Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (86 page)

in their midst! Until now Drakesh had been the most anonymous and secure of them all; he would like to keep it that way.

But some two years ago - by some weird process of synchronicity, at about the same time the Francezcis had been studying grainy photographs of their intruder

- Drakesh had likewise received a set of pictures, a series of snapshots, from members of his ‘sect’ in England. And he had at once recognized several faces: Darcy Clarke, current Head of E-Branch, Trevor Jordan, a Branch telepath, and—

—
Alec Kyle? …
But that was impossible!

Comparisons with photographs in one of Drakesh’s numerous files had decided the mater. Despite a deal of evidence to the contrary, Alec Kyle wasn’t dead.

And the last Drakul had jumped to an understandable but incorrect conclusion: that for reasons known only to E-Branch, Kyle was now working undercover. In al likelihood he’d been ‘killed off to free him from mundane duties and obscure the fact of his involvement with more important maters - or perhaps But sooner rather than later

452

Brian Lumley

he had ‘died’ in order to protect himself? But from what?

It had been a mystery that not even Tsi-Hong could solve; but then again, British E-Branch was a mysterious organization. And since Drakesh was in no way involved, the pictures and the report that accompanied them - about a peculiar event in London’s Oxford Street -had been filed for future reference …

… Until recently.

But now, suddenly, E-Branch was hot again. The Ferenczys were known to be buying information on Alec Kyle and other members of E-Branch from their contacts world-wide; they had even sent two of their lieutenants into England to strengthen their presence there.

Drakesh had started to put two and two together:

One: the dog-Lord’s rising was close now, he could feel it in his vampire bones. Two: the Ferenczys must likewise be aware of this. Three: for some time now the British E-Branch had involved itself in a great many hush-hush affairs - not least the Bronnitsy thing. Now they’d atracted the atention of the Ferenczys, in what connection Drakesh couldn’t say. And in conclusion, four: since from now on it might wel prove too dangerous to keep an eye on E-Branch, Drakesh should watch the Ferenczys’ people in England instead.

Drakesh’s emissaries, expert in discovering vampires, had found little difficulty in tracing the extra thrals sent into England by the Ferenczys. Through them they had also found the Ferenczy sleeper, and through him Bonnie Jean Mirlu. Moreover, they had succeeded where the sleeper had failed - for through Bonnie Jean they had also found Alec Kyle!

Both Radu’s keeper,
and
the supposed ‘ex’-Head of E-Branch together! Now finaly it al made some kind of sense, and Drakesh believed he had the whole picture:

E-Branch were indeed aware of the menace in the midst of humanity! - something of it, anyway - aware of Radu and possibly the Ferenczys, too. But E-Branch did not yet know Radu’s whereabouts, else they would have put him down and al subterfuge done with. Alec Kyle was their undercover agent, who had somehow found his way into the female thrall’s confidence. Or, Kyle had been recruited by her … and if so, how many
others
of these damned espers had Radu got at? As for the Ferenczys: perhaps they were still safe, and were simply keeping a wary eye on the whole thing to see which way it went.

Wel, Daham Drakesh
knew
which way it would go. It would appear that he was the only unknown factor in this entire equation, and he intended to stay that way. But for some time now he’d searched for a way to play the role of
agent provocateur,
and finaly the opportunity had falen right into his hands.

He had a triangle of forces here, al in deadly opposition, just waiting to be unleashed at each other’s throats. The dog-Lord Radu
Necwscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I

453

‘TfDrTeJ”’ t
^^ E~E™Ch’
and the -“-called

S’tU eVe” —— ft «r remained to choose the

II

IT BEGINS…’

September … Harry and Bonnie Jean were driving north through the Grampians, en route for the Cairngorms. In the boot of her hired car: surprisingly little by way of climbing gear; Harry had turned out to be ‘a natural,’ and B.J. was mainly scornful of such equipment. And in any case she was planning to use the easy route to Radu’s lair, on the Badenoch flank of the Cairngorms. That way she could save time by making a kil, food for Radu’s waking warrior, on the way up.

