And yet for all Trask’s caution, tonight he would be in bed with Millie Cleary! But why not, since he’d already jeopardized himself? It was common knowledge in the Branch that he and Millie were lovers, and that they’d been lovers before—and since—the episode in Szwart’s toadstool garden. So that even before Millie’s trip through Möbius-time with Jake, Trask had accepted that she wasn’t infected…or at least he’d accepted the risk that he was taking.
But as for Liz: as yet she was definitely in the clear, and Jake wasn’t about to do anything to alter the status quo. Or so he kept telling himself…
But on the other hand, and according to Millie, so was Jake in the clear: the red in his thread was Korath. It reminded him of something out of an ancient Danny Kaye movie: “the tint with the taint is in the vassal from the castle” (or more properly, in a lieutenant from a Starside aerie), “while the blood that’s good has a hue that’s blue.”
Such was Jake’s odd, not exactly humourous train of thought as he wandered a lonely beach in the Algarve where the sand was still warm, the boulevards of Paris in the dusk of evening, the dreary, rain-damp promenade in Marseilles.
Until eventually it was night not only in Greece, Portugal, and France, but right across Europe and far out into the Atlantic…
By 10:30 Jake had consumed three or four brandies too many in a smoky, oak-beamed pub in the heart of London, just a ten-minute walk from the hotel that housed E-Branch. Because of the proximity he’d kept his psychic shields firmly in place, a precaution he intended to maintain when he rescued his belongings from his room.
Or at least, that was what he’d told himself.
But after he’d made his Möbius jump to his locked room, and as he packed his suitcase:
Jake? A voice out of nowhere, but not deadspeak. And:
“Shit!” he said.
And literally reading his mind: You weren’t going to let me know you were back? It was Liz, of course, not too far away and hurt and indignant.
It seems your talent is improving all the time, he said, in her own mode. Either that or our rapport is getting stronger.
Which is a whole lot more than can be said for our personal relationship, she came back at him.
He sat on his bed, sighed and told her, I want you like mad—and I feel I’m going mad—because I reckon you want me, too. You know how I feel about you. Of course you do, because of the way you’ve always been able to read me. But you’ve got to admit it, Liz, there’s a pretty good reason why…why we shouldn’t.
Not according to Millie, she answered. I’ve been talking to her and she says that from what she saw in the Continuum you’re safe. That in itself would be enough for me, but there’s more.
More? Jake could tell from the tone of her telepathic voice that over and above her resentment, still she was excited about something.
You’re safe, Jake! she told him. You really are! And if you hadn’t been in such a hurry to clear out…but where are you? Close, I know. But can you come to me?
That was what he had wanted to hear, Jake realized that now. It was why he’d relaxed his shields, so that he’d be able to sense Liz close by, smell her scent on the psychic aether.
But could he go to her? Lord, yes! If only to find out what she was talking about. (Oh, really? Only that? Who was he kidding?)
It was one of the shortest jumps he’d ever made, and it was only now that Jake discovered just how close she’d always been, that in fact her room was at the back of his, and only a flimsy partition wall separating them.
But now, as he homed in on her and stepped from the Continuum into normal space, nothing separated them.
Liz’s bedside light was turned down low and she was sitting up in her tousled bed. She wore a shirt of some gauzy material, open in a long V in front, and the light shining through from the side silhouetted her left breast almost as if it were naked. The hollows under her eyes wore the telltale, purplish bloom of a telepath who has been hard at work, and there were also signs that she’d been crying. No need to ask what Liz had been doing. Obviously she’d been “scanning” for him, but he’d been too far away and too well shielded.
He sat down on the foot of the bed, shrugged helplessly, and said, “What can I tell you? Of course I wanted to see you, want to hold you, want us to be together, and want to…to…but I don’t trust myself. I mean, I trust myself but not the thing inside me. Or the thing that might be inside me.”
