The lost years vol 1, p.22
The Lost Years Vol 1, page 22
part #9 of Necroscope Series
‘Oh, I can tell you know about them,’ Harry said. ‘Despite that you’re not one of them…?’
B.J. turned her face away and busied herself pouring wine, generally hiding her momentary confusion.
She had brought a silver tray bearing a crystal decanter, a bottle, and glasses, from the drinks cabinet. Now she poured a glass of red wine from the decanter and a glass of liebfraumilch from the bottle. Taking up the sweet white wine, she offered a toast: ‘Here’s to you, Harry Keogh.’ And the accent had quite disappeared.
Harry picked up his glass and looked at it. The glass was many-faceted; its contents were a light ruby red, but seemed misty. ‘The red’s for me?’ he queried. ‘But I thought red wine was supposed to give you a headache? What’s this, the “house” wine?’
That headache stuffs a myth,’ she told him. ‘In fact I deliberately chose the red for you because it’s not so strong. But it does have more than its share of sediment, which is why I decanted it. I managed to clear most of it. But if you don’t like it…’ she shrugged. ‘I can always make you a coffee, or something else of your choice?’
Harry took a sip. The taste wasn’t unpleasant; there was a certain bite to it - a hint of resin, maybe? He took a stab at it. ‘You seem taken by things Mediterranean.’
‘Aha!’ she said. ‘One minute an innocent, the next a connoisseur! But you’re right: a friend brought a whole crate of it back from Greece for me. Probably very cheap local stuff, which might explain its quality, but…’
‘… It’s okay,’ Harry cut her short. ‘It tastes fine. And I’m grateful for your hospitality. But B.J., I do have to talk to you.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘About that night?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well good, because I want to talk to you, too.’
‘You probably saved my life,’ Harry went on, ‘and I’m not forgetting that I owe you for that. But what you did was still a killing, if not downright murder! Also, you nailed the “wolfman” to his seat in that van, and so helped kill him, too. And you were very cool, calm and collected about the whole business - which worries me. I mean, it’s not everyone who goes around shooting people with a crossbow, then shrugs it off like it’s something that happens all the time…”
She waited until she was sure he had finished, then said: ‘You could have asked me all of these things that night, after you… well, after I found myself in the alley… when I was off balance? Let’s face it, Harry, if I have a case to answer, so do you. You said you weren’t a policeman, so… what were you doing there that night, eh? And then there’s a really big question: namely, how did you get us out of there? I mean, I still can’t believe that—’
‘—Drugged,’ the Necroscope lied. ‘I drugged you.’ (He’d come prepared for this).
‘What?’ Her eyes has narrowed to slits, increasing their tilt, making her look more feral than ever. ‘You… drugged me? How? When?’ Disbelief was written plain on Bonnie Jean’s face.
‘When I took your arm: I squeezed your arm tightly, held you, but still you pulled away. The effort you exerted to free yourself concealed the fact that I’d administered a drug from a small device in my hand. It had been meant for the people I was after, but I hadn’t had an opportunity to use it.’
She let that sink in, and thought about it. And finally: ‘That… all sounds a bit far-fetched,’ she said. ‘What, you got me out of there, unconscious, on your own?’ But Harry saw that she was uncertain.
‘I wasn’t alone,’ he went on. ‘I had friends in the yard at the back of that place. And I switched the lights off, remember? That stopped the police for a little while. By the time they went inside, we’d bundled you over the wall.’
‘Oh?’ She cocked her head on one side. ‘And then you carried me across the road, in full view of anyone who just might happen to be looking, to the alley, where you waited for me to recover, right?’ Her sarcasm didn’t quite drip, but it brimmed, certainly.
‘Yes,’ Harry nodded, delighted that she herself had supplied the answer to his biggest problem. ‘Exactly right. There was a lot of milling around; most of the police were inside, or gathered at the entrance ramp; their vehicles were all over the place, blocking the road. And there was the distraction of the blazing van, of course. Also, if we had been seen… well, the people I work for are powerful. And so you see it wasn’t really difficult. The drug is quick-acting, and just as quick to disperse. After a few minutes you came out of it. You were a bit shaken but nothing serious. Surely you remember sitting down on the wet cobbles?’
