Necroscope: The Plague-Bearer (7 page)

Controlling the urge to remind him how she’d saved his life that time, she said: “Ye’re a contrary man, Harry! Did I no see ye drinkin’ that wee beer after tellin’ me ye fancied a glass of mah wine? What, has the thirst gone off ye then? And even if it has, still ye’ll be better off here in the bar. For there’s all sorts o’ weird folk out in the streets this time o’ nicht!”

The Necroscope grinned and thought:
Ah, that false Scottish brogue of hers!
Which he knew was mainly for the benefit of the handful of local lads in the bar. And the reason B.J. whispered was because she didn’t want those selfsame customers wondering at her concern for this “bleddy sassenach,” this Englishman who always seemed to be hanging around the bar these days.

But anyway, it was nice to know she worried about him. And:

“Hey, I’m a big boy now, Bonnie Jean,” he told her. “Surely you know that? But anyway, I promise I won’t talk to strangers, okay?”

Since he was already headed for the exit it seemed it would have to be okay, and B.J. made no further protest. But after he had gone she took Kate aside to ask her what they had been talking about.

“Oh, just the local layout,” Kate answered in all innocence, “About mah wee flat, and the route I take tae get here; no that I’ll be walkin’ it again! No, from now on I’ll be takin’ a taxi here and back! But he says he likes tae walk the streets—more fool him!” And then, remembering B.J.’s attachment, “Er—but a
verra
nice yin for a’ that! I told him he should call in at the garage doon the street, or maybe a stationery store tae pick up a map o’ the area. That should satisfy his curiosity, should it no?”

To which B.J. nodded, saying, “Aye, I should think so.” But in her heart she suspected that Harry’s “curiosity” wouldn’t be satisfied quite so easily.

Which was just as well, she supposed—as long as he remembered to look after himself “as best possible.” For B.J. had to admit that so far, and with that one exception in London, Harry had been pretty good not only at looking after himself but just about everything else! Pretty damn good, for a mere man…

…Aye.

It was 10:30, and night’s cloak had long since settled on Edinburgh’s ancient streets and historic buildings. The last faint flush of a departed sun loaned low western hills a fast-fading afterglow, and likewise silhouetted the famous outlines of the city’s towering Castle-on-the-Rock against the deepening black velvet of a sky full of stars.

It was night and the vampire Mike Milazzo’s time. And only when he rose from his bed in the grubby room where he had languished through all the hours of day in fear and loathing of the yellow curse, the monster whose seething rays on the building’s outer walls—indeed the very
knowledge
of those rays, of their
proximity,
with only eleven inches of fragile brickwork to ward them off—had caused his flesh to creep; and only when he had crossed to the room’s small window, half-shuttered his eyes and cringed as he cautiously lifted a corner of dank and mouldering curtain to glimpse beyond the fly-specked pane only the dark of night and sense something of its balming coolness…only
then
could Mike feel truly secure and breathe more easily—

—At least until dawn, when the sun would rise again…

It had not always been this way. In more familiar Sicilian surroundings after those Francezci bastards had taken his blood and turned him, and when the change had taken hold, he’d had at least a little time to get accustomed to the dangers of his condition. But since visiting Bulgaria on the orders of the brothers, and having met “The Chemist,” who was one of their agents, those dangers had not only multiplied but were much more imminent. And even after a week and a half Edinburgh was new to him and strange, while the work he had been tasked to perform was not without its own hazards.

Getting dressed by the window and continuing to look out on the night, Mike scowled and cursed the fates—but in the main, and for all that they had appointed him their thrall, he cursed the Francezcis. And Mike’s thoughts were poisonous as he remembered the events leading up to this: his punishment, his reason for being here. Mere thoughts, however, could never be as lethally poisonous as Le Manse Madonie’s vampire brothers—nor for that matter as monstrous as the man they had sent him to see in Bulgaria…

Mike remembered how he had struggled awake in the confines of a cellar under Le Manse Madonie; how he’d surfaced from a drugged stupor to find himself hanging in chains against a damp, nitre-streaked stone wall. And despite that in those first moments of returning awareness he ached in every fibre of his being, still Mike’s first dull reaction before his situation fully dawned on him had been one of relief—that he was still alive!

