Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (21 page)

One direction would have been more than sufficient: that of the garage across the road.

There came … an intrusion! Which the Necroscope felt at once. But instead of avoiding it or flinching from it, he answered back and tried to get into the mind that was getting into his. Trevor Jordan felt it, too, the blunt groping of a strange and strangely gifted mind, and said: ‘Wha—?’

But Harry held up a hand to still Jordan’s inquiry, husking, ‘Listen in if you want, but be sure not to open your mind to it for now. I’ll let you know when.’ And:

Huh?
The intruder grunted like a pig in Harry’s mind, no longer a mere whisperer but a sentience surprised that the Necroscope had recognized his presence and was reacting to it, but not in the way that the intruder had anticipated. Then, because he knew he’d been discovered:

You … again!
There could be no mistaking the phlegmy, threatening quality of that voice, or the megalomaniac ‘superiority’ of its owner. Any other man but a telepath born - and a practised one, who had come into contact with deranged minds such as this before - must surely recoil from the stench, the mental slime of it, like a poison seeping in his mind. A telepath, yes … or the Necroscope Harry Keogh. For he had spoken with vampires, and not all of them dead ones. By comparison -and
strictly
by comparison - this mind was almost sweet. But as for the rest of it, the actual contact:

In fact, this mind-to-mind contact with a living person wasn’t unlike

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speaking to the dead. Except Harry wasn’t a true telepath; he couldn’t ‘send’, but only receive incoming information; any answers he might originate would only be ‘heard’ by virtue of the
other’s
telepathy - which in this case amounted to the same thing.

And this time the other -
none
other but A.C. Doyle Jamieson - had indeed heard the Necroscope’s thoughts. But they were scarcely the thoughts of a frightened man, and definitely not those of one who doubted his own sanity! And:
Who are you?
(There was anger in that voice now, and perhaps something of uncertainty if not downright fear.)
What are you?

What the
fuck …
are … you!?

‘I’m the end of the road, Arthur,’ Harry told him. ‘I’m a big dose of your own brand of obeah bouncing right back at you. I’m a silver bullet heading for your heart. I’m the justice of all the lives you’ve taken held back way too long, pent up, and now about to burst out and enact itself on you!’ But in Harry’s metaphysical mind, irrepressible if not deliberately expressed, there was one other thought:
And I’m the one they call the Necroscope.

A.C. got all of it, but especially the last bit. And even though he didn’t know what a Necroscope was, it sounded threatening and he didn’t like it.
Huh? Necroscope?
(The ‘scope’ ending had stuck in his mind; finally made sense to him, albeit mistakenly).
‘Scope’: a spy! A police spy? A raid? Oh, really?
A.C. was trying to sneer but in fact he was panicking now, and far more dangerous for it! Finally he broke and snarled:
Well, fuck your ass, bro!
His presence vanished abruptly from Harry’s mind.

The seconds ticked by. Then:

Down the street at the other end of the garage, the overhead door began clattering up on itself, its long metal leaves concertinaing into the housing. It was easily sixty yards away, but in the quiet of the midnight street, even at that distance Harry and Trevor Jordan could hear hoarse, angry shouting. And as the darkness was suddenly slashed by headlight beams, a veritable convoy of vehicles came roaring down the exit ramp, one after the other onto the road.

White and blue sparks lit the night where wings hit the walls of the ramp and chassis jarred down onto the shining tarmac as the cars and vans turned viciously, squealingly into the road, some heading in the one direction and others coming Harry’s way.

He and Jordan ducked down, shrank against the wall of the alley, watched two cars and a van howl by, their drivers pale-faced where they crouched over their steering wheels. ‘Like a pack of rats deserting a sinking shit!’ Jordan said in Harry’s ear. Glancing at him, Harry saw that his eyes were narrowed to slits and his face creased in concentration. ‘But the shit who ordered them out of there is still inside!’

‘What?’ Harry frowned. ‘You’re in contact with him? But I asked you to stay out of it! We’re not sure what we’re dealing with here.’

