Krakovitch gave a curt nod. “Well, at least we know the thing burns!” he said. “It was probably dead anyway, but by my books when a thing’s dead it lies still!”
They bumped the cabinet downstairs, two flights to the ground floor, then out through the battle-torn building into the grounds. Krakovitch stood guard on it while Gulharov went back for the Avgas. When he returned, Krakovitch said, “This will be the tricky bit. First we pour some of this stuff around the cabinet. That way, when we open it, if what’s inside is—active—we just jump back out of range and toss a match. Until it’s quiet. And so on …”
Gulharov seemed uncertain, but he was far more alert now.
They poured Avgas on to and around the cabinet, and then Gulharov got well back out of it. Krakovitch slid back the bolt, threw the door clangingly open. Inside, Dragosani stared into the sky. His chest stirred a little, but that was all. As Krakovitch began to pour Avgas carefully into the cabinet near Dragosani’s feet, Gulharov came forward. “Don’t use too much,” it was the Sergeant’s turn to caution. “Or it will go off like a bomb!”
When the fuel swirled almost an inch deep around Dragosani’s prone form, evaporating furiously, the dead man’s chest gave another sudden lurch. Krakovitch stopped pouring, stared, backed off a little. Outside the circle of danger, Gulharov stood with a match ready to strike. A slickly shining, grey-green tendril sprouted upwards from Dragosani’s chest. Its tip formed a knob as big as a fist, which in turn formed an eye. Just seeing that orb, Krakovitch knew there was no thought behind it, no sentience. It was vacant, staring, made no connections and carried no emotions. Krakovitch doubted if it even saw. Certainly there was no longer any brain for it to relay its message to. The eye melted back into protoflesh, was replaced by small jaws which clashed mindlessly. Then it sank down again out of sight.
“Felix, get out of there!” Gulharov was nervous.
Krakovitch backed out of the circle; Gulharov struck a match, tossed it; in a moment the cabinet was an inferno. Like the oblong mouth of a jet engine on test, the cabinet hurled a pale blue sheet of fire roaring into the cold air, a shimmering column of intense heat. And then Dragosani sat up!
Gulharov clutched Krakovitch, clung to him. “Oh God! Oh, mother—he’s alive!” he croaked.
“No,” Krakovitch denied, tearing himself free. “The thing in him is alive, but mindless. It’s all instinct with no brain to govern it. It would flee but doesn’t know how to, or even what it’s fleeing from. If you spear a sea-cucumber it reacts, spills out its guts. No mind, just reaction. Look, look! It’s melting!”
And indeed it seemed that Dragosani was melting. Smoke curled upward from his blackened shell; layers of skin peeled away, bursting into flame; the fats of his body ran like candle wax, and were consumed by the fire. The thing inside him felt the heat, reacted. Dragosani’s trunk shuddered, vibrated, convulsed. His arms shot out straight, then fell to dangle over the sides of the blazing cabinet, where all the while they jerked and twitched. His clothing was completely burned away by now, and as Krakovitch and Gulharov watched and shuddered, so his crisped flesh burst open here and there, putting out frantic, whipping tendrils that melted and slopped down into the furnace.
In a very little while he fell back and was still, and the two men stood in the snow and watched the fire until it burned itself out. It took all of twenty minutes, but they stood there anyway …
3:00 P.M., 27 August 1977.
The big London hotel, within easy walking distance of Whitehall, contained rather more than its exterior might suggest. In fact the entire top floor was given over to a company of “international financial entrepreneurs,” which was the sum total of the hotel manager’s knowledge about it. The company had its own elevator at the rear of the building, private stairs, even its own fire escape. Indeed the company owned the top floor, which was therefore entirely outside the hotel’s sphere of control and operation.
In short, the top floor was the headquarters of the most secret of all British secret services: namely INTESP, the British equivalent of that Russian organization housed just outside Moscow at the Chateau Bronnitsy. But the hotel was only the headquarters; there were also two “factories,” one in Dorset and the other in Norfolk, direct-linked to each other and to the HQ by telephone, radio-telephone and computer. Such links, though top-security screened, were open to sophisticated abuse, of course; a clever hacker might get in one day. Hopefully before that happened the branch would have developed its telepaths to such an extent that all of this technological junk would be unnecessary. Radio waves travel at a mere 186,000 miles per second, but human thought is instantaneous and carries a far more vivid and finished picture.
