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Vampirella #3

Deadwalk

by

Ron Goulart

Prologue

The wind howled and whooped and roared along the dark beach, snatched up sand and sent it spinning across the night, churned the surf into leaping foam. The palm trees bordering this lonely stretch of island beach rattled and clattered, and the thick tropical darkness seemed to shiver. None of it bothered the gaunt old man.

He walked straight and stiff, his sharp-edged figure cutting a path for him through the night. Held tightly in his left hand was a black satchel. Stopping at the edge of the sea, his blind eyes turned toward it, he said aloud, “She was here, less than two days ago.”

The harsh wind whipped at his white hair and tugged at the thin wire frames of the black glasses which covered his useless eyes. “I missed her here,” he said, “but I know where she’s gone.”

One rough hand burrowed into the satchel. It emerged gripping a wooden spike, a spike with its point carved deadly sharp. “I’ll catch up with her soon,” he promised himself. “And when I do, I’ll drive this stake through Vampirella’s heart!”

He raised his arm high, then brought the stake stabbing down through the air.

The stars looked dingy out over the Pacific Ocean. A thin smokish fog smeared them, making the moon show sooty. A coltish red-haired girl in white Levi’s and a maroon body shirt made a disgusted noise and turned slowly away from watching the surf come in along the San Amaro beach. She was seventeen and tired, carrying a small tan suitcase and a faded canvas airline bag.

She climbed up onto the swayback boardwalk which led to Playland.

“Look at the knockers on that one,” said an adolescent voice some distance behind her.

“Nice little ass on her, too.”

“Hey, Red!” The voice was louder, trying to attract her attention now.

“Hey, wiggle it a little more!”

The girl sighed, a weary sigh, and kept on walking.

Lights appeared up above her head now—scruffy colored bulbs, green, red, yellow—outlining the entrance arch to the midway.

The youthful voices faded, the shouts and the snarling laughter. They hadn’t tried to follow her. Most of them who hollered and laughed like that never did.

She really was tired. Tired of the whole damn Southern California version of the world. Tired of the shitty way the sky always looked at night.

A neon moon flashed on at her right. A scarlet comet blinked. Below that was the entrance she was heading for.

Prince Starbuck, flashed the neon tubes. Sees The Future! Romance, Jobs, Adventure! What Does Tomorrow Promise for You?

The red-haired girl knew what her future promised. No more of San Amaro and the high school which was all corridors and rooms painted the color of cold split-pea soup.

She went into Prince Starbuck’s outer office, walked confidently to the door marked “Private” and, setting down her luggage, knocked.

The prince was shaving. Lather masked the lower left-hand side of his face; the drugstore safety razor was in his right hand. “Hi, princess,” he said, grinning through the lather. “Come on in.”

“See what I brought?”

The prince dropped the wet razor into his bathrobe pocket to grab the suitcase and the bag. “You did it, just like we talked about.”

“I told you I would.” She entered the back room and closed the door.

“That’s terrific,” he told her as he set the baggage in front of a cardboard wardrobe closet. “No trouble with your folks?”

“What folks? My dad’s been off on a sales trip for a week, and my mother…I don’t know where she is tonight. I left ‘em a note.”

“Saying what?”

“That I was going to take a bus up to San Francisco and look for a job. Just the way we talked about,” said the redhead. “They’re not going to know I’m going on the road with you.”

“Perfect, princess! That’s nothing if not terrific.”

Another door opened, this one across the room.

A large, thickset man in a dark suit stepped inside. “Yes,” he said, “she’ll do as a sacrifice.”

The girl took one step back, looking from the thickset man to the half face of the prince. “What are you—”

A hand was clamped over her mouth before she could say anything else.

The musky tropical night was rich with confetti and streamers, the cobblestone street thick with people. Monsters roamed and howled, skeletons danced, strange beasts prowled, pirates yelled and looted, dead men walked. It was carnival time on the Caribbean island of Côte de Soleil.

Shreds and scraps of intense color fluttered down across the high window of the Casa Francesca restaurant. At the crisp white table nearest the leaded window sat two very pretty American women. One was forty-two, though her face was smooth and unwrinkled. The other was less than half her age, her hair a brighter shade of gold.

“It’s wonderful,” the younger woman said.

“I wouldn’t wish to be a street cleaner come tomorrow.”

“Mother, you really have to watch it. You’re sounding more and more like Dad, you’re even getting that sensible banker’s look in your eye now and again.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s inevitable.”

“No, it isn’t. A woman today doesn’t have to be a poor imitation of her husband. Do you realize—”

“Let’s not debate, Alicia,” cut in her mother. “We still haven’t decided about the theater tomorrow.”

Alicia smiled. “That reminds me, Mother,” she said, “I saw a poster when I was out shopping this afternoon. A poster announcing a magician called the Great Pendragon. Would he be any relation to us, do you think?”

