“You’re telling me” (Jake felt his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down) “that the man, ghost, thing, or whatever who gave me my powers—deadspeak and the Möbius Continuum—was the revenant of a vampire?”
“And now perhaps you can understand my concern,” said Trask. “You see, all of Harry’s life was like a tragedy, especially at the end. And the trouble is it didn’t stop with him. Even while he was winning it seemed like everything around him was turning to so much shit. Nathan Kiklu—or perhaps it’s easier to think of him as Nathan Keogh, one of Harry’s sons in Sunside/Starside—finally redeemed him. Which is to say, Nathan put right most of the things that had turned sour for Harry; he squared it for him, with both the living and the dead alike.”
“His sons, yes!” said Jake, with a snap of his fingers. “I remember now: the bits that were missing from those first files I read, the ones that you’d had doctored especially for me. The material that was missing was about Harry’s sons.”
“Because it’s like Liz told you,” Trask answered. “I didn’t want to lose you. Letting you know about Nathan was okay, but I certainly couldn’t tell you about the others.”
“The others?” Jake was frowning again. “Harry’s other sons, you mean?”
Trask nodded. “You see, Jake, even after Harry died on Starside, the curse remained. Both Harry Jr., and Nestor Kiklu, too, Nathan’s twin brother, they both of them—”
“—Were vampires?” Jake knew it was so, and his hollow face turned really pale now.
“They became Wamphyri,” Trask told him. “Maybe it was sheer bad luck, the curse, call it fate or whatever you will. But…” And not knowing what else to say, he shrugged and fell silent.
And in a little while, feeling obliged to pick it up where Trask had left off, Jake said, “But, now there’s Jake Cutter—a Necroscope in his own right, Harry’s heir apparent, with some weird leftover of the original lodged in him, not to mention a nightmarish thing called Korath Mindsthrall—and Jake has got himself involved in killing vampires, too. It all sounds just a little bit familiar, right? So what is it you’re trying to say? What, like history is repeating itself or something?”
“Not this time, Jake,” said Liz, moving closer and reaching out to him. “No way—not if we have anything to say about it. That’s why you’ve got to accept Ben’s help, and in turn give us your assistance with those tests back in London.”
“That’s it,” said Trask. “End of story. Now you know almost everything. And anything you don’t know, just ask and I’ll tell you—right now if you like. Or do you need some time to think about it first?”
Jake thought about it, then took a very deep breath before answering, “Yes, I have a question. How soon are we going back to London…?”
4
The Survivor’s Story
AFTER CHECKING THAT THE EVENING STAR’S LONE survivor was sleeping comfortably and apparently well—at least physically if not yet psychologically—Trask and his team used the extra time to get their own heads down.
While the journey out from London to HMS Invincible hadn’t taken very long, still it had been fairly intense: a whirlwind rush from one point of departure to the next.
First they’d been airlifted by helicopter from the roof of the hotel that housed E-Branch HQ and flown to Gatwick Airport. Then a private jet—courtesy of the Ministry of Defence—had flown them to Kavála, a military airport on the Greek mainland just a few miles north of the Aegean coast. And finally a jet-copter from HMS Invincible had sped them to the aircraft carrier herself.
Thus the droning sound of engines was still in their ears (now reinforced by the short haul out to the cruise ship), and similarly a dizzy and debilitating kaleidoscope of scenery and tilting ocean views all fusing into one in their memories. The overall result was a feeling of exhaustion, and the dull, near-distant heartbeat of Invisible’s engines at standby that came throbbing through the bulkheads was a lullaby by comparison…
Trask was roused at 16:30 hours and handed a communication from the Minister Responsible. Relayed through Admiralty channels and encrypted by them, the message had been unscrambled in Invincible’s radio room, so that Trask was able to read:
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY:
(And: Hah! Trask thought, before continuing.)
Mr. Trask.
Lifeboat serial number MS 02/000000 has been discovered by fishermen, scuttled in shallow waters off Rodosto in the Sea of Marmara.