Such were Alec Kyle’s own thoughts as he sat at his desk and formulated Security Standing Orders for the six Special Branch officers whose sole task in life was the personal security of an infant boy just one month old, a child called Harry Keogh. Harry Jr.—the future head of INTESP.
“Harry,” said Kyle out loud, to no one in particular, “you can have the job right now, if you still want it.”
No, came the answer at once, startlingly clear in Kyle’s mind. Not now, maybe not ever!
Kyle’s mouth fell open and he started upright in his swivel chair. He knew what this was, had known something very much similar at a time some eight months ago. It was telepathy, yes, but it was more than telepathy. It was the “infant” he’d just been thinking about, the child whose mind housed all that was left of the greatest ESP talent in the world: Harry Keogh.
“Christ!” Kyle whispered. And now he knew what it had been about, “it” being the dream or nightmare he’d had last night—when he’d been covered with leeches as big as kittens, whose mouths had fastened on him to drain his blood, while he had leaped and gibbered in a glade of stirless trees, until he’d been too weak to fight any longer. Then he’d fallen on the earth amidst the pine needles, and the leeches had clung to him, and he’d known that he was becoming a leech!
And that, mercifully, had scared him wide awake. As for the dream’s meaning: Kyle had long since given up trying to read meanings into such precognitive glimpses. That was the trouble with them: they were usually cryptic, rarely self-elucidating. But certainly he’d known that the dream was one of those dreams, and now he guessed that this had something to do with it, too.
“Harry?” he breathed the query into the suddenly frigid atmosphere of the room. His breath actually plumed in the air; in the space of mere seconds the temperature had taken a plunge. Just like last time.
Something was forming in the middle of the room, in front of Kyle’s desk. The smoke of his cigarette trembled there and the air seemed to waver. He got up, crossed quickly to the window and adjusted the blinds. The room grew dim, and the figure in front of his desk took on more form.
Kyle’s intercom buzzed urgently and he jumped six inches. He leaped to his desk, hit the receive button, and a breathless voice said, “Alec, there’s something here!” It was Carl Quint, a top-rank psychic sensitive, a “spotter.”
Kyle pressed the send button, held it down. “I know. It’s with me now. But it’s OK, I’ve been half-expecting it.” Now he pressed the command button, spoke to the entire HQ. “Kyle here. I don’t want to talk to anybody for—for as long as it takes. No messages, no incoming calls, and no questions. Listen in if you like, but don’t try to interfere. I’ll get back to you.” He pressed the secure button on his desk computer keyboard, and door and window locks audibly snapped shut. And now he and Harry Keogh were completely alone.
Kyle forced himself to relax, stared at the—ghost?—of Keogh where it confronted him across his desk. And he thought an old thought, one which had never been far away, not since the first day he’d come here to work for INTESP:
Funny bloody outfit. Robots and romantics. Super science and the supernatural. Telemetry and telepathy. Computerized probability patterns and precognition. Gadgets … and ghosts!
No ghost, Alec, Keogh answered wit
h a wan, immaterial smile. I thought we went into all of that last time?
Kyle thought about pinching himself but didn’t brother. He’d gone through all of that last time, too. “Last time?” he spoke out loud, because that was easier for him. “But that was eight months ago, Harry. I had started to think we’d never hear from you again.”
Maybe you wouldn’t have, said the other, his lips moving not at all, for believe me I’ve plenty to keep me occupied. But … something’s come up.
Kyle’s awe was ebbing, his pulse gradually slowing to its norm. He leaned forward in his chair, looked the other up and down. Oh, it was Keogh, all right. But not exactly the same as the last time. Last time Kyle’s first thought had been that the—apparition—was supernatural. Not merely paranormal or ESP-engendered but actually supernatural, extra-mundane, not of this world. Just like now, the office scanners had failed to detect it; it had come and told Kyle a fantastic true story, and gone without leaving a trace. No, not quite, for he’d written down all that had been said. Even thinking about that, his wrist ached. But you couldn’t photograph the thing, couldn’t record its voice, couldn’t harm or interfere with it in any way. The entire HQ was now listening in on Kyle’s conversation with this, this … with Harry Keogh—and yet they’d hear only Kyle’s voice. But Keogh was here: at least the central heating’s thermostat knew it. The heating had just come on, turning itself up several notches to compensate for the sudden drop in temperature. Yes, and Carl Quint knew it, too.