Mrs. Pendragon frowned. “Yes, I believe he’s a cousin of your father’s. A vainglorious man, and quite a drinker as I remember. The last I heard he was traveling with a seedy carnival somewhere.”

“He’s risen in the world, then,” said her daughter. “The girl assisting him, judging by her photo, is quite a—”

“Ah, excuse me, lovely Mrs. Pendragon and lovely young Miss Pendragon.” A plump black man in a rose-colored suit was standing beside their table. He held a fresh Panama hat against his stomach with both beringed hands.

“Would you prefer to be addressed as Ms., Alicia?”

Alicia made an uncouth sound at her mother and said nothing.

Mrs. Pendragon said, “Well, what sort of news do you have for us, señor Ajo?”

Ajo bowed as much as his body allowed. “The best of news, my lovely United States ladies.” He paused to smile at each of them in turn. In a lowered voice he continued, “It is all arranged…with Papa Jumbee.”

“Oh, that’s marvelous,” said Alicia. “And I know it’s something Father would never allow if he were along with us.”

“If you will meet me in the alley behind this charming restaurant in—shall we say fifteen minutes, for I see you have not had your dessert—a car will be waiting.” Señor Ajo attempted another bow before moving away across the shadowy candlelit room.

“You have to admit, Alicia, that I’m acting on my own this time,” said Mrs. Pendragon. “As you say, your father would never allow us to attend a voodoo ceremony.”

“But this is our vacation and not his,” said the younger woman. “I’m terribly anxious to go.”

Death passed by outside and grinned and waved at her.

Chapter 1

It was an astounding illusion. They always saved it until last, ending the act with it.

Today, on this clear blue afternoon, the Great Pendragon and his attractive assistant were performing in an outdoor amphitheater. At the moment the amphitheater was named after General Cordero, the dictator of the island. From the circular stone stage you could see, through the stand of palm trees to the rear of it, the bright blue water and one of the wide white beaches of Côte de Soleil.

Vampirella was watching the sea, and the skimming gulls, while Pendragon delivered the preamble to the final illusion. The long-legged girl was wearing a very tight-fitting and very minimal costume of scarlet silk. It left her rounded glistening stomach bare and only partially concealed her breasts.

“…and I give you my solemn word (you grinning louts) that no other magician or sorcerer on the face of the globe can perform this next and final trick (I can’t even do it myself if the truth were known),” Pendragon was telling the audience.

“Knock off those muttered asides,” Vampirella cautioned in a whisper. “They’ll hear you.”

Pendragon was a lean, hawk-nosed man of sixty. He had straw-white hair worn long and red-rimmed eyes. A black cloak fell from his shoulders, and a gold-tipped wand was held in his right hand. Though his body swayed slightly and his feet shuffled, his knobby hands were steady. “(Nonsense) And now, dear people,” he told the large shirt-sleeve audience, “you will witness the most amazing act of transformation ever seen (and you’d no doubt rather be home watching television). This stunning and statuesque young lady you see before you will be changed in front of your very eyes (beady and bloodshot as they are) from a beautiful young woman into a loathsome life-stealing bat (Forgive me, my dear).” Pendragon gestured magnificently with hands and wand. “Zaragata! Zanga! Zingaro! So be it!”

Vampirella was there, and then she was not. Her body seemed to quiver for an instant before it was gone. A large black bat appeared in the bright sunlight, circling a few feet above the spot where the dark-haired girl had stood.

The audience sighed, gasped, applauded, whistled.

“(Enjoyed it, eh, you cretins?) And so, dear ones, our magical mystery show must come to a close. I hope you enjoyed it (may you all break a leg stampeding out of this pesthole) and that we will meet again. Until that happy moment I am…your obedient servant, the Great Pendragon.”

The circling bat flew off and disappeared behind the stage.

Pendragon bowed and was suddenly engulfed in a billowing spume of black smoke. When the smoke drifted away on the afternoon breeze, the stage was bare.

“I sincerely wish I could tolerate this stuff warm,” Pendragon, lounging in a paisley dressing gown, was saying. His sharp chin rested on the rim of a tumbler filled with six ounces of Scotch and one ice cube. “But, alas, I am compelled to dilute it with a little ice. A shame, a great pity and a universal—”

“Couldn’t you go a little easy?” Vampirella was her long-legged self again, a silk dressing gown wrapped around her. “We have another performance tonight, remember? Rumor has it that the great General Cordero himself will honor us with his presence tonight.”

“(That bloated oaf) Ah, it will indeed be an honor to have so illustrious a cutthroat witness my poor feats of magic (feats, do your stuff).” Pendragon took a long sip of his drink.

“We may have some work to do after the show, too,” said the girl. “I think I have a lead on señor Ajo.”

“Whom?” inquired the magician as he slouched even further into the wicker chair.

“Señor Ajo,” repeated Vampirella, “the gentleman who may be the last one who saw your cousin’s wife and daughter before they vanished last week.”

