But the door of the flat was immobile as ever, with the piano still wedged against it on the landing outside. Clarke put his shoulder to it and shoved until he thought his heart would burst. The door was giving way, but only an inch at a time. He simply didn't have the bulk.
But Guy Roberts did.
Clarke didn't know his dead friend had stood up until he saw him there at his side, helping to force the door open. Roberts — his head a crimson jelly where it flopped on his shoulders, with the broken skull showing through — inexorably thrusting forward, filled with a strength from beyond the grave!
And then Clarke simply fainted away.
The two Harrys had looked out through the infant's eyes into the face of terror itself, the face of Yulian Bodescu. Crouched over the baby's cot, the leering malignancy of his eyes spoke all too clearly of his intention.
Finished! Harry Keogh thought. All done, and it ends like this.
No, another voice, not his own, had spoken in his mind. No it doesn't. Through you I've learned what 1 had to learn. 1 don't need you that way any more. But I do still need you as a father. So go, save yourself.
It could only have been one person speaking to him, doing it now, for the first time, when there was no longer any time to question the hows and whys of it. For Harry had felt the child's restraints falling from him like broken chains, leaving him free again. Free to will his incorporeal mind into the safety of the Möbius continuum. He could have gone right there and then, leaving his baby son to face whatever was coming. He could have gone — but he couldn't!
Bodescu's jaws had yawned open like a pit, revealing a snake's tongue flickering behind the dagger teeth.
Go! little Harry had said again, with more urgency.
You're my son! Harry had cried. Damn you, I can't go! I can't leave you to this!
Leave me to this? It had been as if the infant couldn't follow his reasoning. But then he did, and said, But did you think I was going to stay here?
The beast's taloned hands were reaching for the child in his cot.
Yulian saw now that Harry jnr was… was more than a child. Harry Keogh was in him, yes, but it was even more than that. The baby boy looked at him, stared at him with wide, moist, innocent eyes — and was totally unafraid. Or were those eyes innocent? And for the first time since Harkley House, Yulian knew something of fear. He drew back a fraction, then checked himself. This was what he was here for, wasn't it? Best to get it done with, and quickly. Again he reached for the baby.
Little Harry had turned his small round head this way and that, seeking a Möbius door. There was one beside him, floating up out of his pillows. It was easy, instinct, in his genes. It had been there all along. His control over his mind was awesome; over his body, much less certain. But he'd been able to manage this much. Bunching inexpert muscles, he'd curled himself up, rolled into and through the Möbius door. The vampire's hands and jaws had closed on thin air!
Yulian strained back and away from the cot as if it had suddenly burst into flames. He gaped — then pounced upon the cot's covers, tearing them to shreds. Nothing! The child had simply disappeared! One of Harry Keogh's tricks, the work of a Necroscope.
Not me, Yulian, said Harry softly from behind him. Not this time. He did it all for himself. And that's not all he can do.
Yulian whirled, saw Harry's naked figure outlined in glowing blue neon mesh, advanced menacingly upon him. He passed through the manifestation, found himself tearing at nothing. ‘What?' he gurgled. ‘What?'
Harry was behind him again. You're finished, Yulian, he told him then, with a deal of satisfaction. Whatever evil you've created, we can undo it. We can't give life back to those you've destroyed, but we can give some of them their revenge.
‘We?' The vampire spoke round the snake in his mouth, his words dripping like acid. ‘There's no "we", there's only you. And if it takes me forever, I'll —‘
You don't have forever. Harry shook his head. In fact, you've no time left at all!
There was a soft but concerted shuffling of footsteps on the landing and up the stairs; something, no, a good many somethings, were coming into the flat. Yulian swept out of the tiny bedroom into the flat's main room and skidded to a halt. Brenda Keogh no longer lay where he had tossed her, but Yulian barely noticed that.
The Keogh manifestation, suspended in thin air, moved after the vampire to watch the confrontation.
A policeman, his throat torn out, was leading them. And with steps slow and staggering, but full of purpose, they came on. You can kill the living, Yulian, Harry told the mewling vampire, but you can't kill the dead.
‘You…‘ Yulian turned to' him again. ‘You called them up!'
No, Harry shook his head. My son called them up. He must have been talking to them for quite some little time. And they've grown to care for him as much as they care for me.
‘No!' Bodescu rushed to the window, saw that it was old and no longer opened. One of the corpses, a thing that shed maggots with every step, lurched after him. In its bony hand it carried Darcy Clarke's crossbow. Others had long wooden staves, taken from cemetery fences. Animated corruption was now spewing into the room like pus from a ruptured boil.
It's all over, Yulian, said Harry.
Bodescu turned on them all, scowled his denial. No, it wasn't over yet. What were they anyway but a mirage and a mob of dead men? ‘Keogh, you bodiless bastard!' he snarled. ‘And did you think you were the only one with powers?'
He crouched down, spread his shoulders, laughed in their faces. His neck elongated, the flesh rippling with a life of its own. His terrible head was now like that of some primal pterodactyl. His body seemed to flutter, flattening in depth and increasing in width until his clothes, unable to contain it, tore into so many rags around him. He reached out his arms and lengthened them, forming a blasphemous cross, then grew a webbing of wing down each side of his body. With greater ease, more fluency far than ever Faethor Ferenczy had possessed, he completely remoulded his vampire flesh. And where moments before a manlike being had stood, now a huge batlike creature confronted its hunters.
Then… the thing that was Yulian Bodescu turned and launched itself at the thin-latticed panes of the wide bay window.
Don't let him get away! Harry told them; but without need, for that wasn't their intention.
Yulian went out through the latticework, showering glass and fragments of painted woodwork down into the road. Now he formed an aerofoil, curving his monstrous body like a straining kite to catch a night wind blowing up from the west. But the avenger with the crossbow stood in the gap of the broken window and aimed his weapon. A corpse without eyes should not see, but in their weird pseudolife these pieces of crumbling flesh enjoyed all of the senses they'd known in life. And this one had been a marksman.
He fired, and the bolt took Yulian in his spine, halfway down his rubbery back. The heart, Harry admonished. You should have gone for his heart. But in the end, it was all to work out the same.
Yulian cried out, the raucous, ringing cry of a wounded beast. He bent his body in a contortion of agony, lost his control, sank like a crippled bird towards the graveyard. He tried to maintain his fight, but the bolt had severed his spine and that would take time to mend. There was no time left. Yulian fell into the cemetery, crashing into the damp shrubbery; and at once the crumbling dead turned in their tracks and began to file out of the garret flat, shuffling in pursuit.
Down the stairs they went, some with their flesh sloughing from their bones, and others who couldn't help but leave bits behind, which followed of their own accord. Harry went with them, with all of the dead he'd befriended, oh — how long ago? — when he'd lived here, and new friends he hadn't even spoken to yet.