The figure seemed etched in pale blue light: insubstantial as a moonbeam, less than a puff of smoke. Incorporeal, yet there was a power in it. An unbelievable power.
Taking into account the fact that his neon-limned feet weren’t quite touching the floor, Keogh must be about five-ten in height. If his flesh were real instead of luminous filament, he would weigh maybe nine and a half to ten stone. Everything about him was now vaguely fluorescent, as if shining with some faint inner light, so Kyle couldn’t be sure about colouring. His hair, an untidy mop, might be sandy, his face slightly freckled. He would be twenty-one, twenty-two years old.
His eyes were interesting. They looked at Kyle and yet seemed to lock right through him, as if he were the apparition and not the other way about. They were blue, those eyes—a startling, almost colourless blue neon—but more than this, there was that in those eyes which said they knew more than any twenty-two year old had any right to know. The wisdom of ages seemed locked in them, the knowledge of centuries lying just beneath the shimmer of blue haze which covered them.
Apart from that: his features would be fine, like blue porcelain and seemingly equally fragile; his hands slim, tapering; his shoulders drooped a little; his skin in general, apart from the freckles, pale and unblemished. But for those eyes, you probably wouldn’t look twice at him on the street. He was just … a young man. Or had been.
And now? Now he was something more. Harry Keogh’s body had no real, physical existence now, but his mind went on. And his mind was housed in a new—quite literally new—body. Kyle found himself starting to examine that part of the apparition, quickly checked himself. What was there to examine? In any case it could wait, wasn’t important. All that mattered was that Keogh was here, and that he had something important to say.
“Something’s come up?” Kyle repeated the Keogh projection’s statement, made it a question. “What sort of something, Harry?”
Something monstrous! Right now I can give you only the barest outline—I simply don’t know enough about it, not yet. But do you remember what I told you about the Russian E-Branch? And about Dragosani? I know there was no way you could check it all out, but have you looked into it at all? Do you believe what I told you about Dragosani?
While Keogh spoke to him, so Kyle had stared fascinated at that facet of him which was different, that addition to him since the last time he’d seen or sensed him. For now, superimposed over the apparition’s abdomen—suspended in midair and slowly spinning on its own axis, turning in the space that Keogh’s body occupied—there floated a naked male baby, or the ghost of one, just as insubstantial as Keogh himself. The child was curled like a foetus floating in some invisible, churning fluid, like some strange biological exhibit, like a hologram. But it was a real baby, and alive; and Kyle knew that it, too, was Harry Keogh.
“About Dragosani?” Kyle came back to earth. “Yes, I believe you. I have to believe you. I checked out as much as I could and it was all exactly as you said. And as for Borowitz’s branch—whatever you did there, it was devastating! They contacted us a week later, the Russians, and asked us if we wanted you … I mean—”
“My body?”
“—if we wanted it back, yes. They contacted us, you understand. Direct. It didn’t come through diplomatic chan-nels. They weren’t ready to admit that they existed, and didn’t expect us to admit that we existed. Therefore you didn’t exist, but they asked us if we wanted you back anyway. With Borowitz gone they have a new boss, Felix Krakovitch. He said we could have you, if we’d tell them how. How you did what you did to them. What, exactly, you’d done to them. I’m sorry, Harry, but we had to deny you, tell them we didn’t know you. Actually, we didn’t know you! Only I knew you, and Sir Keenan before me. But if we’d admitted you were one of ours, what you’d done might be construed as warfare.”