Moments later, as his painful stirring caused his chains to clank, a Francezci servant had appeared, nodded his acknowledgement of Mike’s awakening, and moved silently off again into the shadows. Following which, within just a few minutes, the Francezcis had come to visit.

Barely conscious, Mike’s thoughts had been confused, whirling. His only emotion: that soothing sensation of relief for his continued existence, however precarious that might yet prove to be. So that when at last Anthony had spoken to him, it almost seemed to Mike that the “youthful,” centuried vampire had read his mind:

“Oh, what’s this? Do I see fear, terror in your eyes, Mike? Now why is that, I wonder? Did I not tell you that we have work for you, a job for which you seem eminently suited? But perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps you’re not the man we took you for, not suited at all! For to find you here, so very weak, strung up in your chains…and afraid?”

At which Francesco had taken it up. “And so you should be afraid,
Mr.
Milazzo! How many warnings did you expect? Knowing who we are, and what we are—and what we guard, succour, and
feed
down there in its pit at the roots of Le Manse Madonie—and for all that you are or should be one of ours, a Francezci thrall,
still
your behaviour has been intolerable!”

Anthony had moved closer, narrowing his smouldering yellow eyes and cocking his head a little to one side where he stared as if in fascination at Mike dangling from his chains. Finally he had nodded. “Yes, my brother is quite right: utterly intolerable behaviour! And here in this very house of ours at that! You attempted a
second
attack on several of our very best men! Either incredibly brave, or unutterably stupid! For unlike you we learn from our mistakes.”

And at last Mike had found his voice, which sounded from a parched throat and emerged as a strangled croak: “I thought…thought I was a dead man. And it seemed…seemed to me I had no choice but to fight. So I fought, or tried to.”

“Yes, which gave
us
no choice!” Francesco had then growled. “Except to knock you out. But in fact we
did
have a choice: We could have killed you outright and thrown you into the pit…or
not
killed you but thrown you in there anyway! Which in the end would be the same but even more…unpleasant. Thank your lucky stars that you’re not down there even now!”

At which, once again, Anthony had taken over from his twin. “You see, Mike, we’ve decided to give you one more chance—one
last
chance—which is why you’re chained instead of suffering the worst true death that any undead man could possibly imagine. So then, you’re still alive, at least for now, but nevertheless shackled. Why? Because you are too quick off the mark and there may still be a little fight left in you. And if you continue to give us trouble…but no, for we have taken measures to ensure that can’t happen.” From a pocket in his long black coat he had then produced a hypodermic syringe, tapped it twice with a sharp fingernail, and squeezed the plunger to eject a few droplets of glistening fluid.

And: “No,” Anthony had continued, stabbing the needle into Mike’s arm through the expensive materials of his soiled jacket and sweat-stained shirt, “we can’t afford to have you fight us, for then we’d be
obliged
to kill you and be done with it! Which would ruin our plans for you. Wherefore, this:” And he had held up the hypodermic again, to let Mike see that it was empty now. “You scarcely felt it at all, did you? A mere bee sting, right? From which you feel no ill effect whatever. Not yet, anyway…”

Then it had been Francesco’s turn. And his voice had gurgled like thick oil draining from a sump—gurgled with perverse pleasure—when he asked, “Do you recognize the word ‘bubonic,’ Mr. Milazzo? And, in relation to that needle, can you guess the word’s significance? Oh yes! Indeed you can! I see by your suddenly bulging eyes and twitching lips that you know
exactly
what I’m telling you! But are you also aware that the bubonic plague is yet another way, one of the cruellest ways, for the likes of us, or rather, on this occasion the likes of you, to suffer the true death? What, you didn’t know that?
Well now you do!”

