Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (79 page)

In a tower security room, a guard stared from a half-open window across the plateau of the Madonie and watched the helicopter sweeping the far jumble of rocks and blasting clouds of dust over the sheer rim of the canyon. Then, sensing the glare of a viewscreen brightening to unaccustomed life on the security console, he blinked tired eyes and turned to see what was happening. What he saw froze him rigid, if only for a moment: It was the strongroom; its lighting system could only be activated from within; it
had been
activated, else the screen would be in darkness. But that was okay; it must be one of the brothers;
must
be one of them, because no one else was alowed in the strongroom, ever. Except. . the brothers were down at the arched entranceway, waiting for reports on the explosions!

A shadow - a male figure, dark-suited - flitted across the viewscreen, paused at one of the racks, picked up a smal burlap sack and spiled some of its contents.

Gold burned silver on the monochrome viewscreen as coins roled this way and that. The intruder was plainly astonished; he picked up handfuls of heavy coins, standing stock still to let them trickle through his fingers.

Unaccountable blasts … both of the Francezcis in plain view out there in the night… strongroom …
intruder!

It al came together in the disbelieving watchman’s mind. His jaw had falen open; he snapped it shut to bite off a half-hissed,
‘Shit!’ -
then grinned as a red flashing light on the console told him that the vault’s cameras had been activated along with the lights. Whoever it was down there, he was having his picture taken! One way or the other, he was already a dead man. And sliding the window open al the way, the guard shouted down to the Francezcis: ‘Intruder! In the vault!

Intruder!’

At first they failed to hear, or perhaps they didn’t understand, accept. But who would? Then it sank in. ‘What?’ Anthony Francezci caled up, as he and Francesco glanced frowningly at each other and began walking, then running, towards Le Manse’s main doors. ‘What’s that you say? In the vault?
What
vault?’

‘He’s on-screen!’ The guard’s voice was hoarse with excitement. ‘He’s in the strongroom!’

The brothers knew what it meant. Of course they did. It was one of theirs, could only be one of theirs. The bomb blasts had been a decoy. Treachery! But it was unheard of, unthinkable. To a man, these people were al in thral. In any case, how could anyone even
think
to get away with it?

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Brian Lumley

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‘Weapons!’ Francesco caled out, his voice booming into the night. He snatched his dark glasses from his face, and his eyes were scarlet. ‘Everyone up and on the alert. Man the wals. Any stranger you see, take him alive - or if you can’t, then shoot him dead! In or out of the house.’ And pointing at the security guard in the tower window: ‘You -what about the cameras?’

They’re activated, yes.’ The guard shouted back.

But by then the Francezcis were into Le Manse and gone from view …

The Necroscope hadn’t noticed the cameras in the ceiling. Since switching on the lights he’d noticed nothing, except the extent of the hoard. And even then his mind couldn’t take it in, only the fact that it was massive and ill-gotten.

From stacks (literally stacks) of ‘lost’ Old Masters - one or two of which, in rich gilt frames, were actualy hanging on the naked rock wals - to the coins of forgoten realms; from the books and iluminated manuscripts of antiquity, to the jeweled ornaments of Byzantium; from pirate gold to modern paper money in bundles inches thick, Harry’s eyes were drawn this way and that as the
mass
of it sank in.

It was far more than Darcy Clarke had hinted, because Darcy hadn’t known. But the Necroscope did know, and knew what he must do.

The place had ventilation; he could hear a faint whirring and feel a gentle current of dry air being circulated. And when he looked closer, sure enough there were ducts behind the racks. Doubtless the system was an extension of Le Manse Madonie’s air-conditioning. Harry grinned (for what felt like the first time in a very long time), and thought
Well, and why not add insult to injury? This is for Humph. Something of what he’s owed, anyway.

He took two tear-gas canisters from his belt attachments, positioning them on shelving close to the ventilation ducts .

. .

… But first he had his own needs.

