Necroscope 7 Vampire World 2 The Last Aerie.pdf

THE LAST AERIE

VAMPIRE WORLD II

BRIAN LUMLEY

PART ONE

E-Branch

Harry's Passing

To the members of E-Branch, bad dreams were an occupational hazard; it was generally accepted that

nightmares went with the work. Ben Trask, current head of the Branch, had always had his share of bad

dreams. Indeed, since the Yulian Bodescu affair twelve years ago, he'd had more than his share. And

only half of them when he was asleep. The sleeping ones were of the harmless variety: they frightened but

couldn't kill you. They were engendered of the waking sort, which were very different: sometimes they

could kill andworse. Because they were real.

As for this one, it wasn't so much a bad as a weird dream. And weirder because Trask was wide

awake, having driven his car through the wee small hours of a rainy night into the heart of London, and

parked it opposite E-Branch HQ . .. without knowing why. And Trask was fussy about things like that;

he generally liked to be responsible for his actions.

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It was a Sunday in mid-February of 1990, one of those rare days when Trask could get away from his

work and switch off, or rather switch on, to the normal world which existed outside the Branch. It should

have been one of those days, anyway. But here he was, at E-Branch HQ in the middle of the sleeping

city; and in the eye of his mind this weird dream which wouldn't go away, this daydream repeating over

and over, like flick-

ering frames from an old monochrome movie projectedonto a window, so that he could see right through

it. A ghost film; if he blinked his eyes rapidly it would vanish, however momentarily, and return just as

soonas he relaxed:

A corpse, smouldering, with its fire-bJackened arms flung wide; steaming headthrown back as in the

final agony of death; tumbling end over end into a black void shot through withthin neon bars or ribbons

of blue,green, and red light.

It was a tortured thing, yes, but dead now from all of its torments and no longer suffering; unknown and

unknowable as the weird waking dream which it was. And yet there was something morbidly familiar

about it; so that watching it, Trask's face was grey and his lips drawn back in a silent snarl from his

strong, slightly yellow teeth. If only the corpse would stop tumbling for a moment and come into focus,

give him a clearer shot of the blistered, silently screaming face ...

Trask got out of his car into a sudden squall of leaden raindrops, as if some Invisible One had dipped his

hands in water and scooped it into Trask's face. And muttering a curse as he turned up the collar of his

overcoat, he glanced at the building across the street, craning his neck to peer up at the high windows of

E-Branch. Up there he expected to see a light -just one, burning in a window set centrally in the length of

the entire upper storey which was the Branch - lighting the room which housed the Duty Officer through

his lonely night vigil. Well, he saw the Duty Officer's light, right enough, and keeping it company, three or

four more which he hadn't expected. But he saw more than the lights, for even the rain couldn't wash

away the tortured, monotonously tumbling figure from the screen ofhis mind.

Trask knew that if he were someone or thing other than who and what he was — head of a top-secret,

in more than one way esoteric security organization — that the experience must surely scare the hell out

of him. Except, well, he'd been scared by experts. Or, he might believe he was going mad. But there

again, E-Branch was ... E-Branch. This thing he was experiencing, it must be in his mind, he supposed. It

had to be, for there was no physical mechanism to account for it.Or was there?

Hallucination? Well, possibly. Someone could have got to him, fed him drugs, brainwashed him ... but to

what end? Why bring him here in the dead of night? And why bring these other people here? (The extra

lights up there, the shiny black MG Metro pulling into the kerb, and the bloke across the road - an

E-Branch agent, surely? - even now running through the rain towards the Branch's back door entrance.)

Why werethey here?

'Sir?' A girl struggled stiffly, awkwardly out of the Metro. She was Anna Marie English, a Branch esper.

English by name but never an English rose - nor any sort of rose by any other name - she was enervated,

pallid, dowdy, a stray cat drowning in the rain. It was her talent, Trask knew, and he felt sorry for her.

She was 'ecologically aware'; or as she herself was wont to put it, she was 'as one with the Earth'. When

water tables declined and deserts expanded, so her skin driedout, became desiccated. When acid rains

ate into Scandinavian forests, her dandruff fell like snow. In her dreams she heard whale species singing

sadly of their decline and inevitable extinction, and she knew from her aching bones when the Japanese

were slaughtering the dolphins. A human lodestone, she tracked illicitnuclear waste, monitored pollution,

shrank from

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yawning holes in the ozone as a coral polyp from a diver's probing spearpoint. Yes, she was an

'ecopath': she felt for the Earth and suffered all of its sicknesses, and unlike the rest of us knew that she,

too, was dyingfrom them.

