And yet … perhaps there was still a chance, albeit a slim one. For B.J. Mirlu was a beguiler second only to Radu himself: a hypnotist with her eyes and mind, and a seducer with her body. If she had followed Radu’s good advice—which he knew she had—then by now this Harry was far more her thrall than any mere bite might ever decree! And if he knew she was here, surely he would want to know what was become of her?
… For which reason Radu would cling to life to the bitter end, in the hope that his Man-With-Two-Faces would yet put in a late appearance. And meanwhile, there was this Ferenczy scum to deal with, who might yet deal with him! For Radu had “seen” in the Ferenczy’s mind the devastation he held in his eager hands: a technology lost on the dog-Lord, which he scorned as much as he misunderstood it. He, too, could have control of just such a weapon, yet he had taken Guy Tanziano’s machine-pistol and broken it in pieces against a granite wall! And all that remained to him now were the wiles of a wolf, with which to combat this ancient enemy. Which was why he had doubled back to the lair’s main cavern, in the hope of eluding him.
But just as surely as Radu’s mistress moon blazed high in the night sky, his immemorial enemy was returning for him even now. And Radu knew it …
The dog-Lord was right. Alerted by a shuddering underfoot and in the walls, and an uproar of inexplicable sounds from behind him, the Francezci had abandoned the trail and returned to the main cavern in time to witness the wrecked helicopter’s plunge. Then, working out what had happened had scarcely taxed his intelligence, and while he waited for the rockfall to subside and the dust to settle, he roundly cursed the coward Manoza—for whatever good that would do him. What good to curse the dead, who were beyond it? Oh, but if only he had the little fat bastard here, now!
Instead … he had someone else here! For in the cavern’s smoky light Francesco had seen a slim male figure climbing the jumbled rock pile to Radu’s great coffin. Just who it might be … he couldn’t say, wouldn’t hazard a guess, though certainly he seemed familiar. But then again, what odds? If he was here, he was an enemy, and all of Francesco’s passions were incensed to murder.
So he went from shadow to shadow—flowing in the manner of the Wamphyri, soundlessly, across the rubble-strewn floor—in the direction of the dais and its massive sarcophagus. While at the coffin itself:
Harry remembered his dream. In it, no less than in Radu’s, he and the dog-Lord had come face to face—which was the part that had been the nightmare. So that now, in real life, he was taking no chances. With the crossbow at arm’s length, he gradually raised himself up to look in at an angle on the contents of the coffin. And he saw what Francesco had seen. But no sign of Radu—
—Until claws like the tines of a garden fork, set in a paw eight inches across, sank into his clothing—but not into his skin, for the dog-Lord wasn’t about to pass on his ancient disease to his future-self and so perpetuate it—at the shoulder, turning him about! Radu had emerged from behind his sarcophagus and was crouching on the uneven tangle of granite slabs at the head of the coffin like some grotesque gargoyle. Inches from the Necroscope’s astonished face, a pair of great triangular yellow eyes with crimson cores bored searchingly into his own, and Radu’s breath was as hot and rank as molten copper in a forge. And:
“Ahhhh! The Mysterious One,” that vast mouth cracked open in wonder, in something of disbelief, and finally in a twisted, drooling smile. “My Mysterious One …”
Harry couldn’t get the crossbow between them. Crushed to the side of the sarcophagus, he tried, was rewarded by a glancing buffet from the monster’s free paw that nearly broke his wrist and sent the crossbow flying free. Then … Harry knew he was a dead man. Held like a child in Radu’s grip, he could conjure a Möbius door but couldn’t move to step through it. He knew he was dead, but the dog-Lord only knew he was alive! And his eyes continued to hold him.
To hold him, yes, with a grip as powerful as his great paw. Harry felt himself held, felt his muscles relax, his breathing slow from its hoarse panting. And finally he felt Radu’s mind, groping to be inside his!
Dr. James Anderson’s post-hypnotic restraints had been lifted; to such a telepathic power as Radu, Harry’s very soul was laid bare. Radu saw and absorbed all, almost in as little time as it takes to tell:
Necroscope …
He talks to the dead, and can call them from their graves!
