Necroscope IV: Deadspeak (Necroscope #4)

Necroscope IV: Deadspeak (Necroscope #4) Page 3

3

Finders

In the hour before midnight a mist came up that lapped at the castle's stones and filled in the gaps between so that the ancient riven walls seemed afloat on a gently undulating sea of milk. Under a shining blue-grey moon whose features were perfectly distinct, George Vulpe sat beside the fire and fed it with branches gathered in the twilight, watched the occasional spark jump skyward to join the stars, and blink out before ever they were reached.

He had volunteered for first watch. Having slept through most of the day, he would in any case be the obvious choice. Emil Gogosu had insisted there was no real need for anyone to remain awake, but at the same time he had not objected when the Americans worked out a roster. Vulpe would be first and take the real weight of it, Seth Armstrong would go from 2:00 a.m. till 4:30, and Randy Laverne would be on till sevenish when he'd wake Gogosu. That suited the old hunter fine; it would be dawn then anyway and he didn't believe in lying abed once the sun was up.

Both Gogosu and Armstrong were now fast asleep: the first wrapped in a blanket and wedged in a groove of half-buried stones with his feet pointing at the fire, and the last in his sleeping-bag, using his jacket wadded over a rounded stone as a pillow. Laverne was awake, barely; he had eaten too many of the boiled Hungarian sausages and too much of the local black bread; his indigestion kept burping him awake just as he thought he was going under. He lay furthest from the fire in the shadows of the castle's wall, his sleeping-bag tossed down on a bed of living pine twigs stripped from the branches of trees where they encroached on the ruins. Facing the fire, he was drowsily aware of Vulpe sitting there, his occasional motion as he shoved the end of this or that branch a little deeper into the red and yellow heart of incandescence.

What he was not aware of was the insidious change coming over his friend, the gradual submersion of Vulpe's mind in strange reverie, the pseudo-memories which passed before his eyes, or limned themselves in the eye of his mind, like ghostly pictures superimposed on the flickering flames. Nor could he know of the hypnotic vampiric influence which even now wheedled and insinuated itself into Vulpe's conscious and subconscious being.

But when a branch burned through and fell sputtering into the heart of the fire, Laverne heard it and started more fully awake. He sat up ... in time to see a dark shadow pass into even greater darkness through a gap in the old wall. A shadow that moved with an inexorable, zombie-like rigidity, like a sleepwalker, its feet causing eddies in the lap and swirl of creeping mist. And he knew that the shadow could only have been George Vulpe, for his sleeping-bag was empty where it lay crumpled against a leaning boulder in the glow of the fire.

Laverne's mind cleared. He unzipped himself from his bed, sought his climbing shoes and pulled them on. With fingers which were still leaden from sleep he drew laces tight and tied fumbling knots. Still rising up from his half-sleep, he nevertheless hurried. There had been something in the way George moved: not furtive but at the same time silently... yes, like a sleepwalker. He'd been that way, sort of, all day: sleeping through the journey, not entirely with it even when he was fully awake. And the way he'd climbed up here, like it was something he did every Friday morning before breakfast! Passing close to Gogosu and Armstrong where they lay, Laverne thought to wake them... then thought again. That would all take time, and meanwhile George might easily have toppled headfirst into the gorge, or brained himself on one of the many low archways in the ranks of tottering walls. Laverne knew his own strength; he'd be able to handle George on his own if it came to it; he didn't need the others and it would be a shame to rouse them for nothing. So he'd take care of this himself. The only thing he mustn't do, if in fact George was sleepwalking, was shock him awake.

Careful where he stepped through the inches-deep ground mist, Laverne followed Vulpe's exact route, passed through the same gap in the wall and moved deeper into the ruins. They were extensive, covering almost an acre if one took into account those walls which had fallen or been blasted outwards. Away from the sleepers and the firelight, he switched on a pocket torch and aimed its beam ahead. The ground rose up a little here, where heaps of tumbled stones stood higher than the lapping mist, like islands in some strange white sea.

In the torch beam, caught in the moment before he passed behind a shattered wall, George Vulpe paused briefly and looked back. His eyes seemed huge as lanterns, reflecting the electric light. George's eyes... and the eyes of something else!

They were there only for a single moment, then gone, blinking out like lights switched off. A pair of eyes, low to the ground, triangular, feral... A wolf?

Laverne swung his beam wildly, aimed it this way and that, crouched down a little and turned in a complete circle. He saw nothing, just ragged walls, mounds of stones, empty archways and inky darkness beyond. And a little way to the rear, the friendly glow of the campfire like a pharos in the night.

They'd made a wise choice not to start exploring this place in the twilight; it was just too big, its condition too dangerous; and maybe Laverne had been mistaken to leave the others sleeping.

But ... a wolf? Or just his imagination? A fox, more likely. This would be the ideal spot for foxes. There'd be room for dens galore in the caves of these ruins. And hadn't Gogosu mentioned how the locals wouldn't shoot or hunt the foxes who raided from up here? Yes, he had. So that's what it had been, then, a fox...

... Or a wolf.

Laverne had a pocketknife with a three-inch blade; he took it out, opened it up and weighed it in his hand. Great for opening letters, peeling apples or whittling wood! But in any case better than nothing. Christ! - why hadn't he shaken the others awake? But too late for that now, and meanwhile George was getting away from him.

'George!' he whispered, following on. 'George, for Chrissakes! Where the hell are you?'

Laverne reached the corner of crumbling wall where Vulpe had disappeared. Beyond it lay a large area silvered by moonlight, which might once have been a great hall. On the far side, behind a jumble of broken masonry and shattered roof slates, the silhouette of a man stood outlined from the waist up. Laverne recognized the figure as George Vulpe. Even as he watched, it took a step forward and down in that stiff, robotic way, until only the head and shoulders were showing. Then another step, and the head might be a round boulder atop the pile; another, and Vulpe had vanished from sight.

Into what? A hole or half-choked stairwell? Where did the idiot think he was going? How did he know where he was going? 'George!' Laverne called again, a little louder this time; and again he went in pursuit.

