Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (31 page)

That headache stuffs a myth,’ she told him. ‘In fact I deliberately chose the red for you because it’s not so strong.

But it does have more than its share of sediment, which is why I decanted it. I managed to clear most of it. But if you don’t like it…’ she shrugged. ‘I can always make you a coffee, or something else of your choice?’

Harry took a sip. The taste wasn’t unpleasant; there was a certain bite to it - a hint of resin, maybe? He took a stab at it. ‘You seem taken by things Mediterranean.’

‘Aha!’ she said. ‘One minute an innocent, the next a connoisseur! But you’re right: a friend brought a whole crate of it back from Greece for me. Probably very cheap local stuff, which might explain its quality, but…’

‘… It’s okay,’ Harry cut her short. ‘It tastes fine. And I’m grateful for your hospitality. But B.J., I do have to talk to you.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘About that night?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well good, because I want to talk to you, too.’

‘You probably saved my life,’ Harry went on, ‘and I’m not forgetting that I owe you for that. But what you did was still a killing, if not downright murder! Also, you nailed the “wolfman” to his seat in that van, and so helped kill him, too.
And
you were very cool, calm and collected about the whole business - which worries me. I mean, it’s not everyone who goes around shooting people with a crossbow, then shrugs it off like it’s something that happens all the time … ”

She waited until she was sure he had finished, then said: ‘You could

have asked me all of these things that night, after you … well, after I found myself in the alley … when I was off balance? Let’s face it, Harry, if I have a case to answer, so do you. You said you weren’t a policeman, so … what were
you
doing there that night, eh? And then there’s a really big question: namely, how did you get us out of there? I mean, I still can’t believe that—’

‘—Drugged,’ the Necroscope lied. ‘I drugged you.’ (He’d come prepared for this).

‘What?’ Her eyes has narrowed to slits, increasing their tilt, making her look more feral than ever.
‘You …
drugged
me?
How?

When?’ Disbelief was written plain on Bonnie Jean’s face.

‘When I took your arm: I squeezed your arm tightly, held you, but still you pulled away. The effort you exerted to free yourself concealed the fact that I’d administered a drug from a small device in my hand. It had been meant for the people I was after, but I hadn’t had an opportunity to use it.’

She let that sink in, and thought about it. And finally: ‘That… all sounds a bit far-fetched,’ she said. ‘What, you got me out of there, unconscious, on your own?’ But Harry saw that she was uncertain.

‘I wasn’t alone,’ he went on. ‘I had friends in the yard at the back of that place. And I switched the lights off, remember? That stopped the police for a little while. By the time they went inside, we’d bundled you over the wall.’

‘Oh?’ She cocked her head on one side. ‘And then you carried me across the road, in full view of anyone who just might happen to be looking, to the alley, where you waited for me to recover, right?’ Her sarcasm didn’t quite drip, but it brimmed, certainly.

‘Yes,’ Harry nodded, delighted that she herself had supplied the answer to his biggest problem. ‘Exactly right. There was a lot of milling around; most of the police were inside, or gathered at the entrance ramp; their vehicles were all over the place, blocking the road. And there was the distraction of the blazing van, of course. Also, if we
had
been seen … well, the people I work for are powerful. And so you see it wasn’t really difficult. The drug is quick-acting, and just as quick to disperse. After a few minutes you came out of it. You were a bit shaken but nothing serious. Surely you remember sitting down on the wet cobbles?’

B.J. looked very uncertain now; her eyes blinked rapidly as she attempted to absorb all of this. ‘I was shaken up,’ she finally said. ‘I … didn’t know
what
to make of things, except that it seemed like some kind of magic. I went to my hotel and to bed. In the morning … well, it was all like a dream! And I had no way to contact you or even to know who you were. And I still don’t.’

She looked at him accusingly.

‘I shouldn’t have helped you,’ the Necroscope continued, and took another sip of wine. ‘It didn’t do me much good with my superiors, the

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people at the top. I should have left you at the garage to fend for yourself, and that way the police would have had a suspect for the killings. But …’ He shrugged. ‘You had saved my life, and I felt obliged.’

