telepaths in Ben Trask's E-Branch today would have stood a chance against Lord Malinari in any battle of minds, nor all of them together. Let me tell you how it was with him:
'Among the Szgany, even more so than in your people, there were weird talents. My own sixth sense — my seer's blood — is but one example. But we had mentalists, too, and oneiromancers, and even men like lan Goodly, aye, despite that their precognition was a dubious art at best. For it's as I've said, there's a trace of the Wamphyri in all men of Sunside; their taint lingers on, and I fancy it has carried over even into this world. But Malinari… was special. His evil was special! Why, among the Wamphyri themselves, Lord Nephran Malinari had no friends. But don't let me mislead you, Jake: it's not that the Wamphyri were given to forming lasting relationships. They weren't, but some of them did form alliances; well, occasionally. But never with Malinari the Mind. How may a man trust, or remain on good terms, with a creature who knows his every thought, who is one step ahead of his every move? The Wamphyri are devious, secretive… but how to keep secrets from such as Malinari?
'Let him but touch a man, a mere touch of the fingertips, and it was as though the other's thoughts flowed like water — or like blood? — out of their owner and into the mind of Malinari. Ah, a vampire with a difference: he slaked two kinds of thirst, the one for blood and the other for knowledge! No idle curiosity, Jake, but the lust for knowledge itself. And once a thing was learned, Nephran Malinari never forgot it.
'But of course in Sunside/Starside, just as in this world, there were those who could not be read. Be it strength of will, or simply their nature, there was a wall in their minds no ordinary mentalist could ever breach. Ah, but Lord Malinari was no ordinary mentalist. I have said his touch opened the way. So it did, like opening a dam in a pent river. But if the soft brush of fingertips would not suffice… there was another way.
'Fingertips… and the incredible strength of the Wamphyri… Trask says it's their metamorphism that allows them to punch stiffened fingers into a man's chest to nip his heart. I think so, too, for it certainly wasn't brute force with Malinari. His fingers were fluid, like liquid, allowing the exploration of a man's inner ear, or the sockets behind his eyes, or the brain itself. And whenever The Mind stole a man's thoughts out of his very brain… then he left nothing behind. No, not even the will to live…
'We're almost done. What remains is not for me to tell but for Ben Trask — in his own time, that is.
'Just one more thing. I spoke of Vavara, Lord Szwart, and
Malinari the Mind in the past tense. For that's how I heard of them, around camp fires when I was a boy, as part of Sunside's legends. The final part of the legend had it that four hundred years ago the rest of Starside's Lords and Ladies got together to be rid of them, and it took all of their strength and their fighting forces together to do it, to banish them into the Icelands.
'But five years ago — when Nathan and Trask's espers turned Sunside/Starside towards the sun — it appears that some of the ice melted. And if Vavara, Szwart, and Nephran Malinari were locked in the ice, waiting out the long cold years…?
'That's Trask's explanation, anyway.
'And now we're done, for that's all I know of it, or all I'm willing to say for now… except for one final thing that I'm sure you've worked out for yourself: the fact that they're back, Jake. All three of those monsters, they're back.
'And that's the nature of Trask's mission. It's what he and his espers are pledged to do. For once again there are vampires on the loose—
'—And no longer confined to Sunside/Starside!'
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Trask's Story
When Jake looked up he was alone. Perhaps he'd been asleep by the end of Lardis's story, but he didn't think so. It had gone in, all of it, and perhaps a lot more than Lardis had actually said. Weird, but that's how it had felt during the telling: as if Jake had been there on Sunside/Starside; as if he had known all or most of these things — the sights and sounds and smells of Lardis's world — and had only needed the old gypsy's corroboration.
But that was during the telling, and now it was all receding; the scenes that Lardis had painted so inadequately, which Jake's own mind had coloured, and into which he'd inserted the finishing touches, were just words instead of feelings, sensations… emotions? And all that was left was a legend in its own right. Half of a legend, anyway.
'You didn't tell me everything…' Jake accused, before he fully realized that he was alone. Then, looking all around and feeling foolish, he stood up, tossed aside the dregs of coffee gone cold in his cup, stretched the stiffness out of his limbs. It would be good to get some real sleep sometime.
Suddenly the silence, the emptiness, the loneliness of the place had become oppressive, weighing on him… until he spied movement in the clump of pale, stumpy trees between himself and the big Ops truck. It was Ben Trask, dappled grey and green and gold in the partial shade of the trees, heading his way.
'Jake?' Trask called ahead. He wasn't shouting, but in the clear morning air — the silence of the near- deserted campsite — sound carried a long way. And drawing closer, Trask asked, 'Did I hear you talking to someone?'
'Talking to myself,' Jake answered, rubbing at the stubble on his chin. 'Or maybe to one of your ghosts — Lardis? That old man has this strange effect on me. He doesn't just tell a story but takes me with him! Says his piece and leaves me there, then vanishes.'
'Sunside/Starside?'
Jake nodded. 'But he left a lot out.'
'He was told to,' Trask said. 'But that's okay… you can have the rest of it from me. Most of it, anyway. And if there's stuff I leave out, you'll just have to believe me that there's a good reason. Let's go to the Ops truck. It's going to get hot out here in the next hour or so, by which time the chopper will be back and we can get on our way. Meanwhile, the Ops truck has air-conditioning.'
As they walked back towards the articulated vehicle, Jake said, 'The stuff Lardis left out, I mean apart from the technical stuff, or 'science,' as he calls it, was mainly to do with people. Harry Keogh, of course, the mysterious Necroscope? But also his sons: The Dweller, Nestor, and Nathan. Huh! I learned more about Vavara, Malinari, and Szwart than about these human figures.'
Trask looked at him but said nothing, and so Jake went on: 'That term, Necroscope. It comes up time and time again. Now I know what a telescope is. 'Tele' is from the Greek, right? Far, as in far away? Likewise 'micro' in microscope, which obviously means very small. But Necroscope? An instrument for seeing corpses?'
'Something like that,' Trask told him.
'And that makes sense to you?'
'And to you, eventually,' Trask answered. 'I hope.'
Jake shook his head. 'So it's your belief that this Harry Keogh, this Necroscope who sees dead folks, is in my head? Now, I know I've tried asking this before, but what the hell is this guy? Some kind of telepath?'
Trask nodded. 'He was that, too, towards the end.'
'Was?' Jake frowned. 'Towards the end?' Then he snapped his fingers. 'Oh, yes, and that's the other thing. Lardis mentioned a bomb — a nuke? — that came through the Gate into Starside. And I somehow got the impression that Harry and this, er — this 'changeling' son of his, The Dweller? — that they were there at the time.'
They were approaching the steps at the rear of the big Ops vehicle. Trask paused in his striding to take Jake's arm. 'They were there/ he said, his voice hoarse now. 'And before you ask me: no, Harry didn't escape.'
'What?' Jake said.
Trask climbed the steps and made to enter, then turned and looked back. 'Harry Keogh, Necroscope — the original Necroscope — is dead and gone, Jake,' he said. 'In one way an incredible waste, and in another a merciful release, and probably a blessing, too.'
'Dead?' Jake said, and was suddenly cold fn the full glare of the sun. 'Then how can—?'
'—Harry's gone/ Trask cut him short. 'He's just another one of E-Branch's ghosts. But dead and gone or alive and living in you, he has never been more important to us than he is right now..