Beyond the pile of rubble, there where a small area of debris had been cleared away down to the original stone flags of the floor, a hole gaped blackly, descending into the bowels of the place. At one end of the hole or stairwell a long, narrow, pivoting slab had been raised by means of an iron ring and now leaned slightly out of the perpendicular away from the space it had covered. Laverne flashed his torch into the gap, saw stone steps descending. Carried on a stale-tasting updraught came a whiff of something burning mingled with musk and less easily identified odours; glimpsed in the darkness down below, the merest flicker of yellow light, immediately disappearing into the unknown depths.

The paunchy young American paused for a brief moment, but the mystery was such that he had to follow it up. 'George?' he said again, his whisper a croak as he squeezed down into the hole.

After that ... it was easy to lose track of time, direction, one's entire orientation. Moreover, the pressure spring in Laverne's torch had lost some of its tension; battery contact was weak, which resulted in a poor beam of light that came and went; so that every so often he must give the torch a nervous shake to restore its power.

The stone steps were narrow and descended spirally, winding round a central core which was solid enough in itself. But outwards from the spiral all was darkness and echoing space, and Laverne hated to think how far he might fall if he slipped or stumbled. He made sure he did neither. But how would George Vulpe be faring, sleepwalking in a place like this? If he was sleepwalking.

Finally a floor was reached, with evidence of a fire or explosion on every hand in the shape of scorched and blackened walls and fallen blocks of carved masonry; and here a second trapdoor slab; then more steps leading down, ever down...

Occasionally Laverne would see the flaring of a torch -a real torch - down below at some undetermined depth, or smell its smoke drifting up to him. But never a sound from Vulpe, who must know this place extremely well to negotiate its hazards so cleanly and silently. How he could possibly know it so well was a different matter. But Laverne felt his anger rising commensurate to the depths into which he descended. Surely he and Seth Armstrong were the victims of a huge joke, in which Gogosu was possibly a participant no less than Vulpe? Ever since last night when they'd met the old hunter it had been as if this entire venture were pre-ordained, worked out in advance. By whom? And hadn't George been born here? Hadn't he lived here - or if not here exactly, then somewhere in Romania?

And finally Vulpe's descent into the black guts of this place, when he thought the others were asleep... what little 'surprise' was he planning now? And why go to such elaborate lengths anyway? If he'd known of this place and been here before - as a boy, perhaps - couldn't he have let them in on it? It wouldn't have been any the less fascinating for that.

'The Castle Ferenczy!' Laverne snorted now to himself. 'Shit!' And how many leu had Vulpe coughed up, he wondered, to get old Gogosu to play his part in this farce?

Very angry now he stepped down onto a second floor where he paused to call out more loudly yet: 'George! What the fuck are you up to, eh!?'

His cry disturbed the air, brought down rills of dust from unseen heights and ceilings. As its echoes boomed out and came back distorted and discordant, Laverne nervously explored the place with the smoky, jittery beam of his torch.

He was in the vaults, the place of frescoed walls, many archways, centuries-blackened oaken racks, urns and amphorae, festoons of cobwebs and layers of drifted dust. And there were footprints in the dust, quite a few of them. The most recent of these could only be Vulpe's. Laverne followed the direction they took - and ahead caught a glimpse of flaring torchlight where it lit the curve of an archway before disappearing.

You bastard! Laverne thought. You'd have to be deaf not to know I'm back here! You've got a hell of a lot of explaining to do, good buddy! And if I don't like what you have to -

From above and behind, on the stone stairs where they wound up into darkness, there came the soft pad of feet and a softer whining. A pebble, disturbed, came clattering down the steps. Then all was silence again.

Shaking like a leaf, suddenly cold and clammy, Laverne aimed his torch up the stairwell. 'Jesus!' he gasped. 'Jesus!' But there was nothing and no one there. Or perhaps a shadow, drawing back out of sight?

Laverne stumbled across the stone-flagged floor of the great room, through an archway and into other rooms beyond it. His ragged breathing and muffled footfalls seemed to echo thunderously but he made no effort to be silent. He must shorten the distance between Vulpe and himself right now and find out exactly what the bastard was doing down here. The glow of Vulpe's torch came again, and the resinous stench of its burning; Laverne plunged in that direction, through drifts of dust, salts and chemicals where they lay spilled on the floor, until...

... This room was different from the others. He paused under the archway prior to entering, cast about with his weakening beam.

Mouldy tapestries on the walls; a tiled floor inlaid with a pictorial mosaic which illustrated some strange, ancient motif; a desk thick with dust, laid out with books, papers and other writing implements. A massive fireplace and chimney-breast - and the flickering glow of a naked flame coming down out of that fireplace! George Vulpe had stepped... inside there?

Finding not a little difficulty in breathing, Laverne gasped: 'George?' He quickly crossed the room and stooped a little to aim his feeble beam of light up under the low arch of the fireplace. In there, fixed in a bracket in the rear wall, he saw Vulpe's smoky, flaring torch... but no Vulpe.

A hand fell on Laverne's shoulder! 'Jesus God!' he cried out, as adrenalin pumped and he snapped erect. The back of his head crunched into collision with the keystone of the arch over the fireplace; he reeled away across the room, and for a moment Vulpe was trapped in his torch's beam; the other stood there silent as a ghost, his hand still reaching out towards him.

Laverne went to his knees on the floor, clutched at the back of his head. His hand came away wet with blood. Sick and dizzy he kneeled there. He was lucky he hadn't brained himself. But anger quickly replaced his pain. He found his orientation, again aimed his torch where last he'd seen Vulpe. But Vulpe - sleepwalker, clown, asshole or whatever he was - wasn't there. Only a fading flicker of yellow fire from within the chimney-breast.

Laverne staggered to his feet. He found his knife lying where he'd dropped it close to the chimney. He closed it and put it away. He wouldn't need a knife for the beating he was going to give 'Gheorghe' Vulpe. And when he was done with him the bastard could find his own way back out of here - if he had the strength for it!

Steadier now, gritting his teeth, Laverne went again to the fireplace. He ducked inside and at once saw,the rungs in the back wall of the flue. From up above he heard sounds: the echoing scrape of shoes, a low cough. And: What goes up, he thought, must come down! Maybe he should wait right here for the idiot. Except that was when Vulpe screamed!