Actually, it was mayhem! said Keogh. Listen, Alec, this can’t be like the last time we talked. I may not have the time. On the metaphysical plane I have comparative freedom. In the Möbius continuum I’m a free agent. But here in the physical now I’m a virtual prisoner in little Harry. Right now he’s asleep and I can use his subconscious mind as my own. But when he’s awake his mind’s his own, and like a magnet I’m drawn back to it. The stronger he gets—the more his mind learns—the less freedom for me. Eventually I’ll be forced to leave him entirely for an existence along the Möbius way. If I get the chance I’ll explain all of that later, but for now we don’t know how long he’ll sleep and so we have to use our time wisely. And what I have to say can’t wait.
“And it somehow concerns Dragosani?” Kyle frowned. “But Dragosani’s dead. You told me that yourself.”
Keogh’s face—the face of his apparition—was grave now. Do you remember what he was, this Dragosani?
“He was a necromancer,” said Kyle at once, no shadow of doubt in his mind. “Much like you.” He saw his mistake immediately and could have bitten his tongue.
Unlike me! Keogh corrected him. I was, I am, a necroscope, not a necromancer. Dragosani stole the secrets of the dead like … like an insane dentist yanking healthy teeth—without an anaesthetic. Me: I talk to the dead and respect them. And they respect me. But very well, I know that was a slip of the tongue. I know you didn’t mean that. So yes, he was a necromancer. But because of what the old Thing in the ground did to him, he was more than that. He was worse than that.
Of course. Now Kyle remembered. “You mean he was also a vampire.”
Keogh’s shimmering image nodded. That’s exactly what I mean. And that’s why I’m here now. You see, you’re the only one in the world who can do anything about it. You and your branch, and maybe your Russian counterparts. And when you know what I’m talking about, then you’ll have to do something about it.
Such was Keogh’s intensity, such the warning in his mental voice, that gooseflesh crept on Kyle’s spine. “Do something about what, Harry?”
About the rest of them, the apparition answered. You see, Alec, Dragosani and Thibor Ferenczy weren’t the only ones. And God only knows how many more there are!
“Vampires?” Kyle thrilled with horror. He remembered only too well that story Keogh had told him some eight months ago. “You’re sure?”
Oh yes. In the Möbius continuum—looking out through the doors of time past and time to come—I’ve seen their scarlet threads. I wouldn’t have known them, might never have come across them, but they cross young Harry’s blue life thread. Yes, and they cross yours, too!
Hearing
that, it was as if the cold blade of a psychic knife lanced into Kyle’s heart. “Harry,” he said stumblingly, “you’d … you’d better tell me all you know, and then what I must do.”
I’ll tell you as much as I can, and then we’ll try to decide what’s to be done. As to how I know what I’m about to tell you … The apparition shrugged. I’m a necroscope, remember? I’ve talked to Thibor Ferenczy himself, as I once promised him I would, and I’ve talked to one other. A recent victim. More of him later. But mainly the story is Thibor’s …
Chapter Two
THE OLD THING IN THE GROUND TREMBLED HOWEVER MINUTELY. shuddered slightly, strove to return to his immemorial dreaming. Something was intruding, threatening to rouse him up from his dark slumbers, but sleep had become a habit which satisfied his every need … almost.
He clung to his loathsome dreams—of madness and mayhem, the hell of living and the horror of dying, and the pleasures of blood, blood, blood—and felt the cold embrace of the clotted earth closing him in, weighing him down, holding him here in his darkling grave. And yet the earth was familiar and no longer held any terrors for him; the darkness was like that of a shuttered room or deep vault, an impenetrable gloom entirely in keeping; the forbidding nature and location of his mausoleum not only set him apart but kept him protected. He was safe here. Damned forever, certainly—doomed for all time, yes, barring some major miracle of intervention—but safe, too, and there was much to be said for safety.
Safe from the men—mere men, most of them—who had put him here. For in his dreaming the wizened Thing had forgotten that those men were long dead. And their sons, dead. And theirs, and theirs …
The old Thing in the ground had lived for five hundred years, and as long again had lain undead in his unhallowed grave. Above him, in the gloom of a glade beneath stirless, snow-laden trees, the tumbled stones and slabs of his tomb told something of his story, but only the Thing himself knew all of it. His name had been … but no, the Wamphyri have no names as such. His host’s name, then, had been Thibor Ferenczy, and in the beginning Thibor had been a man. But that had been almost a thousand years ago.