“Korath?” she said. “But he’s locked away now—isn’t he?” And after staring at him for a moment in that searching way of hers, “No, I see now that you don’t mean Korath.”
“Korath is locked away good and tight,” Jake answered. “Oh, he would have enjoyed playing the voyeur, but that’s beyond him now. I’m not so much concerned about him as this other thing of mine, this crimson stain. And I thought that was what you meant when you said something about my being safe.”
“But that’s exactly what I meant!” she said, leaning toward him so that her shirt fell open. She followed his gaze, saw her nakedness, and her first instinct was to cover herself—which she ignored. And: “Jake,” she said, her voice so thickened that she could barely speak his name. “Jake, even if we didn’t think you were okay, still I would want you. Our minds are already as one, or they would be if we worked together in full cooperation. And there’s no longer any reason why our bodies shouldn’t be as one, too.”
He leaned towards her—felt love in his heart and lust in his loins—then snatched himself away, shook his head, and got to his feet. “You don’t know what you’re saying!”
“Yes I do!” Liz said. “I’m saying I’d take a chance—just like Ben and Millie are taking a chance—but that it’s such a remote chance now that it no longer merits our concern.”
“You’d better tell me what you’re talking about,” he said. “And please, do it quickly. What’s been happening here?”
“Come here,” she said, holding out her arms to him.
He couldn’t any longer resist her. Stepping quickly to her side, he sat down on the bed and took her in his arms. But the way he held her, so tightly that she couldn’t move, was simply to stop this thing from going any further until she’d told him everything. And now she did.
“Just an hour ago we got a message from the Minister Responsible, relayed from Porton Down. It was about that specimen you got for them. The plasma in it was…it was still alive; it wasn’t quite dead as we understand death, if you see what I mean. And they had found similar activity in other specimens. Cells were regenerating, the blood wasn’t coagulating, and the flesh—God!—was still fresh. It was all too deep for me and went right over my head. Anyway, after carrying out all kinds of tests and trying various agents on it they discovered that plague bacteria kills it dead!”
“Plague bac—?” Jake released her just a little. “You mean that new strain of the bubonic out of China?”
“The same.” Liz nodded.
“What?” Jake’s jaw fell open. He let go of her, sat back, let it all sink in—but in another moment he shook his head despairingly, lifted his eyes to the ceiling and gave a harsh, barking laugh. And taking her by the shoulders he said, “Well, isn’t that just bloody wonderful?” And surprised by her frown, her puzzled expression: “Liz, what is it with you? Haven’t you forgotten something? Some small, perhaps insignificant detail? Like out in Australia how we all had shots against the plague! Every bloody one of us—and by now just about everyone in the world! How can you be so happy sitting there telling me we’ve discovered another way to kill vampires just a couple of weeks after we’ve immunised ourselves against that agent?”
But now she was laughing, too, bringing his outburst to an abrupt halt. And: “You didn’t let me finish,” she said. “Those jabs we took were made of dead plague bacteria. Dead to us but undead to the undead! From now on if they suck on us—on anyone who has had their shots—they just won’t be able to take it. The agent will reactivate in them. Nothing of their fil
th can get into us, and anything of us that gets into them—”
“—Will kill them?” It was too much for Jake, too sudden. And now they were both laughing, but really laughing—almost hysterically laughing—as they collapsed in each other’s arms.
Then Jake grew thoughtful, sat up and said, “Then the tint with the taint really is in the vassal from the castle. It has to be. In him and him alone.”
“What?” she said, stroking his neck with one warm hand and unbuttoning his shirt with the other.
“No, wait,” he said, drawing back again. “Something’s out of whack here. It isn’t right. In fact it’s very wrong!”
“What is?” She fell back against the bed’s headboard.
“I’m talking about those people on the Evening Star,” Jake answered. “What about them? They must have had shots. Yet they became victims, and it doesn’t seem to have affected Malinari or Vavara one little bit!”