Harry was in ‘conscious’ mode; he was for the moment himself, and not under any mental constraints other than the deep-seated post-hypnotic commands of James Anderson, and those of Bonnie Jean herself, of course. In short, he continued to hide his talents as best he could, and B.J. continued to be an ‘innocent’ but strong-or wrong-headed young woman. She was also his lover, and Harry was loyal to a fault, or things might not be so easy for her … or so hard. Radu had been partly right: there
were
other ways to enthrall a man - but some swords are two-edged.

Physically, the Necroscope was fit and well. But mentally or subconsciously …

He was constantly uneasy. His worries, mainly unspecified - which seemed something of a contradiction in itself! -were many. And despite that he hid it from B.J. as far as possible, he often felt … paranoid? That was the only way to describe it: the omnipresent feeling that he was the victim of some malicious plot. His memory, however, was much improved - especially since giving up his search for Brenda on a personal level. On the other hand, his sleep continued to be plagued by grotesque nightmares he could
never
remember in his waking hours but which he knew had grown worse than ever.

All he ever recalled of them was that they involved the Great Majority, the teeming dead, who were desperately trying to convey some message which he wasn’t allowed to receive; and a picture of his

Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I

455

beloved Ma, her face filled with concern, and her arms thrown wide open as if to protect him from the tumult of their thoughts.

And lingering over as he struggled to bring himself awake, always there would be that familiar moon
motif,
with a howling wolfs head in silhouette.

Oddly, these dreams didn’t come when he slept with Bonnie Jean; she seemed to act as a buffer against them.

And something of a paradox, too, that in the conscious, waking world he found the dead less inclined to his company, while sensing in them an air of expectancy hard to define …

‘Penny for them?’ said Bonnie Jean, luring the Necroscope from his inward-probing thoughts. She spoke mainly to fill the unaccustomed vacuum between them, an emptiness which - in her case, at least - felt like an ache in her bones, growing there from the moment Radu had told her to bring Harry to him.

‘A total blank,’ he lied, not wanting to worry her. ‘I was just lying back enjoying it.’

‘The ride? You can drive if you like.’ (On the other hand, it would be better if he didn’t. They were travelling north and it was past noon. If she let him drive, she would be uncomfortable in the warm sunlight coming through his window).

He shook his head, elevated his seat a little, sat up and glanced out of the window. Almost unnoticed, summer had slipped quietly away and made room for autumn. The trees were beginning to shed their leaves: red, gold, and umber, slipping by outside the car, and the occasional glossy blur of an evergreen. ‘Where are we?’

‘I chose a different route … er, from my usual one,’ she began to explain, then realized there was no need; Harry hadn’t been out this way before. Anywhere north of the Firth of Forth would be new to him. ‘I just thought - I don’t know - a change of scenery?’ She fiddled with her sunglasses, adjusting them on the bridge of her nose. The real reason she was taking a different route was to break the routine and confuse anyone, such as the watcher, who might try to follow her. Also, since she had rarely if ever sensed an intrusion during daylight hours, it had seemed a good idea to make the trip in daylight.

‘A change of scenery?’ he said. ‘Well, that’s
why
we’re here. But I asked where.’

‘We’re through Blairgowrie, heading for Pitlochry,’ she told him. ‘Does that help?’

‘Shouldn’t have asked,’ he shrugged. And, showing a rare flash of humour: ‘It’s all Irish to me!’

‘Scottish!’ she admonished. But the smile as quickly fell from her face, too. And she wondered what he was really thinking, the man
inside
this man. For the man inside knew why they were here, where they were going, and who he would be meeting. But the man inside was a prisoner in his own mind-cell, and he couldn’t be set free - couldn’t
Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I

457

Brian Lumley

456

think his real thoughts - except by special command.

To Bonnie Jean … suddenly Harry seemed much less than a whole man. He felt like some kind of zombie sitting here beside her - or a puppet waiting to jerk into life the moment she puled his strings - and
she
felt guilty; she didn’t like it. But the fact of the mater was he would only become a zombie, or a puppet, if and when she commanded it. Then he would know, would remember, everything she had told him … and not be able to do a damned thing about it! He was so
much
under her control that she felt sorry for him.