Laverne had never heard a scream like it. It followed close on a nerve-rending grating sound - like massive surfaces of rock sliding together - and rose to a vibrating falsetto crescendo before shutting off at highest pitch. And as its echoes died away, they were followed by a glottal gurgling and gasping. Vulpe was going, 'Ak... ak... ak... ak,' as if choking: a sort of slow death-rattle. Laverne, his hair standing on end, didn't actually know what a death-rattle sounded like, but he felt that if the sound were suddenly to speed up to ak-ak-ak-ak, then that would be his friend's last gasp.

'Oh, Jeeesus!' he whined, and drove himself clattering up the rungs and through the flue to the place where it curved through ninety degrees to become a passage. Twenty or twenty-five paces ahead, there lay Vulpe's torch still flickering fitfully and giving off black smoke where it teetered on the rim of a trench cut in the stone floor to the right of the passageway.

But of Vulpe himself ... no sign. Only the choking, agonized 'Ak... ak... ak' sounds, which seemed to be coming from the trench.

'George?' Laverne hurried forward - and came to an abrupt halt. Beyond the guttering brand, where neither its light nor his own torch beam could reach, triangular eyes floated in the darkness, unblinking, unyielding, unnerving.

Laverne wasn't an especially brave man, but he wasn't a coward either. Whatever the creature was up ahead -fox, wolf or feral dog - it wouldn't much care for fire. He lumbered forward and snatched up the smouldering torch, and waved it overhead to get it going again. A whoosh of flame at once rewarded his efforts and the gathering shadows were driven back. Likewise the creature along the passageway; Laverne caught a glimpse of something grey, slinking, canine, before it was swallowed up in gloom. He also caught a glimpse of something in the trench -

- Something which drove him back against the wall like a blow from a huge fist!

Gasping his shock, his horror - feeling his blood running cold in his veins - Laverne tremblingly held out the torch over the trench. His disbelieving eyes took in the bed of spikes and the figure of his friend, crucified and worse, upon them. George Vulpe squirmed there, impaled through his cheek, neck, shoulders and arms; nailed through his back, buttocks, and thighs; issuing blood from each dark gash and puncture, which coloured the rusty spikes and flowed in thickly converging streams around and between his twitching feet, into the channel and down towards the stone spout.

'Mother of God!' Laverne croaked.

'Ak!... ak!... ak!' said Vulpe, the words bursting in bloody bubbles from his pallid lips.

And along the passageway the great old Grey One growled low in his throat and paced slowly, stiff-legged, into full view.

Vulpe was finished, that much was plain. An army of nurses with a ton of bandages between them couldn't have stopped him bleeding his last, not now. Laverne couldn't save him, neither from the bed of spikes nor from the wolf. On nerveless legs he backed off, shuffling crablike, sideways back along the passage, back towards the shallow steps leading to the false flue. It was all over for George - everything was over for him - and now Laverne must think only of himself. And as Vulpe's blood commenced to gurgle from the carved stone spout into the mouth of the urn, so the overweight American backed away faster yet...

... And paused abruptly, wobbling like a jelly there in the narrow mould of the passageway.

In front, the wolf, its face a snarling mask in the torchlight; between, the dying man on his torture-bed of spikes; and now... now there was something else. Behind!

No longer breathing, Laverne cranked his head round like a nut on a rusty bolt. At first he made little of what he was seeing. All the edges were indistinct, weirdly mobile. The ceiling seemed to have lowered itself, the passage to have narrowed, the floor to have become heaped with... something. Something furry. Something that rustled and flopped!

Laverne's eyes bugged as he thrust out his torch in that direction, bugged more yet as several small parts of that anomalous furriness detached themselves from the moving walls and darted by him in fluttering swoops and dives. Bats! A colony of bats! And more of them clustering to the walls, floor and ceiling even as he grimaced his disgust.

He looked back the other way. The wolf had come to a standstill; its ears were pointed into the trench, its attention centred on the urn. Cold as death, reeling and panting for air, Laverne looked where it looked. He looked, saw, and knew that he was on the verge of fainting. His blood was pooling, his senses whirling - but he also knew that he dared not faint! Not in this nightmare place, and certainly not now.

The urn was belching. Puffs of vapour, like small smoke rings, were issuing from its obscene mouth. Black slime, bubbling up from within, was blistering on the cold rim like congealing tar. As Vulpe's blood was consumed, so something was forming and expanding within the urn. A catalyst, his blood transformed what was within!

Hypnotized by horror, Laverne could only watch. A mottled blue-grey tentacle of slime, crimson-veined, slopped upwards out of the mouth of the urn and into the stone spout. Elongating, it slid like a snake along the trail of blood to where Vulpe lay transfixed. Sentient, it curled round his right leg where it was bent at the knee, surged along the impaled thigh and across his belly, crept over his palpitating chest. He continued to gasp, 'Ak!... ak!... argh!' - but agony had very nearly inured him, numbed him into a mental limbo, and loss of his life's blood was quickly finishing the job.

Somehow, summoning up his last ounce of strength from the very roots of his will, Vulpe managed to lift his face up off the spike which pierced his right cheek and lower jaw; and conscious to the last, he saw what reared on his chest and even now formed a flat, swaying, blind cobra head!

His bloody jaws flew open - perhaps in a scream, though none came - and the leech-thing at once drove itself into his yawning mouth and down his straining gullet! He convulsed on the spikes; his lips split at their corners as his jaws were forced apart and the now corrugated, pulsating bulk of the thing thrust into him.

The urn was empty now, steaming and slimed where the 'tail' of the leech-creature had snaked free. But still Vulpe gagged and frothed and bled from his nostrils as the horror filled him. His neck was fat from its passage into him; his eyes stood out as if to burst from their sockets; his three-fingered hands tore free of the spikes and grasped at the monster raping his throat, trying to tear it out of him. To no avail.

In another moment the entire creature had entered him - and still he tossed on the spikes, flopped his head this way and that, slopped blood and mucus all around.

'Oh, Jesus! Oh, great God in heaven!' Laverne wailed. 'Die, for Christ's sake!' he instructed Vulpe. 'Let it go! Be still!' And it was as if George Vulpe heard him. He did let it go, he was... suddenly... still.

