Jake was in his black gear, lying on his bed with his hands behind his head when the call came. Jake? We need you now. Also our weapons.
“Liz?” he said, getting to his feet. He had sensed her urgency, knew there was very little time to spare.
Turchin and the Duty Officer had been seated at the foot of the bed talking in lowered tones; now, as they fell silent, the Russian Premier stood up and stepped forward. “Is this it?” His eyes were suddenly wide, apprehensive.
“Yes,” said Jake, grunting as he hoisted ninety-five pounds of deadly weaponry up onto one broad shoulder. “This is it. But it could be a dangerous situation.”
And John Grieve said, “Sir? You’ll find this easy to use, I think. Let’s just hope you don’t need to.”
Turchin looked at him, saw the modified 9 mm Browning automatic that Grieve was holding out to him. He accepted and pocketed it, also three magazines loaded with silver bullets.
And Jake said, “Are you ready? Do you still want to come?”
“Yes—I mean no—I mean, what choice is there?” Turchin shrugged helplessly.
“Then let’s go,” said Jake. “Take my arm and hold on. Close your eyes and take one step forward, and don’t—”
“Ahhhh!” Turchin gasped, a mere susurration that yet gonged in the Möbius Continuum.
—don’t cry out, Jake finished what he’d started to say, a fraction too late. Speech is unnecessary in the Continuum. Just thinking it is sufficient—it conveys all you want to say.
Telepathy? Turchin was quick on the uptake. But as the head of Russia’s E-Branch, so he should be.
Something of the sort, Jake answered. The way I understand it, in a place like this where there’s absolutely nothing without that it’s brought here, even thoughts have weight.
Yet I don’t have weight! said Turchin. My God, I’m in free fall!
Not any longer, said Jake, guiding him out through a Möbius door.
Turchin stumbled but Jake held him upright, and the Premier opened his eyes. The gloom of twilight, following on the bright light of Harry’s Room, found him stumbling again. This time Ben Trask was there to steady him, barking, “Jake, what the hell is going on here? Gustav Turchin? What’s he doing here?”
“It seems I owe him,” Jake answered, putting down the weapons and giving Liz a hug. “And so do you.”
“We…we had a deal,” Turchin gasped. “I’m here to ensure you take care of your end of things.” And then he frowned; some weird trick of the light seemed to be affecting his eyes. Or if not his, theirs certainly. Trask, Millie, and Liz—and especially Jake—their eyes were faintly luminous, almost feral in the dusk. Or it could be an effect of the full moon drifting up from beyond the hills.
“We’ve no time for this,” Trask rasped, turning from Turchin to the Necroscope. “Jake, the Wamphyri—all three of them, we believe—are up in that windmill, probably at the top. Liz and Millie say they’re feeling trapped there, by us. I’m not so sure. I believe it’s a replay of Malinari’s game in Xanadu. But however it turns out we’re here to destroy them, or at least to do our damnedest. Ian Goodly has foreseen something of how it’s going to end, however, and while we can’t say if it’s to be now or later, we do know we’ll all be in on it. So for now, you and me, and Ian and Paul, we’re going in. That way we may manage to avoid being together, and so avoid what the precog has foreseen…I hope! As for what we can expect inside—”
“Those girls are in there, too,” said Millie, staring up at the windmill’s darkly shadowed face. “They’re very scared, very excited, and extremely dangerous! They’re Malinari’s first line of defence. To get to him and those other two creatures, you’ll have to get past the girls first. But we can’t any longer think of them as human, and you’ll be doing them a favour.”
“So, then,” Trask nodded, “that’s it. Lardis, and Gustav—” He paused to glare at the latter, and said, “Damn you—you and your political objectives, your bloody interference!—you can stay down here with Liz and Millie. You’ll watch that door, all four of you. And if anything comes out that isn’t one of us—”
“We’ll know what to do,” Lardis assured him, holding a 9 mm automatic in one hand and hefting his wicked-looking machete in the other. And:
“Right, then,” said Trask, picking up grenades and a specially adapted machine-pistol, “let’s go.”