“Oh, that!” Liz said. “Well, Ben asked the Minister Responsible the same question. It seems that Porton Down didn’t have the capacity to manufacture sufficient of the antidote for the entire population, so they tendered it out to other manufacturers. And of course it was all done in a big hurry. Also, a decision was taken to only inoculate people who were entering or leaving the country. If you remember, that’s what the Australians did, too, at ports and airports, etcetera.”
“I remember.” Jake nodded. “So?”
“The Evening Star cruise was a package holiday,” Liz went on. “All the passengers had flown out from Heathrow, where they were given their shots, to Limassol where they boarded the ship. But…certain batches of the plague antidote were defective! They were harmless enough to the people who got them, but they just didn’t work. And the Heathrow batch was one of them.”
She had begun to unbutton his shirt again, but Jake wasn’t happy with this as yet. “Okay,” he said, “but the crew of that ship weren’t all Brits.”
“No,” Liz answered, “but Trask speculates that just as you would be turned off by the smell of rotten food, so might vampires be able to detect inedible people. He also said something about pheromones: that Malinari and Vavara would probably feel repulsed by people who weren’t ‘right’ for them.” She had finished unbuttoning his shirt and was shrugging out of her own.
“Pheromones,” said Jake, looking at her ample breasts, her delicious, stiffened brown nipples only inches from his hands, his chest, his mouth. “Well, I don’t know about vampire pheromones, but right now mine are working overtime!”
“Mine, too,” Liz answered. And:
“The blood that’s good still has its blue hue,” Jake said, ready now to believe it. “Moreover, the vassal is locked in my castle.”
“What?” Liz said, turning back the covers.
“Nothing,” he said huskily, ridding himself of his clothes and trying to reach for her all at the same time. And a moment later when they were both naked and she opened her arms to him between the sheets, everything else was forgotten as they came together like human magnets, but warm flesh as opposed to cold steel.
Then, riding that wildest ride, they lusted and loved, and lusted again, deep into the night. There was little or no foreplay and there were very few words, only sounds of endearment. For when bodies and minds join like that, the sensation itself is joyous beyond any such requirements…
Several rooms and many walls away from Liz and Jake, Ben Trask was preparing for bed. As he left the bathroom and entered the bedroom, Millie sat up straight in bed and said, “Ben, there’s something I’d like to tell you—a situation—but first you must promise not to do anything about it.”
He looked at her a little suspiciously, cocked his head on one side and growled, “It’s been a hell of a long day, Millie. Can’t it wait?”
“Yes, but if it waits until tomorrow you’ll be mad at me.”
“No I won’t,” he answered. “Not unless it’s earth-shattering, in which case you’d have told me already. But okay, since you insist, I won’t do anything about it. What is it?”
“Jake’s back,” she said, then bit her lip as Trask came to an abrupt halt beside the bed.
He took a long moment to think about what she’d said, then asked her, “Where, back?”
“He’s here at the HQ, with Liz,” Millie answered. “I mean, you know, he’s with Liz.”
Again Trask thought about it, and slowly got into bed. But in a little while: “Good!” he rasped, making it sound anything but good.
“Really?” Millie seemed delighted, perhaps cautiously skeptical, certainly surprised: a mixture of all these things.
“Yes, really.” Trask put the light out, then folded her in his arms. “Because she needs him in order to…in order to be whole, I suppose. The way I need you. And I need him—we need him—because he’s the Necroscope. So if Liz has got him, I’ve got him. But on the other hand, I still think Harry could have made a better choice. And the same goes for Liz.”
He felt Millie stiffen in his arms. “What?” she said. “But we know Harry’s reason now: unfinished business, Luigi Castellano and his organization, those vampires we knew nothing about who were survivors of Harry’s lost years. Jake and Harry, they shared the same agenda, which made Jake the obvious choice! As for Liz: you can’t blame her for being attracted to Jake. He’s a very attractive man.”
