The Source n-3 Page 10

  Which was exactly where it wanted to be! The vampire egg soaked like quicksilver through Agursky's skin and settled on his spinal column.

  Incredible pain at once filled his body, his limbs, his brain. Out of sheer reaction, like a man grasping a live cable, he bounded, bounded again and again. He crashed into a wall, lurched dizzily away from it, crumpled to his knees. Somehow he forced himself upright again, waded across the room through an ocean of pain. He must do something; but this hideous… this unbearable…

  Red rockets were bursting, burning in his brain. Someone — something — was dripping acid on nerve-endings which were as raw as if recently severed. Agursky screamed, and as the entire world began to turn crimson saw his only possible salvation: the black alarm button in its red-framed glass box on the wall.

  Even as he passed out he summoned sufficient strength to throw a punch at the glass box…

  6. Harry Keogh: Necroscope

  Harry sat on the rim of the river and talked to his mother. He believed he was alone and unobserved, but it would make no difference anyway: no one would object to a crazy hermit sitting on a riverbank talking to himself. He suspected that a handful of locals thought of him that way, as an eccentric recluse: someone to be regarded warily, but mainly harmless. He suspected it and didn't much care one way or the other. In their position he'd probably feel the same way about it.

  Indeed he sometimes wished he was in their position: normal, common-or-garden, everyday people. Homo sapiens, with normal lives to lead. But he wasn't in their position, he was in his, and it could hardly be described as normal. He was a Necroscope and as far as he knew he was the only Necroscope in the world. There should be at least one other like him, his son, but Harry Jnr was no longer in the world. Or if he was, Harry didn't know where.

  Harry looked down between his knees and dangling legs at his own face mirrored on the surface of the water. He watched its blank expression turn to a cynical scowl. 'His own face', indeed! For to complicate matters, it wasn't his face at all! Or it was — now. But it had been the face of Alec Kyle, one-time head of British E-Branch. And yet Harry also seemed to see himself — the Harry Keogh he'd once been — superimposed over the stranger's face, making up a composite mask which wasn't really strange at all. Not any longer. But it had taken him eight long years to get used to it. Eight years of waking up in the mornings, of looking in the mirror and thinking: Jesus! Who's this? Until in the end the question had been merely academic. He'd known who it was: himself, in mind if not in body.

  'Harry?' his mother's suddenly anxious voice broke in on his mental paradox. 'You know you really shouldn't worry any more about things like that. That side of your life is over, done with. You were called to do a job and you did it. You did more than any other man could possibly have done. And for all that there have been… well, changes, you know that you're still you.'

  'But in another man's body,' he answered, wryly.

  'Alec was dead, Harry,' she made the point bluntly, for there was no other way to make it. 'He was worse than dead, for there was nothing left of his mind at all — not even of his soul. And anyway, you had no choice.'

  Harry's thoughts, spurred by his mother's words, carried him back, back to that time eight years ago:

  Alec Kyle had been on a mission to Romania — to destroy the remains of a human vampire in the ground there. Thibor Ferenczy had been dead, but he'd left part of himself in the earth to pollute it, and to pollute anyone who went near it. Kyle had succeeded, burned the thing, and was on the point of returning to England when Soviet espers had picked him up. Flown in secrecy to Russia, to the Chateau Bronnitsy, the then HQ of Soviet E-Branch, he'd been subjected to a particularly horrific method of brain-washing. His mind had been electronically drained, his brain literally emptied of knowledge. All knowledge. It wasn't merely a question of hot white lights, the rubber hose, truth-drugs and the like: the very contents of his mind had been forcibly, needlessly extracted, like a good tooth, and thrown away. And in the process Soviet telepaths had stolen the bits that were useful to them, all the secrets of their enemies, the British espers. When they'd finished with Kyle he'd been alive — been kept alive, for the time being — but his brain had been completely vacant, dead. Taken off life-support, his body too would die. And that had been the intention of his tormentors: to let him die and have his corpse dumped in West Berlin. There wouldn't be a pathologist in the whole wide world who could state with any certainty what had killed him.

