Resurgence, p.35
Resurgence, page 35
part #10 of Necroscope Series
‘I would never betray you, Master,” she wheezed.
His eyes were blood; his lips curled back from teeth that were long and salivating; his tongue was forked and scarlet in a red-ribbed throat. And as he drew her closer still: “You are less than refuse,’ he said. ‘And if I should hear so much as a whisper, then I would throw you like refuse - or you would be seen to fall, like refuse - from the great cliff. Do you understand?’
But Katerin could only gag and hang on to his wrist, and stick out her wriggling tongue at him.
Finally he released her, thrust her away, sent her stumbling across the marble floor. ‘Now go, and never come into my room again!’ Clutching at her throat, she went.
Then, knowing there would be no more sleep for him this morning, shuddering, and trembling in every limb, Anthony got dressed. But as he finished he paused, lifted his head, listened intently as a voice came to him from far below:
I fought it for two hundred years, my son, my dear sweet Tony, before it won and you put me down here. But with help - with my help, my knowledge - why, your fight might last even longer. And as long as I remain safe, so do you. But ah!… only see how our roles are reversed, eh, my dear, dear boy?
And then there was only silence…
Three days later:
In his lair in the high Cairngorms, the dog-Lord Radu was awake and aware as never before in six hundred long years. By now, Bonnie Jean Mirlu had contacted the surviving sons of the sons of his thralls throughout the land, calling them to Scotland to prepare for his coming, and to protect him in the hour of his resurgence. Indeed, he knew that it was so; at the full of the moon he had put out probes of his own to seek them out and reinforce B.J.‘s instructions.
And moon-children that they were, they had answered him. Radu had sensed their response: the howling going up over the moors -over the Dartmoor tors, and in Bodmin - and the whimpering of Auld John in Inverdruie. But only three? Only three descendants of his Children of the Moon? Well, four if he included B.J. herself, and a handful more with her small pack.
But as for her girls: they were more dedicated to Bonnie Jean herself than to Radu. Which was only understandable, the dog-Lord supposed, for B.J. was Wamphyri in her own right—
—And becoming more so with every full moon.
Right now, the lunar orb was in the centre of its cycle, a crescent, but in a fortnight it would be full again. Radu’s original schedule had been set to ensure Harry Keogh’s audience with him at the full of the moon in May. And the dog-Lord’s rebirth had been scheduled for the moon after that. Auld John, however - whom Radu had ‘taken into his confidence’ - believed that he had brought these dates forward by two full months… and so he had, upon a time. But now the Old Wolf in his resin tomb had had second thoughts.
Auld John was a fool for his ‘wee mistress’; he had been in thrall to her for long and long, perhaps even too long. Who could say what she might or might not have winkled out of him? Which was one of the reasons why Radu had yet again rearranged his rebirth - to the end of February, just a few weeks away!
Another reason was that he could no longer wait to come face to face with B.J.‘s mysterious Mr Keogh, who might well prove to be Radu’s Man-With-Two-Faces, so frequently glimpsed in prescient dreams; the one who would be there to greet, and perhaps even ‘succour’ him, in his most needful hour.
Now, in just two weeks’ time, the dog-Lord would see this Harry for himself, in the flesh, and know the truth of it And then, one way or the other he would use him - and use him up! But however it went, in whichever eventuality, the meeting was now set to coincide with Radu’s rising.
The final and perhaps most important reason for advancing the date of his return lay in Radu’s constant state of nervous apprehension: his anxiety, the awareness of his own vulnerability while he lay here ‘in state.’ The knowledge that should his enemies find him here like this, they could do with him as they wished. And as to what they would do: the dog-Lord had no delusions about that For they were searching for him even now; and by now, but for B.J.‘s vigilance, her diligence, they might even have found him. This wouldn’t save her, however, for Radu knew why she was so ‘diligent’: because she could not hope to stand against them on her own. What, the filthy Drakuls, and the loathsome Ferenczys? And both camps determined to destroy him and his? Not only were they vampire Lords, in command of unknown numbers of lieutenants and thralls, but they were Wamphyri, experienced in the arts and wiles of the Great Vampire! By comparison, Bonnie Jean was indeed innocent. Even as innocent as she’d fooled her Harry into believing.
And so she must have Radu up; to be her protection, and to learn what she could from him… before turning on him in earnest in the right place and at the right time. The dog-Lord knew this was her plan, as indeed it would be his, if he were in her place.
Ah, the Wamphyri! No two alike - not even twin brothers - yet in certain ways alike as peas in a pod.
Thus, being Wamphyri and a beguiler, B.J. had made a great fool of her thrall and lover Harry Keogh - because he, too, was a part of her plan. But Radu had plans of his own.
He was no female’s fool like this Harry, to fall under the treacherous spell of any scheming witch or bitch however clever or buxom. No, he wasn’t this mysterious Harry Keogh, not in any shape or form…
… Well, not yet anyway.
It was midday and the moon was a pale sickle hanging low in the wintry grey sky. The dog-Lord Radu couldn’t see it, but he felt it there - its influence on him - tugging at the fluids of his brain. It wasn’t strong, indeed it was at its weakest, much as he was at his; for this was ever an inauspicious time for him, midway between his mistress moon’s cycle. But with just a fortnight of waiting left (a mere fourteen days!) there were still things he must do, precautions to take. He couldn’t allow himself simply to lie here like this in a gluey semi-torpor, with the resin weighing on him like lead and only his mind free.
But since it was so … very well, he would use his mind.
Radu knew the danger in using his mentalism, his telepathy. But he had been taking risks with it for six hundred years now, every time he’d reached out to some thrall or other to call him or her to his side when he needed sustenance. Recently, however - since his first true awakening - he’d used it that much more frequently: to call his few remaining thralls, or to see if the psychic aether was clear, and if not, to discover who else was probing it. And therefore the danger was that much greater.
For if anyone had sensed his sendings, or intercepted them, they too would know that his time was imminent. And if a really clever mentalist were in the vicinity (for example, some gifted vampire Lord) then Radu might easily reveal his location. These were the risks he took.
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 I 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 minuscule 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. DONTEVEN THINK IT! His mental howl, directiy 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, teo, 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. herselfhadrit 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 Mm 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… yes, 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! Ahk! Ahkh!’
*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.