‘So … you’re an agent, of sorts?’

‘Yes.’ (It wasn’t too much of a lie. He
had
been one, at that time, anyway).

‘Working … for whom?’

‘People,’ Harry shrugged again. ‘When the police can’t do something that needs doing - when the law defeats the lawful -then my people are there to help. Except they’re not my people any more. I overstepped myself, with you.’

Her mouth fell open. ‘You’re out?’

‘Yes,’ he answered. This is my last job: to find out why you were there, why you did what you did. Only answer a question or two, truthfully … you’ll be in the clear. And I shall have squared it with my people.’

They’ll take you back?’

‘No, but that’s okay. I have other things to do.’ He sipped again at his wine, which was in fact excellent. It soothed a sore throat he hadn’t even realized he had. And it was loosening not only his tongue but his mind, too, and making everything he’d said seem reasonable - even to him!

‘So …’ (she was still uncertain). ‘After you’d left me in that alley -
‘.
and that was something of a swift getaway, too, if I may say so! - where did you go? And how did you disappear so quickly?’

‘I went to my superiors and briefed them on what had occurred. They’d been after that gang for a long time. As for getting away quickly:
\
there’s a wicket gate in that warehouse door in the alley. I simply I stepped through it.’ (Well, he’d stepped through a
kind
of door, : anyway, if not a wicket gate).

The frown was back on her face. ‘I could swear that when I glanced away from you, then back again, you had simply … I don’t know, disappeared?’

That stuff I used on you,’ he answered. ‘It has illusory effects, but i they soon wear off. Also, it was very misty in the alley.

Anyway, what ; are you suggesting? Where’s the mystery? I get paid -1
used
to get paid ‘ - not to be seen, to arrive unannounced and depart without leaving a trace.’ Suddenly Harry was slurring his words. Not a lot, but sufficient that he noticed it.

‘So what with the mist and all, and your disorienta-i tion …’

And there was B.J. refilling his glass. Had he emptied it that quickly? ‘Now it’s your turn,’ he said, stifling a yawn.

‘Is my company that boring?’ B.J. smiled wonderingly. Or so he thought.

Tired!’ the Necroscope told her, feeling the weight of his leaden eyelids. Not surprising, really … all the chasing about he’d been doing … and the drink … and the big question mark still hanging like a sword over Brenda and Harry Jr: their whereabouts, their safety. He leaned to one side, propping himself up with one elbow on the lounger, and asked: ‘Why were you there? Why the crossbow? Why did you kill that Skippy bloke, and
try
to kill the one in the wolf mask? Just for revenge? You said that they’d put friends of yours in jeopardy.’ (The word ‘jeopardy’ hadn’t come out very well, but Harry continued anyway): ‘Which was enough to make you track them down and
kill
them? Well, all I can say is, you must really care for your friends! Why not start by telling me about that?’

‘Are you okay?’ she looked a little worried now, concerned for him.

‘Me? I’m fine!’ But the glass tilted in his hand a little. That was okay, there wasn’t much wine in the glass anyway.

‘Look, be comfortable,’ she said. ‘I’ve only just realized how wiped out you look! Here, let me fix that …’ And before he could complain even if he’d wanted to, B.J. had placed a couple of pillows under his head. ‘You have hollows under your eyes a cat could curl up and sleep in!’ she said. But the way she said the word ‘sleep’ was like an invocation: he could actually feel his itchy eyelids closing, and was too tired to rub them open.

‘Your … turn …’ he said, lolling there—

—And barely felt her hands touching his shoulders, turning him on his back, and easing his head onto the pilows. And:
Damn it!
he thought, as he passed out. And a moment or an aeon later, even more idiotically: /
hope I didn’t drop my glass!

When she was satisfied that the Necroscope was well and truly under, taking her time and careful not to disturb him too much, B.J. unclenched his fingers from around the glass, removed the tray and wine and all back to the drinks cabinet, then returned to Harry and pulled down the crystal chandelier on its retractable cable and chain. His story hadn’t been so wild after all. Not to someone like Bonnie Jean Mirlu, who had heard many wild stories and known many wild things in her long, long life. And what he’d said about drugging her hadn’t come as too much of a surprise either, except for the fact that she hadn’t been able to work out what he’d done to her at the time. But now? It was far easier to believe that than that he’d somehow conveyed her in the blink of an eye from one place to another, without covering the space between! What, like some kind of Genie out of the Arabian Nights?