  That was to have been the scenario. Except… while Alec Kyle had been a husk, an empty mind in a living body, the then Harry Keogh had been mind alone! Incorporeal, a bodiless inhabitant of the Mobius Continuum, Harry had searched for Kyle, found him, and the rest had been almost beyond his control. Nature abhors a vacuum, whether in the physical or metaphysical worlds. The normal universe had no use for an incorporeal being. And Kyle's brain had been an aching void. Thus Harry's mind had become one with Kyle's body. Since then… a great deal had happened since then. Harry forced the scowl from his face, stared harder at his image in the calm river water. His hair (or Alec's?) was russet-brown, plentiful and naturally wavy; but in the last eight years a lot of the lustre had disappeared, and streaks of grey had become very noticeable. It would not be too long before the grey overtook and ruled the brown, and Harry not yet thirty. His eyes, too, were honey-brown; very wide, very intelligent, and (strange beyond words) very innocent! Even now, for all he'd seen, experienced and learned, innocent. It could be argued that certain murderers have the same look, but in Harry the innocence was mainly genuine. He had not asked to be what he was, or to be called upon to do the things he'd done.

  His teeth were strong, not quite white, a little uneven; they were set in a mouth which was unusually sensitive but could also be cruel, caustic. He had a high brow, which now and then he'd search for freckles. The old Harry used to have freckles, but no longer.

  As for the rest of Harry's body: it had been well-fleshed, maybe even a little overweight, once. With its height, however, that hadn't mattered a great deal. Not to Alec Kyle, whose job with E-Branch had been in large part sedentary. But it had mattered to Harry. He'd trained his new body down, got it to a peak of condition. It wasn't bad for a forty-year-old body. But better if it was only thirty, like Harry himself.

  'You're at odds with yourself again, Harry,' said his mother. 'What's bothering you, son? Is it Brenda still, and little Harry?'

  'No use denying it,' he gruffly answered, with something of an irritable shrug. 'You never met him, did you? He'd have been able to talk to you too, you know. But… I still can't get over the way he did it. It's one thing to lose somebody — or even two somebodies — but quite another to be left wondering why. He could have told me where he was taking her, could have explained his reasons. After all, it wasn't my fault she was like she was — was it? Maybe it was,' (again his shrug) 'I don't know any more…'

  His mother had heard all of this before; she knew what he meant, intimately understood his otherwise vague words and expressions, even his tone of voice. For while he didn't need to, he usually spoke out loud to her. He didn't need to because he was a Necroscope (no, the Necroscope, the man who communicated with the dead) and also because she was dead, and had been since Harry was an infant. She was down there, where she'd been for more than twenty-seven years, in the mud and the weeds of the river, murdered all that time ago by Harry's stepfather. Yes, and now that same traitor was down there with her, put there by Harry, but he'd stopped speaking to anybody long ago.

  'Why not look at it from their point of view?' his mother said, reasonably. 'Brenda had been through an awful lot for a small village girl. Maybe she simply… well, wanted to get away from it all. For a while, anyway.'

  'For eight years?' There was a brittle edge to Harry's voice.

  'But having made the break,' his mother hurriedly went on, at her diplomatic best, 'she found she was happier. And he could see she was happier, and so they didn't come back. After all's sa
id and done, your main concern was for their happiness, wasn't it, Harry? And you'd be the first to admit that you weren't the man she'd married. Well, not exactly. Oh.r And he could picture her hand flying to her mouth, even though he knew she no longer had either of those things. Alas, she'd stumbled over her own argument, speaking not only her mind but Harry's, too. 'I mean — '

  'It's all right,' he stifled her. 'I know what you mean. And you're right — as far as you go.' But because she had tried to be diplomatic, she hadn't gone far enough. And Harry knew that, too.