He unzipped the top half of his track-suit and stuffed it to bulging with wads of deutschmarks, sterling, dollars; filling the jacket until it bloated obscenely on him and threatened to split at the seams. Then he took up two smal, ridiculously heavy burlap sacks and hung them from hooks on his belt. It was as much as he could manage; it would have to do.

He yanked the ring-pulls on the gas canisters, backed off across the concrete floor and turned his face away. There came the threatening hiss of hot gases expanding under pressure.

Harry conjured a door and held it steady. He took two grenades from his belt, armed them, tossed them among the shelving. Wanton destruction of priceless treasures, but so what? No way the Francezcis were ever going to release any of this stuff or let anyone else see it, or

even admit that it was here! It was here because it was theirs; ownership was everything.

He stepped through his door, exiting the Continuum
between
Humph’s doors, in the airlock section. Quickly, he fiddled with the combination, until a red light began flashing … the alarm system, obviously. Then he heard the
crump! crump!
of his grenades from within the vault, and felt the bedrock give a shudder under his feet.

Another jump took him into the outer passage on the other side of the first door, where again he fiddled with the combination

… and once more the red flashing light—

—Which was when he heard the shouting, and saw powerful torch beams turning the dim light almost to daylight where they lit up the bend in the tunnel. As to why he’d bothered to mess with the combination locks: he’d definitely developed a ‘thing’ about protecting his talents. This way he was making it ‘obvious’ that somebody had
physically
broken into the strongroom. And thus it would be far less obvious that the someone in question was purely and not-so-simply a magician!

But in order to protect his talents yet again it was now time for him to move on, before the people with those powerful hand torches came into view around the bend. And anyway, there was somewhere else he wanted to see.

He didn’t quite know why, but—

—There was definitely somewhere else he wanted to see …

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IV

THE PIT-THING— THE CLIMB — THE EXAMPLE

Harry was back in his hotel room. He dumped his smal but heavy burlap sacks and unzipped his jacket into a wardrobe, deflating himself like a marquee with a snapped kingpost. Then, moving at a frenzied pace, he was out again.

At Le Manse Madonie: only nine or ten seconds had passed; the Francezci brothers were at the outer vault door, where Tony expertly spun the combination lock in a sequence that disarmed the alarms. But already Francesco was asking: ‘Why did he lock the fucking place up again? And how did he - how
could
he - get past us on his way out? Or

… is he still here, one of us?’ He glared all about, at the small party of thralls gathered in the tunnel.

They stared back at his writhing features, the unequivocal guarantee of murder written clear in his scarlet eyes and flaring, convoluted nostrils.

Tony had the outer door open; he made to step through into the airlock section … paused, lifted his head, and sniffed at the air. And, nostrils gaping, he inhaled frantically, disbelievingly - then choked and grabbed his brother’s elbow.

They all smelled it at the same time: gas!

Tear-gas, in the ventilation system!

The lieutenants and thralls reacted instantly: they stumbled about in the tunnel, coughing and choking, blinded by their own tears, as the atmosphere became tinged with a trace of yellow from the tunnel’s ducts. But a trace was enough.

Not enough for the Francezcis, however. Not yet. Wamphyri, they had more control over their bodies. The gas couldn’t hurt if they didn’t breathe it in. Their eyes wouldn’t sting if they shuttered them with transparent membranes.

The
membranes
would sting, but sight would remain unimpaired for a while at least.

Francesco put the second combination to rights as his men began to

leave the tunnel, staggering away through the reek of the place, colliding with each other, their torches probing the misty-yellow, gradually thickening atmosphere. He spun the dial this way and that, and finally swung the door open -on an inferno!

Hot metal had set fire to paper money and burlap; shelving sprawled in twisted disarray; art treasures lay blackened, broken in the roil of dense smoke and fumes. Electrical conduits burned, sparked, sputtered. Flames licked up the rear wall and gouted on the ceiling, emitting the greasy black smoke and gut-wrenching stench of destruction, as fabulous oil paintings submitted to the heat. A
wall
of heat came scorching out of the strongroom!