The entire scene stood frozen, timeless. The great wolf, a statue blocking the way forward; the bats, almost completely choking Laverne's single route of exit; the drained and hideously refilled body of his friend, motionless on its bed of spikes. Only the flickering torch in Laverne's hand had any life of its own, and that too was dying.

In one badly shaking hand the firebrand, and in the other his pocket-torch; Randy Laverne could never have said how he'd hung on to either one of them. But now, snarling his outrage and terror, he turned to the wall of bats and thrust at it with his smoking, guttering torch. They didn't retreat but clustered to the firebrand, smothered it with their scorching, crackling bodies, put it out! A dozen dead or dying bats fell to the floor of the passage, were ploughed under by the creeping furry tide of their cousins where they wriggled and flopped forward.

Laverne went a little mad then. He screamed hoarsely, brokenly; he panted, gasped and screamed again; he lashed out with his arms in the near-darkness and aimed the ailing beam of his electric torch this way and that all around, never giving himself a moment's time to see anything.

He did not see George Vulpe wrench himself upright, free of the spikes in the trench, or the way his gashes had stopped bleeding and were mending themselves even now. Nor did he see him climb up from the trench, fondling the old wolf's ears and smiling. Especially, he did not see that smile. No, his act of dropping the electric torch and sliding semiconscious down the wall to crumple on the floor of the passage was occasioned by none of these things but by Vulpe's sudden appearance, his rising up there, directly before him. By that and by his redly glaring eyes, and his entirely alien, phlegm-clotted voice, saying:

'My friend, you came to this place of your own free will. And I believe you are... bleeding?' Vulpe's nostrils opened wide, sniffed, and his eyes became fiery slits in that preternaturally pale face. 'Indeed, I'm sure you are. Now really, someone should see to that wound - before something gets into it.'

Emil Gogosu woke up to find someone kneeling close by. It was young Gheorghe, one hand shaking the hunter awake, the other holding a warning finger to his lips. 'Shhhr he hushed.

'Eh? What is it?' Gogosu whispered, at once wide awake and peering about in the night. The fire was burning low, its heart redly reflecting from Vulpe's eyes. 'Dawn already? I don't believe it!'

'Not dawn,' the other replied, also in a whisper, however hoarse and urgent. 'Something else.' He stood up. 'Come, bring your gun.'

Gogosu unrolled himself from his blanket, reached for his rifle and came lithely to his feet. He prided himself that his bones didn't ache.

'Come,' Vulpe said again, stepping carefully so as not to wake Armstrong.

As they left the campfire and the ruins behind and the darkness began to close in, the hunter caught at Vulpe's arm. 'Your face,' he said. 'Is that blood? What's been going on, Gheorghe? I didn't hear anything.'

'Blood, yes,' the other answered. 'I was keeping watch. I heard something out here, in the trees there, and went to see. It might have been a dog or fox - even a wolf -but it attacked me. I fought it off. I think it may have bitten my face. And it's still out here. It was following me as I came back for you.'

'Still out here?' Gogosu turned his head this way and that. The moon was down a little, its grey light coming through hazy clouds. The hunter saw nothing, but still the young American led the way.

'I thought maybe you could shoot it,' said Vulpe. 'You said you'd tried to shoot a wolf up here before.'

'I have, that's right,' Gogosu answered, hurrying to keep up. 'I hit him, too, for I heard him yelp and saw the trail of blood!'

'Well,' said the other, 'and now another chance.'

'Eh?' the hunter was puzzled. Something wasn't quite right here. He tried to get a good look at his companion in the pale moonlight. 'What's wrong with your voice, Gheorghe? Frog in your throat? Still shaken up, are you?'

'That's right,' said Vulpe, his voice deeper yet. 'It was something of a shock...'

Gogosu came to a halt. Something was definitely wrong. 'I see no wolf!' he said, the tone of his voice an accusation in itself. 'Neither wolf nor fox nor... anything!'

'Oh?' said the other, also pausing. 'Then what's that?' He pointed and something moved silently, low to the ground, grey-dappled where moonlight formed pools under the trees. It was there, then gone. But the hunter had seen it. As if in confirmation, a low growl came back to them out of the night.

'Damn me!' Gogosu breathed. 'A Grey One!' He brushed past Vulpe, crouched low, ran forward under the trees.

Vulpe came after, caught up with him, pointed off at a tangent. 'There he goes!' he rasped.

'Where? Where? God, you've the eyes of a wolf yourself!'

'This way,' said Vulpe. 'Come on!'

They came out of the trees, reached the piled scree at the foot of rearing crags. The younger figure breathed easy, but Gogosu was already panting for air. 'Lord,' he gulped, and finally admitted it: 'but my legs aren't as young as yours.'

'What?' said Vulpe, half-turning towards him. 'Oh, but I assure you they are, Emil Gogosu. Centuries younger, in fact.'

'Eh? What?'

'There? said the other, pointing yet again. 'Under that tree there!'

The hunter looked - brought his rifle up to his shoulder - saw nothing. 'Under the tree?' he said. 'But there's nothing there. I -'

'Give me that,' said Vulpe. And before the other could argue, he'd taken the gun. Aiming at nothing in particular, he said: 'Emil, are you sure you shot a wolf up here that time?'

'What?' the old hunter was outraged. 'How many times do you need telling? Aye, and I damn near got him, too! You can wager he bears the scar to prove it.'

'Calm down, calm down,' said the other, his voice dark as the night now. 'No need for wagering, Emil, for I've seen that gouge in his flank, where your bullet burned his hide! Oh, yes, and just as you remember him, so he remembers you!'

And as suddenly as that the hunter knew that this wasn't Gheorghe Vulpe. He looked deep into his shadowed face, hissed his terror and shrank down - and saw the Grey One crouched to spring, silhouetted on top of a mound of sliding scree. It snarled, sprang... Gogosu snatched at his rifle where the other seemed to hold it oh so lightly ... try snatching an iron bar from the window of a cell.