The others had all chosen weapons, but as the four “assault troops” made for the leaning, ominous-looking doors in the base of the windmill, Premier Turchin called after them, “What about torches? It will be dark in there. Are the laser sights on your guns going to be sufficient?”
Trask hadn’t considered that—hadn’t really needed to—for it didn’t feel dark at all. But speaking almost as one man, Paul Garvey and the precog said, “He’s right,” and Goodly produced a pocket torch. Then the precog said, “Oh, and by the way, it doesn’t work like that.”
“What’s that?” said Trask, leading the way toward the windmill. “What doesn’t work like that?”
“Trying to avoid the future,” said the precog. But he followed on anyway.
And Jake said, “As for it being dark in there, forget it. I have enough light for everyone right here.” Elevating his flamethrower’s nozzle, he applied gentle pressure to the trigger and a brief, hissing lance of fire stabbed upwards into the night.
“Avoid using it,” Trask warned him. “This place looks like so much kindling to me!”
A moment later, and with their weapons’ crimson laser beams crisscrossing, probing the dusty, dusky gloom ahead, they were in through the doors…
Up above, Malinari turned to the hag Vavara—minus her masking guise now—and to Lord Szwart, in a less than human configuration, and said, “It worked—worked even better than I anticipated—and they’re coming up. When the fighting commences just one floor down from here, that’s when we go down…but on the outside! Down below, that’s where they’ve left their weakest.”
“Oh?” Szwart used his broken-bellows voice. “And meanwhile, what of their strongest? I saw that one in what I thought was a cavern stronghold, forgotten by men. He had that devil Nathan’s weapons, and used them to great effect! And this is the man you would take, one of the four who are climbing towards us even as we speak?”
“Take him I will,” said Malinari, “but not here, not now. I have explained how we’ll go about it. Is your memory so short?”
That last was an error. Unwise to speak to one such as Lord Szwart like that, in such abrupt, demeaning terms. And:
“I remember your other plans!” Szwart came flowing from the darkest corner, looming large. “I remember centuries in the Icelands, the devastation waiting in Starside when finally we went back there, the ruination of all our works by Nathan Kiklu, and our flight into this place. What of those plans, Nephran Malinari? If anything, my memory is too keen, I think!”
“We’ve no time for arguing now,” Malinari backed away. “The time of your revenge is at hand, Lord Szwart…but not on me! The one who was largely instrumental in my downfall—who assisted in Vavara’s, and who was wholly responsible for yours, in your cavern stronghold under London—will soon be in our grasp. And I assure you he’ll sacrifice his safety, aye, and even himself, for the woman Liz. She is our target. Only the woman Liz. As for the others…well, we’ve set our trap for them. And it only remains to spring it. The smell of kerosene rises in the air down there, yet we have blocked it from their minds and left them feeling almost invincible…well, with the possible exception of Trask. Myself, I believe they will survive it even as they survived Xanadu, but it should at least work as a smokescreen, allowing us to slip away. Then, when we’re prepared, we shall reveal ourselves one last time, at which this Jake—this Necroscope—will come after us to save his darling Liz. Ahhh!”
At which point Vavara came in with, “And am I really trusting my safety to you two? We are at a fearful height, and I was never the adept where metamorphosis is a requirement.
Only drop me…I could be sorely broken.”
“Oh, we’ll not drop you, sister,” said Malinari, “for we’ll not be carrying you!”
“What!?” She was at once alarmed. “But I understood we’d be flying down from here?”
“Which indeed we shall be,” said Malinari. “Lord Szwart and myself.”
“But—”
“—But speed is of the essence!” Malinari cut her off. “We can’t burden ourselves with you; you must climb down. After all, Vavara, your skills in that department lack nothing whatsoever! You managed those cliffs on Krassos easily enough when you were hurled down in the sea. And as for that hotel in Turkey…why, you were like a lizard creeping up that wall!”
“Bah!” Vavara swept to the window. “The only lizard here is you, Nephran Malinari—and I won’t forget this! But what must be must be. I’ll begin the descent now.”
“No,” said Szwart, blocking the way. “The ones who are waiting below might see you. They have weapons. They could swat you like a fly on a wall.”
