Head down, like a human torpedo, he hurled himself into the doorway's shadows.
‘Mr Brown' hit him twice, two expertly delivered blows, not calculated to kill but simply stun. And to be doubly sure, before Dolgikh could fall, Brown slammed the Russian's head into the stout panels of the door, splintering one of them.
A moment later he stepped out of the shadows into the alley, glanced this way and that, satisfied himself that all was well. Just the drip of rain and the stinking vapours from the garbage. And now there was this extra heap of garbage. Brown grinned hugely, toed Dolgikh's crumpled figure.
That was always the way of it with big men: they tended to assume that they were the biggest, the toughest. But that wasn't always the case. Brown was about the same weight as Dolgikh, but he was three inches taller and five years younger. Ex-SAS, his training had been none too gentle. In fact, if he hadn't developed something of a kink in his mental make-up, he'd probably still be with the SAS.
He grinned again, then hunched his shoulders and shrank down into his raincoat. Hands thrust deep into his pockets, he hurried to fetch his car.
Chapter Eight
That same Saturday at noon, Yulian Bodescu decided he'd had enough of his ‘uncle' George Lake. Rather, he decided that the time had come to use Lake in his search for knowledge. His specific aim was simple: he desired to know how a vampire could be killed, how one of the undead might be made more surely dead — forever, never to return — and in this way learn how best to protect himself from any such demise.
They could die by fire, certainly, he knew that much already. But what about the other methods? Those methods specified in the so-called ‘fictions'. George would provide the ideal test material. Better far than the Other, which was more a dull tumour than a healthy intelligence.
When a vampire comes back from the dead, the thought suddenly struck Yulian, he comes back stronger!
He had put something into Georgina, Anne and Helen, something of himself. But he had not killed them. Now they were his. George he had killed, or at least caused to die, and George was not his. He obeyed him, yes, or had until now. But for how much longer? Now that George was over the initial shock, he was growing strong. And hungry!
Twice during the night, striving restlessly for sleep, Yulian had sprung awake feeling oppressed, menaced. And twice he had sensed Lake's skulking, furtive movements down in the cellars. The man prowled down there in the darkness, his body aching, thoughts seething. And a monstrous thirst was on him.
He had taken from the woman, from the veins of his own wife, but her blood had not been much to his taste. Oh, blood is blood — it would sustain him — but it was not the blood he craved. That blood flowed only in Yulian. And Yulian knew it. Which was the other reason he had determined to kill George. He would kill him before he himself was killed (for sooner or later George would certainly try it), and before George could drain Anne; oh yes, for if not there'd soon be two of them to deal with! It was like a plague, and Yulian thrilled to the thought that he was the source, the carrier.
And then there was a third reason why Lake must die. Somewhere out there — in the sunlight, in the woods and fields, lanes and villages — somewhere there were people who watched the house even now. Yulian's senses, his vampire powers, were weaker by day, but still he could feel the presence of the silent watchers. They were there, and he feared them. A little.
That man last night, for instance. Yulian had sent VIad to fetch him, but Viad had failed. Who had he been, that man? And why did he watch? Perhaps George's return had not gone entirely unnoticed. Was it possible that someone had seen him emerge from his grave? No, Yulian doubted that; the police, in their innocence, would have mentioned it. Or then again, perhaps the police had not been satisfied with his reaction that day they came here with their report of vile grave-robbing.
And George with his bloodlust: what if he should break out one night? He was a vampire now, George, and growing stronger. How long could VIad contain him? No, better far if George died. Gone without a trace, leaving no shred of evidence, no jot of proof of the evil at work here. He would die a vampire's death this time, from which there'd be no returning.
At the back of the house a great stone chimney rose from earth to sky, buttressed at the bottom and flaring up through the gable end. Its source was a huge iron furnace in the cellars, a relic of older generations. Though the house was centrally heated now, a heap of dusty coke still lay in the furnace room down there, nesting place for mice and spiders. Twice, when the winters had been especially cold, Yulian had stoked up the fire and watched the iron flue glow red where its fat cylindrical conduit joined the furnace to the chimney's firebrick base. It had served to heat the back of the house admirably. Now he would go down there and sweat a little and fire the thing up again, albeit for a different purpose. But his sweat would be well worth the effort.
There was a trapdoor under one of the back rooms which, since George had been down there, Yulian had kept boarded up. That left only the entrance from the side of the house, where Viad kept his vigil as usual. Yuiian took a steak, thick and dripping blood, from the kitchen out to the dog where he guarded the cellars, left him growling and tearing at his food while he descended the narrow steps down one side of the ramp and shoved open the door.
Then, as he stepped into darkness… he had maybe a half-second's warning of what was waiting for him, but it was enough.
George Lake's mind was a bubbling pit of crimson hatred. Many emotions were trapped in there, controlled until that last half-second: lust, self-loathing, a hunger beyond human hunger, which was so intense it was in fact an emotion, disgust, jealousy so strong it burned, but mainly hatred. For Yulian. And in the moment before George struck, the bile of his mind touched Yulian's like acid, so that he cried out as he avoided the blow in the dark.
For darkness had been Yulian's element long before George discovered it, a fact which the new, half-mad vampire had failed to take into account. Yulian saw him crouching behind the door, saw the arc of the mattock as it swung towards him. He ducked under the rushing, rusty, vicious head of the tool, came up inside the circle of its swing and closed fingers like steel on George's throat. At the same time, with his free hand, he wrenched the mattock away from him and hurled it aside, and drove his knee again and again up into George's groin.
For any ordinary man the fight would have been over there and then, but George Lake was no longer ordinary, and no longer merely a man. Forced to his knees as Yulian's fingers tightened on his throat, he glared back at the youth through eyes like coals under a bellows' blast. A vampire, his grey undead flesh shrugged off the pain, found strength to fight back. His legs straightened against all Yulian's weight, and he smashed at Yulian's forearm to break his grip. Astonished, the youth found himself tossed back, saw the other springing at him to tear his throat out.
And again Yulian knew fear, for he saw, now that his uncle' was almost as strong as he himself. He feinted before George's charge, thrust him sprawling, snatched up the mattock from the stone floor. He hefted the tool murderously in his powerful hands, advancing on George where he came surging to his feet. At which moment Anne — Yulian's dear ‘Auntie' Anne — came ghosting and gibbering out of the shadows and the darkness to throw herself between Yulian and her undead husband.