Trask looked at her: she was twenty-four and lookedfifty. Despite his pity, perhaps paradoxically, he

thought of her in harsh, disassociated, almost disapproving terms - thick-lensed spectacles, liver spots,

hearing aid, straggly-haired, crumpled blouse, splay-legged - and knew he disliked her because she

mirrored the decline of the world. And that was his talent at work. Ben Trask was a human lie-detector:

he recognized a lie when he saw, felt, heard, or otherwise perceived one as other men recognize a slap in

the face; so that conversely, in the absence of falsehood he must acknowledge truth. Except Anna Marie

English's truth was unbearable. If Greenpeace had her and could make the world believe in her, they

would win their case in one ... though of course it would be lost at one and the same time. For they'd

suspect that they were too late. But Trask also knew that it wasn't quite like that. Theworld was a huge

creature and had been sorely wounded, and Anna Marie English was just too smallto sustain so much

damage. But while she was suffering almost beyond endurance, the Earth could go on taking it for a long

time yet. This was Trask's view of it, anyway. He supposed it made him an optimist, whichwas something

of a paradox in itself.

'Can you see it?' he said. 'Do you have any idea whatit's all about?'

She looked at him and saw a mousey-haired, green-eyed man in his late thirties. Trask was about five

feet ten, a little overweight and slope-shouldered, and wore what could only be described as a lugubrious

expres-

sion. Perhaps it had to do with his talent: in a world where the plain truth was increasingly hard to find, it

was no easy thing being a lie-detector. White lies, half- truths, and downright fables came at Trask from

all directions, until sometimes he felt he didn't want tolook any more.

But Anna Marie English had her own problems. Finally she nodded her bedraggled mop of a head. 'I

see it, yes, but don't ask me what it's all about. I woke up,saw it, and knew I had to come here. That's

all. But I've a hunch the world's a loser yet again.' Her voice was acoughing rasp.

'A hunch?'

This thing isn't specific to me,' she frowned. This time I'm just... an onlooker? It isn't hurting me. I feel for

him, yes, but his fate doesn't seem to have made much impression on the world in general. Yet at the

same time, somehow I think it makes the world less.'

'Do you know him?'

'I feel that I should know him, certainly,' she answered, simultaneously shaking her head. And ruefully,'I

know that I was watching him when I should have been watching the road. I went through two red lights

at least!'

Trask nodded, took her by the elbow and guided heracross the street. 'Let's join them and see if anyone

else has a clue.' In fact he already had more than a clue butwas unwilling to give it voice. If he was right,

then just like the ecopath he could scarcely view this phenomenon as Earth-damaging. In fact it might

even be arelief.

With Whitehall no more than a ten minute walk away, the torn front page from a discarded Pravda

seemed strangely out of place where it spun slowly in the current of the flooded gutter, inching soggily

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and

perhaps prophetically towards the iron-barred throat of a gurgling sump. But as if in defiance of the

stinging rain, the night, and all other distractions, the phantomhologram continued to displayitselfwherever

the glances of Trask and Anna Marie English happened to fall. It was there in the tiny unmanned foyer,

playing on the neutral grey doors of the elevator as if projected there from their eyeballs; and when the

doors hissed open to admit them, they took it with them into the cage to be carried up to the top floor

offices of E-Branch HQ.

The rest of the building was a well-known hotel; bright lights at the front, and a uniformed doorman from

the Corps of Commissionaires sheltering from the rain under his striped plastic canopy, or more likely

inside taking a coffee with the night clerk now that allthe guests were abed. But up here on the top floor .

. .

This was a different world. And a weird one.

E-Branch: Ben Trask felt much the same about it nowas he had fourteen years ago when he was first

recruited, and as every Branch esper before and since. Alec Kyle, an old friend and ex-Head of Branch

was dead and gone now, (was he? And his body, too? Was that what this was all about?) but he had

come closest to it when he'd used to say, 'E-Branch? A bloody funnyoutfit, Ben! Science and sorcery —

telemetry and telepa thy - computerized probability patterns and precogni-tion - gadgets and ghosts. We

have access to all of these things .. . now.'