The wolf struck and knocked him down, away from this awful stranger he'd thought a friend. Its fangs were at his throat, slavering there. He went to cry out, but already those terrible teeth had met through his windpipe, turning his scream to a scarlet froth that flew like a brand across a wrinkled grey brow over vengeful yellow eyes...

'You let me sleep late!' was Seth Armstrong's first reaction when he found himself prodded awake. The moon was down, the ground mist gone, the fire almost dead.

'Are you complaining?' said the man seated close by, who at first glance was George Vulpe.

'No,' Armstrong shook his head, as much to free it from sleep as in answer, 'I guess I was tuckered. Must be the altitude.'

'Good,' said the other. 'I'm glad you enjoyed your sleep. Sleep is a necessity, however wasteful. Why should we sleep when there's a life to be lived, eh? I shall not sleep again in... oh, a long time.'

Armstrong was almost awake now. 'What?' he said, and sat up. He might have jumped up, but the barrel of Gogosu's rifle was prodding him in the chest. And a lean grey wolf, lying prone on its belly like a dog, with paws stretched forward towards him, was gazing directly into his eyes! One of its ears stood stiffly erect; the other, twitching, lay close to its elongated skull. The wolf might be half-grinning, or half-snarling; whichever, its quivering muzzle was splashed with scarlet.

'Jesus H. Christ!' Armstrong snatched back his feet, which got tangled in the lower half of his sleeping-bag.

'Be still,' commanded the one he still believed was Vulpe. 'Do as you're told and he won't attack you, and I won't squeeze this trigger.'

'Geor - Geor - George!' Armstrong finally found his voice. 'That's a bloody wolf, there!'

'Bloody, yes,' said the other.

'So sh - sh - shoot the bastard!' Armstrong's face was deathly white in pale blue starshine.

'Eh?' said the seated man, cocking his head curiously on one side, for all the world as if he hadn't heard right. 'I should shoot him? I should reward an old and trusted friend by shooting him? No, I think not.' He picked up a dry branch and tossed it onto the bed of hot ashes, where small flames lingered still. Sparks showered up and the flames leaped higher, and Armstrong saw the bloodied holes in the other's clothing, his torn, rapidly mending face, the pits of hell which were his eyes.

'Christ - Christ �C Christ!' the big, gangling man gasped. 'George, what the hell's happening here?'

'Be still,' the other said again, his head still tilted at an angle. For long moments he stared into Armstrong's terrified face, studying it, perhaps thinking something over. And eventually: 'You're a big man and strong, and I cannot be alone in the world. Not now, and not for some time. I have things to learn, places to go, things to do. I will need instruction. I must be taught before I may... teach? I got something from Gheorghe's mind, you see, before he honoured the covenant. But not enough. Perhaps I was too eager. It is understandable.'

'George,' Armstrong licked his lips, which were parched. 'George, listen.' He reached out a trembling hand to the other - but the old wolf's muzzle at once cracked open to display jaws like a bone vice. He lifted his belly off the earth, crept closer.

'I said be still!' said the one with the rifle, lifting it until its foresight pressed against Armstrong's bobbing Adam's apple. 'If the Grey One understands my wishes, why can't you? Or perhaps you're a fool, in which case I'm wasting my time. Is that it? Am I wasting my time? Should I be done with it, simply squeeze this trigger and make a fresh start?'

'I'll... I'll be still!' Armstrong gasped, his voice a hoarse whisper, cold sweat starting out on his brow. 'I'll be still! And... and don't worry, George. I'll help you. God, yes, whatever bug you've picked up, I'll help you!'

'Oh, I know you will,' said this - this stranger? - still staring from his crimson eyes.

'I'll do anything you say,' said Armstrong. 'Anything at all.'

'Yes, that too,' said the other, nodding. And having made up his mind: 'Very well, and shall we start with something simple? Look into my eyes, Seth Armstrong.' He moved the barrel of the rifle aside to lean closer, until his terrible mesmeric face was only a foot away. 'Look deep, Seth. Look under the skin of my eyes, into the blood and the brains and the very landscape of my mind. The eyes are the windows of the soul, my friend, did you know that? Portals on one's dreams and passions and aspirations. Which is why my eyes are red. Aye, for the soul behind them has been torn asunder arid eaten by a scarlet leech!'

His words conjured seething horror, but more than that they inspired awe, a creeping paralysis, a lassitude of terror. Armstrong knew what it was: hypnotism! He could feel his mind going under. But Vulpe - or whoever this was in Vulpe's body - had been right: Seth Armstrong was strong. And before his will could be subverted utterly -

- He batted the rifle aside, so that it was directed at the wolf, and reached for the throat of his tormentor. Tm going to have me ... a piece of ... you, George!' he panted.

As the Texan's fingers closed on Vulpe's windpipe, so that facsimile gave a grunting cry and clawed at his face. The three fingers of his left hand hooked in the corner of Armstrong's lower lip, tearing it. Armstrong howled his pain, bit down hard on the smallest of Vulpe's fingers, severed it at the central knuckle in the moment before the other dragged his hand free.

The rifle went off, its flash startling and the crack of its discharge reverberating from the peaks. The great wolf knew something about guns; unharmed, fur bristling, still he whined and backed away.

Gurgling and clutching at his damaged hand, Vulpe had reared to his feet. Armstrong spat out Vulpe's little finger, which hung from his mouth on a thread of blood and gristle. The Texan now had possession of the rifle and knew how to use it. But even as he tried to turn the weapon on the madman, so Vulpe recovered and kicked it from his hands.

Somehow Armstrong burst free of his sleeping-bag, but as he lurched to his feet he felt something clinging to his face and moving there. And shaking with laughter, the mad thing which had been George Vulpe pointed at Armstrong - at his face. He pointed with his freakish left hand, where all that remained of the third finger was now a bloody stump.

The Texan put up a hand and slapped at the finger on his cheek, clawed at it. It climbed higher, with a life of its own, and gouged at the corner of his right eye. Armstrong howled as it dug in, dislodged the eyeball and entered the socket. With his eye hanging on his cheek, he danced and screamed and clutched at his face; but he couldn't dislodge the thing, which burrowed like an alien worm into his head.