He moves in the spaces between the spaces—goes from place to place as quick as thought!
He is a man of the modern world, and understands all of its technology, its scientific wonders. Yet not one of its wonders, or all of them together, can explain or understand him!
He knows about the Wamphyri … has even removed, destroyed members of our species, Drakuls and Ferenczys!
He knows the locations of all my enemies out of time, their power-bases, their seats in this modern world!
He is my Mysterious One!!!
But mysterious no longer …
And: “Now, Necroscope, now,” Radu growled, a low rumble in his great throat, as his eyes grew large as lanterns in Harry’s trapped perspective. “Tell me: is there room in that marvellous mind of yours for both of us? Well, for however brief a time?”
“Radu!” The shout snapped like the crack of a whip in the great cavern, snatching the dog-Lord upright from his gargoyle crouch—all seven feet of him—and jerking him to face the one who shouted. But his great paw remained fastened on Harry’s shoulder, and the Necroscope could only hang there, like a rabbit snapped up by a hunter, dazed in Radu’s grasp; dazed mainly by his telepathic encounter, which had had the effect of draining him.
And at the foot of the dais Francesco Francezci—or more properly, the Ferenczy—aimed his machine-pistol and grinned as he squeezed the trigger. Radu read the other’s mind, whined:
“Ah! No! Not now! Nooooo!” But the bullets paid no attention whatever.
The staccato coughing and spanging of that stream of lead and silver would have been an obscenity in itself, without the amplifying, echoing qualities of the labyrinth; but the liquid spattering that accompanied it was far worse, for it signified hits on Radu’s flesh. Not that Harry felt any sympathy for the dog-Lord, but the huge, hairy, twitching, shuddering body that gave him cover had only so much resistance, and any one of the bullets might find its way right through!
Radu was hit a dozen or more times as the Ferenczy hosed him down, waving his clamouring weapon to and fro in a criss-cross over his half-human target. Harry saw bright splashes of red against the side of the sarcophagus, and gobs of red sent flying during the frantic seconds of the machine-pistol’s mad chattering, and he wondered if in fact he, too, had been hit. But then it was over and the dog-Lord’s weight—Radu’s dead weight—came down on him. Trapped as the werewolf was thrown back against him, jammed down into the ragged jaws of a broken slab, between Radu’s quivering, slumping frame and the side of the sarcophagus, Harry was still trying to recover his orientation following Radu’s invasion and near-occupation of his mind. Indeed the roots of that contact were still there and the pain he imagined he felt was the dog-Lord’s death agony, but it was ebbing very quickly now.
And realizing he was still alive and apparently unharmed, the Necroscope began struggling to free himself, all the time aware that a scarlet-eyed vampire Lord was climbing the rocky jumble towards him.
Francesco, however, was taking his time. For Radu was Wamphyri, too, and there might yet be a few surprises … as there doubtless would be, when he set fire to his body! But no great ruckus as yet, so maybe he’d got Radu’s leech, too, crippled by a silver bullet. Or perhaps he’d been right to suspect that the dog-Lord was on his last legs, and his vampire leech with him. Hah! But after six hundred years in a bath of resin, wasn’t it only to be expected?
Thus Francesco rationalized, as he climbed warily towards Harry and the monster pinning him. But in the Necroscope’s metaphysical mind:
Dead! (Radu couldn’t believe it.) Murdered by a Ferenczy!
Killed, Harry corrected him silently. Executed. Not murdered, but put down—like a mad dog.
So close, Radu whined. So very close. We could have been great together, Necroscope.
No, Harry answered, it doesn’t work that way. No partnerships, not with your sort. And well you know it!
But in death the old wolfs mind was as agile as in life, and he saw a way to prolong his existence even now. Obscuring his true thoughts, he said: You are eager to insinuate, quick to accuse, Necroscope. But did you ever see me do wrong? What evil act, pray, have I performed against you—how have I mistreated you—that you should so misjudge me? No, don’t tell me what you think I have done, but what you know I have done, which you have seen with your own eyes.