  What had happened back then, eight years ago, was this:

  In the Mobius Continuum, Harry had discovered by chance the elements of an insidious plot which was unfolding in the mundane world. The vampire Thibor Ferenczy had set in motion a gradual metamorphosis in a child as yet unborn. He had physically (and psychically, spiritually) defiled an innocent unsuspecting mother-to-be, causing something of himself to attach and cling to her foetal child. Now that child was grown to a youth, Yulian Bodescu, and as he had developed so his potential for evil had outstripped his human and humane side to achieve a monstrous vampire dominance.

  The task of the British E-Branch had been twofold: to seek out and destroy whatever remained of lingering vampire influences (especially what remained of Thibor) in the USSR and her satellites, and so ensure that the 'Bodescu situation' could never arise again; also to destroy Yulian Bodescu himself, through whom Thibor had determined to terrorize the world anew.

  But Bodescu had discovered the covert workings of E-Branch, specifically their plot and determination to put him down, and had turned his awesome emerging vampire powers and cold, cruel fury upon them. His principal adversary in the Branch had been the incorporeal Harry Keogh, who at that time was trapped in the psyche of his own infant son. Kill Harry Jnr and Bodescu would also rid himself of Harry. After that… the remaining members of E-Branch could be tracked down and picked off one by one, at the vampire's discretion.

  This was a scheme monstrous enough in itself, but the true horror of the situation would lie in the aftermath of such a bloodbath; for then there would be no stopping Bodescu, who could create almost at will an army of undead followers which would spread like a dark plague across the face of the entire earth! And this was a very real possibility, for while Bodescu had become one of the Wamphyri, he did not have their self-discipline. They were essentially territorial; they had their cold pride; they were solitary and cautious, and usually firmly in control of their own destinies. Most of all, they were jealous of their powers, deviously protective of their Wamphyri nature and history, aware and appreciative of human skills and ingenuity. Only let mankind become aware that they were real and not merely creatures of myth and legend, and men would strive to hunt them down and destroy them forever! But Yulian Bodescu was 'self-taught'; he had had no Wamphyri instruction. He was none of the things which had made them what they were and possessed none of their dubious qualities. He was only a vampire, and he was insane!

  Brenda and her months-old infant son Harry Jnr were living in a garret flat in Hartlepool on the north-east coast of England when matters finally came to a head. Leaving a trail of bloodshed and destruction behind him, Bodescu evaded E-Branch's attempts at entrapment, fled his home in Devon and travelled north. Having inherited his mentor's expertise in hideous necromancy, he could 'examine' the desecrated corpses of his victims and read in their brains and blood and guts all of their innermost secrets. This was his intention in respect of the two Harrys, father and son: to murder them and steal the secrets of the Necroscope, and so discover the nature and properties of the metaphysical Mobius Continuum.

  E-Branch, closing on the Devon house to destroy it, missed their main quarry but discovered unthinkable horror there. Bodescu's aunt, uncle and cousin had been tortured and vampirized; his huge black dog was something more than a mere dog; a semi-plastic thing inhabited the earth under the extensive cellars, and Bodescu's mother was quite out of her mind from the unbearable knowledge of what Yulian had become. The house and all who dwelled in it were put to the torch.

  E-Branch had men in Hartlepool, psychically talented people who were keeping a low profile in and around the Edwardian building which housed Brenda's flat. The local police and Special Branch had also been informed (however guardedly, so as not to panic the populace) that the woman and child in the garret rooms were possible targets for an 'escaped lunatic'. Their presence hardly deterred the vampire; he invaded the building, killed all who stood before him mercilessly and with dreadful efficiency, and finally reached his objective. But where the incorporeal Harry Keogh himself had been impotent, his infant son was anything but. His father's freakish powers had come down to him; he could talk to the dead, could even call them up from their graves in the cemetery across the road from the house.

  Harry Snr had considered himself 'trapped' in the baby's psyche, but this had not been the case. The infant had held him there for one reason only: to explore Harry's mind and learn from it. Physically he was a baby, apparently helpless, but mentally -

  Harry Jnr's talents were already vaster far than anything his father possessed or ever dreamed of achieving. And his potential was enormous. All the theory was there in the child's mind and only practical application, experience, was missing. But not for long.

