She had left him in switched-on mode. He knew about her, Radu, everything she wanted him to remember, but everything else was safely back in limbo. It had to be that way, at least until she could check that her hypnotic adjustments had taken.

'Except?' she prompted him.

'Just one thing,' he said. 'Just one...'

'Real talk?'

'Yes,' he nodded, stood up (a little shakily), and quickly stripped out of his pants and s.h.i.+rt. 'Real talk - about Radu.'

'Oh?' B J. tried to remain calm. Despite the fact that his actions as he prepared for love had cus.h.i.+oned the impact of his query, still his words had seemed cold and calculating.

'He's in his vat, deep in a resin bath - yes?'

'In a sleep of centuries,' she nodded.

'But h.e.l.l be up soon?'

Again her nod. 'Has to be if I - we - are to survive. We can't fight his enemies on our own. Afterwards I...

don't want to know about Radu. Only about us.' That last was straight from the heart. If only it could be so.

He shook his head. This isn't only about Radu, B.J. It's also about you.'

'About me?'

'He's in his vat, deep in the resin. He hasn't ... touched you?' It90.was as if those soulful eyes of his were looking right into her. Soulful but bottomless, and sometimes as cold as some unfathomed ocean floor. B.J. thought she knew what Harry meant, and believed she understood his concern. He was asking if Radu was more than merely her Master, wondering if perhaps he'd been her lover, too. And maybe, in one sense, B J. was right to interpret his question thus.

But in fact it was deeper than that, and there were parallels here that only the Necroscope recognized, which he could never explain to B.J. because he'd been forbidden to do so. For example: the necromancer Boris Dragosani had also been the guardian of a vampire's tomb in his time, and at first he, too, had been an 'innocent' in his fas.h.i.+on. Dragosani's fate, however...

... Was something Harry must steer clear of as best he possibly could. He daren't think too deeply about it, despite that i t had prompted his qu estion. For the idea simply wasn't acceptable, it wasn't tenable, not in tandem with BJ.'s situation.

Touched me?' She contrived to look puzzled. 'But Radu was down in the resin centuries before I was born, like a great fly trapped in amber! How could he possibly touch me, except in his capacity to speak to me through his mentalism?'

It was the truth, and it was a lie. A white lie. And what difference did it make anyway? For it was the cure.

Harry expelled air in a great sigh, as if he'd been holding it in his lungs forever. A single word came bursting like a bubble from his lips: 'Innocent...!' And B J. knew he meant her innocence, the only facet of her post- hypnotic facade that she'd forgotten to reinstate. So Harry had done it for her. It had been that important to him.

Now he was satisfied, and so was she. She switched him off with four simple words, 'Harry, mah wee man,'

then switched him on again, with her body...

Afterwards they slept, but the Necroscope's dreams were uneasy and from time to time lurched into grotesque nightmares.

Twice in the night he started awake, fancying that BJ.'s b.r.e.a.s.t.s were too many, and that they felt like flaccid, hairy dugs in his hands...

THE WATCHER UNMASKED.

It was a late night for Inspector George lanson, and an early morning. A late night because he contacted Police Central and requested a vehicle registration check on the silver-grey car, then waited up until he had the answer; which had taken all of an hour, because they were busy. And an early morning because he didn't sleep too well (too much on his mind) and wanted to do an occupancy check first thing on Numbe r 3, The Riverside.

What was on his mind was B.J., the fact that it was her car old Angus had followed. But why? Surely the old fool knew better than to go carrying out his own investigations on B.J. and her wine bar? He had his own kind of investigations to do, for G.o.d's sake! And then there was that look on his face when he'd driven away fro m the place on the river. If there was an explanation for that - well, for the life of him the Inspector couldn't think what it might be.

At 9:15 a.m. he phoned B.J. at the wine bar. He couldn't be sure she would be home yet, or even if she planned on returning home today, but he had to try anyway. He got her first go, and without ado asked, 'B.J., didn't you fancy someone might be following you last night?'

He heard her suck in her breath - and then something that he really hadn't wanted to hear 'Last night?' (All innocence.) 'When, last night?'

So, did she have something to hide? 'Come, come, B.J. When you left the wine bar - and went to see Mr Keogh?'

'Oh!' But in any case, B.J. had realized her mistake the moment she made it. Stupid to play dumb with lanson. He was no fool, this one.

'A big secret, is it?' he asked her softly, and heard her sigh of resignation.

But on the other end of the line she was doing some fast thinking.

93.

92.'Harry... is a married man," she finally said, 'but separated. He doesn't even know where his wife is. She walked out on him. That was some time ago, years even, but...'

'I see,' lanson said. Tou're still being careful.'

'Inspector,' (now she was pouring it out), 'I thought it might be possible that the man who has been watching my place was a private detective employed by Harry's wife. But believe me, I wasn't trying to throw you a red herring. That's why I didn't tell you about him immediately - the watcher, I mean. But when you came to my place and mentioned a big dog, and what with Margaret being attacked and all... suddenly it all seemed to connect up.'

'I understand,' lanson said. 'But now tell me: does Harry Keogh have a dog?'