Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (84 page)

‘As for this Harry person, whoever he is: he’ll be out of Sicily by now. But we know where to find him: with Radu’s lady lieutenant, Bonnie Jean Mirlu! And we certainly know where to find her - and through her Radu himself.’

‘Al very interesting,’ Francesco told him. ‘But haven’t you forgoten something - like our vulnerability? We’ve been hit once. So what’s to stop them doing it again? I mean, this “Harry” felow has to be a ghost! Indeed we have our father’s word for it that he “talks to dead people!”
Hah!’

‘We
were
vulnerable, yes,’ Tony answered. ‘But no more. From now on there’ll be day and night patrols, guards outside the vault, men on the walls and at every access or egress; Le Manse Madonie has to become a fortress. And after that, if we so much as smell a stranger within a mile of the place …’ He left the threat unspoken.

Finally Francesco was convinced. ‘Everything you’ve said makes sense,’ he said. ‘Especially what you said about intelligence. So why not put our contacts to use? In the past we’ve been in the business of selling them information, so why don’t we buy a little back? Let’s not stick our own necks out - or, at least, not too far - but have the KGB and CIA do

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it for us. Our father tells us this Harry is no common man …
Huh!
As if we didn’t have proof enough already! But doesn’t that mean he should be on record somewhere?’

‘Good!’ Tony was enthusiastic. ‘Send out copies of these photographs. If he’s known, then we’l know him too. And meanwhile I’l look to the security of this place. We have a network, brother, so let’s use it. But slowly, oh-so-slowly. And let me emphasize it again: the world must
never
suspect, must never know of our secret war. For if it did know, be sure the world would go to war, too - against us, al of us! Our father says two to three years before Radu Lykan is up again. That is when he wil be at his weakest, in the hour of his resurgence. Wel, two to three years should be time enough to find him. So I repeat: slowly, slowly does it. And let’s be sure that whatever it is that’s going down, we’re not going with it…’

Harry Keogh, Necroscope, woke up in his house on the outskirts of Bonnyrig one morning and discovered that two years had gone by. He had known they were going, of course, but stil it surprised him. From autumn to autumn to autumn, as if in a single night. It was the colour of the leaves that told him; some of them were turning again - just as they’d been when he and B.J. had first started climbing together.

But two years? As long as that? Maybe it was only one!

And feeling disoriented - but even so, knowing what he would find -he checked his calendar. Two years, yes.

And again he wondered about his memory. Alzheimer’s? God, no! He was too young for
that!
Echoes of Alec Kyle: his talent, and all his problems? Was Harry compensating for those glimpses of the future by losing fragments of his past? But Kyle’s

‘problems’ - in particular his drinking - had disappeared, merging with or being subsumed into Harry’s stronger identity; and his dubious talent hadn’t recurred. Not so far, anyway.

But two years! And as he got dressed, Harry tried to fil them in. He had done a little searching, for his wife and baby of course.

Except now … he sometimes forgot what Brenda had looked like; and this time it wasn’t any kind of defect in his memory. Not long-term, anyway.

He remembered her as a girl, in Harden on the coast; and school holidays … on the beach … the woods … long walks … their first fumbling attempts at making love. Then a blank. It was grief, but Harry didn’t know that. It was as if Brenda had died, and his mind had found ways to forget. Forget what she’d felt like in his arms, what he had felt like in her. The adult part, the meaningful part, had been closed down.
He
had found ways to close it down, to forget - if only to get to sleep at nights - when he was on his own.

As for the baby: nothing. Harry just didn’t know, couldn’t remember a single feature of the baby. But except to a mother, aren’t all babies

like that? A baby is a baby. And what the hel, Harry Jr wasn’t a baby any longer (and had he ever been one?) He was an infant, almost four years old now: lost years, from his father’s point of view. And Harry wondered: would he even recognize Harry Jr or his mother if he were to pass them on the street?

But in any case, he
had
done some searching - personally, that is, and keeping it quite separate from the army of private investigators who were now working on his case. The west coast of England: Maryport to Blackpool… the Derwent at Workington . .