“He’s a bloody obstinate man!” said Trask. “He thinks only of himself, and right from the start he’s been a loose cannon. But now…well, now he’s our cannon.”
Millie snorted and pushed apart from him. “And is that it? Is that how you see it? Just another ace card up your sleeve?” Before he could answer she broke their unspoken rule, searched his mind and saw the truth, which was integral to Trask as his blood and bones. And:
“So that’s it!” she said. “Now that we’re together Liz has taken over my kid sister role. And nobody—not even the Necroscope—is good enough for your kid sister!”
“Huh!” Trask grunted. Then shrugged and said, “Well, maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m being overprotective. But one thing’s for sure: if Liz were really my kid sister, you wouldn’t catch me playing at peeping Tom when she was entertaining a guest in her room!”
Millie crept back into his arms and said, “Me neither, but their shields were down, and they were so very—well, very—that it was almost unavoidable, like psychic fireworks! I mean, it’s an odds-on bet that by now the entire HQ knows Jake’s back and they’re together.”
“Voyeurs, the lot of you!” But still Trask had to chuckle.
“Not really,” she said. “And actually it’s sort of nice.”
“What is?”
“To know we’re not the only ones? Not the only lovers?” She gave a small shrug. “Something like that, anyway. And you know, even though I was only there for a moment—just long enough to detect their togetherness,” (her cool hand automatically sought and found Trask’s quickening pulse, the urgency of his desire), “I know it’s still flowing out of them like…like a river of sweet wine on the psychic aether.”
Trask lay still for a moment, then turned more fully towards her and said, “Me, I can’t feel a thing. Not from them, anyway. But it’s pretty obvious that you can.”
“Yes,” Millie breathed into his neck. “And it’s very infectious.”
Which was something that Trask made no attempt to deny…
Bernie Fletcher’s psychic shielding had always been something of a joke to the rest of his colleagues in E-Branch; Ben Trask wasn’t the only one who occasionally took the mickey, accusing Bernie of “glowing in the dark.” But while it wasn’t as bad as all that, still at close range Fletcher’s aura—the waves he gave off into the psychic aether—would be clearly “visible” to most espers. Just as Fletcher was able to locate other talented individuals, so he could be located.
Which was why Trask had tended to use him as a tracker, in situations where he could keep his distance while pinpointing the target. That was how he’d wo
rked out in Greece and Bulgaria, when he and Lardis Lidesci had been tracking the old Gypsy, Vladi Ferengi: Fletcher had guided Lardis and his minders unerringly to the Gypsy encampment, and then Lardis had gone alone into the camp to talk to the travelling folk. In short, Bernie had always played the part of “radar” or “Asdic” to E-Branch’s far more potent “flak” and “depth-charge” units, the ones who followed up with fire and fury.
On this occasion, however, Fletcher was himself “the man,” a lone field agent whose mission was to get as close as possible to his target, and remain in situ until his backup squad arrived to do whatever was necessary. Not that he was entirely alone; his minders had worked with him before and were specialists in close protection; they knew something of what E-branch was about and had been sworn to secrecy.
Right now one of them, Joe Sparrow (who was anything but a sparrow, a burly six-footer, hard as rocks and with fists like hams), was sitting just inside their hotel room’s door reading a book. And his colleague, Cliff Angel (another misnomer), was out in the town trying to find a place to buy some cigarettes. At this time of night Fletcher suspected he’d be out of luck.
“The town.” Was that what this was, a town? Looking out of the bleary window, Fletcher could think of a couple of hundred places where he would rather be. For Sirpsindigi (how the hell did you pronounce it?), on or close to the borders with Greece and Bulgaria, was just about as drab as it gets. A town? Well, it had roads, buildings, and a main motorway running close by, but as for anything else—forget it! And Turkey itself, from what little Fletcher had actually seen of it—which he had to admit wasn’t too much in the flurry of travel arrangements and bumping along third-class roads in a hired boneshaker and what all—well, at least they’d got that one right. By no means a misnomer!