‘We’re dealing with one powerful telepath, that much I’ll grant you,’ Jordan answered. ‘Also a frightened one.

Something is interfering with his talent. He’s trying to locate you again but something is getting in his way. Not me or you but - oh, I don’t know - something else. And anyway, I didn’t deliberately ignore your warning, Harry. But with a talent as strong as this one … he’s hard to avoid.’

‘R.L. Stevenson,’ Harry offered a grim nod. That’s what’s bothering him most: his brother’s obeah. I can almost feel it flowing through me!’ Which made little or no sense to Jordan; he couldn’t get the meaning of it because he was busy
not
reading the Necroscope’s mind.

But at that precise moment the intruder had chosen to return, and he
was
reading it. And:
What…’.?
(He issued a disbelieving croak).
R.L.? But… he’s dead! Listen, you white fuck, whatever you are: my brother is
dead! Did you get that? He’s
dead! /
know ‘cos I killed him! For that matter, so are you dead, or good as …
and
the two you got out there with
you!

Two? And Harry wondered:
What? Can he feel R.L. too? Not just his obeah but… R.L. himself?

Who you trying to shit, Fuckscope? There ain’t no ‘feeling’ R.L. ‘cos R.L. ‘s dead! I mean your two friends out there! Enemies, all three of you -
but
only
three of you. So come and get it, if you got the guts. I mean, three against one … what are you waiting for? But remember this: I got the
moon on
my
side!
His fading mental laughter was like the barking of a wild dog.

‘He’s not scared any more,’ Jordan hissed. ‘He’s just mad-angry - and mad as a hatter, too, of course!’

‘He’s picked up three enemies, but there are only the two of us,’ Harry was puzzled. ‘If he’s also reading R.L.’s talent, that makes him something of a Necroscope in his own right!’

‘Whatever he is, he craves blood … namely, yours!’ Jordan answered. ‘But also mine, if I’ve read him right! We should stop this right here and now and call in the law.’

Cowardly bastards!
the thing in Harry’s head roared.
Fuck you, then. We fight another day!
And Harry got a vivid mental picture of the intruder inside the garage, making for his vehicle. But the Necroscope had been challenged; worse, he’d been scorned, called a coward. And deep inside there was still this feeling that
he
wasn’t at risk. Not the Harry Keogh he’d used to be, anyway.

Meanwhile, Jordan had locked on again, deliberately this time, and said: There’s more than just him in there. He has a friend with him. Or … friends?’

‘Skippy,’ Harry answered, jumping to the wrong conclusion, or one that was only half-right. They’re both in there.

And if they get away this time, who knows when we’ll be able to bring them to book.’

Jordan saw what was coming next, and said, ‘Harry, I… ”

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‘Are you coming?’ The Necroscope held out his arms.

Jordan backed off. ‘Your way? Not
likely!
I’ve seen inside your head, Harry. I know a little of what your Mobius Continuum is like! I’ll go over the wal.’

Alowing no time for argument, he left the cover of the aley and made to run across the road, only pausing to turn and toss something back. It glinted blued-steel.

Harry caught it: a 9mm Browning. ‘Since you’l be there first,’ Jordan quietly caled, ‘you may need it.’

Reaching the wal, he looked back … and saw that he was right, Harry was no longer there—

—But he
was
inside the garage. And A.C. Doyle Jamieson knew it! The madman’s astonishment was like triple exclamation marks in the Necroscope’s mind, folowed by a ripple of terror, and a barrage of inwardly-directed questions:
What? Where? How? Who? …
and finaly a renewed flaring of anger. His was a mind ful of moon and murder. And Harry was his target for tonight.

There came silence, physical and mental…

Someone switched the lights off; Harry heard the switches trip. And now there was darkness. Only one smal electric bulb, fifty or so feet away in the middle of a massive concrete ceiling, gave any light at al. And it cast shadows.

Moving shadows!

Harry saw or sensed movement… a metal object clatered as someone stumbled over it or kicked it aside. That was to the left. But to the right: a slithering of shadows, just a flicker but enough to bring the short hairs at the back of Harry’s neck erect like a cat’s brush. His eyes flickered this way and that, glanced upwards.