B.J. looked very uncertain now; her eyes blinked rapidly as she attempted to absorb all of this. ‘I was shaken up,’ she finally said. ‘I… didn’t know what to make of things, except that it seemed like some kind of magic. I went to my hotel and to bed. In the morning… well, it was all like a dream! And I had no way to contact you or even to know who you were. And I still don’t.’ She looked at him accusingly.
‘I shouldn’t have helped you,’ the Necroscope continued, and took another sip of wine. ‘It didn’t do me much good with my superiors, the people at the top. I should have left you at the garage to fend for yourself, and that way the police would have had a suspect for the killings. But…’ He shrugged. ‘You had saved my life, and I felt obliged.’
‘So… you’re an agent, of sorts?’
‘Yes.’ (It wasn’t too much of a lie. He had been one, at that time, anyway).
‘Working… for whom?’
‘People,’ Harry shrugged again. ‘When the police can’t do something that needs doing - when the law defeats the lawful - then my people are there to help. Except they’re not my people any more. I overstepped myself, with you.’
Her mouth fell open. ‘You’re out?’
‘Yes,’ he answered. This is my last job: to find out why you were there, why you did what you did. Only answer a question or two, truthfully… you’ll be in the clear. And I shall have squared it with my people.’
They’ll take you back?’
‘No, but that’s okay. I have other things to do.’ He sipped again at his wine, which was in fact excellent. It soothed a sore throat he hadn’t even realized he had. And it was loosening not only his tongue but his mind, too, and making everything he’d said seem reasonable - even to him!
‘So…’ (she was still uncertain). ‘After you’d left me in that alley - ‘. and that was something of a swift getaway, too, if I may say so! - where did you go? And how did you disappear so quickly?’
‘I went to my superiors and briefed them on what had occurred. They’d been after that gang for a long time. As for getting away quickly: there’s a wicket gate in that warehouse door in the alley. I simply I stepped through it.’ (Well, he’d stepped through a kind of door, : anyway, if not a wicket gate).
The frown was back on her face. ‘I could swear that when I glanced away from you, then back again, you had simply… I don’t know, disappeared?’
That stuff I used on you,’ he answered. ‘It has illusory effects, but i they soon wear off. Also, it was very misty in the alley. Anyway, what ; are you suggesting? Where’s the mystery? I get paid -1 used to get paid ‘ - not to be seen, to arrive unannounced and depart without leaving a trace.’ Suddenly Harry was slurring his words. Not a lot, but sufficient that he noticed it. ‘So what with the mist and all, and your disorienta- i tion…’
And there was B.J. refilling his glass. Had he emptied it that quickly? ‘Now it’s your turn,’ he said, stifling a yawn.
‘Is my company that boring?’ B.J. smiled wonderingly. Or so he thought.
Tired!’ the Necroscope told her, feeling the weight of his leaden eyelids. Not surprising, really… all the chasing about he’d been doing… and the drink… and the big question mark still hanging like a sword over Brenda and Harry Jr: their whereabouts, their safety. He leaned to one side, propping himself up with one elbow on the lounger, and asked: ‘Why were you there? Why the crossbow? Why did you kill that Skippy bloke, and try to kill the one in the wolf mask? Just for revenge? You said that they’d put friends of yours in jeopardy.’ (The word ‘jeopardy’ hadn’t come out very well, but Harry continued anyway): ‘Which was enough to make you track them down and kill them? Well, all I can say is, you must really care for your friends! Why not start by telling me about that?’
‘Are you okay?’ she looked a little worried now, concerned for him.
‘Me? I’m fine!’ But the glass tilted in his hand a little. That was okay, there wasn’t much wine in the glass anyway.
‘Look, be comfortable,’ she said. ‘I’ve only just realized how wiped out you look! Here, let me fix that…’ And before he could complain even if he’d wanted to, B.J. had placed a couple of pillows under his head. ‘You have hollows under your eyes a cat could curl up and sleep in!’ she said. But the way she said the word ‘sleep’ was like an invocation: he could actually feel his itchy eyelids closing, and was too tired to rub them open.