Well, Bonnie Jean didn’t believe in that sort of magic, but the ‘magic’ of secret agencies, like Mis 5 or 6, and mindbending drugs especially, these were things she could
readily
believe in. Yes, for she had experience of the latter!

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Indeed her red wine was a case - or a good many botles - in point. The recipe for that had been old when the sciences were young, and when dabblers had been caled alchemists. B.J. didn’t know what the ingredients were, but she knew where they were cached and how to brew them up. And she knew something of their origins, too: the islands of the Greek Sea - the ‘Mediterranean,’ as it was now - and the Bulgarian Empire (later Romania, or Eflak, or Walachia). Oh yes, and even further afield; for certain of the ingredients had come from the Far East with the Hsiung-nu (later the Huns), in the form of precious balms and medicines.

Certainly the wine had been known in Manchuria and Sinkiang, and to the esoteric Worm Wizards of the Takla Makan Desert, and much later to Arab alchemists in olden Irem, the City of Pillars. In the 14th Century it had been used by the Bulgars - who were good chemists and wine-makers both - and by the Serbians and the Otoman Turks, to ward off the Black Death itself which also had its source in the east. After that, its secrets had been lost to mankind in the reel and roil and turmoil of a troubled world. Lost to mankind, aye, but not to Bonnie Jean’s Master, who remembered al things and told them to her in the hours when she was caled up to atend
Him.
For she was
His
watcher where
He
lay in state, the Guardian of
His
Place. And the hour of
His
caling would be soon now …

…
The howling in her mind, that would cal her back even from halfway across the world - the cry of the Great Wolf in
His
secret den -that throbbing throat
that the wild Carpathians had known when the Danube was a trade route and Alaric of the Visigoths was yet to sack Rome …

Reluctantly, B.J. drew herself back from her mental wanderings in space and time. After al, these weren’t her memories but those of her Master, and she was only privy to them through
Him.
But Bonnie Jean had watched over
Him
for two hundred years - like her mother before her, and hers before her - and was a zealous, even a jealous Guardian. And now someone was come who might, just
might,
threaten B.J., and in so doing threaten
Him
in
His
place.

Well, threats weren’t new. They were old as earth, as old as her Master’s being here; indeed, some of them had come here with him! But the nature of the threat was something else. Aye, for there are threats and there are threats. Now she must discover what sort Harry was, and decide how best to deal with it.

Kill him? Oh, that would be easy, so easy. She could have done it in the garage - she almost
had
done it - except she’d thought he was a policeman, and knew that the police don’t give up easily when one of their own is murdered.

She could even do it now, this very minute … Ah, but what would follow behind? What of these powerful friends of his, these men who could act when the law

couldn’t? And what was their interest in her? Was it just the way he said it was, or was there a lot more to it? No, killing him now would be stupid, dangerous. Especially if he had been sent here, as he alleged. Safer to find out about him -discover al there was to know -and then let her Master decide his fate.

By now the wine would be right through his system. It was time to begin. Bonnie Jean propped Harry up with pilows until he was in the half-reclining position. She drew curtains across the bay windows, turned down the chandelier lights to a softly luminous glow, and gave the spiral flex a gentle twist that set the pendants slowly turning. Winding and unwinding, they sent a stroboscopic flicker through the finely sheathing membranes of the Necroscope’s eyelids.

And: ‘My turn, aye,’ she said softly, in a while. ‘Or are you no longer interested? Don’t you want to listen to me then, Harry Keogh?’

His eyelids flickered and B.J. smiled. Oh, he could hear that hypnotic voice of hers, al right, as in some especially vivid dream. ‘No need to speak,’ she told him. ‘Simply nod, or shake your head, in answer to my questions. Do you understand?’ B.J. couldn’t know that this was a ‘game’ he’d played before, and that therefore his resistance was weakened. Or should be.