Overhead, a system of gantries supported rails and a motorized cabin and crane; heavy chains were still swinging a little on their puleys. Or maybe they’d only just been set swinging?

A. C. and Skippy … and who else? Harry remembered what Trevor Jordan had said only a moment ago: ‘He has a friend with him … or friends?’ Wel, great!

But how many of them? Jordan was right: Skippy didn’t have to be the only one.

Three!
said a voice from the blue, or rather from the metaphysical darkness behind the Necroscope’s eyes. And he at once knew its owner for R.L. Stevenson Jamieson.
Three enemies. But
whose
enemies is harder to say! Two of them is against you, for sure. As for the third …
Harry sensed the dead man’s shrug.

‘R.L.,’ Harry whispered, ‘you’d best be using your obi to damp down your brother’s. I mean, you should save your efforts for that.

Don’t waste them talking to me.’

You is there to put things right, Necroscope, and I’ll do whatever I can to help you,
R.L. told him.
Don’t you be worrying ‘bout
my obi. It
is
working, believe me. And I just read in your mind my own brother boasting how he killed me! So I won’t be
holding you to no promises,

Harry. Don’t be holding off for my sake. You go
get
that son of a …

Harry’s eyes were now more accustomed to the gloom of the place. The shels of cars lay in various stages of repair, conversion, and reconstruction, in twin rows of bays equipped with inspection pits, overhead hoists, and various hand tools. Jacks and other wheeled machines stood abandoned in the central aisle, and chains dangled everywhere. The garage had been evacuated in a hurry and was now a mantrap. Even to someone wel acquainted with the layout, any abrupt or hasty motion could prove dangerous to say the least.

Harry was shielded by one of the massive steel stanchions supporting the high ceiling; he was located just inside a repair bay, where he’d stepped out of the Mobius Continuum. Some forty or so feet to his left, the warehouse doors that he knew opened on the maintenance yard … had been closed! By now Jordan would be stranded on the other side of them, and that meant that Harry was on his own. And he knew that even if he took the Mobius route into the yard, still the telepath wasn’t going to let himself be transported
that
way. But in any case what good would it do to get Jordan inside? None: it would only place him in greater danger.

Of course, Harry could simply wash his hands of the whole mess and take himself out of here. But that wasn’t his way.

And the trouble was that here in the dark and the danger, he was starting to feel more nearly himself; he was more surely aware of the jeopardy in which he had placed
himself,
the Harry Keogh mind if not the original body. But what the hel, it was al the same - wasn’t it? It had now been brought forcefuly home to him that this
was
him! And he realy was on his own …

Not necessarily, Necroscope,
said the near-distant voice of George Jakes, causing him to start a little.
Harry, use the - what, Mobius Continuum?
Jakes was excited, uncertain of what he’d ‘heard’ Harry thinking.
By all means use it, but not just to cut and run! You need real back-up, Harry, and it just
might be that I’ve got the answer.
Then, quickly (indeed, as quickly as that), he outlined his plan. And because George Jakes was a dead man, whom only the Necroscope could hear and speak to, no other prying, intruding mind was privy to it.

Harry listened, liked what he heard, acted upon it. The idea of placing an aly like Jordan in jeopardy had been sufficient to give him pause, true, but Harry was no fool; he knew he could use George Jakes without worrying about the consequences. And this way he would be keeping his promise both to R. L. Stevenson and to the teeming dead in general. He made a Mobius jump to the police mortuary in Fulham, and in a mater of seconds returned to the East End garage.

But coming back, he wasn’t alone …

/
got him!
R.L. was triumphant, his incorporeal voice greeting the

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Necroscope even as he stepped from his door.
You was right, Harry. My obeah has come back to me, drawn back through you. It gives me
strength and depletes A.C. He’ll have a hard time finding you now. The balance is maintained; you is equals. At least as long as 1 can hold
him.

‘My thanks, R.L.,’ Harry whispered; but in the empty, echoing garage his words were plainly audible! Almost immediately, there were furtive movements both left and right… and overhead?