‘Your… turn…’ he said, lolling there—
—And barely felt her hands touching his shoulders, turning him on his back, and easing his head onto the pillows. And: Damn it! he thought, as he passed out. And a moment or an aeon later, even more idiotically: / hope I didn’t drop my glass!
When she was satisfied that the Necroscope was well and truly under, taking her time and careful not to disturb him too much, B.J. unclenched his fingers from around the glass, removed the tray and wine and all back to the drinks cabinet, then returned to Harry and pulled down the crystal chandelier on its retractable cable and chain. His story hadn’t been so wild after all. Not to someone like Bonnie Jean Mirlu, who had heard many wild stories and known many wild things in her long, long life. And what he’d said about drugging her hadn’t come as too much of a surprise either, except for the fact that she hadn’t been able to work out what he’d done to her at the time. But now? It was far easier to believe that than that he’d somehow conveyed her in the blink of an eye from one place to another, without covering the space between! What, like some kind of Genie out of the Arabian Nights?
Well, Bonnie Jean didn’t believe in that sort of magic, but the ‘magic’ of secret agencies, like Mis 5 or 6, and mindbending drugs especially, these were things she could readily believe in. Yes, for she had experience of the latter!
Indeed her red wine was a case - or a good many bottles - in point. The recipe for that had been old when the sciences were young, and when dabblers had been called alchemists. B.J. didn’t know what the ingredients were, but she knew where they were cached and how to brew them up. And she knew something of their origins, too: the islands of the Greek Sea - the ‘Mediterranean,’ as it was now - and the Bulgarian Empire (later Romania, or Eflak, or Wallachia). Oh yes, and even further afield; for certain of the ingredients had come from the Far East with the Hsiung-nu (later the Huns), in the form of precious balms and medicines.
Certainly the wine had been known in Manchuria and Sinkiang, and to the esoteric Worm Wizards of the Takla Makan Desert, and much later to Arab alchemists in olden Irem, the City of Pillars. In the 14th Century it had been used by the Bulgars - who were good chemists and wine-makers both - and by the Serbians and the Ottoman Turks, to ward off the Black Death itself which also had its source in the east. After that, its secrets had been lost to mankind in the reel and roil and turmoil of a troubled world. Lost to mankind, aye, but not to Bonnie Jean’s Master, who remembered all things and told them to her in the hours when she was called up to attend Him. For she was His watcher where He lay in state, the Guardian of His Place. And the hour of His calling would be soon now…
… The howling in her mind, that would call her back even from half-way across the world - the cry of the Great Wolf in His secret den -that throbbing throat that the wild Carpathians had known when the Danube was a trade route and Alaric of the Visigoths was yet to sack Rome…
Reluctantly, B.J. drew herself back from her mental wanderings in space and time. After all, these weren’t her memories but those of her Master, and she was only privy to them through Him. But Bonnie Jean had watched over Him for two hundred years - like her mother before her, and hers before her - and was a zealous, even a jealous Guardian. And now someone was come who might, just might, threaten B.J., and in so doing threaten Him in His place.
Well, threats weren’t new. They were old as earth, as old as her Master’s being here; indeed, some of them had come here with him! But the nature of the threat was something else. Aye, for there are threats and there are threats. Now she must discover what sort Harry was, and decide how best to deal with it.
Kill him? Oh, that would be easy, so easy. She could have done it in the garage - she almost had done it - except she’d thought he was a policeman, and knew that the police don’t give up easily when one of their own is murdered. She could even do it now, this very minute… Ah, but what would follow behind? What of these powerful friends of his, these men who could act when the law couldn’t? And what was their interest in her? Was it just the way he said it was, or was there a lot more to it? No, killing him now would be stupid, dangerous. Especially if he had been sent here, as he alleged. Safer to find out about him - discover all there was to know -and then let her Master decide his fate.
By now the wine would be right through his system. It was time to begin. Bonnie Jean propped Harry up with pillows until he was in the half-reclining position. She drew curtains across the bay windows, turned down the chandelier lights to a softly luminous glow, and gave the spiral flex a gentle twist that set the pendants slowly turning. Winding and unwinding, they sent a stroboscopic flicker through the finely sheathing membranes of the Necroscope’s eyelids.