. ‘grockles’ in kiss-me-quick hats on fifty different promenades. Blackpool and the illuminations, and the tower like some garish beacon, its lights liquidly mobile on a rainy night. And of course, the east coast again: Whitley Bay, Seaton Carew, and Redcar; Marske and Saltburn-by-the-Sea; Whitby and Robin Hood’s Bay. But all stereotypes - images, unreal somehow -scenes that drifted on the surface of his memory, unable to anchor themselves, as if he had never been there at al! Except he must have, for they were al places he’d struck from his itinerary. Yet if he tried to focus on any specific place or moment: nothing. And time and again he remembered catching himself thinking:
someone is messing with my mind!

In the end he’d given it up: his search, the personal side of it. He would let the professionals do it. Except they seemed to be having as litle luck as he himself. And of course he had to fund them al the way. Or someone must fund them, if not the Necroscope.

And a good many someones had; including the most powerful of Japan’s Yakuza ‘families,’ whose illicit earnings were such that they operated their own bank, and several oil-rich, potentially dangerous potentates, and a Czechoslovakian arms manufacturer notorious for his dealings with terrorists. So far it had cost twenty milion pounds, or the equivalent, and the end was nowhere in sight. Another two or three months, Harry would have to top-up his fund yet again. But since there was no lack of rich villains, that shouldn’t be too hard …

But the idea of ‘villainy’ - the word itself, the thought of it - was sufficient to bring on other emotions. First among them (again), Harry felt
himself
victimized; by whom or what he couldn’t say. Worse, he, too, felt like something of a vilain. It wasn’t his series of grand larcenies (his ‘fund-raising activities,’ as he liked to think of them), because in that regard he felt more like some modern Robin Hood; no, it was his adultery. It was his guilt.

And no mater how many times he reminded himself that his wife, Brenda, had deserted him, stil
he
felt like the vilain of the piece; like some kind of animal, yes. The Necroscope had never considered, had never thought of people as animals before meeting B.J., but he did now. For his sexual appetite when he was with her was certainly animal. Likewise hers! Love? Perhaps he was in love with her, and she with

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him. But wild? No ‘perhaps’ about that! Together, they were wild! Harry told himself that for him it was a sort of frenzied making up for lost time - the taking back of something stolen from him, if only by circumstances - but at the same time he admited to a fascination he’d never known before. No doubt about it, B.J.

was
fascinating.

And for her? What was in it for her? Just lust? Maybe in the beginning, but Harry felt it was deeper than that now. How much deeper, then? What if he
were
to find Brenda now? What if she should change her mind, decide to come back, and suddenly appear? Where would B.J. fit in the scheme of things then? And would he even want Brenda back?

Thus his guilt complex - if that was what it was - ran in circles. And the idea of himself as some sort of lustful animal who cared only for his own sexual fulfilment was reinforced. It perhaps explained his dreams …

Harry’s dreams - specificaly his nightmares - had always been complex things, but never more so than now. While he could never remember the substance of certain parts, the animal motif was always present; the wolf fetish (inspired no doubt by those events in London almost three years ago) featured strongly.

He would dream of B.J., usualy when he was alone, and the nightmare would start when she was in his arms, gazing into his eyes. The moon’s rim would rise above the window-sil, shining into
her
eyes. And they would change …

…
From slightly slanted hazel ovals, to feral yellow triangles, then from the colour of gold to that of blood. And finally … finally they would
drip
blood! Then a swirl of strange motion, and dark against the disk of the moon, a silhouette … always the same silhouette … a wolfs head,
thrown back in a full-blooded howl!

Thinking about this fragment (for that was al there was to it) was sufficient to bring it back into focus, and sufficient to chil the Necroscope to the bone even though the morning was warm and sunny. Brilliant sunlight streamed in through his bedroom window, pooling on the polished boards of the floor, while Harry sat and shivered, and listened to an ululant, fading howl conjured from a dream …

He gave himself a shake, slid his feet into shoes, tried physical as opposed to mental activity. He knew what he would
like
to do today: talk to his Ma. (God, something else to feel guilty about!) How long had it been? Far too long he was sure. She would be feeling neglected. But how could he talk to her? There were questions she was bound to ask that he couldn’t possibly answer. And if he guarded his thoughts she would know it at once, would think he was hiding something. And of course he would be; he’d be hiding B.J.