How to answer him? Harry had forced himself half-way out from beneath the dog-Lord’s body, but the pouches on his belt were caught up on sharp edges of rock. “I only know what B.J. Mirlu told me,” he finally gasped out loud. “But I also know that she … that she’s a liar just like the rest of you! All of your ‘glorious’ bloody history: a handful of truths, a few half-truths, but mainly damned lies!”
“What?” Francesco Francezci, his head and shoulders level with the dais’s platform now, looked to see who the Necroscope was talking to. Harry’s top half was sticking out from beneath the dog-Lord’s carcass, and he made the mistake of looking directly at Francesco—who could no longer doubt the evidence of his own excellent eyesight.
Before, the Ferenczy hadn’t even considered the possibility. But now:
“What the … ?” he said. And, “How … ?” For the man trapped under Radu’s riddled body was the same one he’d had thrown out of the helicopter! For a moment it stopped him dead in his tracks.
The dog-Lord read the fact of it right out of the Necroscope’s mind, also the absolute certainty that Francesco wouldn’t miss this second opportunity to kill Harry. And: What? he growled. Do you give in that easily? But you can stop him even now, and permanently. Or … we can?
“The dead come up of their own accord,” Harry told him. “I suppose I’m the focus, but their love is the true catalyst.”
“What?” Francesco said again, frowning as he climbed on up to the dais. “Are you a madman? Not that it matters, for you’re certainly a dead one! But first I want to know how you did it.”
Love? Radu growled. Human love? Hah! But that is something I left behind along with my “humanity.”Hate I understand, and greed, and lust. Maybe I can use them instead? No? I thought not. So now it is up to you. If you would live, call me up … or don’t you ever want to see B.J. again? With which he played his one trump card.
Harry dragged the upper half of his body to one side, out of Francesco’s immediate line of fire, clawed his way just two or three inches to the edge of a tilted slab, and glanced over between his clutching fingers. And the Ferenczy rose up to face him, grinning from ear to ear, and pointing the ugly muzzle of his weapon directly into Harry’s face.
“On the other hand,” Francesco grunted, “don’t bother telling me how, for it no longer matters. Maybe there were two of you, eh? Twins? Well—since my father has assured me you talk to dead men—give your twin my regards when next you see him, OK?” And:
“Radu,” said Harry. “I … I think I may need you!” Which seemed to be quite enough. The dog-Lord’s weight lifted off him and he at once rolled to one side, through a Möbius door—but not before he saw a massive, monstrous paw reach out in a dark blur of motion to swat Francesco’s weapon aside.
Then, materializing a third of the way across the floor of the great cavern, the Necroscope breathed his relief and looked back on what he’d left behind. He saw, and heard it all … and then for a while wished that he hadn’t:
The Ferenczy’s sobbing at first, then his pleading as Radu dragged him writhing and kicking up the last of the stone steps to his sarcophagus, finally his shrieking, and the sharp snap! of his arms as Radu broke them across his knee one after the other at the elbows. Upended, Francesco’s cries were reduced to guttural gulps and gurgles as the great wolf plunged him headlong into the warm resin that remained in his coffin, only to drag him out again. And:
“But—you’re dead!” A final explosion of disbelief from the doomed Francesco, his words coughed out in resin slops and yellow bubbles from gapingjaws. “You’re only a f-fucking dead thing!”
Radu picked him up by the broken arms, whip-lashed him in an arc over his head and down onto the stone steps, and growlingly, joyfully answered: “Apparently—but not nearly as dead as you are about to be!” And planting his feet on Francesco’s shoulders—catching him under the chin and at the back of his skull, with several expert twists and turns of his hugely corded arms, and straightening his back in one smooth movement—he very quickly pulled his head off!
The pulpy sound as living flesh was literally torn apart would have been sickening in itself, but the sight of it was worse. The Necroscope had seen many horrific things in his time, but this ranked among the worst of them. That incredible elongation of Francesco’s neck, until his metamorphic flesh could take no more of it and came apart. And the upper part of his backbone, dragged out in a red spray like the spine of a gutted fish—
—Except fish don’t have leprous, corrugated, living flesh twined about their spines! Francesco’s leech—which Radu tore free with a howl of delight, and dangled into the red cave of his throat. It was gone in two bites, two massive swallows. And only then the real commotion!