At which Anthony, not to be denied some measure of the sadistic pleasure enjoyed by his twin, had explained that Mike had less than a fortnight to seek an antidote in Bulgaria; to visit their agent there, a man known only as “The Chemist,” who would supply him with the cure and certain instructions, before sending him off to complete his assignment in Edinburgh, Scotland.

“But of course,” Anthony had added as if on an afterthought, “if you should foolishly decide not to follow our orders or The Chemist’s instructions, then you’ll surely die—in agony! And if you should think to attempt any more ridiculous heroics here at Le Manse Madonie…there’s always the pit. But for now, if all I’ve said is understood, I shall unchain you. Then when you are feeling a little better, my brother and I will explain something of the task you’ll perform for us in Edinburgh.

“So then, is all clearly understood?”

After Mike had nodded his aching head, and croaked a single word: “Yes,” in reply, Anthony had unlocked his shackles, letting him crumple to the floor. And in a little while, as some of the stiffness went out of Mike’s joints, a pair of the brothers’ vampire thralls had come to help him move to a more comfortable room in Le Manse Madonie’s upper quarters, leaving him there to consider all that he’d been told and wait for the Francezcis to supply him with the rest of their instructions, his orders.

But with what he had supposed was a deadly poison, a veritable plague coursing in his veins, each minute Mike waited had felt like an hour…

Mike had been given “less than a fortnight,” perhaps twelve or thirteen days, to visit The Chemist in Bulgaria, obtain an antidote for his alleged condition, receive final orders and certain items of latent equipment, and then journey on to Scotland and the task in hand. Less than a fortnight, yes; but once the brothers had supplied him with The Chemist’s address, he’d been there inside twenty-four hours!

Now in this shabby, cheap hotel room in Scotland’s capital, as night settled more surely on the ancient city’s streets, his thoughts were bitter as bile as he recalled to mind his time in The Chemist’s lonely Bulgarian villa in a densely forested area some miles from Gabrovo in the Balkans…

Mike had flown to Sofia, hired a car and driven one hundred and twenty miles to Kazanlak and on through the Shipka Pass to Gabrovo. From Gabrovo a large-scale local map of the region’s frequently trackless mountain forests had seen him to the gates of a stone-walled private estate located in a valley between spurs radiating from the craggy spine of the Balkan Mountains: all of this travelling done by night—the night following his ordeal at Le Manse Madonie—so that it was almost dawn by the time of Mike’s arrival at his destination.

From a distance the iron gates had appeared rusted, in part ivy-grown. But as a security camera situated in one of the high wall’s buttresses detected Mike’s approaching vehicle, and after he had halted the car, stepping out into a swirling ground mist and a probing light beam from a verandah under the jutting roof of the gloomy house at the end of the drive, then the gates had been activated, causing them to swing open on well-oiled hinges. For of course Mike had been expected.

Having parked on a gravel-strewn hard-standing close to the house—a chalet-like wooden structure half hidden in the shade of close-towering, guardian evergreens—a place that seemed in excellent order, despite age-darkened timbers and the mistiness rising from some nearby stream—Mike had climbed the steps of an oak-boarded stoop to a heavy front door, also of oak. Now he understood why the house appeared in such good order: It seemed to have been constructed of quality oak from the ground up.

The door had an old-fashioned iron knocker in the shape of a clenched fist; but even as Mike had reached out his own flesh-and-blood hand to the hinged hand, so the door had swung almost silently open, revealing The Chemist where he stood smiling his welcome.

In that frozen moment of time Mike would have found it difficult to say what precisely he had expected; but it would never have been the bent figure at the threshold, or the warming glow of a fire behind him, reflected from a hearth deeper within the house. And after that moment had passed:

“Come in, Mr. Milazzo,” the figure had stepped to one side, gesturing and inviting entry. “Please come in—and welcome to my house—my young visitor from Sicily! Come in man, and make yourself at home. For if you’re not comfortable then neither am I, and I
insist
on being at ease in my own home!”