“Szwart is right,” said Malinari. “When the fighting starts below, then you can go…Lady!”
“Mentalist bastard!” she hissed, her eyes flaring where she pressed to the gapped boarding of the wall close to the window.
“Oh, be quiet!” Malinari grinned, albeit nervously. “If you must do something, then use those lying powers of yours to lure them on; let them know we’re ‘afraid’; send the acrid stench of our fear into their minds to buoy them up. But whatever you do, don’t whine, Vavara—for it only makes you that much more the great hag.” And:
“Mentalist bastard!” she hissed again, all leather and bone and needle teeth where she crouched at the window, trembling in her rage. But she did as he requested, for that way lay salvation…
Down below, Trask and his forces had swept the ground floor and found nothing but several heaps of mouldy grain, a stack of old and rotting sacks, and some rusted ironwork and frayed belting, relics of the forsaken mill’s machinery. The rickety staircase, however, showed plenty of recent footprints in a thick layer of dust; they pointed upwards, none of them coming down again. And there were at least three higher levels, and sixty or more feet of staircase to go to the windmill’s top floor.
“Smell anything funny?” Trask queried in a low voice, as he began to climb the stairs.
“Just fear,” said the telepath, Paul Garvey. “Maybe Liz and Millie are right and those soulless monsters are panic-stricken up there. Why do you ask? What do you smell?”
“Machinery, engines, oil,” Trask answered. “I’m not sure. I can feel the fear, too…but it seems to be masking something else. Maybe I smell lies. Vavara is good at masking things, and Malinari knows no peer in the art of mentalism.”
“But we do have their measure,” said the Necroscope, midway between Trask and Garvey, with Goodly bringing up the rear. “If they’re up there they have plenty to fear. Szwart knows what to expect from me, and you certainly taught Vavara a lesson or two on Krassos. And anyway, we’re into this now.”
“But it isn’t the Big One,” said Ian Goodly. “This place is dark, yes, but it isn’t the kind of darkness I experienced. No, for that was as deep and as dark as…as a pharaoh’s tomb.”
“Jake,” said Trask quietly, “come up alongside me. We’re up to the next level and I’m not sticking my head up there without someone’s here to back me up.”
Feeling his way very carefully on the creaking treads, Jake stepped up beside the older man and squeezed his flamethrower’s trigger to send a brief jet of fire spurting ahead of them.
“Watch what you’re doing with that!” Trask warned him again as he sniffed the hot reek of Jake’s weapon. “All this dust and spoiled grain could be a problem. Under certain conditions it’s like methane—goes off like a bomb!” And moving on up into the room, he sniffed again, frowned and said, “Maybe that’s what I keep smelling, exhaust fumes from your flamethrower.”
Jake stepped up beside him and made room for Garvey and the precog. Again their laser beams cut through the gloom, sweeping the wooden walls and floor. There was more spilled grain; a few mice leaping from their nests in rotten sacks and scurrying for the safety of mouseholes; thick curtains of cobwebs everywhere. But that was all.
“Ian,” said Trask. “Is there anything?”
“The future’s a blank,” the precog shook his head. “But if I try too hard that’s usually the way of it.”
“Then you’d better quit trying and concentrate on the here and now,” said Trask. “By my reckoning there are two floors to go.”
The interior space had narrowed down due to the windmill’s slightly conical construction. Central shafts in the floor and ceiling—dark square holes, which in the past had housed the belt drive—now stood empty. But as the team continued climbing the stairs, so Goodly swept the room one last time…and saw a thin trickle of dust and yellow grain husks smoking down from the timbered ceiling. Lit up in the light from his torch, the stream sparkled like gold dust as it fell from the central aperture.
“Look!” he whispered. And the others saw what he’d seen.
“Something stirring up there,” said Garvey. And from somewhere up above, the creaking of a floorboard voiced its corroboration.
“Those dancing girls,” said Trask, his voice like a rustle of dead leaves. “Millie said we’d be meeting them first. Well, as the saying goes, it’s dirty work but…let’s do it!”
