But there had been no sounds of rending, no screaming from the crone Katerin—or at best, only a brief period of gasping, an “Ah! Ah! A-ahhh!” sound, almost of pleasure, then silence—and, strangest of all, no cries of outrage from the Old Ferenczy, Angelo himself, the nightmarish inhabitant of the pit. Then again, there had been nothing from him for quite some time now.
Which was why Anthony had come down here: because something less than an hour ago, at eight-thirty, he had received some sort of communication, a message, from his twin brother. Or not a message as such, but … knowledge? Pain, momentary; there had been a brief aching in his arms, his back, his neck. A burning in his blood, and since then nothing. Except a dawning awareness that it was dark out there, and darker still in his mind. An awareness that indeed he was quite alone. Except for Angelo.
For Francesco was dead.
And so Anthony had brought Katerin down here as an offering to his father, in the hope of soliciting a corroboration or explanation of his suspicion. For of course the mutant thing in the pit would know. Old Katerin, yes—but he hadn’t told Angelo what he had for him, only that she was “a tidbit.” Hah!
The pit had been silent, just as silent as it was now, so that no amount of cajoling, threatening, or bribing could solicit an answer, and in the end Anthony had given in and lowered a mildly-anaesthetized Katerin down the throat of the pit. The pain would bring her out of it, of course, and that was important. For not only did Anthony want his father to know what he was getting, but Katerin to know who was getting her! And when she was down, he had waited for her screaming, and for the Old Ferenczy’s cursing.
But no, there had been only the unknown creeping (and the creeping of his flesh), and the seething, and at the end Katerin’s “Ah! Ah! A-ahhh!” cry or sigh, in response to what? Some weird sexual pleasure, or perhaps exquisite pain?
And now this unbearable silence …
… Of which, Anthony had had quite enough. And:
“Fuck you, Angelo!” he cried out, beating on the old well wall with his fist. “Are you beyond all this? Is that what you have become, what I shall become: a pile of slop in a stinking pit, not knowing the difference between a juicy young girl and a smelly old hag? Very well, then rot down there, if you will. But whether Francesco is dead or not, I live on!”
HE IS DEAD, came the gale in Anthony’s mind, so sudden it drove him back from the rim. HE IS DEAD, AND I … PREPARE!
Anthony came forward again, stabbed at the button to work the hoist, to bring it up. Then, as the motor throbbed and the gears engaged, and the chain quivered as it wound on its pulleys, he said, “Prepare? Oh really?” His voice dripped its sarcasm. “And do you have something to prepare for, father? Death, maybe, the true death, when I plug this stinking hole?”
Life, said the other, the volume of his telepathic sending more nearly bearable now. Lives! And death, yes. But Anthony, ah, my Tony. Haven’t you learned anything? Don’t you know that there is life in death? Especially for such as you and I? Rot down here? But I’ve been doing that for long and long, and I tell you that life may spring even from corruption.
“Life in death? Undeath, you mean?” But Anthony was feeling very uncertain now; his father’s tone was so doom-fraught, so mournful.
Undeath is one thing, the pit-dweller said. But there are others. I prepare for one of the others. While you … you have your own problems.
The platform was coming up into view—but old Katerin was still on it! “What?” Anthony’s eyes bugged.
Several problems, his father went on. For one, he is coming, as he came once before. Only this time he isn’t coming to steal from you. And he isn’t coming alone …
“What?” Anthony said again, bringing the hoist to a jerky halt, and, in his confusion, switching on the electric current. The chain swung against the open cover, made contact—
—Sparks skittered down the chain. And ten feet down the shaft, on the dangling platform, old Katerin’s body swelled up like a grotesque balloon—and burst. Burst open, revealing a part of Angelo! The old bastard would have tried to escape. Or something of him at least. But escaped to where, to whom? Anthony believed he knew well enough to whom.
Not now, however, for Katerin’s gutted body had collapsed back to the dried-out husk, or less than the husk, that it had been. And a corrugated nucleus of purple-grey protoplasm ten to twelve inches in diameter, with dozens of flickering cilia-like tentacles propelling it, was skittering down the sheer wall of the shaft like a crazed, alien spider!