But at the same time … maybe something of understanding had surfaced at that. The atmosphere between them felt unusual, uneasy, unnatural. And now and then, if she looked at him suddenly out of the corner of her eye—

—Was that an accusing look on Harry’s face? If she were a faithless wife, it might be just exactly the sort of curious, vaguely doubting look she would expect from a husband who half-suspected. Or was she just

imagining it?

‘Oh?’ Harry raised an eyebrow. He’d caught her giving
him
just such

a look as she’d imagined!

‘Just wondering,’ she said. And before he could ask what: ‘After Pitlochry, within the hour, we should be back on my usual route and into the Forest of Athol. Plenty of places along the way to stop and picnic, if you like? Or maybe a little cafe in the woods, for tea?’ It al sounded so weak, so … treacherous?

Even to her own ears, yes. Or especialy

so,

‘Whatever you say,’ he said - which for some reason irritated her out of her mind. Bad enough that it was “whatever she said” when he was totally under her influence. But here he was like … like a
lamb
on his way to the slaughter! And maybe not now, not this time, but soon, too soon, he realy would be!

‘Do you put that much bloody faith in me, then?’ she blurted, glaring at him. ‘Whatever I fucking say?’

He was taken by surprise. ‘Why, yes. Why not?’

Oh, mah wee man!
B.J. cried out… to herself, yet stil managing to surprise herself. If only it were possible to break the chains on his mind and set it free - set him free - to fly, fly like a smal frightened bird! It would be worth … almost anything! She thought it, and at once denied the thought:

What, and betray a cause she’d worked for for two hundred years? And defy her master, Radu? And throw away her own chance of
immortality? And prove once and for all and beyond any reasonable doubt that she could never be a Lady, Wamphy’ri, but must
always be a snivelling…
woman!?
Ridiculous!

It was her immature leech fighting back; fighting for its life against a power as strong as anything it ever met before, which it didn’t, couldn’t possibly, understand. Bonnie Jean’s emotions boiled over; she glanced at Harry; he had tucned his face away to look out of his window. Damn, he was simply ignoring her outburst! As if she were a child! Probably because he subconsciously understood only too wel what was going on.

And there and then - in broad daylight, even at the wheel of the car -B.J. felt the change coming and couldn’t stop it. It was as though she stood outside herself, watching in horror, frozen by her own hypnotic talent! She could even
feel
the eye-teeth - her dogteeth - curving up through pink-sheathing gums, cuting the flesh!

She could taste the blood on her gums.
Her
blood, as yet…

Harry glanced ahead, jerked upright, cried: ‘Christ -
the road …!’

And the Lady in her was banished, and B.J. back in charge. For now at least.

She slammed on the brakes, hauled on the wheel, almost physicaly dragged the car round a sharp left-hand bend. Harry was thrown against her, and as they colided B.J. came close to losing her sunglasses. She knew her eyes would be crimson, but had to put every effort into bringing the car to a halt. The right-hand wheels bumped up onto the grass verge; the hedgerow made a sharp scraping against her window; her driving mirror was bent back. And the car stopped …

The Necroscope colapsed his Mobius door where he had instinctively conjured it across the dashboard. It had been a close thing. If they had crashed, been thrown forward … by now they would be in the Mobius Continuum! Nothing he could have said or done would have fooled Bonnie Jean this time. No

‘drug-induced halucination’ would have covered it.

He wiped the sweat from his brow and said, ‘Did I say something?’

B.J. thumped the steering wheel with both hands, glared at him - and burst out laughing! Then, in the mirror, she saw the blood on her lower lip and sucked it inside her mouth.

‘Hurt?’ he said, at once solicitous.

‘I bit my lip,’ she lied. ‘You?’

He shook his head. ‘What happened?’

‘I wasn’t paying attention to my driving,’ she answered. ‘I suppose I’m just a bad driver, that’s all.’
A bad-tempered driver,
anyway.

‘Let’s get on to the Forest of Atholl, then,’ he said. ‘I could use a cup of tea now - not to mention a leak!’ Which set her off laughing again.