And without further pause he went headlong up the groaning stairs.
Jake was a split second behind him, both men falling into a crouch where they left the stairs. Garvey and Goodly were right on their heels, standing over them, their laser beams slashing at the gloom, seeking targets but not finding any. Or at least not yet.
The precog swept the place with his torch. He saw festoons of cobwebs…dusty sacking hanging from crossbeams…a pile of junk in a corner…a heap of mouldy grain…the eyes of mice reflecting the light of his torch—
—And then other eyes, feral, flaring eyes, that were too far from the floor, too big, and set too far apart to be mouse eyes! And:
“Ahhhh!” came a gasp, a sigh, a snarl—from above!
Up there, launching themselves from a crossbeam, two half-naked girls came swinging on rusty chains, their mouths gaping open and their long teeth gleaming white and razor sharp!
Paul Garvey caught a thought. It was a red thought, and it steamed:
A human heart, still beating—raw red meat!—strength!—Life!—Bloooood!—The blood is the life!
And Garvey’s reaction was instantaneous and deadly. Swinging his machine-pistol up at arm’s length, he triggered a burst that stopped one of the girls in mid-flight. With a shriek that brought down streamers of dust, she was swatted from her chain, hurled backwards by sleeting, silver-plated steel. But her companion dropped down to the floor and came on at a lope, hissing her hatred and reaching with hands like claws.
Trask and Goodly fired together, twin bursts whose strobing flashes saved them from the worst of it: the sight of the vampire girl’s head exploding like an overripe melon. And away she went, swept back out of sight and toppling into oblivion.
But no respite for the team, for now it was as if the shadows themselves were coming alive, and coming at them from every direction…
Vavara was halfway down the windmill’s flank.
Moving crabwise and so descending diagonally, she turned a corner of the five-sided structure and thus passed from line of sight of the E-Branch group below, who in any case were preoccupied with guarding the door. And in shadows cast by an overly bright moon, she clung to warped, often crumbling fascia boards, cursed the arrogance of the mentalist maggot, Nephran Malinari, and vowed terrible vengeance on him in return for all the many insults and injuries she’d suffered at his hands.
As for her “colleagues”: Szwart and Malinari waited beside the empty windows from which, when the stuttering gunfire from below ceased, they would launch themselves out into
the night. Experts in metamorphosis (and Szwart a past master, whose constant flux required little or no tasking from him), they would assume airfoils, glide out and down, and so descend on the unsuspecting group below. Black against the dark of night—especially Szwart—they would go all unseen until far too late.
So it came to pass. As the mechanical thunder fell silent, and the smell of cordite came drifting up from below:
“Now!” said Szwart, and the two launched outwards.
Their loose clothing ballooned—their skin and very flesh stretched—they formed webs between elongating arms and sides, between their legs, and even between the twelve-inch fingers of lily-pad hands. Like pterodactyl kites, they flew, their shapes streamlined, their webbing belling in a breeze off the distant ocean.
Malinari, the most manlike, was grotesque. But Lord Szwart was a thing born of nightmare. A scalloped blanket, a bat-shape without a bat body, a leaflike life-form with a whipping rudder tail and mantalike paddles in front…he was a thing of dread and darkness!
They swept out upon the air, turned, swept back and down.
And the four on the ground didn’t even see them coming…
It was Lardis who felt the first rush of air, who turned to look up, and was felled as Malinari reversed himself and rammed the Old Lidesci feetfirst. Lardis’s weapons went flying; likewise Gustav Turchin’s as Lardis collided with him. And both men went down, the one winded and feeling the pain of cracked ribs, the other yelping his shock, his terror, as he saw what had attacked them out of the night.
Millie backed off—backed into Liz, who was trying to fix Malinari in the sights of her Baby Browning—but before Millie could bring up her own weapon, Szwart fell on her like a living blanket.
She knew his smell—the greasy, suffocating feel of him—and screamed. But nothing came out, because he had wrapped her entirely, cocooning her in his webbing and cutting off her air. Unable to breathe, Millie struggled frantically, kicked, tried to throw herself down. But Szwart held her there and tightened his grip.