“Damn you!” Anthony snarled. “Was that your … your ‘preparation?’ Did you intend that for me? To go on in me? A mutant leech from your own mutant body, to continue in me?”
Bringing up Katerin’s remains, he switched off the electricity and swept the debris from the platform, to flutter in rags and tatters back into the pit. Then, with the current on again, he let the wire-mesh cover fall with a clang, and watched the “breath” of the pit-thing steaming and sputtering where it drifted up and made contact with the grid.
Tenacious, his father told him, and Anthony sensed the Old Ferenczy’s irritation, his impatient mental shrug, but nothing more than that; as if this were some minor setback. It’s in our nature and we can’t help it, in you just as it’s in me. And oh, I’m not finished yet, my Tony—not yet. But you are. For he’s here. They are here!
“Madman!” Anthony hissed. “Mad thing! Who is here?”
You grow more like your brother every day, said the other. For he never listened, either …
An alarm went off high in the wall; and from up above, the concerted clamouring of more alarms. Anthony stared at the silvery blur of the bell’s hammer striking its dome, and back down into the pit. “He? They?” he mouthed. “Do you mean that fucking thief—and Radu? But that can’t be. It can’t be!”
BUT IT CAN BE! Angelo’s multi-minds screamed in unison, in wild excitement. HE COMES TO DESTROY YOU, AND LE MANSE MADONIE, AND ALL OF US—FOR WHICH WE HAVE PRAYED!
At which Anthony was gone from there, rushing like a wind through the subterranean system, up into Le Manse Madonie where he was met in the great hall by the cadaverous Mario. “What is it?” He grabbed Mario’s shirt front in claw hands. “What in the name of hell is it? And where is everyone?”
“They’re all at their posts,” Mario told him. “On the walls or in the courtyard, or outside the walls. I sent them out. And I set off the alarms, because I didn’t know where you were.” He led the way up the great staircase to Anthony’s private rooms.
“But why? What’s happening?” Anthony swept along behind his first lieutenant.
“A man on the wall thought he saw something,” Mario answered, as Anthony let them into his rooms.
“Thought?” Anthony was less panicked now. “On a clear night like this, someone thought he saw something? What, is he going blind or someth—?” But there he paused, choking on the words.
They were through his rooms to the balcony. Out there, the courtyard; armed men scattering left and right, taking up defensive positions on the walls or hurrying out under the wide arch of the main entrance. And in through that entrance, a mist came creeping. But such a mist! In the valleys and coastal villages, it wouldn’t be too extraordinary. But up here in the high mountains?
Rolling in off the plateau, the mist seemed concentrated in front of Le Manse Madonie; a dense white bank of mist, writhing at the high wall. And as Anthony gasped his astonishment …
… An eerie howl came echoing out of the mist. The inhuman, ululating cry of a beast, but in no way mournful, and in every way threatening!
“Radu!” Anthony whispered.
“A dog?” Mario shrugged.
“No,” Anthony turned on him, grabbed him again. “A wolf!”
“A wolf? Up here on the Madonie?”
“The wolf!” Anthony gasped. And quickly pulled himself together. “You,” he snapped. “You stay with me. And if you’re not already armed, do it now. Orders to the rest of them: a
nything that moves—and I do mean anything—shoot it! Especially if they see … a big dog. Go, tell them, then come back here. And Mario, is the chopper fuelled?”
“Yes,” the other answered.
But as he left, “Radu!” Anthony breathed again. Then, leaning on his balcony—feeling suddenly weak in all his limbs—he anxiously scanned the courtyard and the ocean of mist beyond. And his eyes were like crimson marbles rolling in the orbits of his skull …
Out on the plateau, in Radu’s mist, Harry and the dog-Lord were on the far side of a clump of boulders. “Your mist has its disadvantages, Radu,” the Necroscope said. “They can’t see us, but neither can we see them.”