One smoky torch still flared and sputtered at the base of the coffin. In a bound the dog-Lord leaped free of the lashing nest of grey and purple tentacles sprouting from the Ferenczy’s shattered, erupting body, tossed his head up into the sarcophagus, and followed it with the torch.
Twirling end over end, the torch flared up with the rush of air, and came down on the warm resin. And blue fire lit the cavern as the semi-liquid surface was patterned with whooshing streamers of flame like some fine, fiery Greek brandy. Following the trail of resin that spattered the rim, the fire leaped to Francesco’s soaked, broken body. And mindless vampire protoplasm with neither the will nor the intelligence to escape the flames began to roast.
It went on for quite some time …
… Until the dog-Lord came loping in Harry’s direction, calling: “Necroscope, a proposal.”
“I don’t think so,” Harry backed off, hastily conjured a door. “It’s time you rested from all this, Radu. For that one was right, you are a dead thing.”
“Wait!” The other skidded to a halt some thirty feet away. “I’ve rested long enough! And what about Bonnie Jean? Don’t do it, Harry—not if you would see her again.”
Harry hesitated; he more than hesitated; for the fact was that he didn’t know if he could put Radu down again! When members of the teeming dead came up it was out of love or fear for him, as he had stated. And when they went back down it was because they were no longer needed. But Radu wasn’t here out of love or fear but hatred, and the Necroscope wasn’t sure he had any control over that. His shields were up again, however, and Radu read nothing of his uncertainty.
The dog-Lord took a loping, tentative step closer, prompting Harry to warn him: “Stay right there, Radu!” And, because he didn’t know what else to do: “So, what do you propose?”
“Help me and I’ll help you,” Radu barked. “Refuse me, and B.J. rots in hell forever!”
Harry avoided his eyes. “Help you? But you’re beyond help. You’re dead.”
“Would you destroy an entire species?”
“Yes.” (Without hesitation.)
“And B.J., too?”
“Is she Wamphyri?”
“A fledgling Lady, yes—but only a fledgling! I can stop it. She can be wholly human again. What is in her can be taken out of her.”
“I’ve heard such lies from the like of you before,” Harry answered, even as he felt his heart leap within him.
“No,” the dog-Lord laughed, coughed, barked, “not so. For there never has be
en the like of me before. And I promise you, I can give the woman back to you clean of this contagion.”
“You see it as a contagion?”
“Perhaps—upon a time—oh, a very long time ago. But no longer. Now I see it as life. You see it as a contagion. Don’t bandy terms. Will you hear my proposal?”
“Where is B.J.? Is she safe?”
But Radu knew that the Necroscope was hooked. He laid back his head and howled to set the cavern echoing, then fell to all fours and pointed his terrible muzzle in Harry’s direction. And his lantern eyes blazed as he said, “For the last time. Hear me out or put me down—and kill that bitch Bonnie Jean, too, all in one fell stroke! What’s it to be? One more bound will force your hand, Necroscope. No more arguing then, for it will all be over. For me, at least—and for B.J.” His muscles seemed bunched to spring.
“Very well,” Harry licked his dry lips, nodded his agreement. “Let’s hear it.”
Radu relaxed a little, sat back on his haunches and growled, “In one way at least, our aims are much of a sort. For the last six centuries I have dreamed a dream whose source lies two thousand years ago in Olden Starside in another world. But now, in this world, there is only one way my dream can come true.”
Without more ado, he told Harry what he wanted.
And he was right: their aims were much of a sort, for the Necroscope wanted it, too …
IV
DEAD RECKONINGS
LIKE SOME STRANGE GAUNT BIRD OF PREY, HUNCH-SHOULDERED AND SUNKEN-eyed, the once-handsome Anthony Francezci stood alone—for the first time truly alone—beside the pit under Le Manse Madonie.
The current was off, and the wire-mesh cover stood open on its hinges; the heavy chain hung stationary on its pulleys, its load delivered into the unknown; the sounds of furious seething—sounds like hard acid biting into bone—had died down and faded to nothing.