'Jesus God!' he screamed, falling to his knees and tearing at the rim of the empty orbit. And: 'J-J-Jesus G-G-God!' he gurgled again as he ripped the flopping eye loose and vampire flesh put out exploratory tendrils into his brain.

On his knees, he shuffled spastically, blindly towards the fire, and shuddered to a halt. He coughed and shuddered again, and toppled forward like a felled tree.

But the Vulpe-anomaly stepped forward, caught his collar with its good hand and swung him to one side, turning him onto his back. 'Ah, no, Seth!' the thing said, standing over him. 'Enough is enough. For if you burn it will take time in the healing, and I would be up and gone from here.'

'Ge-o-o-orge!' the other coughed and gagged.

'No, no, my friend, no more of that,' said the monster, smiling hideously. 'From now on you must call me Janos!'

More than five and a half years later; the balcony of a hotel room in Rhodes, overlooking a noisy, jostling, early-morning street only a stone's throw from the harbour; salty-sweet air breezing in across the sea from Turkey, thinning out the clouds of blue exhaust smoke, the pungent miasma of the bakeries, the many odours of the breakfast bars, refuse collectors and humanity in general in this, the nerve-centre of the ancient Greek port.

It was the middle of May 1989, the tourist season only just beginning and already threatening to be a blockbuster, and the sun was a ball of fire one-third of the way up the incredibly blue dome of the sky. A 'dome' because you couldn't take it in in its entirety but must close your eyes to a squint, thus rounding off the corners and turning your periphery of vision to a shadowy curve. That was how Trevor Jordan felt about it, anyway, having thrown back maybe one or two Metaxas too many the night before. But it was early yet, just after 8:00 a.m., and he guessed he'd recover in a little while; though by the same token he knew the town would get a lot noisier, too.

Jordan had breakfasted on a boiled egg and single piece of toast and was now into his third cup of coffee �C the British 'instant' variety, not the dark-brown sludge which the Greeks drank from thimble-sized cups - which he calculated was gradually diluting whatever brandy remained in his system. The trouble with Metaxa, as he'd discovered, was that it was extremely cheap and very, very drinkable. Especially while watching the nonstop belly-dancing floor-show in a place called The Blue Lagoon on Trianta Bay.

He groaned and gently fingered his forehead for the fifth or sixth time in a half-hour. 'Sunglasses,' he said to the man who sat with him, similarly attired in dressing-gown and flip-flops. 'I have to buy a pair. Christ, this glare could take your eyes out!'

'Have mine,' Ken Layard told him, grinning as he passed a pair of cheap, plastic-framed shades across their tiny breakfast table. 'And later you can buy me new ones.'

'Will you order more coffee?' Jordan groaned. 'Say, a bucketful?'

'I thought you were knocking it back a bit last night,' the other answered. 'Why didn't you tell me you'd never been to the Greek islands before?' He leaned over the balcony rail, called down and attracted the attention of a waiter serving breakfast to other early-risers on a terraced lower level, then lifted the empty coffee pot and jiggled it suggestively.

'How do you know that?' said Jordan.

'What, that this is new to you? No one who's been here before drinks Metaxa like that - or ouzo for that matter.'

'Ah!' Jordan remembered. 'We started off on ouzo!'

'You started off on ouzo,' Layard reminded him. 'I was getting atmosphere, local colour. You were getting drunk.'

'Yes, but did I enjoy myself?'

Layard grinned again, shrugged and said, 'Well ... you didn't get us thrown out of anywhere.' He studied the other in his self-inflicted discomfort.

An experienced but variable telepath, Jordan could be forceful when he needed to be; usually, though, he was easy-going, transparent, an open book. It was as if he personally would like to be as readable as other people's minds were to him, as if he were trying to make some sort of physical compensation for his metaphysical talent. His face reflected this attitude: it was fresh, oval, open, almost boyish. With thinning fair hair falling forward above grey eyes, and a crooked mouth which straightened out and tightened whenever he was worried or annoyed, everyone who knew Trevor Jordan liked him. Having the advantage of knowing about it when people didn't like him, he simply avoided them. But rangy-limbed and athletic despite his forty-four years, it was a mistake to misread his sensitivity; there was plenty of determination in him, too.

They were old friends, these two, who went back a long way. They could clown with each other now because of their past, in which there'd been times when there was little or no room for clowning; times and events, in fact, so outr�� even in their weird world that they'd receded now to mere phantoms of mind and memory. Like bad dreams or tragedies (or even drunken nights), best forgotten.

There was nothing so deadly strange in their current mission - though certainly it was serious enough - but still Jordan realized he'd been in error the previous night. He put on the sunglasses, frowned and sat up straighter in his cane chair. 'I didn't draw attention to us or anything stupid like that?'

'Lord, no,' said the other. 'And anyway I wouldn't have let you. You were just a tourist having himself a good time, that's all. Too much sun during the day, and too much booze through the night. And what the hell, there were plenty of other Brits around who made you look positively sober!'

'And Manolis Papastamos?' Jordan was rueful now. 'He must have thought me an idiot!'

Papastamos was their local liaison man, second in command of the Athens narcotics squad, who had come across to Rhodes by hydrofoil to get to know the pair personally and see if there was anything he could do to simplify their task. But he'd also proved to be something of a hellraiser, even a liability.

'No,' Layard shook his head. 'In fact he was more under the influence than you were! He said he'd join us on the harbour wall at 10:30 to see the Samothraki dock -but I doubt it. When we dropped him off at his hotel he looked like hell. On the other hand... they do have remarkable constitutions, these Greeks. But in any case we'll be better off without him. He knows who we are but not what we are. As far as he's concerned we're part of Customs and Excise, or maybe New Scotland Yard. It would be hard to concentrate with Manolis around making conversation and creating a mental racket. I hope to God he stays in bed!'

Jordan was looking and feeling a little healthier; the sunglasses had helped somewhat; fresh coffee arrived and Layard poured. Jordan watched his easy movements and thought: Just like a big brother. He looks after me like I was a snot-nosed kid. He always has, thank God!

Layard was a locator, a scryer without a crystal ball. He didn't need one; a map would do just as well, or an inkling of his quarry's location. A year older than Jordan, he stood a blocky seventy inches tall, with a square face, dark hair and complexion, expressive, active eyebrows and mouth. Under a forehead lined from accumulated years of concentration, his eyes were very keen and (of course) far-seeing, and so darkly brown as to border on black.

