Necroscope: The Plague-Bearer (10 page)

That same night, before leaving the wine bar and while talking to young Kate, Harry had glanced through the recently delivered evening paper and had come across an item buried in a back-page column which he’d found both interesting and troubling; either way it was something he would have to look into, and soon.

As for Harry’s conversation with Kate: He had enquired not only about the routes the girls took when going to and on leaving the bar, but also their shifts or work rosters. For depending on the number of thirsty customers, B.J.’s with its private members’ licence frequently stayed open until the small hours. And the Necroscope’s interest had picked up, albeit guardedly, on noting that she, young Kate herself, would be finishing in just an hour’s time when Zahanine took over for the late shift.

Harry knew the bar and its precise location well enough; he had long since acquainted himself with many “safe” Möbius coordinates: secure places which he could use covertly to enter into or exit from the general area. But while the bar itself was in a well-frequented road and locale, the districts bordering upon it included several veritable warrens of steep, narrow, cobbled streets and alleyways. Depending on the locations of their various lodgings, most of B.J.’s girls weren’t required to navigate the lonelier alleys and would normally keep well away, but for two of them the danger was more or less unavoidable.

In the past, and considering the nature of B.J.’s girls—that they were a new generation of moon-children, lycanthropes descended from the thralls of Radu Lykan, whose werewolf blood had bred true—any risk had seemed minimal and acceptable, but no longer. And now, as a result of B.J.’s concerns, the Necroscope had determined that who or whatever was threatening Bonnie Jean and the pack it was time someone put a stop to it.

For the fact that the unknown assailant had already failed twice in whatever he was trying to do was no guarantee that he would not try again. And as for the identities of his two most likely targets: These were already apparent.

The black girl, Zahanine, was one such, and young Kate herself another. As such, Kate scarcely realized how lucky she had been three nights ago when she’d escaped Mike Milazzo’s poisonous bite by the skin of her—or of his?—teeth!

With these things in mind, Harry had distanced himself from the wine bar by a quarter mile and crossed the road into one of his coordinates, the entrance to a narrow alley: as good a spot as any to commence reconnoitring Zahanine’s and Kate’s routes, searching for the one or two locations on each route which the unknown attacker might find best suited to an ambush.

Then he would have to decide—or perhaps try to discover—which of these locations it would most likely be, and more importantly when. And he must work quickly, for Kate would be leaving the bar in barely an hour’s time. She had said she’d take a taxi; but she had also mentioned that after she was dropped off there yet remained a wearying climb to her first-floor flatlet, almost one hundred yards of it up steep stone steps in a narrow canyon-like alley. Once indoors she’d feel safe enough, for the flat was well secured behind
“verra
strong doors wi’ guid locks and bolts, aye. It’s just a pity the alley’s so verra steep and narrow. As for the neighbourhood…well, while it’s no a slum it’s no of the, er, highest quality, if ye ken mah meanin’.”

Harry did indeed “ken” young Kate’s meaning; it solved the problem of which locations to reconnoitre first. But before any of that there was someone he must contact about that item which had caught his attention in the evening newspaper. And so, with only a little time to spare, Harry took the Möbius route to his lonely old house outside the city, and from there put through a call to the Night Duty Officer at E-Branch H.Q. in London…

A gangling, ex-intelligence corps major called Fred Madison was on duty. Normally easy-going, and sometimes downright indolent, Madison sat up straighter in his chair and came wide awake when Harry identified himself.

“Harry? Long time no see—or hear. So what’s up?”

The Necroscope told him: an item in the Edinburgh Express’ late edition. A post mortem that seemed to be returning strange or anomalous results. Some poor girl, a prostitute, had died of drugs, starvation, anaemia; perhaps a combination of all three. Maybe Madison could look into it for him, let him know what was going on?

“Let me look at the screen,” the other answered. “Something you think might interest us? I mean, the Branch?”

“I don’t know,” Harry snapped, and frowned impatiently even though Madison couldn’t see him. “Perhaps, perhaps not—but it
does
interest me, and time is pressing…”

And just a few moments later: “Well, what do you know! I’ve got it on the screen. It must have come to us through the usual channels. Whenever Porton Down is involved we get to know about it first off, er, as you probably know.”

Harry’s frown deepened. Porton Down: the British Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research. “So, what’s going on?”

“Er,” Madison seemed of two minds. “Harry, you’re no longer with us, right?”

“Listen,” said the Necroscope quietly, “I really don’t have time for any cloak and dagger stuff. This could be very important to me, you, everybody. So either tell me what you’ve got on your screen or put me through to Darcy Clarke.” Clarke was Head of Branch and had used to be as good a friend as any of Harry’s old circle at E-Branch. And after another brief pause:

“Okay, Harry, but I’ll need to let Darcy know. It’ll be in the situation report in the morning. You do understand that?”

“Of course,” Harry answered. “Fine.”