  Brenda, attempting to protect her infant son from the incredible nightmare which was Yulian Bodescu, had been tossed aside by the vampire. Unconscious, she had not seen the final confrontation. Thinking back on that scene in the flat now, Harry remembered it as vividly as if it were yesterday:

  The two Harrys had looked out through the infant's eyes into the face of terror itself, the face of Yulian Bodescu. Crouched over the baby's cot, the leering malignancy of his eyes spoke all too clearly of his intentions.

  Finished! Harry had thought. All done, and it ends like this.

  No, another voice, not his own, had spoken in his mind.

  No, it doesn't. Through you I've learned what I had to learn. I don't need you that way any more. But I do still need you as a father. So go, save yourself.

  It could only have been one person speaking to him, doing it now, for the first time, when there was no longer any time to question the hows and whys of it. Then… Harry had felt the child's restraints falling from him like broken chains, leaving him free again. Free to will his incorporeal mind into the safety of the Mobious Continuum. He could have gone, right there and then, leaving his son to face whatever was coming. He could have gone — but he couldn't!

  Bodescu's jaws had yawned open like a pit, revealing a snake's tongue flickering behind gleaming dagger teeth.

  Go! little Harry had said again, with more urgency.

  You're my son! Harry had cried. Damn you, I can't go! I can't leave you to this!

  Leave me to this? It had been as if the infant couldn't follow his reasoning. But then he had, and said: But did you think I was going to stay here?

  The beast's taloned hands were reaching for the child in his cot. Little Harry had seen the lust in the monster's eyes; he turned his small round head this way and that, seeking a Mobius door. A door had appeared, floating up out of his pillows. It was easy, instinct, in his genes. It had been there all along. His control over his mind was awesome; over his body, much less certain. But he'd been able to manage this much. Bunching inexpert muscles, he'd curled himself up, rolled into and through the Mobius door. The vampire's hands and jaws had closed on thin air!

  After that it had been all up for Yulian Bodescu. Harry had not called up the dead from the local graveyard, but his son had. For the dead had learned to love this child who talked to them, who had talked to them even from the womb! They loved him even as they loved and trusted his father; and if Harry Jnr was in trouble, that was all the incentive they needed to move limbs stiffened by death, to will back into pseudolife tissues and sinews long turned to leather and ravaged by the worm.

  They had pinned the vampire down, staked him out between their own yawning gr
aves, lopped his harshly screaming head from his body and burned him to ashes. And Harry Snr, no longer imprisoned but once more master of the Mobius Continuum, had watched them do it and instructed them when they faltered.

  Later… Harry had discovered that his infant son had not only saved his own life but also removed his unconscious mother from danger. The child had used Mobius or Zollnerist metaphysics to move both himself and Brenda to a place of safety — indeed, to the safest possible place: E-Branch HQ in London! And Harry had been left to pursue his own destiny and inhabit the shell of the once-Alec Kyle.

  This he had done, and in the process destroyed the KGB's new toy, the Soviet ESPionage centre at the Chateau Bronnitsy.

  After that… it should have been a time for relaxation, a time to pause and take stock, make adjustments, realign lives. But the staff of E-Branch, jubilant over their triple success — the elimination of Yulian Bodescu, the termination of residual vampire sources abroad, and the destruction of Russia's KGB-corrupted esper corps — hadn't fully appreciated the stresses Harry and his family had suffered. Now that the job was done they wanted the entire thing pegged out, mapped, recorded, studied and more fully understood; and the only man who understood all of it was Harry. For a month he gave them what they wanted, even considered taking on the job of Director of E-Branch; but over that same period of time it had become increasingly apparent that all was not well with Brenda. As Harry's mother had so recently pointed out, there was hardly any mystery that anyone could attach to that; indeed Brenda's breakdown was only to have been expected, might even have been anticipated.