“Sunside of the barrier mountains, in my own world, I used it as cover,” the dog-Lord coughed. “Here I use it differently, to inspire fear! When the Ferenczy sees it—and when he hears this—” He laid back his head and howled at the full moon hanging low on the horizon, and Harry stepped back a pace. “—Then he will know what is what. But I have discovered a weird thing: that what I did in life, I do with greater efficiency in death! Because in life there were the limitations of the flesh: air to be breathed, and a body to be fuelled lest it fail through exhaustion. But in death there are no limits … except that you impose them, Necroscope. Hah!” Cocking his head on one side, he let his lantern gaze light on Harry. “Ah, but without you there would be nothing at all. I suppose I must be thankful. Well, so be it. Now I drive my mist in through that archway …”
He called the mist up from the dry earth, let it roll from his body’s pores, and loping towards the vague white blur of Le Manse Madonie’s lights drove it before him. The men outside the walls were engulfed in it; it rolled over them, into the courtyard, piled in a swirling drift against the manse itself.
“And now,” said Radu, quivering and leaning forward as if drawn by a magnet, “I go to ravage among them!” He dumped heavy sausage bags, one from each shoulder. “Ferenczys,” the dog-Lord snarled. “The first and worst of my enemies!”
“Wait,” Harry told him. “We have things to do. You can … ravage later, if you must. And be careful with those bags! That stuff is dangerous.”
Dangerous? That wasn’t the half of it. The Necroscope had stolen it right out of the Czechoslovakian plant that manufactured it. A single stray shot could set it off—a thought that the werewolf read clearly in Harry’s mind. “So for now,” Harry continued, “first things first. That’s if we don’t want anyone to walk away from this.”
“I agree,” Radu barked, straightening from his crouch. “No one is to walk away from it. And any who run, I shall be behind them!”
“How’s the mist coming?” The Necroscope heard himself say it, thought about it, blinked and shook his head as if to clear it. Good grief: he wasn’t only accepting all this, he was actually getting used to it!
“The courtyard is filled with my mist,” Radu growled.
“Then let’s go,” said Harry. He made to pick up the sausage bags, but Radu beat him to them.
“You do your part, Necroscope, and I shall do mine.”
They emerged from the Möbius Continuum in a corner of the courtyard, and Radu quickly sniffed out what Harry was looking for. As he was finishing up the job, two armed thralls came at a run, calling to each other through the mist—and ran right into Radu. The speed, the savage efficiency of the dog-Lord as he dealt with them was incredible and terrifying to watch. But Harry quickly turned away. The sound of it was enough …
Mercifully they were sounds that were lost in the general confusion. And finally:
“That’s it,” said the Necroscope. “Their transport is useless to them. They’re stuck here, trapped. By now most of them will be out here, and the interior of Le Manse Madonie will be empty. That’s how it was last time, anyway. Give me the bags.”
Radu read what was in his mind, said: “What about me?”
“Stay clear of the place,” Harry answered. “There’s a rocky outcrop in that direction,” he pointed. “Wait for me there. And take this with you.” He handed him a transmitter. “If you see a vehicle or vehicles on the move, press the buttons till you get the right one.”
“Another of your modern toys? I hate them!”
Harry showed him a mental picture of what this “modern toy” would do, and Radu grunted his reluctant appreciation.
“And if something happens to you?”
“Then it happens to you, too …” (Harry hoped he was right, but he kept that thought to himself.)
He conjured a door and took Radu back out onto the plateau, watched him lope away into the thinning mist, and without pause returned to Le Manse Madonie—
—To the co-ordinates of a forbidden location in the very bowels of the place. The cavern of the pit.
The spotlights lanced down, illuminating the throat of that ominous shaft; the electrified exit was barred; the alarm clamoured high on the wall. Except for a cloud of red vapour drifting over the pit, nothing moved. The cavern seemed still, safe. Harry checked again, then made an exit through his door, which he hadn’t collapsed. He had another use for some of his plastic that he hadn’t wanted the dog-Lord to know about.
But on a count of ten he was back again, carrying just one of the sausage bags.
The weird red cloud over the pit was denser now; lured by the ventilation system, it was drifting towards the air-ducts. Whatever the stuff was, Harry was well away from it. But as he moulded plastic—twenty pounds of plastic—into a wide crack in the wall:
Necroscope!