It would appear that after leaving Greek waters, she passed through the Dardanelles at night without lights, was stopped by a patrol boat which she somehow managed to set on fire and sink leaving no survivors, and from then on played a cat-and-mouse game with various Turkish patrol vessels until they lost her in a sea fret off Gallipoli.
Understandably, the Turkish authorities are somewhat miffed—especially in the light of the current heightened tension between Greece and Turkey—so you can’t expect any help from them. Therefore any enquiries concerning the boat, or the ones who commandeered her, will have to be of a covert nature.
Suggestion: collect the PD sample ASAP, return to base, then fly to Istanbul using the same routine you employed in Krassos: i.e., go in as tourists. There are no restrictions on British tourists in Turkey at this time. I’ll arrange your flight for you. After that…I assume your next port of call will be Rodosto.
Anything you need in advance, let me know and I’ll have it waiting for you at your HO…
MIN. RES.
Trask read the message again, and scribbled underneath it: “Speak to my people. Have Bernie Fletcher and a pair of minders go out there NOW, tonight, as our advance party. Make sure they have lots of Turkish liras.” Then he returned it for onward transmission to the CPO who had delivered it…
The survivor was awake but groggy, shivering, and still very frightened. The medics had cleaned him up, draped him in warm blankets, were pouring coffee into him when Trask and Co. went in to see him in the stateroom.
“Coffee?” Trask asked in an aside to one of the medics.
“Because he asked for it,” the other shrugged.
“And has he asked for anything else, or said anything?”
“Nothing as yet.”
“Then you can leave him with us.” Trask dismissed them and closed the door after them.
Lardis had been with the survivor all along, but still he looked fresh as a daisy. “Why don’t you try to get some sleep?” Trask asked him, taking him to one side.
“Don’t need it,” came the gruff reply. “Sunside days are long ones. I’m used to long hours. But when I do sleep, then I really do sleep, because Sunside nights are long ones, too! Anyway, I wanted to stay with him. I feel a kind of kinship.”
“Oh?”
“Aye,” Lardis nodded. “This one, unless I’m much mistaken, is from your so-called old country, Romania. Szgany, too, by his looks. Besides, he seems taken with me. If anyone is going to be able to talk to him, it’ll probably be me. So seeing him frightened out of his wits, I decided to be close to hand when he woke up. I’ve seen people like him before on Sunside, after the Wamphyri raided. They usually needed gentling along for a while, and so might he.”
“So can we talk to him at all now?”
“Let’s find out,” said Lardis.
The pair approached the survivor where he sat in his blankets, and the other E-Branch people made way for them. “Do you remember me?” Lardis asked him. “I was there when they got you off that floating town.”
The other nodded. “I called you father,” he answered. “But I didn’t mean my father. When I was a boy we always called the clan elder father.”
While he spoke, Trask looked him over. From what could be seen of him under the blankets he was lanky and even bony. His high forehead and penetrating dark eyes signalled his intelligence, but those same eyes also gave him away; along with his wolfish looks, raven-black hair, and light brown, large-pored skin, they more than hinted at his origins.
“You’re
from Romania, right?” said Lardis, but it was more a statement than a question. “A Gypsy, perhaps?”
“Was,” said the other. “But when I was young my mother got married to a Greek, from Rhodes. So I was brought up on Rhodes in the village of Lindos. We eventually moved to Cyprus, and I got work as a deckhand on the cruise ships.”
At which point Trask came in with, “May I speak to you?”
The other looked uneasy but shrugged his acquiescence. “If you like.”
“You speak good English,” said Trask.
“From school, the tourists, and…and the ships.” He gave a small shudder. “I also speak Greek and Romanian. I even remember a little of the old secret tongue, Szgany.”
“My name is Trask,” Trask told him. “And my friend here is called Lardis. Lardis knows the myths of the old country, some of which aren’t myths at all. I believe you know them, too. We think that’s probably why you’re still alive.”
The survivor’s shudders were coming faster now; his entire body was beginning to shake under the blankets. Lardis touched Trask’s shoulder, indicating that he wanted to take over. With a nod of his head, Trask agreed. And:
“Forget about all that for now and tell me your name,” the Old Lidesci said. “For as you can see, you’re with friends now and you’re safe.”
