Yulian Bodescu had not spent a pleasant night. Even the presence of his beautiful cousin in his bed — her lovely body his to use in whichever way amused him — had not compensated for his nightmares and fantasies and frustrated half-memories out of a past not entirely his own.
It was all down to the watchers, Yulian supposed, those damned busybodies whose spying (For what purpose? What did they know? What were they trying to find out?) over the last forty-eight hours had become an almost unbearable irritation. Oh, he no longer had any real cause to fear them — George Lake was fine ashes, and the three women would never dare go against Yulian — but still the men were there! Like an itch you can't scratch. Or one you aren't able to reach — for the moment. Yes, it was down to them.
They had brought on Yulian's nightmares, his dreams of wooden stakes, steel swords and bright, searing flames. As for those other dreams: of low hills in the shape of a cross, tall dark trees, and of a Thing in the ground that called and called to him, beckoning with fingers that dripped blood… Yulian was not quite sure what he should make of them.
For he had been there — actually there, on the cruciform hills — the night his father died. He had been a mere foetus in his mother's womb when it had happened, he knew that, but what else had happened that time? His roots were there, anyway, Yulian felt sure of that. But the fact remained that there was only one way he could ever be absolutely sure, and that would be to answer the call and go there. Indeed a trip to Romania might well be useful in solving two problems at once; for with the secret watchers out there in the fields and lanes around Harkley, now was probably as good a time as any to make himself scarce for a while.
Except… first he would like to know what the real purpose of those watchers was. Were they merely suspicious, or did they actually know something? And if so, what did they intend to do about it? Yulian had already developed a plan to get those questions answered. It was just a matter of getting it right, that was all.
The sky was cloudy and the morning dull that Monday when Yulian rose up from his bed. He told Helen to bathe, dress herself prettily, go about the house and grounds just as if her life were completely normal, unchanged. He dressed and went down to the cellars, where he gave the same instructions to Anne. Likewise his mother in her room. Just act naturally and let nothing appear suspicious; indeed, Helen could even drive him into Torquay for an hour or two.
They were followed into Torquay but Yulian was not aware of it. He was distracted by the sun, which kept breaking through the clouds and reflecting off mirrors, windows and chrome. He still affected his broad-brimmed hat and sunglasses, but his hatred of the sun — and its effect on him — were much stronger now. The car's mirrors irritated him; his reflection in the windows and other bright surfaces disturbed him; his vampire ‘awareness' was playing hell with his nerves. He felt closed in. Danger threatened and he knew it — but from which quarter? What sort of danger?
While Helen waited in the car, three storeys up in a municipal car park, he went to a travel agency and made inquiries, then gave instructions. This took a little time, for the holiday he had chosen was outside the usual scope of the agency. He wanted to spend a week in Romania. Yulian might simply have phoned one of London's airports and made a booking, but he preferred to let an authorised agency advise him on restrictions, visas, etc. This way there would be no errors, no last minute hold-ups. Also, Yulian couldn't stay penned up in Harkley House forever; driving into town had at least given him a break from routine, from his watchers, and from the increasing pressures of being a creature alone. What was more, the drive had let him keep up appearances: Helen was his pretty cousin down from London, and he and she were simply out for a drive, enjoying what was left of the good weather. So it would appear.
After making his travel arrangements (the agency would ring him within forty-eight hours and let him have all the details) Yulian took Helen for lunch. While she ate listlessly and tried desperately hard not to look fearful of him, he sipped a glass of red wine and smoked a cigarette. He might have tried a steak, rare, but food — ordinary food — no longer appealed. Instead he found himself watching Helen's throat. He was aware of the danger in that, however, and so concentrated his mind on the details of his plan for tonight instead. Certainly he did not intend to stay hungry for very long.
By 1.30 P.M. they had driven back to Harkley; and then, too, Yulian had briefly picked up the thoughts of another watcher. He'd tried to infiltrate the stranger's mind but it immediately shut him out. They were clever, these watchers! Furious, he raged inwardly through the afternoon and could scarcely contain himself until the fall of night.
Peter Keen was a comparatively recent recruit to INTESP's team of parapsychologists. A sporadic telepath, (his talent, as yet untrained, came in uncontrolled, unannounced bursts, and was wont to depart just as quickly and mysteriously) he'd been recruited after tipping off the police on a murder-to-be. He had accidentally scanned the mind — the dark intention — of the would-be rapist and murderer. When it happened just as he'd said it would, a high-ranking policeman, a friend of the branch, had passed details on to INTESP. The job in Devon was Keen's first field assignment, for until now all of his time had been spent with his instructors.
Yulian Bodescu was under full twenty-four hour surveillance now, and Keen had the mid-morning shift, 8.00 A.M. till 2.00 P.M. At 1.30 when the girl had driven Bodescu back through Harkley's gates and up to the house, Keen had been only two hundred yards behind in his red Capri. Driving straight past Harkley, he'd stopped at the first telephone kiosk and phoned headquarters, passing on details of Bodescu's outing.
At the hotel in Paignton, Darcy Clarke took Keen's call and passed the telephone to the man in charge of the operation, a jolly, fat, middle-aged chain-smoking ‘scryer' called Guy Roberts. Normally Roberts would be in London, employing his scrying to track Russian submarines, terrorist bomb squads and the like, but now he was here as head of operations, keeping his mental eye on Yulian Bodescu.
Roberts had found the task not at all to his liking and far from easy. The vampire is a solitary creature whose nature it is to be secretive. There is that in a vampire's mental makeup which shields him as effectively as the night screens his physical being. Roberts could see Harkley House only as a vague, shadowy place, as a scene viewed through dense, weaving mist. When Bodescu was there this mental miasma rolled that much more densely, making it difficult for Roberts to pinpoint any specific person or object.
Practice makes perfect, however, and the longer Roberts stayed with it the clearer his pictures were coming. He could now state for certain, for instance, that Harkley House was occupied by only four people:
Bodescu, his mother, his aunt and her daughter. But there was something else there, too. Two somethings, in fact. One of them was Bodescu's dog, but obscured by the same aura, which was very strange. And the other was — simply ‘the Other'. Like Yulian himself, Roberts thought of it only that way. But whatever it was — in all likelihood the thing in the cellars which Alec Kyle had warned about — it was certainly there and it was alive.
‘Roberts here,' the scryer spoke into the telephone. ‘What is it, Peter?'
Keen passed his message.
‘Travel agency?' Roberts frowned. ‘Yes, we'll get on to it at once. Your relief? He's on his way right now. Trevor Jordan, yes. See you later, Peter.' Roberts put down the telephone and picked up a directory. Moments later he was phoning the travel agency in Torquay, whose name and address Keen had given him.