“Okay then.” Madison sighed, and Harry could sense that he remained reluctant. “Now let’s see what we’ve got here…Well, it doesn’t say how the people from Porton Down got onto it, but
their
post mortem has come up with a really weird mixture which includes some drug use and apparent pernicious anaemia—though not enough in itself to have killed her—but the rest of it is…
Jesus!
What in the name of…!?”

“What’s that, Fred?” Harry rasped, his impatience mounting. “Something you don’t understand? Well neither will I understand if you don’t get on with it and tell me what you’ve got!”

“Harry,” Madison replied, “it’s not what I’ve got but what that girl
had!
She’d been sick with several unknown strains of some of the world’s nastiest diseases, possibly natural mutations but more likely some weird shit designed in a laboratory! Well, that’s according to the Porton Down memo, anyway.”

“Diseases? Made in a laboratory?” Shivering, the Necroscope could feel the hairs standing up at the back of his neck. “What kind of diseases, Fred?”

“What kind?” the other came back. “Leprosy, rabies, and—would you believe—the bubonic plague!?
That’s
what kind! What the hell is going on up there in your neck of the woods?”

And as suddenly and horrifyingly as that, Harry knew
exactly
what was going on, and he couldn’t stop from gasping it out loud, though it was only intended for himself. “He’s a plague-bearer!” With which:

Erupting from secret subconscious depths, the Necroscope’s metaphysical mind was instantly awash with otherwise forbidden knowledge. He “remembered” everything that Bonnie Jean had told him, and all of it made sense. B.J. Mirlu, a moon-child; likewise her girls—wolflings all—in thrall to a dog-Lord sleeping down the centuries! What better way for her enemies,
their
enemies, to deal with them than by infecting them with the only diseases that could destroy them? Leprosy, the so-called “bane” of both vampires and lycanthropes; rabies, which maddened dogs, causing them to bite and spread it abroad; and the Black Death, the bubonic, a hideous scourge out of the past which even their enhanced systems couldn’t handle!

Now the Necroscope understood it all, and in no more than a whisper he said it again: “He’s a bloody plague-bearer! A vampire and a plague-bearer!”

“He’s a what?” Madison’s suddenly anxious voice got through to him. “Who are you talking about, Harry? What’s going on?”

But Harry couldn’t tell him, and so said, “Nothing, not now that the Porton Down people are on it. I was just…you know, checking things out, that’s all.” Which sounded stupid, even to him. But Madison wasn’t letting it go as easily as that.

“Harry, we’re talking about a dead girl here. It’s like…I mean, you know—you being who you are, what you are—and if you were wanting to know something about her, like how come you didn’t just—”

“Why didn’t I speak to her?” Harry cut him short. “Perhaps I would have, if I thought I could get to her, see her without attracting a lot of attention. But this would have been new to her…
death
would have been very new, very terrifying to her. And with those poisons in her—in her body, butchered in the post mortem—asking questions of her wouldn’t have been easy. It never is, not for them and not for me…” He gave himself a shake and withdrew from the morbidity of it all, then said:

“Anyway, I’ve got what I wanted. So thanks.” And before the other could say anything else he put the phone down…

Now, with a far more complete picture of all that was happening in his mind, under cover of darkness the Necroscope returned to the entrance of his gloomy alley bolthole near B.J.’s wine bar, and there commenced his previously determined course of action.

Using the Möbius Continuum, he began by making a series of covert jumps that traced Kate’s route, as she’d described it to him, all the way from his secret alley to the door of her flat. And with those locations locked firmly in his mind, he went on to examine Zahanine’s routes, accumulating several more coordinates along the way…

At approximately the same time, Mike Milazzo was making his way towards B.J.’s bar intent upon attacking the first of her girls he came across. It no longer made any difference to him whether the attack resulted from an ambush or a chance encounter.

During the past week or so, he had indeed checked out every location or ambush site that the Necroscope was now reconnoitring—both these and some of the routes taken by other members of Bonnie Jean’s pack—but the urgency of his mission, not to mention that of his personal situation, was now so extreme that he was on the verge of throwing caution to the wind.

The means of Mike’s salvation was in his bite, also in the tiny phials in an inner pocket of his coat; but while the first of these was still viable, the second continued to be an enigma both frustrating and terrifying. Where was the Francezci brothers’ sleeper, their so-called watcher? When would he put in an appearance and finally reveal which of the phials contained the antidote? Ah, but Mike already knew the answer to that last…not until he’d completed his task, obviously.

Meanwhile—while yet there
remained
a meanwhile—he found himself salivating or frothing at the mouth more frequently; he felt the seeping stickiness of the pus in his armpits and groin where his clothing adhered, and could even smell it; and insensitive ex-mafioso thug that Mike was, still he was horrified by the rapid, spongy degeneration of his extremities.

Hence his anxiety, his preoccupation as he entered a gloomy alley on Zahanine’s route; where even with his heightened vampire senses he failed to note a shadow growing out of the deeper shadows until it was upon him, taking form and confronting him! Momentarily startled, he came to an abrupt halt, his heels skidding on the cobbles. But a moment later, as brute instinct took over, he snarled, lurched forward and reached for the throat of the small man who now stood in his way.