“No one is safe!” the other gabbled. “You didn’t see—you didn’t hear—you didn’t smell it! But the whole ship smelled of it! I saw, heard, smelled it. And I knew…right from the time we took them on board. I knew, but I didn’t speak. I…” He paused, began to blink rapidly and uncontrollably, and gave a start when Lardis placed a gnarled hand on his shoulder. But then he calmed down and was able to continue. “As for my name: it’s Nicolae Rusu. I go by my real father’s name. His blood is my blessing.”
“It most certainly has been!” said Lardis. “For without it you’d never have known, and you wouldn’t be here talking to us now! And I understand why you told no one: they wouldn’t have believed, and you weren’t quite ready to believe yourself. Now listen carefully, Nicolae Rusu. These people here with me are experts in such matters. They know and understand such things. That ship, the Evening Star, is a ship of death! You know what happened, and we’ve come here to take our revenge. But we have to know the whole story, else we won’t know what we’re up against. You are the only witness.”
“But I don’t want to remember!” The survivor was shivering again. “I was…I was trying to forget when you rescued me.”
“I know,” said Lardis. “I understand. But tell me now—do you want it to happen again, to others? For you can be sure it will, Nicolae, if we don’t stop it.”
“Call me…call me Nick,” said the other. And in another feverish burst, “You can’t stop it! You can’t stop them! I saw them, and no one can stop them!”
“Easy, easy!” said Lardis. And in a moment: “Can you give them a name, perhaps? Do you know what we call them?”
The survivor’s eyes went this way and that. “Do you really believe?” he said. “Or is it that you think I’m crazy?”
“You were crazy with fear,” Lardis answered. “For a little while, at least. But you’re safe now and sane. Yes, we believe. And more than that, we do what I said we do. We hunt such creatures to destroy them.”
“Wampir!” said the other then, but so low they could barely hear him. “Or obour! The terror by night! The thing that drinks blood! Vampires…but no one ever dreamed of such vampires as these!”
And: “Wamphyri!” said Lardis. “Aye, we know. So then, will you tell us your story, Nick? How you survived your ordeal and what…what happened to the others?”
“Yes,” Nicolae Rusu nodded. “Yes, if only to get it out of my system. And then I want to go away from here, and away from cruise ships. Back to Cyprus or Rhodes, or maybe farther still. Far, far away…”
“I was doing some cleaning-up on the cabaret deck near the prow when Purser Galliard called down to me to meet him starboard on B deck. But in fact I met him in the lift on the way down. He had got hold of three stewards and a loud-hailer and seemed very excited. By the time we got down onto B deck—that’s inside the ship, you understand, not quite the basement but just above the Plimsoll line—the Star was just about dead in the water. And that was when they opened the for’ard gang: a large, watertight hatch for low-level loading. It forms steps when you let it down, allowing access from the docks or in this case permitting a rescue.
“The becalmed boat—just a boat, which should never have been out there in mid-ocean—was a thirteen-foot Greek caïque with a wide black canopy. There were two…people aboard her. When I saw the man—at first glance, just looking at him as he stepped from the caïque to the gangway—I took fright. He was tall and dark; he could even have been one of my people…but something told me he wasn’t. It was like…as if my blood was running cold inside me, and I knew right there and then that we were in trouble. But what could I do or say? ‘We can’t let this man come aboard’? Ridiculous! Of course they would have thought I was mad! I myself believed that I must be out of sorts, ill, feverish, or something. I felt sick, and so very, very scared. And that was even before I saw how his hand shimmered, seeming to smoke when the sunlight fell on it!
“But after that, why, I could even feel the evil! It was as if every atom of my body knew that this was wrong, that he was wrong…and then I saw her, that she-creature!
“I can’t remember exactly how it was. My mind was whirling. But her terrible companion helped her, and Purser Galliard lifted her up, and they were aboard. She was wrapped like a mummy, all covered against the sun, yet still I saw that she was beautiful…and knew that she wasn’t! It must have been my Szgany blood—something out of the dark past—like a strange memory of times I’ve never known. But it was as if I could see through her tatters to the Thing beneath them. And she was ancient, and ugly, and terrifying!
