'Gone!' said Darcy, when he could draw breath.
'Right,' Jazz Simmons nodded. 'But let's make sure she's all gone. And her crew with her.'
Manolis got the motor going and they chugged over to where the Lazarus had gone down. An oil slick lay on the water, where bubbles surfaced and made spreading rainbow colours. Then, even as they watched, a head and shoulders came bobbing up, lolled over backwards, and the lower part of the blackened body slowly rotated into view. He lay there in the water as if crucified, with his arms spreadeagled and great yellow blisters bursting on his neck, shoulders and thighs. But as they continued to stare aghast, so his eyes opened and glared at them, and he coughed up phlegm, blood and salt water.
Manolis didn't think twice but shut off the motor, picked up a speargun and put a harpoon straight into the gagging vampire's chest. The creature jerked once or twice, then lay still in the water. But still they couldn't be sure. Zek looked away as they reeled him in to the side of the boat, tied lead weights to his ankles and let him sink slowly out of sight.
'Deep water,' Manolis commented, without emotion.
'Even a vampire is only flesh and blood. If he can't breathe he can't live. Anyway, the floor of the sea is rocky here: there will be many big groupers down there. Even if life were possible, he can't heal himself faster than they can eat him!'
Ben Trask was white and shaky but well in control of himself. His shoulder was all strapped up now. 'What about the one I knocked overboard?' he said.
Manolis took the boat to the middle of the bay where the Lazarus had been moored, and Darcy gave a shout and pointed at something that splashed feebly in the water. Even shot, the vampire had made it half-way to land. They closed with him, speared him and dragged him back out to sea, where they dealt with him as with the first one.
'And that's the end of them,' Ben Trask grunted.
'Not quite,' Zek reminded him, pointing at the looming stack of white and yellow stone inland. There are two more of them up there.' She put her hand to her brow and closed her eyes, and frowned. 'Also... there may be something else. But I'm not sure what.'
Manolis beached the boat and took up his speargun. He was happy with that and with his Beretta. Darcy had his SMG, which he considered enough to handle, and Zek took a second speargun. Jazz was satisfied with Harry Keogh's crossbow, with which he'd familiarized himself during the voyage. They might have taken the other SMG, too, but Ben Trask was now out of it and they must leave the gun with him - just in case. His task: stay behind and look after the boat.
They waded ashore and started up the rocks. The trail was easy to follow where the thin soil had been compacted between boulders, and where steps had been cut in the steeper places. Half-way to the stack they paused to take a breather and look back. Ben was watching them through binoculars, and also watching the stack. So far there had been no sign of life in the place, but as they approached its base Jazz spied movement up in the ancient embrasures.
He immediately dragged Zek into cover and motioned Darcy and Manolis down among jumbled rocks. 'If those creatures up there had rifles,' he explained, 'they could pick us off like flies.'
'But they haven't, or they would have already,' Manolis pointed out. 'They could have got us as we beached the boat, or even as we engaged the Lazarus.'
'But they have been watching us,' said Zek. 'I could feel them.'
'And they are waiting for us up there,' Jazz squinted at the rearing, dazzling white walls.
'We're skating on very thin ice,' Darcy told the others. 'I can feel my talent telling me that this far is far enough.'
A shout echoed up to them from the beach. Looking back, they saw Ben Trask struggling up the incline after them. 'Hold it!' he yelled. 'Wait!'
He approached to within thirty or forty yards, then fell back against a boulder in the shade and rested a while. And when he had recovered: 'I've been looking at the fortifications through my glasses,' he yelled. 'There's something very wrong. The climb looks easy enough - up those ancient stone steps there - but it's not. It's a lie, a trap!'
Jazz went back and met Ben half-way, and took the binoculars from him. 'How do you mean, a trap?'
'It's like when I listen to a police interview with a suspect perp,' Ben answered. 'I can tell right off if he's lying even if I don't know what the lie is. So don't ask me what's wrong up there, just take my word for it that it is!'
'OK,' said Jazz. 'Go on back down to the boat. From here on in we step wary.'
When Ben had started back, Jazz looked through the binoculars at the zig-zagging, precipitous stone stairway from the base of the stack to the ancient walls. Close to the top, a jumble of boulders and shards of stone bulged from the gaping mouth of a cave, held back from the steps and the vertiginous edge by a barrier of heavy-duty wire mesh strung between deeply bedded iron staves. Cables, almost invisible, hung down from the ramparts and disappeared into the gloom of the cave. Jazz looked at these cables for long moments. Demolition wire? It could be.
He rejoined the others where they waited. 'I think we're walking right into one,' he said. 'Or we will be if we start up those steps.' He explained his meaning.
Darcy took the binoculars from him, stuck his head out from under cover and double-checked the face of the looming rock. 'You could be right... must be right! If Ben says it's all wrong, it's all wrong.'
'No way we can cut those cables,' Jazz said. "Those things up there have the advantage. They could spot a mouse trying to make it up those steps.'
'Listen,' said Manolis, who had also been studying the route up the rock. 'Why don't we play them at their own game? Let them think we're falling for it, and make them waste their ambush.'
'How?' said Darcy.
'We start on up,' said Manolis, 'but we are stringing it out a little, and one of us is staying well ahead of the rest. The path turns a corner just underneath the cave with the boulders. And just before the corner, there is this big hole - er, this concavity? - in the face of the cliff. So, one of us has already turned the corner, and the others look all set to follow him. The creatures up in the fort are in a quandary: do they press the button and get the one man for sure, or do they wait for the others to come round the corner? At this point the one in front, he goes faster, past the point of maximum danger, and the others pretend they are coming on! But they only just show themselves and don't actually start on up that leg of the climb. The vampires can't wait; they have missed one of us and so must try for the other three; they press the button. Boom!'
Jazz took it up: 'The three at the rear have now showed themselves around the corner, but unbeknown to the guys on top they're expecting what happens next. As the charge blows those rocks out of the cave higher up, so the three skip back round the corner and into the scoop in the face of the cliff.'
'Is how I see it,' said Manolis, nodding, 'yes.'
'Or,' said Darcy, his face suddenly pale, 'we leave it till tonight, and -'
'Is your guardian angel speaking?' Manolis looked disgusted. 'I have seen that look on your face before!'
Darcy knew he was right and cursed under his breath. 'So, who do you suggest bells the cat?' he said.
'Eh?'
'Who goes first and risks getting blown the hell off the cliff?'
Manolis shrugged. 'But... who else? You, of course!'
Jazz looked at Darcy and said: "This talent of yours, it really works?'