Looking at Layard through and in the privacy of dark lenses, Jordan's thoughts went back twelve years to Harkley House in Devon, England, where he and the locator had formed their first real partnership and worked as a team for the very first time. Then as now they'd been members of E-Branch, that most secret of all the Secret Services, whose work was known only to a handful of 'top people'. Unlike now, however, their work on that occasion had been far less mundane. Indeed, there had been nothing at all mundane about the Yulian Bodescu affair.

Memories, deliberately suppressed for more than a decade, sprang once more into being, full-fleshed and fantastic in Jordan's ESP-endowed mind. Once more he held the crossbow in his hand, chest-high and aimed dead ahead, as he listened to the hiss of jetting water and the girl's voice humming that tuneless melody from beyond the closed door, and wondered if this were a trap. Then -

He kicked open the door to the shower cubicle - and stood riveted to the spot! Helen Lake, Yulian Bodescu's cousin, was utterly beautiful and quite naked. Standing sideways on, her body gleamed in the streaming water. She jerked her head round to stare at Jordan, her eyes wide in terror where she fell back against the shower's wall. Her knees began to buckle and her eyelids fluttered.

'But this is just a frightened girl!' he told himself- in the moment before her thoughts branded themselves on his telepathic mind:

Come on, my sweet! she thought. Ah, just touch me, hold me! Just a little closer, my sweet...

Then, jerking back away from her, he saw the carving knife in her hand and the insane glare in her demonic eyes. As she drew him effortlessly towards her and lifted her knife in a gleaming arc, so he pulled the crossbow's trigger. It was an automatic thing, his life or hers.

God! - the bolt nailed her to the tiled wall; she screamed like the damned soul she was and jerked herself free of splintering tiles and plaster, staggering to and fro in the shower's shallow well. But she still had the knife, and Jordan could do nothing but stand there with his eyes bulging, mouthing meaningless prayers, as she advanced on him yet again ...

... Until Ken Layard shouldered him aside - Layard with his flamethrower - whose nozzle he directed into the shower to turn it into a blistering, steaming pressure-cooker!

'God help us!' Jordan gasped now, as he'd gasped it then. He blotted the unbearable memories out, came reeling back to the present. In the wake of mental conflict, crisis, his hangover seemed twice as bad. He breathed deeply, used the tips of his fingers to massage the top of his head where it felt split, and wondered out loud: 'Christ, what brought that on?'

Layard's eyes were wide; he bent forward across the table and grasped Jordan's forearm. 'You too?' he said.

Jordan broke an unspoken rule among E-Branch espers: he glanced into Layard's mind. Receding, he felt the echoes of similar memories and at once broke the contact. 'Yes, me too,' he said.

'I could tell by your face,' Layard told him. 'I've never seen you look like that since... that time. Maybe it's because we're working together again?'

'We've worked together plenty,' Jordan flopped back in his chair, suddenly felt exhausted. 'No, I think it's just something that was squeezed up in there and had to be out. Well, it took its time - but it's out now and gone forever, I hope!'

'Me too,' Layard agreed. 'But both of us at the same time? And why now? We couldn't be in a more different setting from Harkley House than we are right now.'

Jordan sighed and reached for his coffee. His hand trembled a little. 'Maybe we picked it up from each other and amplified it. You know what they say about great minds thinking alike?'

Layard relaxed and nodded. 'Especially minds like ours, eh?' He nodded again, if a little uncertainly. 'Well, maybe you're right...'

By 9:45 the two were down on the northern harbour wall, seated on a wooden bench which gave them a splendid view right across the Mandraki shallows and harbour to the Fort of St Nikolas. To their left the Bank of Greece stood on its raised promontory, its white-banded walls and blue windows reflected in the still water, while on their right and to the rear of the promenade sprawled Rhodes New Town. Mandraki, being mainly a shallow-water mooring, was not the commercial harbour; that lay a quarter-mile south in the bay of the historic, picturesque and Crusader-fortified Old Town, beyond the great mole with the fort at its tip. But their information was that the drug-runners moored up in Mandraki, taking on water and some small provisions there, before proceeding on to Crete, Italy, Sardinia and Spain.

A little cannabis resin would be dropped off here, by night (probably carried ashore by a crewman in swim-trunks and fins), and likewise in various ports of call along the way. But the great mass of the stuff - and the main cargo, which was cocaine - was destined for Valencia, Spain. From where, eventually, a lot of it would find its way to England. Such had been its route and destination in the past. Meanwhile the E-Branch agents had the task of determining (a) how much of the white powder was aboard; and (b) if the amount was small, would a pre-emptive bust simply serve to tip their hands to the drug-barons; and (c) where was the stuff kept if it was aboard?

Only a few months ago a boat had been stripped to the bones in Larnaca, Cyprus, and nothing had been found. But of course, that one had been handled by the Greek-Cypriot police, whose 'expertise' perhaps lacked that little something extra - like co-ordination or even intelligence! This time it would be a combined effort, terminating in Valencia before the bulk of the stuff could be off-loaded. And this time, too, the boat - a wallowing, wooden, round-bottomed barrel of an old Greek thing called the Samothraki - would be stripped not just to her bones but the very marrow. And in the interim Jordan and Layard would shadow her along her route.

Dressed in tourist-trade 'American' caps with hugely-projecting peaks, bright, open-necked, short-sleeved shirts, cool slacks and leather sandals, and equipped with binoculars, they now awaited the arrival of their quarry. Since they went allegedly incognito, their mode of dress might seem almost outlandish, but by comparison with the more lurid tourist groups they could easily be too conservative. And that was to be avoided.

They had been silent for some time; there was something of a mood on both of them; Jordan blamed the Metaxa and Layard said it was 'bad gut' brought on by greasy food. Whichever, it interfered a little with their ESP.

'It's... cloudy,' Jordan complained, frowning. Then he shrugged. 'But you don't know what I mean, do you?'

