Deadspeak

'What about the tourists?' Darcy inquired. 'Wouldn't they be a nuisance? And how come Lazarides - or Janos - gets away with it? I mean, digging in these ruins? Is your government crazy or something? This is ... it's history!'

Again Manolis's shrug. 'The Vrykoulakas apparently has his friends. Anyway, they are not actually digging in the ruins. Beyond the castle where it sits up on the crest, the cliff falls away very steeply. Down there are ledges, and caves. This is where they are digging. The villagers think they are the crazy men. What, treasure up there? Dust and rocks, and that's all.'

Darcy nodded. 'But Janos knows better, eh? Let's face it, if he buried it, he should know where to dig for it!'

Manolis agreed. 'As for the tourists: there are maybe thirty of them right now. They spend their time in the tavernas, on the beach, lazing around. They are on holiday, right? Some climb up to the castle, but never down the other side. And never at night.'

'It feels weird,' said Darcy, after a while.

'What does?'

'We're going up there to kill these things.'

'Right,' Manolis answered. 'But only if it's necessary. I mean, only if they are things!'

Darcy gave an involuntary shudder and glanced at the long, narrow wicker basket which lay between them. Inside it were spearguns, wooden stakes, Harry Keogh's crossbow, and a gallon of petrol in a plastic container. 'Oh, they are,' he said then, and offered a curt nod. 'You can believe me, they are...'

Fifteen minutes later Nikos brought his vehicle to a halt in a rising re-entry. To the left, pathways which were little more than goat tracks led steeply up through the ruined streets of an ancient, long-deserted hill town; above the ruins stood a gleaming white monastery, apparently still in use; and higher still, on the almost sheer crown of the mountain itself -

' - The castle!' Manolis breathed.

As Nikos and his wonderful three-wheel workhorse made an awkward turn and went rattling and jolting back down into the valley, Darcy shielded his eyes to gaze up at the ominous walls of the castle, standing guard there as it had through all the long centuries. 'But ... is there a way up?'

'Yes,' Manolis nodded. 'A goat track. Hairpins all the way, but quite safe. According to the fishermen, anyway.'

Carrying the basket between them, they set out to climb. Beyond the monastery and before the real climbing could begin, they paused to look back. Across the valley, they could pick out the boundaries of long-forsaken fields and the shells of old houses, where olive groves and orchards had long run wild and returned to nature.

'Sponges,' said Manolis, by way of explanation. 'They were sponge fishermen, these people. But when the sponges ran out, so did the people. Now, as you see, it's mainly ruins. Perhaps one day the tourists will bring it back to life again, eh?'

Darcy had other things than life on his mind. 'Let's get on,' he said. 'Already I don't want to go any further, and if we hang about much longer I won't want to go at all!'

After that it was all ochre boulders, yellow outcrops and winding goat tracks, and where there were gaps in the rocks dizzying views which were almost vertiginous. But eventually they found themselves in the shadow of enormous walls and passed under a massive, sloping stone lintel into the ruin itself. The place was polyglot and Darcy had been right about its historic value. It was Ancient Greek, Byzantine, and last but not least Crusader. Climbing up onto walls three to four feet thick, the view was fantastic, with all the coastlines of Halki and its neighbouring islands laid open to them.

They clambered over heaps of stony debris in the shell of a Crusader chapel whose walls still carried fading murals of saints wearing faded haloes, and finally stood on the rim of the ruins looking down on the Bay of Trachia.

'Down there,' said Manolis. That's where they are. Look: do you see those signs of excavation, where all of that rubble makes a dark streak on the weathered rocks? That's them. Now we must find the track down to them. Darcy, are you all right? You have that look again.'

Darcy was anything but all right. They... they're down there,' he said. 'I feel rooted to the spot. Every step weighs like lead. Christ, my talent's a coward!'

'You want to rest here a moment?'

'God, no! If I stop now I'll not get started again. Let's get on.'

There were several empty cigarette packets, scuff marks on the rocks, places where the sandy soil had been compacted by booted feet; the way down was neither hard to find nor difficult to negotiate. Soon they found a rusting wheelbarrow and a broken pick standing on the wide shelf of a natural ledge which had weathered out from the strata. And half-way along the ledge... that was where much of the stony debris had been excavated from the mouths of several gaping caves. Moving quietly, they approached the cave showing the most recent signs of work and paused at its entrance. And as they took out spearguns from their basket and loaded them, Manolis whispered: 'You're sure we'll need these, yes?'

'Oh, yes,' Darcy nodded, his face ashen.

Manolis took a step into the echoing mouth of the cave.

'Wait!' Darcy gasped, his Adam's apple working. 'It would be safer to call them out.'

'And let them know we're here?'

'In the sunlight, we'll have the advantage,' Darcy gulped. 'And anyway, my urge to get the fuck out of here just climbed the scale by several big notches. Which probably means they already know we're here!'

He was right. A shadow stepped forward out of the cave's darker shadows, moving carefully towards them where they stood in the entrance. They looked at each other with widening eyes, and together thumbed the safeties off their weapons and lifted them warningly. The man in the cave kept coming, but turned his shoulder side on and went into something of a forward leaning crouch.

Manolis spat out a stream of gabbled Greek curses, snatched his Beretta from its shoulder holster and transferred the speargun to his left hand. The man, thing, vampire was still coming at them out of the dark, but they saw him more clearly now. He was tall, slim, strangely ragged-looking in silhouette. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, baggy trousers, a shirt whose unbuttoned sleeves flapped loosely at the wrists. He looked for all the world like a scarecrow let down off his pole. But it wasn't crows he was scaring.

'Only... one of them?' Darcy gasped - and felt his hair stand on end as he heard pebbles sliding and clattering on the ledge behind them!

The man in the cave lunged forward; Manolis's gun flashed blindingly, deafeningly; Darcy looked back and saw a second - creature? - bearing down on them. But this one was much closer. Like his colleague in the cave he wore a floppy hat, and in its shade his eyes were yellow, viciously feral. Worse, he held a pickaxe slantingly overhead, and his face was twisted in a snarl where he aimed it at Darcy's back!

Darcy - or perhaps his talent - turned himself to meet the attack, aimed point-blank, squeezed the trigger of his speargun. The harpoon flew straight to its target in the vampire's chest. The impact brought him to a halt; he dropped his pickaxe, clutched at the spear where it transfixed him, staggered back against the wall of the cliff. Darcy, frozen for a moment, could only watch him lurching and mewling there, coughing up blood.

In the cave, Manolis cursed and fired his gun again -and yet again - as he followed his target deeper into the darkness. Then... Darcy heard an inhuman shriek followed by the slither of silver on steel, and finally the meaty thwack of Manolis's harpoon entering flesh. The sounds brought him out of his shock as he realized that both his and Manolis's weapons were now empty. He leaned to grab a harpoon from the open basket, and the man on the ledge staggered forward and kicked the whole thing, basket and contents, right off the rim!