That 'now' had qualified it. For at the time, Kyle had been talking about Harry Keogh. And later he had

become Harry Keogh; Keogh's mind in Kyle's body,anyway...

The cage jerked to a halt; its doors hissed open; Traskand the unnaturally aged 'girl', and the hologram,

got out.

Hologram or phantom? Trask wondered. Gadget ... or ghost? When he was a kid he'd believed in

ghosts.Then for a time he hadn't. Now he worked for E-Branch and ... sometimes he wished he were a

kid again. Forthen it was all in the imagination.

lan Goodly, the Night Duty Officer, was waiting for them in the corridor. Very tall, skeletally thin and

gangly, he was a prognosticator or 'hunchman'. Grey and mainly gaunt-featured, Goodly's expression

was usually grave; he rarely smiled; only his eyes - large,brown, warm and totally disarming - belied what

mustotherwise constitute a rather unfortunate first impression, that of a cadaverous mortician. 'Anna,' he

offeredthe girl a polite nod. 'Ben?'

Trask returned the unspecified query. 'Do you see it,too?'

'We all do,' Goodly answered, his voice high-pitchedand a little shrill, but not unusually so. And before

Trask could say anything else: T guessed you'd be in.I've told them to wait for you in the Ops room.'

'How many of them?'

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Goodly shrugged. 'Everyone within a thirty mileradius.'

Trask nodded. Thanks, lan. I'll go and speak tothem. And you'd better go back to keeping watch.'

Again Goodly's shrug. 'Very well, but apart from thisit's going to be a quiet night. This thing is happening,

and soon it will be finished. And then we'll see whatwe'll see.' He began to turn away.

Trask caught his arm and stopped him. 'Any ideas?'

Goodly sighed. 'I could give you... an "educated guess". But I suspect you'd prefer to let it play itself out,

right?' Like all hunchmen, he was cautious aboutbeing too specific. The future didn't like being pinned

down.

Someone had called the elevator; its doors closed andthe indicator signalled its descent. As Goodly

made to return to his watch, Trask uttered a belated,'Right,' then turned left along the corridor and

headed for theOps room. And Anna Marie English limped along behindhim.

In the Ops room they found their colleagues waiting for them. In front of the briefing podium an area had

been cleared of chairs where eleven espers formed an inward-facing circle. Trask and the girl made

thirteen. A witch's dozen, he thought, wryly. We complete thecoven.

As the circle opened up and its members adjusted their positions the better to accommodate the

latecomers, so Trask saw the point of the formation. The combined awareness of the espers added to the

hologram's authentication: to experience the thing as a groupwas to focus it, lend it definition. And the

hithertonebulous mental projection expanded in a moment from a 3-D picture in Trask's mind's eye to a

seemingly physical, apparently solid figure right there in front of him! But only apparently solid, for

obviously it wasn'treal.

The ring formed by the espers was maybe fifteen toeighteen feet in diameter; the location of the smoulder

ing corpse where it tumbled backwards, head overheels, free of the floor, as on some invisible spit, was

no more than ten feet away from any individual viewer. If it were solid - if it were 'here' at all - then the

figure would have to be that of a child or a dwarf. But itsproportions were those of a normal, adult human

being. And so the apparition was some kind of hologram, viewed as from a considerably greater distance

than was apparent. It was like a scene in a crystal ball: they were seeing something which had happened,

or which

was even now in enactment, somewhere else. And morethan ever Trask believed he knew this ... victim?

And more than ever he suspected that this was a scene fromanother world, even another universe.

On entering the room, the Head of Branch had noted the identities of the eleven. There was Millicent

Cleary, a pretty little telepath whose talent was still developing. There seemed little doubt but that one

day she would be a power in her own right, but right now she was vulnerable - telepathy could do that to

a person - and Trask thought of her as the kid sister he'd never had. Then there was David Chung, a

hugely talented locator and server. He was slight, wiry, slant-eyed and yellowas they come. But he was

British from birth, a Londoner,and fiercely loyal to the Branch. All of them were loyal, or else the Branch

would fail. Chung tracked Soviet stealth subs, IRA units in the field, drug-runners -especially the latter.

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