And Harry gave a massive start. “R.L.? Is that you? Damn, you nearly scared the life out of me!”
You mean, like you is scaring me, Necroscope? R.L. Stevenson Jamieson came back.
“What? I’m scaring you?” Harry didn’t understand.
Man, you has enemies all around you! A million of ’em!
“I what?” Harry fell into a crouch, scanned the cavern all around. Nothing. “R.L., your obi must be playing tricks on you. There’s no one here.”
Hell, no, R.L. insisted. My obi’s just fine, Harry—and there’s more’n I can even calc’late. But … but they’s all the same one!
It was quite beyond Harry. But: “OK, R.L., I’ll be looking out for them—whatever they are!” And he finished packing the plastic into the wall. But as he stuck the timer and detonator into the explosive mass:
Harry?said another voice. Is that what I think it is? And if so, do you know what it will do down there? It was J. Humphrey Jackson Jr.—“Humph” to his friends, the American who had built the Francezci treasure vault in another part of the underground system. A man they had murdered for his efforts.
“I know what it will do, Humph,” Harry said. “I shouldn’t think you’d have any complaints about that.”
Not as long as you’re out of there when it happens, Necroscope, Humph said. But do you really know what you’re doing?
“How do you mean?”
I mean this is Sicily, and these mountains are as shaky as a lightning-struck tree! Hell, I even warned the Francezci brothers they shouldn’t do any blasting down there. But in my day, well, we had nothing like that stuff!
“I want to reduce this place to rubble, and destroy what’s in that pit,” Harry said, dispassionately.
I am with you, Humph said. I just thought maybe I should, you know, point out that we’re on a fault-line here? This part of the Med is volcanic. From here across to Etna, and due north into Italy, then west through the Peloponnese to the Greek islands: one big lightning-flash of a fault. Oh, you won’t be setting anything really big off, but I think you’ll do a lot more damage than just filling in a hole …
“Good!” Harry said, and set the timer for two minutes. “Now I have to be out of here. Have fun, Humph.”
You too, said the other, as Harry conjured a door and left.
But he and Humph didn’t know the half of it; couldn’t know, for instance, that Anthony Francezci had also booby-trapped the treasure vault and other rooms and j
unctions in the tunnel system. And now, from the balcony of his private rooms, he and the corpse-like Mario were watching the madness that was going on at the arched entrance to the courtyard and on the plateau.
Searchlight beams were sweeping the plateau; diffused by Radu’s dispersing mist, they found nothing. Yet when Anthony had ordered a Land Rover out onto the rough terrain just a minute ago … the vehicle had travelled maybe forty yards beyond the archway before it blew itself to pieces in a searing flash of light that was still fading on his retinas. And now the men on and outside the walls were firing at nothing—blazing away with fire and steel—cutting holes in the swirling mist.
“Did something hit the Land Rover—or was it sabotaged?” Mario’s slit of a mouth hung open.
“Sabotage?” Anthony face was a mad white mask. “Sabotage? The last time this bastard was here, that was sabotage!”
He is here! came a desperate cry in Anthony’s mind. He is down here, under Le Manse Madonie! Or he was just a moment ago.
“Angelo! Angelo, are you sure?”
Yes, yes, I am sure. And I know what he did. Goodbye, my Anthony. Goodbye, my dear sweet Tooonnnnyyyyy … !
Two more vehicles went speeding out under the archway—but they got no further than the Land Rover. Hot twisted metal shot aloft, and fire lanced the night.
“We can’t fight this,” Anthony snarled. “Fuck—there’s nothing to fight!” Hunched over, he ran inside, yanked open a drawer in his desk, and pressed a button.
In six different locations—some deep and others not so deep—under his feet, under Le Manse Madonie, timers started counting off the seconds. “Two minutes,” Anthony’s face cracked open in an uncontrollable grin, snarl, something; his gums spurted blood as teeth like knifes sliced up through them; his tongue seemed to unwind endlessly from his throat. “Do you think,” he choked on that fantastic snake of a tongue, “ … I mean, do you think that we can … that we can make the chopper in just … in just two minutes, Mario?”