There were fire extinguishers, but many of them were damaged, blasted loose from their seatings on the walls. It took quite some time for the Francezcis to find two that were still working, and a lot longer to bring the wreckage of the treasure vault under a semblance of control. And of course they must do it themselves in the stinging yellow fog, through all the tears and blood and rage of their hellish vampire eyes -for as yet their thralls were only human after all

…

Harry emerged from the Continuum at Humph’s co-ordinates deep underground - where the American’s unauthorized explorations had been challenged more than forty years ago, and from which he’d been marched under escort before his employers - in that wide, spiralling stairwell that led upwards to the junction of five tunnels and downwards … to what? A secret place that no one was allowed to see. Which was why the Necroscope must see it.

It was very confusing. He told himself it was to satisfy his ‘natural curiosity,’ but in fact it was to satisfy B.J.’s post-hypnotic command that he seek out the Wamphyri. Oh, she’d yet to turn him loose
officially,
but he knew her purpose, and it had become his. It would have been his purpose anyway, whatever the circumstances; but at the same time he’d been ordered to store away whatever information he discovered -to ‘forget it,’ place it in limbo - until B.J. or Radu brought about its resurgence.

The result of which was that he was now here, investigating a monstrous survival, a powerful and esoteric branch of the most dreadful ‘dynasty’ to ever infest mankind with its evil - the Ferenczys. And on this level he worked without conscious thought with regard to any outcome, but certainly with regard to his own safety. He was in thrall, but he was still Harry Keogh …

Down here, there was as yet no tainted air. In these nethermost extremes of Le Manse Madonie, the performance of the air conditioning system was at its slowest, the circulation languid at best. But up above … Harry could hear the hoarse shouting, the crying of men scrambling for fresh air. And they wouldn’t find it until they were out of Brian Lumley

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the building proper, out in the night. That was good, for they wouldn’t be coming down here.

On the other hand Harry knew his own limitations, too. He was sure that the tear-gas would soon find its way through the system and back to him. Wherefore time was of the essence.

He went down the spiralling steps through several complete revolutions, until he arrived at a door formed of parallel bars of steel set in vertical stanchions. A warning sign - an openly displayed red lightning flash - warned that the bars were electrified. Beyond the door the floor was fairly level but uneven, and showed the natural stratification of rock; the place was a cave at the terminal point, the very lowest level, of Le Manse Madonie’s excavations.

Well back from the bars on Harry’s side of the door, there were twin, rubber-handled switches set in a panel bolted to the wall. One of these was marked with a lightning flash; the other was likewise pictorial, showing a series of horizontal bars. It couldn’t be simpler. Harry threw both switches, waited until a mechanism hummed and the bars slid from left to right through the housing stanchion. The door stood deactivated, and open.

Of course the Necroscope could have simply taken the Mobius route into the natural cavern beyond the door, but he’d been interested in the operation of the mechanism; plainly the technology here antedated Humph’s vault doors.

Also,
this
door was never intended to keep people out - which gave Harry pause as he stepped across the threshold into the dimly-lit cave beyond.

There was a nest of supplementary light switches mortared to the wall; when he switched them on, a battery of spotlights high in the walls lit the cave with
a
briliance that was dazzling. It took a few moments for Harry’s eyes to adjust. Then he saw that the main focus of the spotlights was the mouth of a great circular well whose wall was of massive blocks of old hewn masonry.

The Necroscope took it all in at a glance: the well, its electrified wire-mesh cover, the hoist with its metal platform, throwing a gallow’s shadow across the mouth of the well… or the pit? And the deeper shadows, sharp-etched, marching away into the cavern’s unseen corners. But the walled pit was definitely the place’s centre of focus. And perhaps ‘well’ was a better description after all; Harry could make out a thin mist issuing from its throat, vaporizing on contact with the cover.

That this place was a facility, that it was used, however infrequently, was obvious. The door, spotlights, hoist, electrification … all of these things spoke volumes however inarticulately. But what was it used for?