'I'm a deflector, yes,' Darcy nodded, and sighed.
'So what's the problem?'
The problem is my talent doesn't work in fits and starts,' Darcy answered. 'It's working all the time. It makes a coward of me. Even knowing I'm protected, I'll still use a taper to light a firework! You are saying: off you go, Darcy, get on up those steps.-But it is saying, run like hell, son - run like bloody hell!'
'So what you have to ask yourself,' said Jazz, 'is who's the boss, it or you?'
Darcy offered a grim nod for answer, slapped a full magazine into the housing of his SMG and stepped out into view of who or whatever was watching from above. He made for the base of the stone steps and started up. The others looked at each other for a moment, then Manolis started after him. Jazz let him get out of earshot and said: 'Zek, you stay here.'
'What?' she looked at him. 'After Starside you're telling me that I should let you do something like this on your own?'
'I'm not on my own. And what good will you be anyway with only a speargun? We need you down here, Zek. If one of those things gets past us, you're going to have to stop him.'
"That's just an excuse,' she said. 'You said it yourself: what good am I with only a speargun?'
'Zek, I -'
'All right!' she said. And: 'They're waiting for you.'
He kissed her and started after the other two. She let him get onto the steps and start upwards, then scrambled after. They could fight later...
Just before the crucial corner, where the narrow stone steps angled left and climbed unevenly up the section of cliff face directly beneath the threatening cave with its potential barrage of boulders, Darcy paused to let the others catch up a little. His breathing was ragged and his legs felt like jelly: not because of the stiff climb but because he was fighting his talent every inch of the way.
He looked back and, as Manolis and Jazz came into view, waved. And then he turned the corner and pushed on. But he remembered how, as he'd passed the sheltering hollow where the rest of the team would take cover, he'd been very tempted. Except he had known that once he stepped in there, it would take at least a stick of dynamite to get him out again!
He craned his neck and glanced straight up, and winced. He could see the wire-netting holding back the bulging tangle of rocks not ten feet overhead. It was time to make his break for it. He put on speed and climbed out of the immediate danger area, then glanced back and saw Jazz and Manolis coming round the corner. At which precise moment a pebble slipped underfoot and sent him sprawling.
Feeling his feet shoot out over the rim, Darcy grabbed at projecting rocks and in the same moment knew that it was going to happen. 'Shit!' he yelled, clinging to the cliff face and the steps, as a deafening explosion sounded close by and its shock wave threatened to hurl him into space. Then-
- Fragments of rock were flying everywhere; it was like the entire stack was coming down; deaf and suffocating in choking dust and debris, Darcy could only cling and wait for the ringing to go out of his ears. A minute went by or maybe two, and the rumbling died away. Darcy looked back... and Jazz and Manolis were clambering dangerously up towards him across steps choked with rubble.
But up ahead someone - two someones - were clambering dangerously down!
As Darcy began pushing himself to his feet, he saw them: flame-eyed, snarling, coming to meet the stack's invaders head on. One of them carried a pistol, the other had a nine-foot octopus pole with a barbed trident head. The tines must be all of eight inches long.
Darcy's SMG was trapped under rubble and stony debris. He yanked on the sling but it wouldn't come. The vampire with the pistol had paused and was taking aim. Something thrummed overhead and the creature aiming at Darcy dropped its pistol and staggered against the cliff face, its hands flying to the hardwood bolt skewering its chest. It gagged, gave a weird, hissing cry, fell to its knees and toppled into thin air.
The other one came on, cursing and stabbing at Darcy with its terrible weapon. He somehow managed to turn the wicked trident head aside as Manolis arrived behind him. Then the Greek policeman yelled, 'Get down!' and Darcy threw himself flat again. He heard the crack! -crack! - crack! of Manolis's Beretta, and the hissing of the vampire turn to shrieks of rage and agony. Shot three times at close range, the thing staggered there on the steps. Darcy yanked the octopus pole out of its hands, slammed the butt end into its chest. And over it went, mewling and yelping as it pinwheeled all the way down to the base of the stack.
Jazz Simmons came up to the other two. 'Up or down?' he panted.
'Down,' said Darcy at once. 'And don't worry, it isn't my talent playing up. It's just that I know how hard those things are to kill!' He looked beyond his two friends. 'Where's Zek?'
'Down below,' said Jazz.
'All the more reason to get back down,' said Darcy. 'After we've burned those two, then we'll see what else is up here.'
But Zek wasn't down below, she was just that moment coming round the corner. And when she saw that they were all in one piece... her sigh of relief said more than any number of spoken words.
They brought petrol from the boat and burned the two badly broken vampires, then rested a while before going up into the old fortifications. Up there Janos had been preparing a spacious, spartan retreat; not quite an aerie of the Wamphyri as Zek remembered such, but a place almost equally sinister and foreboding.
Letting her telepathic talent guide her through piles of tumbled masonry and openings in half-constructed walls, and past deep embrasure windows opening on fantastic views of the ocean's curved horizon, she led the others to a trapdoor concealed under tarpaulins and timbers. They opened it up and saw ages-hollowed stone steps leading down into a Crusader dungeon. Rigging torches, the men followed the stairwell down into the reeking heart of the stack, and Zek followed the men. Down there they foupd the low-walled rims of a pair of covered wells which plunged even deeper into darkness, but that was when Zek gasped and lay back against nitrous walls, shivering.
'What is it?' Jazz's voice echoed in the leaping torchlight.
'In the wells,' she gasped, one hand held tremblingly to her throat. 'There were places like this in the aeries on Starside. Places where the Wamphyri kept their... beasts!'
The wells were covered with lids fashioned from planking; Manolis put his ear to one of the covers and listened, but could hear nothing. 'Something in the wells?' he said, frowning.
Zek nodded. "They're silent now, afraid, waiting. Their thoughts are dull, vacuous. They could be siphoneers, or gas-beasts, or anything. And they don't know who we are. But they fear we might be Janos! These are ... things of Janos, grown out of him.'
Darcy gave a shudder and said: 'Like the creature Yulian Bodescu kept in his cellar. But ... it has to be safe to look, at least. Because if it wasn't I'd know.'
Manolis and Jazz lifted the cover from one of the wells and stood it on its edge by the low wall. They looked down into Stygian darkness but could see nothing. Jazz looked at the others, shrugged, held out his torch over the mouth of the well and let it fall.
And it was like all hell had been let loose!
Such a howling and roaring, a mewling and spitting and frenzied clamour. For a moment - only a moment - the flaring torch as it fell lit up the monstrosity at the bottom of the dry well. They saw eyes, a great many, gaping jaws and teeth, a huge lashing of rubbery limbs. Something terrible beyond words crashed about down there, leaped and gibbered. In the next moment the torch went out, which was as well for they'd seen enough. And as the hideous tumult continued, Jazz and Manolis replaced the cover over the awful shaft.
On their way back up the steps, Manolis said: 'We shall need all the fuel we can spare.'