Necroscope IV: Deadspeak

instructions:

AH… BUT IT IS NOT FREE! YOU CAME SPYING, INVADED MY MIND — AN ANT IN A WASP'S NEST! SO NOW PAY THE PRICE. GO ON: PROCEED JUST AS YOU ARE. GO TO THE WINDMILLS.

That terrible, gonging, magnetic voice in his head — that will which superimposed itself over his will — that telepathic, hypnotic command of some One or Thing as powerful, more powerful, than anything he'd ever imagined before, which made a mockery of resistance more surely than any Mickey Finn.

Jordan's legs felt like rubber — almost vibrating, twanging at the knees — as he strained to hold them back. As well hold back opposite magnetic poles, or a moth from a candle. And still he followed the waterfront to the mole, and along its rocky neck, until the ancient windmills stood visible there against a horizon of dark ocean.

Dressed all in black, Seth Armstrong was waiting, crouching in the shadows where the sea wall was shaped like a castle's battlements, after the style of the old Crusaders whose works were still visible all around. He let Jordan go stumbling by, looked back into the darkness of the mole, under the winking lights of Rhodes Old Town where it sprawled on the hill. He heard footsteps, running, and a voice, panting:

'Trevor? For Christ's sake, slow down, will you? Where the hell do you th — ?' And Armstrong struck.

Layard saw something big, black, gangling, step out of the shadows. One eye glared at him from a slit in a black balaclava. Gasping, he skidded to a halt, spun on his heel to flee — and Armstrong rabbit-punched him down to the night-shining cobbles of the path. Out like a light, Layard lay crumpled at the foot of the sea wall. And Jordan, feeling the strictures on his will slacken a little, turned back.

He saw the large, dark, mantis-like figure of Armstrong bent over Layard's unconscious form, saw his friend hoisted aloft on powerful shoulders — and ejected through one of the wall's embrasures, out into thin air! A moment more and there came a splash — then the chop, chop, chop of disturbed water gradually settling — and finally, as the figure in black now turned towards him…

… More running footsteps!

The beam of a torch cut the night, slashing it to left and right like a white knife through black card. And Manolis Papastamos's voice, just as sharp, slicing the silence:

'Trevor, Ken, where are you?'

Be careful! the alien voice in Jordan's mind commanded, but the order was the merest whisper and no longer directed at him. It no longer dominated but merely advised. And he knew that his telepathic mind had simply 'overheard' instructions meant for some other, meant in fact for the man in black. Do not allow yourself to be caught or recognized!

Splashing sounds from below the wall, and a gurgling cry. Ken Layard was alive! But Jordan knew for a fact that the locator couldn't swim. He forced his legs to carry him to the wall, where he could look out through an embrasure. And all the while he was aware of his controlling alien, confused and furious, mewling like a scalded cat in the back of his mind. But no longer fully in control.

Papastamos came running, a small, slim, streamlined shape in the night, and Jordan saw the long-limbed, gangling figure in black back off into the shadows. 'Man — Manolis!' he forced his parched throat to croak. 'Look out!'

The Greek lawman came to a halt, breathlessly called out: Trevor?' and flashed his torch beam full in Jordan's face.

The shadows erupted and Armstrong smashed a blow to Papastamos's face. The Greek rode with it, went sprawling. His torch fell with him, clattering, its beam slithering everywhere. The man in black was running back along the mole towards the town. Papastamos cursed in Greek, snatched at the torch where it rolled past him, aimed it after the fleeing figure. Its beam trapped an elongated human shadow, jerking on the sea wall like a giant crab escaping to the sea. But Papastamos was armed with more than just a torch.

His Beretta Model 92S barked five times in rapid succession, slinging a five-spoked fan of lead after the scuttling shadow. A wailing cry of pain and a gasped, 'Uh — uh — uh!' came back, but the footsteps didn't stop running.

'M-M-Manolis!' Jordan hadn't let up on his battle with the clamp on his will. 'K-K-Ken… is… in… the… sea!'

The Greek got up, ran to the sea wall. From below came a gurgling and gasping, the slosh of water windmilled by flailing arms. And without a thought for his own safety, Papastamos climbed up into the embrasure and launched himself feet-first into the harbour…

In his window-seat upstairs in the Taverna Dakaris, Janos Ferenczy's three-fingered right hand closed on his wineglass and applied pressure until the glass shattered. Wine and fragments of glass, and a little blood, too, were squeezed out from between his tightly clenched fingers. If he felt any pain it didn't show in his gaunt-grey face, except perhaps in the tic jerking the flesh at one corner of his mouth.

'Janos… master!' Armstrong spoke to him from a little over three hundred yards away. 'I'm shot!'

How badly?

'In the shoulder. I'll be useless to you until I heal. A day or two.'

Sometimes I think you have always been useless to me. Go back to the boat. Try not to be seen.

'I… I haven't got the telepath.'

/ know, fool! I shall see to it myself.

'Then be careful. The man who shot me was a policeman!'

Oh? And how do you know that?

'Because he shot me. His gun. Ordinary people don't carry them. But even without it, I guessed what he was as soon as I saw him. He was expecting trouble. Policemen look the same in whatever country.'

You are a veritable mine of information, Seth! the vampire's thoughts were scathingly sarcastic. But I take your point. And since it now seems I may not take this thought-thief for my own, I shall find some other way to… examine him. His own telepathy shall be his undoing. His mind is receptive to the thoughts of others, which until now has made him a big fish in a little pond. Ah, but now he has a shark to contend with! For I was a mindspy five centuries before he was born!

'I'm going back to the boat,' Armstrong confirmed.

Good! And if any of my crew are ashore, be sure to call them back. And Janos thrust the other out of his mind.

He returned to Jordan where he had staggered to a seat underneath one of the antique windmills and sat there in moon-and starlight. Jordan was exhausted, totally drained by the mental battle he'd fought with his unknown adversary, but not so far gone that he couldn't appreciate what he'd come up against.

The last time Jordan had experienced anything like this had been the autumn of 1977, at Harkley House in Devon. Yulian Bodescu. And it had taken Harry Keogh to clear up that mess! And was this like that? he wondered. Had he and Ken Layard sensed the presence of… of this Thing, even before it had become entirely apparent to them? Or apparent to him, anyway? All the pieces were starting to fit together now, and the picture they were forming was — terrible! Cannabis resin, cocaine? They were commonplace, even harmless, compared to this.

E-Branch must be put in the picture at once. The thought was like an invocation:

E-BRANCH? That deep, seething voice was there inside Jordan's head again, and mental jaws were tightening on his mind. WHAT IS THIS E-BRANCH? And pinned there by the sheer weight of the vampire's telepathic power, Jordan could only squirm as the monster commenced a minute, painful examination of all his most private thoughts…

Janos might have examined Jordan all night, except he was interrupted. Looking down out of his window, he saw the bearded, big-bellied Pavlos Themelis, master of the Samothraki, making his way across the street towards the Taverna Dakaris. He was a little late, coming to meet with the man he called Jianni Lazarides; but coming anyway, and Janos couldn't continue to dig away at Jordan's mind and hold a conversation with Themelis at the same time.

This morning he had found himself under the scrutiny of a thought-thief, reached out and delivered a blow to the other's mind. It had been an instinctive reaction which nevertheless served to give the vampire time to think. Jordan was strong, however, and had recovered. Well, and now Janos must strike again at that mind — a different sort of blow — and one from which the English mindspy would not recover. Not without a deal of help, anyway.