Deadspeak

Jazz answered for them. 'It's Harry, isn't it? Harry Keogh? He gets our vote every time. If Harry has problems, it's no use telling Zek and me to keep a low profile.'

That's very loyal of you,' Darcy told him, 'but it was Harry himself who would have preferred to keep you out of it - for your own sakes. Not that I'm complaining... I'm short of a couple of good hands and you two probably fit the bill perfectly. Harry's main concern was that Janos Ferenczy is one powerful mentalist. He has already killed Trevor Jordan and controls Ken Layard, so you can see why Harry was worried. He was mainly concerned about what would happen if Janos came up against you, Zek. However, since Janos is now in Romania - that is, to the best of our knowledge - and with Harry gone there to hunt him down...' Darcy shrugged. 'Myself, I'm delighted to have you on the team!'

'So when does it all start - for us, I mean?' David Chung was eager to get into it.

'For you it starts tomorrow,' Darcy told him. 'The "active service" part of it, anyway. Tonight, back at the hotel after we've finished here, that will be the time for preparation and pla

While Darcy Clarke and his team thought forward to their next day, Harry Keogh was looking back on the one just ended.

Harry's flight to Athens had been uneventful. Aboard the plane for Budapest, however, when he'd closed his eyes even before takeoff and determined to catch an hour's sleep...

... He'd felt them there the moment he began to drift into dreams: alien probes touching on his mind. And knowing they were there he'd forced himself to stay awake and alert, while yet hiding that fact from the telepathic talents who had found him. 'They' could only be Ken Layard and Sandra, but their ESP was cold now and tainted. Almost completely in thrall to Janos Ferenczy, their tentative touches were slimy as the walls of a sewer, so that Harry must fight not to recoil from them. But he remembered what Faethor had told him, and strangely enough accepted that it was probably good advice:

Instead of shrinking back from him when you sense him near, seek him out! He would enter your mind? Enter his!

And as the vampire intelligences grew less apprehensive of discovery and avidly sca

'Ken? Sandra? So he has your co-operation now. Well, and you've done a good job for him. But why so secretive about it, eh? I was expecting you. I knew that he would use you, that in fact he can't do without you. What, him? Face to face and man to man? Not a chance. Your vampire superman is a coward! He fears I'll creep up on him in the night. One man against him and everything he harbours up there in that pesthole in the mountains, and he's afraid of me. You warned me he'd read the future and seen his victory there. Well, you can tell him from me that the future doesn't always work out that way.'

Ahhh! He sensesss ussss! It was Sandra, hissing like a snake in Harry's mind. He knows us. His thoughts are strong. His hidden strengths are surfacing.

She was right and Harry felt the strangeness of it. He was stronger, and didn't know the source of his new vitality. Was it Faethor? he wondered. Possibly. But for the moment there was nothing he could do about Faethor, and in a storm any port is better than none.

Ken Layard's locator's mind was fastened on Harry like a carrier beam. He let his own slide down it (but secretly) to its source, gazed out through Layard's eyes.

It was as if Harry were there in the flesh... and he was, in Layard's flesh! They were in the same subterranean room as before. Sandra sat opposite him (opposite Layard) at the table, and Janos furiously paced the pavings to and fro, to and fro. 'Where is he? What is he thinking?' the monster's eyes burned red where he turned them on Sandra. Plainly he was worried, but he tried to hide it behind a mask of fury.

'He is aboard a plane,' Sandra answered, 'and he is coming.'

'So soon? He's a madman! Doesn't he know he'll die? Can he not see that my plans for him go beyond death? What are his thoughts?'

'He hides them from me.'

Janos stopped pacing, thrust his half-handsome, half-hideous face at her. 'He hides his thoughts? And you a mentalist, a thought-thief? What, and do you seek to make a fool of me? And have I not warned you how it will go for you, if you continue to place obstacles in my way? Now I ask you again: what - are - his – thoughts!'

The master vampire had come forward to lean upon the table with both hands, glaring into the frightened girl's eyes from only inches away. His lips curled back like a leather muzzle shrivelling from the jagged teeth of some dead carnivore, threatening her all too graphically, but she had no answer for him except: 'He - he is too strong for me!'

'Too strong for you?' Janos raged. 'Too strong? Listen: in the bowels of this very castle lie the ashes of men like satyrs who in their day swarmed rampant across this land raping to the death women, men and babes alike!' he told her. 'Aye, and when they'd slain the lot, then even the beasts of the field were not beneath their lust! For two thousand years some of these creatures - whose loins are now dust, whose bones are turned to salts - have gone without. But I say this to you: do my bidding now before I'm tempted to raise them up and command them how to instruct you! An unending torment, Sandra, aye: for I would line them up against you, and as fast as they tore you your vampire would repair the damage! Only picture it: your sweet flesh awash in all their filth, ruined and ruined again... and again... and again!'

Harry looked at him out of Layard's eyes, drew phlegm up from Layard's throat, and spat it into the vampire's face. And as the monster went reeling, gurgling and clawing at his face, Harry said to him with Layard's voice: 'Are you deaf as well as insane, Janos Ferenczy? She can't see into my affairs - for I am right here, seeing into yours!'

Layard, shocked and astonished, sat clutching at his own throat; but for a few seconds more at least, Harry kept a grip on what he now commanded.

Janos staggered back to the table, his head cocked questioningly, disbelievingly on one side. 'What?' he glared madly at Layard. 'What?' He lifted a claw of a hand.

'Go on,' Harry taunted. 'Strike! For it's only your thrall you'll hurt and not the one who commands him!'

Janos's jaw fell open. He understood. 'You?' he breathed.

Harry caused Layard's face to split into a humourless grin. And: 'You know,' he said, 'this fascination of yours with my mind isn't merely unhealthy and irksome, I suspect it's also contagious. I had thought you would learn your lesson, Janos, but apparently I was wrong. Very well ... so now let's see what goes on in your head!'

'Release him!' Janos howled, clutching his head in talon hands and hurling himself away from the table. 'Send the Necroscope out of here! I don't want him in my mind!'

'Don't worry,' Harry told him, as Layard jerked and writhed where he sat. 'Did you really think I would bathe myself in a sewer? Only remember this, Janos Ferenczy: you sought to discover my plans. Well, and now I'll tell them to you. I'm coming for you, Janos. And as you now see, our powers are more or less equal.'

He withdrew from Layard's mind and opened his eyes. The plane was off the ground, heading north and a little west for Budapest. And Harry was well satisfied. Back in Edinburgh less than a week ago he'd wondered at his precognitive glimpses of some vague and frightening future, and felt that he stood on the threshold of strange new developments. Now he experienced a sense of justification: his Necroscope's powers were growing, expanding to fill the gap created by Harry Jnr's tampering. That was Harry's explanation, anyway...