Brian Lumley - Necroscope - Invaders

'Very well, so assuming we're airborne again, what will we be looking for? Military commanders, you'll be looking for naturally concealed campsites for your contingents, harbour areas, and access routes. And you'll also be checking your maps, doing an aerial reconnaissance of the entire area. As for my people:

'We'll be scanning the mountain heights for our quarry. In truth, we don't really know what we're looking for; we can only hope we'll know it when we see it. But it isn't all blind luck. Two of my men, Lardis Lidesci and David Chung, are specialists in this regard. One of them will travel in each chopper.

'Okay, that's it. From midday or soon after we should have these planes at our disposal. Get your maps, cameras, and whatever else you'll need sorted out now. As for myself: well, much as I'd like to be going with you, my duty for the time being is right here. Someone has to watch the shop.

'A final reminder. This is a covert operation. Try not to give anything away to these civilian pilots. Have a set of answers ready to hand. For instance, you could be fire chiefs carrying out preliminary aerial surveys, ensuring there won't be a second Great Fire of Brisbane. Something along those lines. I'm sure you'll think of something.

'That's it, and I hope I didn't bore you too much. Gentlemen, thanks for your time and attention…'

Brisbane's Skytours helicopters were small, conventional pleasure machines custom-built for the job. Capable of carrying four passengers, they had wraparound plexiglass side windows which allowed for superb viewing, but would prove a shade vertiginous for people with height problems. As the Old Lidesci would later describe it, it was like flying in a bubble!' — and he didn't much like it. The only other problem was their range. Two hundred and eighty miles was their safety limit without refuelling; which meant that a chopper on the northern route must land at a small airport in Gladstone, and on the southern route in Grafton. The good side of that was that it gave the passengers time to take on food and water to see them through the return trip.

The pilots were isolated up front behind see-through bulkheads, and they communicated with their passengers on headsets. But since in the main their commentaries consisted of monologues learned parrot-fashion over years of flying the same routes, pretty soon the drone of their voices became one with the whirring of rotors and ceased to have meaning. If passengers didn't want to listen they removed their headsets; when they wished to converse or ask questions, they replaced them. A simple system.

In the early afternoon, Jake flew south toward the Macpherson Range with lan Goodly, the Old Lidesci, and an Australian Major whose rank was never on display or used to unfair advantage; he had his job to do and was simply another member of the team. But truth be told, it was a strange team. The precog was there in the uncertain hope that should they fly over an 'aerie' — in whatever shape or form — he might catch a glimpse of some significant future event and recognize it for what it was. The SAS Major had his own tasks to perform; he understood that Jake, Goodly, and the old man were 'specialists' in their own right, but in what specific areas he neither knew nor cared.

As for Jake: ostensibly he had been sent along so that he could 'get a good look at the lie of the land,' but he assumed that in fact it was to keep him out of Trask's way. And he was partly right: Trask hadn't wanted him around cluttering up the place, asking awkward questions, generally getting in the way. But that wasn't the whole story. Mainly Jake had been sent out with Lardis and lan Goodly in the hope that something of their team spirit might rub off on him.

And truth to tell, Jake was actually developing a strong feeling of kinship with the Old Lidesci, and he already acknowledged a growing measure of respect for Goodly… this despite that the precog seemed as enigmatic as ever. As for the Australian Major: Jake wasn't about to mention (or invite questions about) his own brief 'career' as a member of the original British Special Air Service. For, after all, he had been 'required to leave' in rather short order, and compared to this professional would seem the veriest amateur. But at least he had remembered some of his training… the useful, more deadly bits, anyway.

And there they sat, scanning the beautiful, sun-bleached coastal strip far below, the valleys and hills, but especially the rearing mountains, as the Skytours helicopter whirled them south, and their pilot/tour-guide's monologue droned on and on in their headsets…

Flying north along the Coastal Range, the locator David Chung shared a second Skytours helicopter with two SAS Warrant Officers and Liz Merrick. It said a lot for their personal discipline and commitment that these fit young Australians were able to concentrate on their work with Liz along. For her part, she was aware of the occasional appreciative glance at her curvaceous figure in tight-fitting jeans and loose shirt. But while the SAS men found this British 'Sheila' easy to talk to, frank and friendly, they also knew that she was a member of E-Branch and so must be special in ways other than the purely physical. And she was treated accordingly, with the utmost courtesy.

Liz was part of this second team in her capacity as a telepath. Not that her talent was in any way specific to vampires, but if David Chung were to detect mindsmog, that might provide her with a target area, a 'direction' in which to cast her mental net if only to corroborate the locator's find. Before letting her go, however, Ben Trask had cautioned her that that was as much as she could do, and had warned her:

'Liz, you'd better know what you could be up against. That stuff with Bruce Trennier? Child's play by comparison with what you could expect from a "real" Lord of the Wamphyri! I remember once over — oh, it seems like a million years ago — how Harry Keogh wouldn't hear of Zek using her talent anywhere near Janos Ferenczy. Janos was a powerful mentalist, too, but according to what Lardis has said about Malinari, Janos couldn't have held a candle to him] And it might well turn out that Nephran Malinari is our man, that he's the one we're dealing with here. It's unlikely to be Szwart, we're fairly certain of that, so it has to be either Vavara or Malinari. But if it's the latter, and if he really is better than Janos…

'Listen, twenty-odd years ago I had a friend called Trevor Jordan. He was E-Branch, and a telepath. Janos Ferenczy caught

Trevor spying on him and got into his head — I mean literally! And later, at a distance of some seven hundred miles, Janos was able to invade and even inhabit Jordan's mind. And just to show us how good he was, he made Jordan put a gun to his own ear and pull the trigger! Now that… is mentalism!

'But this Nephran Malinari isn't just another telepath. In his own world, in Starside four hundred years ago, his own kind, the Wamphyri, called him Malinari the Mind. Doesn't that say it all? Anyway, we've learned the legends from Lardis, and the Old Lidesci's word is good enough for me. And even if it wasn't… well, I know I'll never forget the things that Zek showed me on the night she died. That bastard vampire thing, trying its best to leech on her mind.

'So I'm asking you, Liz. Please be careful. You… you're very special, and in my time I've lost too many special people. I just need to be sure you fully appreciate the danger. I don't want you locking on to something — and perhaps receiving something — that you don't want and can't get rid of.'

That had been some three hours ago, but now…

… Trask's words were still echoing in Liz's mind when the pilot's voice climbed a notch in her headset to declare: 'We're going down now, folks. Gladstone next stop. So if yer'll excuse me, I'll just radio a pal o' mine on the ground, tell him to get the beer out o' the cooler, and slice up a fresh batch o' sarnies. By the time yer've all freshened up, I'll be done refuelling and we'll start back. A slightly different route this time, if yer'd like. We can stick more closely to the coast and—'