Brian Lumley - Necroscope IV - Deadspeak

Then… it was a strange feeling: to want him to know that she was there, but at the same time almost fearing him knowing it. Should she stand still, hold her breath, hope that he would carry on by? Or -

But too late.

'You,' he said, taking a step towards the shadows where she stood. 'But this is a lonely place, Ellie, and by now there should be customers for you, back at Nick's.'

As he stepped in, so she stepped a little out of the shadows. They stood close, half-silhouettes in the darkness of old stone walls. And there and then she knew she would have him, the way she always knew it. 'I thought I might come aboard your boat,' she said, breathlessly.

Another pace and he drove her back into the darkness, until she leaned against the wall. 'But you may not,' he answered, with a slow shake of his head.

'Then — ah!' she drew breath sharply as his hand grasped her narrow waist just above the hip. 'Then… I think perhaps I would like you to fuck me here — right now — against this wall!'

He chuckled, but without humour. 'And should I pay for something you so obviously desire?'

'You've already paid,' she answered, beginning to pant as his free hand opened her blouse. 'Your wine…'

'You sell yourself cheaply, Ellie.' He lifted her skirts, moved even closer.

'Cheaply?' she breathed against his neck. 'For you it's free!'

Again his chuckle. 'Free? You give yourself freely? Ah, but this world is filled with surprises! A whore, and yet so innocent.'

She parted her legs and sucked at him, and expanded as he slid into her. He was massive. He surged within her, filling her and yet still surging! The sensation was one such as she'd never known or even imagined before. Was he some sort of god, some fantastic Priapus? 'Who… are… you?' she gasped the words out, knowing full well who he was. And before he could answer: 'What… are… you?'

Janos was aroused now — his hunger, if nothing else. One hand tugged at her breasts while the other reached behind and under her. He continued to surge; not thrusting but simply elongating into her. And now his fingers had found her anus, and they too seemed to be surging.

'Ah! Ah! Ah!' she gasped, her eyes wide and shining in the darkness and her mouth lolling open.

And finally, grunting, he answered her question with one of his own: 'Do you know the legend of the Vrykoulakas?' His hand left her breasts and took away the dark glasses from his eyes — which burned crimson as coals in his face!

She inhaled air massively, but before she could scream his chasm of a mouth had clamped itself over the entire lower half of her face. And his tongue also surged, into and down her convulsing throat. While in her mind:

Ah, I see you do know the legend! Well, and now you know the reality. So be it! Inside her body his vampire protoflesh spread into every cavity, putting out filament rootlets which burrowed in her veins and arteries like worms in soil, without damaging the structure. And even before she had lost full consciousness, Janos was feeding.

Tomorrow they would find her here and say she had died of massive pernicious anaemia, and not even the most minute autopsy would discover anything to the contrary. Nor would there be any-progeny — of this most delicious fusion. No, for Janos would see to it that nothing of him remained in her to surface later and cause him problems.

As for the life he was taking: what of it? It was only one of many hundreds. And anyway, what had she been but a whore? The answer was simple: she had been nothing…

Three and a half hours later and three miles due east of Rhodes Town, the Samothraki lay as if becalmed on a sea like a millpond. Quite extraordinarily, in the last ten or fifteen minutes a writhing fret had developed, quickly thickening to a mist and then to a fog. Now damp white billows were drifting across the old ship's decks, and visibility was down to zero.

The First Mate, still tender from his brush with Janos Ferenczy, had just brought Pavlos Themelis up onto the deck to see for himself. And Themelis was rightly astonished. 'What?' he said. 'But this is crazy! What do you make of it?'

The other shook his head. 'I don't know,' he answered. 'Crazy, like you said. You might expect it in October, but that's six months away.' They moved to the wheelhouse where a crewman was trying to get the foghorn working.

'Forget it,' Themelis told him. 'It doesn't work. God, this is the Aegean! Foghorn? — I never once used it. The pipes will be full of rust. Anyway, she works off steam and we've precious little up. So make yourself useful, go take a turn stoking. We have to move out of this.'

'Move?' said the First Mate. 'Where to?'

"The hell out of this!' Themelis barked. 'Where do you think? Into clear water, somewhere where the Lazarus isn't likely to come barging up out of nowhere and cut us in half!'

'Speak of the devil,' the other growled low in his throat, his little pig-eyes full of hate where they stared through the condensation on the cabin window at the sleek white shape which even now came ghosting alongside, her reversed screws bringing her to a dead halt in the gently 1 lapping water.

The grey, mist-wreathed crew of the Lazarus tossed hawsers; the ships were hauled together, port to portside; ancient tyres festooning the Samothraki's strakes acted as buffers, keeping the hulls apart. All was achieved by the light of the deck lamps, in an eerie silence where even the squealing of the tyres as they were compressed and rubbed between the hulls seemed muted by the fog.

For all that the Lazarus was a modern steel-hull, as broad as the Samothraki but three metres longer, still she sat low in the water when her screws were dead or idling. The decks of the two ships were more or less level, and with little or no swell to mention transfer would be as simple as stepping from one ship to the next. And yet the crew of the white ship, all eight of them, simply lined the rail; while her master and his American companion stayed back a little, gaunt figures under the awnings of the foredeck. The cabin lights, blazing white through the fog, gave their obscure shapes silvery silhouettes.

At the port rail of the Samothraki, Themelis and his men grew uneasy. There was something very odd here, something other than this weird, unnatural fog. 'This Lazarides bastard,' Themelis's sidekick grunted under his breath, 'bothers me.'

Themelis offered a low snort of derision. 'Something of an understatement, that, Christos,' he said. 'But keep your balls out of his way and you should be OK!'

The other ignored the jibe. 'The mist clings to him,' he continued, shivering. 'It almost seems to issue from him!'

Lazarides and Armstrong had moved to the gate in the rail. They stood there, leaning forward, seeming to examine the Samothraki minutely. There was nothing to choose between them in height, Themelis thought, but plenty in bearing and style. The American shambled a little, like an ape, and wore a black eyepatch over his right eye; in his right hand he carried a smart black briefcase, hopefully full of money. And Lazarides beside him, straight as a ramrod in the night and the fog, affecting those dark glasses of his even now.

But silent? Why were they so silent? And what were they waiting for? 'So here we are then, Jianni!' Themelis shook off the black mood of depression which had so suddenly threatened to envelop him, opened his arms expansively, glanced around and nodded his satisfaction. 'Privacy at last, eh? In the heart of a bank of fog, of all bloody things! So… welcome aboard the old Samothraki.'

And at last Lazarides smiled. 'You are inviting me aboard?'

'Eh?' said Themelis, taken aback. 'But certainly! How else may we get our business done?'