'Sure I do,' Layard answered. 'We called it mindsmog in the old days, remember? A kind of dull mental static, distorting or blocking the pictures? Or obscuring them in a sort of... well, almost in a damp, reeking fog! When I reach out and search for the Samothraki, I can feel it there like a welling mist in my mind. A dampness, a darkness, a smog. But how to explain it in a place like this? It's weird. And it doesn't come from the boat especially but -1 don't know - from everywhere!'

Jordan looked at him. 'How long since we came up against other espers?'

'In our work, you mean? Just about every time we do an embassy job, I suppose. What are you getting at?'

'You don't think it's likely there are other agents on the same job? Russians, maybe, or the French?'

'It's possible.' It was Layard's turn to frown. 'The USSR's narcotics problem is growing every day, and France has been in the shit for years. But I was thinking: what if they're on the other side? I mean, what if the runners themselves are using espers? They could well afford to, and that's a fact!'

Jordan put his binoculars to his eyes, turned his head and scanned the coastline from the fort on the mole all the way to the heart of the Old Town where it rose behind massive walls. 'Have you tried tracking it?' he said. 'I mean, after all's said and done, you're the locator. But me, I've a feeling the source is somewhere in there.'

Layard's keen eyes followed the aim of Jordan's binoculars. A big, white, expensive-looking motor-cruiser lolled at anchor in Mandraki's narrow, deep-water channel; beyond that a handful of caiques were moored inshore, or came and went, most of them full to the gunnels with tourists; a further quarter-mile and the Old Town's markets and streets were a hive, literally buzzing where the hill rose in a mass of churches and white and yellow houses, burning in the morning sunlight. Except that all was in motion, he might well have been looking at a picture postcard. The scene was that perfect.

Layard stared for long moments, then snapped his fingers, sat back and grinned. "That's it!' he finally said. 'You got it first time.'

'Eh?' Jordan looked at him.

'And of course it would have to be worse for you than for me. For I only find things. I don't read minds.'

'Do you want to explain?'

'What's to explain?' Layard looked smug. 'Your tourist's map of the Old Town is the same as mine. Except you probably haven't read it. OK, I'll put you out of your misery. There's an insane asylum on the hill.'

'Wha - ?' Jordan started, then put down his binoculars and slapped his knee. 'That has to be it!' he said. 'We're getting the echoes of all of those poor sick bastards locked up in that place!'

'It looks like it,' Layard nodded. 'So now that we know what it is we should try to screen it out, concentrate on the job in hand.' He looked out to sea through the mouth of the harbour and became serious in a moment. 'Especially since it appears the Samothraki's just a wee bit on the early side.'

'She's out there?' Jordan was immediately attentive.

'Five or ten minutes at the most,' Layard nodded. 'I just picked her up. And I'll give you odds she's in and dropping anchor by quarter past the hour.'

Both men now took to watching the entrance to the harbour, so missing a sudden burst of activity aboard the big, privately owned motor-cruiser. A canopied caique ferried out a small party from steps in the harbour wall; two men went aboard the sleek white ship, which soon weighed anchor; powerful engines throbbed as she turned almost on her own axis and nosed idly back along the deep-water channel. Black awnings with fancy scalloped trims gave her foredeck shade, where a black-clad figure now lounged in one of several reclining deckchairs. A tall man in white stood at the rail, looking towards the harbour mouth. He wore a black eye patch over his right eye.

The white leisure craft was very noticeable now, but still it hovered on the periphery of the espers' vision, its screw idling where it waited in the deep-water channel. Both of them now held binoculars to their eyes, and Jordan had stood up, was leaning forward against the harbour wall as the Samothraki came chugging into view around the mole.

'Here she comes,' he breathed. 'Right between the Old Boy's legs!' He sent his telepathic mind reaching across the water, seeking out the minds of the captain and crew. He wanted to know the location of the cocaine ... if one of them should be thinking about it right now ... or about its ultimate destination.

'What Old Boy's legs?' Layard's voice came to him distantly, even though he was right here beside him. Such was Jordan's concentration that he'd almost entirely shut out the conscious world.

'The Colossus,' Jordan husked. 'Helios. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. That's where he stood - right there, straddling that harbour mouth - until 224 b.c.'

'So you did read your map after all,' breathed Layard.

The old Samothraki was coming in; the sleek white modern vessel was going out; the former was obscured by the latter as they came up alongside each other - and dropped their anchors.

'Shit!' said Jordan. 'Mindsmog again! I can't see a damn thing through it!'

'I can feel it,' Layard answered.

Jordan swept his glasses along the sleek outline of the white vessel and read off its name from the hull: the Lazarus. 'She's a beauty,' he started to say, and froze right there. Centred in his field of view, the man in black on the foredeck was seated upright in his chair; the back of his head was visible; he was looking at the old Samothraki. But as Jordan fixed him in his binoculars, so that oddly-proportioned head turned until its unknown owner was staring straight at the esper across one hundred and twenty yards of blue water. And even though they were both wearing dark glasses, and despite the distance, it was as if they stood face to face!

WHAT? A powerful mental voice grunted its astonishment full in Jordan's mind. A THOUGHT-THIEF? A MENTALIST?

Jordan gasped. What the hell did he have here? Whatever it was, it wasn't what he'd been looking for. He tried to withdraw but the other's mind closed on his like a great vice... and squeezed! He couldn't pull out! He flopped there loosely against the harbour wall and looked at the other where he now stood tall - enormous to Jordan - in the shade of the black canopy.

Their eyes were locked on each other, and Jordan was straining so hard to look away, to redirect his thoughts, that he was beginning to vibrate. It was as if solid bars of steel were shooting out from the other's hidden eyes, across the water and down the barrels of Jordan's binoculars into his brain; where even now they were hammering at his mind as they drove home their message:

WHOEVER YOU ARE, YOU HAVE ENTERED MY MIND OF YOUR OWN FREE WILL. SO... BE... IT!

Layard was on his feet now, anxious and astonished. For all that he'd experienced little or nothing of the telepath's shock and, indeed, terror, still he could tell by just looking at him that something was terribly wrong. With his own mind full of mental smog and crackling, buzzing static, he reached to take Jordan's sagging weight - in time to guide and lower the telepath to the bench as he collapsed like a jelly, unconscious in his arms...