And: ‘My turn, aye,’ she said softly, in a while. ‘Or are you no longer interested? Don’t you want to listen to me then, Harry Keogh?’
His eyelids flickered and B.J. smiled. Oh, he could hear that hypnotic voice of hers, all right, as in some especially vivid dream. ‘No need to speak,’ she told him. ‘Simply nod, or shake your head, in answer to my questions. Do you understand?’ B.J. couldn’t know that this was a ‘game’ he’d played before, and that therefore his resistance was weakened. Or should be.
He nodded, but his eyelids continued to flutter a little. ‘Would you like to see?’ B.J. wondered out loud. ‘If so, then open your eyes. The light won’t hurt you; indeed the crystals will help you see more clearly. They’ll help both of us to see much more clearly.’
The Necroscope opened his eyes, and Bonnie Jean was gratified to note that their pupils were dark pinpricks swimming on moist mirror irises. ‘Now listen,’ she said, ensuring that the soft spokes of light from the chandelier’s pendants were wheeling directly across his eyes and forehead. ‘I want you to listen carefully and answer truthfully. You do want to answer my questions, don’t you?’ Her voice was now magnetic, utterly irresistible.
(A slight twitch of Harry’s head: left and right, left and right. A shake? A denial? He must be stronger than she’d suspected! But no, he’d been asked a question and was only trying to answer it truthfully - just as she had demanded!) Then his Adam’s apple wobbled, and he gurgled: ‘Y-your… t-turn …”
Why, he was continuing their ‘waking’ conversation! A different reaction from anything she’d ever known before. Oh, he was a strange one, all right, this one! But: ‘My turn, yes,’ she agreed. And why not? Why not satisfy his queries here and now? Then, whatever his fate would be later, for now at least he’d be satisfied that she was innocent of any ‘ulterior’ motives in connection with the killings in the garage. What she’d told him at that time - that her motive was pre-emptive, defensive - had been a lie concocted on the spur of the moment. She had hoped to gain his sympathy by telling him that those people had threatened friends of hers. That way he’d be more likely to see her as an instrument of his own revenge, which he had. And now was the ideal time, the perfect opportunity, to substantiate and reinforce his previous opinion.
And so: ‘My turn,’ she said again. ‘You want to question me, Harry? You want me to answer those questions you asked me before you fell asleep?’
(His slow, shuddering nod). And B.J. wondering, What sort of mind has this man, anyway? A determined one, certainly!
‘Very well,’ she went along with it. ‘Except… I shall expect you to believe everything I tell you. And no matter what I tell you, or say to you, you will only remember that I’m innocent of any crime. You’ll only remember that I’m innocent, and anything else that I require you to remember. And in that respect, and with that regard to myself, you will only act when I desire it. At such times as I require, you’ll follow any instructions I may give you to the letter. You’ll follow any instructions I give you… to… the… letter! Is that understood?’
But his nod was tentative, trembling.
‘If I’m to trust you with the truth, you must trust me,’ she insisted. ‘Isn’t it only fair?
‘Y-yes,’ he said.
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Now pay attention, and let’s try to have a normal conversation - except you will generally accept what I say. But you are allowed to point out any holes in the logic of my answers. So… can we try to talk normally?’
Harry’s throat worked up and down as he licked his lips. His face relaxed a little, and he said, ‘Sure, why not?’ in a perfectly ordinary speaking voice… but his pinprick pupils remained fixed unblinkingly on the slowly mobile pendants.
B.J. was frankly astonished: at one and the same time he was difficult and he was easy! Perhaps, when these ‘people’ of his had trained him, they had somehow strengthened him against hypnotic suggestion. And post-hypnotic suggestion? If so, then he was a dead man. He mustn’t be allowed to take any knowledge out of this room except what she desired him to know. But that was for the future, while for now:
‘All right, then let’s take it question by question,’ she suggested. ‘You wanted to know about my crossbow?’
‘It’s a weird weapon,’ he said, attempting a shrug.