Bonnie Jean. The woman was always on his mind. Especialy at this time of the month. Tonight was a ful moon: he wouldn’t be seeing B.J.

After two years he knew … that she had her own moods - did her own thing, whatever it was - at the ful of the moon. She was a woman; it was al part of her cycle, Harry told himself. And every three-month without fail, he could guarantee she’d be off to her beloved Highlands for three or four days on her own. Climbing, and hunting, no mater the season. He remembered her promise: to take him with her one of these days. And, in fact, they had already set the date: just a month from today. Wel, at least it would be something to do, other than check the mail for endless negative reports on the whereabouts of Brenda and the baby. And so he looked forward to it—

—And yet, at the same time and without knowing why - he didn’t…

… And neither did B.J.

But the two-year period of probation was up. She was satisfied that Harry had no ulterior motive, that he was under no other’s influence. He was fuly trained in her climbing techniques; not that she believed he’d needed extensive training, but at least it had been an excuse to keep him from the most dangerous climb of al. .

. until now. For Radu had finaly decided it was time he met his ‘Man-With-Two-Faces,’ this oh-so-Mysterious One, in the flesh. Even knowing that this was not the safest of times, still the dog-Lord had insisted that B.J. bring Harry to the Cairngorms lair; and she knew that he’d ordered it in spite of the danger, because he now felt obliged to advance the hour of his resurgence.

Dangerous times, yes - for Radu, and for Bonnie Jean, and not least for Harry.

For Radu, because of his vulnerability. For B.J., because she suffered agonies of indecision, the frustration of her own burgeoning vampire, which constantly strove to defy and undermine the authority of her Master. And for Harry because he was the catalyst; several kinds of catalyst.

For one thing, Harry worked on Bonnie Jean. She was used to him now, wanted him for herself; she was unwiling to envisage a future without him in thral to her - and herself partly in thral to him? Wel, possibly. And for another he worked on Radu. For the dog-Lord saw Harry as his future; as an alternative to the possibility of a crippled, diseased, incapacitated body. And finaly he had worked, and was working still, on the Francezcis …

Harry’s ‘watcher’ had been seen again, indeed on a number of occasions over the last two years. Bonnie Jean had even seen him for herself; she had spied him one night through the gauzy curtains of her garret bedroom - an ominous shadow lurking in the dark doorway across the street, keeping his furtive vigil. And her girls had been folowed to and from their various lodgings, so that al of their comings

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and goings, the tracks and trails of B. J. ‘s smal pack were known.

Occasionaly one or another of the girls would report seeing a certain figure and face on a crowded street in the gloom of a warm evening. It was festival time, and the tourists were here in their thousands; the Castle on the Rock was lit like a Christmas tree. Normaly, it would be a good time for B.J. and the pack. This or that lone stranger could so easily disappear in the thronging night. Bonnie Jean’s girls were good-lookers al. But now they were wary as never before. It was that face, that figure, that watcher whom they feared; for B.J. knew him. She’d seen him before - oh, ten, twenty, thirty
years
before.

Bright bird eyes in a rheumy wrinkled old face; eyes that one second looked grey and the next shone dul silver, like an animal’s at night. B.J. understood that wel enough. For they were feral eyes - thral eyes! The heavily veined nose, flanged at its tip, and the too-wide loose-lipped mouth and aggressive jaws. And the grey, aged aspect of the face generaly. But just like herself he never changed or got any older, and until now had been cautious not to show himself too frequently.

She had passed on details of this suddenly increased surveilance to Radu, of course, which had perhaps determined him to accelerate his rising. And now he would examine Harry, find out if he was a fit vessel for his resurgence, and also to discover whether in fact he could be sent out into the world as an agent and put to good use prior to … to his
primary
use. And even though B.J. was worried about the possible loss of her lover in various ways, the dog-Lord wasn’t. For if indeed this Harry Keogh was the key to Radu’s future … why, then it was already decided.