“Perhaps I looked sick? I can’t remember. In any case, once they were aboard Purser Galliard released me, told me to return to whatever I had been doing. But in fact I hurried in search of a place to be ill. Sick to my stomach, I threw up! And it had all been so weird, so inexplicable, that I still thought I was actually ill, that something I’d eaten hadn’t agreed with me, when all it was—all it really was—was sheer terror! But of what?
“Anyway, after my head stopped spinning I knew I must speak to someone. I didn’t know what I would say, but I must at least try to explain it to someone. Maybe to the Captain, to Captain Geoff Anderson, who was an understanding man. I knew I couldn’t talk of it to the other deckhands, who would only laugh at me, or to the stewards, who would probably just brush it aside, but the Captain himself…well, he was understanding and patient. He’d know what to do, what to say to me and how to reassure me. And if there was something wrong with me, he’d know what to do about that, too.
“I went to the bridge…oh God, I would have gone to the bridge…I almost went to the bridge. But…it had already b-b-begun.
“No, no, just wait a minute, give me a chance, and it will pass. It will be okay…
“There…
“So then, I went up onto the bridge deck. The place seemed very quiet, but we’d had a big night and the people weren’t up yet. It was still fairly early in the morning, and—and God, God—I’m avoiding it, and I can’t help it!
“Okay, I’m okay, I can do this…
“In the crew-only area, the gangway that leads to the door to the bridge, Purser Galliard and two of the stewards were on the floor in pools of their own blood. The purser’s face was a nightmare I’ll see as long as I live. His eyes were hanging on his cheeks—hanging loose there on threads of gristle—and their sockets were black and streaming blood. Galliard’s ears, too: with curtains of blood and brain fluid dripping down onto his shoulders. He was twitching—twitching his last, I would guess—but as for the stewards:
“Well, despite that they were obviously dead—I mean, no one who looks as bad, as pale, as drained
as that can possibly be alive—still they were moving, jerking and moaning, their arms and legs twitching as if they were asleep and nightmaring!
“Nightmaring, yes—well, I certainly was! But I was awake, yet I hoped and prayed I wasn’t…and the door to the bridge had been shattered…and there was blood on the glass, blood everywhere…and…and I could hear sounds, cries, screams—sounds of violence, destruction—from the bridge.
“And I knew then that I wasn’t ever going to speak to Captain Anderson, or to anyone on that bridge.
“I got out of there. I ran—oh, I admit it—ran aimlessly, out through a hatch and onto the outer deck. Down below, people were running about, shouting about an accident. But I saw blood on the rail and knew that it hadn’t been an accident. Somewhere along the way I bumped into two stewards and tried to tell them what had happened…trouble on the bridge…Purser Galliard was dead…also two or possibly three stewards…and creatures were aboard and ravening. But they only heard half of what I said before they went running off to see what was going on. I called after them to get guns, arm themselves, but they weren’t listening. Instead they told me to go with them!
“I pretended to follow them, but as soon as they turned out of sight I was gone in the other direction.
“Later, I found myself in my bunk, locked in. But you know, the doors are so flimsy! I couldn’t stay there…and every so often I thought I could hear screaming…
“I had told the stewards to get guns. Now I thought maybe I should arm myself. I knew that there was a small-arms locker in the purser’s cabin on the main deck. I didn’t have the key—he would have that, poor Purser Galliard, or Purser Bill as we had used to call him—and I couldn’t go back for it. Anyway, this was hardly the time to be worrying about keys. A fire axe would do just as well.
“My bunk was on B deck down in the guts of the ship. So I had to go up two decks to get to the main deck and the purser’s cabin. It seemed to me that the safest, easiest, quickest route would be by lift. The Star is a huge ship; it was unlikely that I would…that I would come up against anything unpleasant on the way. I mean, out of all the passengers and crew on that big ship, there were only two of…of them.