“Oh, that señor Ajo,” mumbled Pendragon. “You know, lass, I’m inclined to let sleeping dogs lay or lie (what the hell is it those slumbering rascals are supposed to do?). Most of my relatives dropped me years ago, which is the way I’d like to leave it.”

“Whatever you think of your cousin, he did wire you and ask you to help,” said the dark-haired girl. “There are two women missing. We ought to find them.”

“I always thought I’d bask in publicity, but now I wish Cousin Roger hadn’t seen that article on us that AP sent out all over the United States.”

“You pasted six copies in your scrapbook.”

“Just because I have an overweening pride,” said Pendragon, “doesn’t mean I want to traipse around this tropical paradise playing detective.” He drank at his Scotch. “Ever since you met foursquare Adam Van Helsing you’ve been overly keen on being an occult investigator yourself.”

“I made a promise,” said Vampirella slowly, “to destroy the Cult of Chaos. That has nothing to do with Adam.”

The wicker creaked as Pendragon sat up straight. “Gad and zooks (and possibly zounds), Vampirella, you don’t think the Companions of Chaos are involved in what happened to Cousin Roger’s brood?”

Eyes narrowed, she said, “I’m not certain, but I have a feeling…”

The magician shuddered and refilled his glass.

Chapter 2

It wasn’t the sort of area he’d have picked for a meeting.

The pretty black girl in the very short flowered skirt scratched at her upper thigh. Then she smiled at Adam Van Helsing, raising her eyebrows inquiringly.

Adam gave the girl a sympathetic but negative nod as he passed her by.

“I’m giving rebates all this month,” she called after him.

Three small ragged boys were crouched at the gutter edge and watching a dog who was stretched out on the oily cobblestones.

“He’s not breathing,” insisted one of the boys.

“Sure, he is. Look, he’s got his tongue hanging out. And that’s how dogs breathe, cabrón.”

“He’s dead, this dog.”

“Feel his nose.”

“It’s ice cold. He’s dead.”

“No, that’s healthy when a dog’s nose is cold.”

“Hey, señor, is this dog dead or not?” the tallest of the three asked Adam.

The broad-shouldered, dark-haired young man halted and took a look. “Afraid he’s dead, fellas.”

“See, cabrón, didn’t I tell you?”

“You certain, señor?”

Giving a nod, Adam continued on. The café he was heading for was at the next corner.

Guitar music, considerably amplified, came rushing out of a narrow restaurant. Just as Adam passed the place, its lights came on. Lobo’s, flashed a dusty neon sign. Island & American Style Meals.

Two more pretty girls were standing in an alcove next to Lobo’s. “You’re new,” one said to Adam.

“Not that new.” He kept moving.

The last of the blue was draining out of the sky, and dusk flowed through the curving lanes and alleys of this sector of Côte de Soleil.

The corner café had its door and windows outlined in bright yellow light bulbs. There were five round metal-topped tables set up on the sidewalk in front of the place, with nobody using them. A waiter, wearing the too-large coat of one tuxedo and the too-small trousers of another, was leaning next to a perpendicular row of light bulbs while reading a Spanish horror comic book.

Adam stopped by the farthest table from the illuminated doorway and glanced around. The man the American consul had told him about was supposed to meet him here.

The two girls in the alcove were watching him; the waiter continued to be interested only in his magazine.

There was an alley, narrow and dark, running alongside the café. Noise commenced in there—shouting and cursing, the rattle of garbage cans.

“You bring dishonor on my—”

“Honor has nothing to do with it. I…oof!”

“Punch him again, Miguel!”

More shouting, more rattling and scuffling.

Then a short, curly-haired man with an abundant mustache came hopping out of the alley. He was in the midst of getting his white trousers pulled up. He got them waist-high, ran directly, to Adam, and halted. “We meet under unusual circumstances, señor Van Helsing,” he said, after panting a moment. “I won’t shake hands, since my pants will fall down if I—”

“You’re Zanka?”

“The same, William Carlos Zanka, notoriously successful Caribbean shamus, and one of the few private eyes with a flair for matters occult and—”

“Stand aside, señor, so we may fell him.”

Three thickset men had joined them on the sidewalk. The oldest stood back, arms folded, urging the other two to avenge the family honor.

“That means they’re going to stomp on me some,” Zanka explained to Adam. He got his fly zipped, then brushed alley dust from his knees. “Could you lend me a hand?”

“Girl involved?”

“Yes, I made a slight miscalculation and assumed that señor Mendoza’s stunning daughter was one of his bar girls. Thus I—”

“He’s maligning Estrellita’s honor again, Pop,” said one of the Mendoza boys.

“Sí, I hear. Smite him.”

“I don’t want to be smote,” Zanka told them. “This is all simply a misunderstanding. And, forgive me for pointing this out, gentlemen, but the young lady—Estrellita, did you say her name was?—Estrellita certainly wasn’t complaining when you—”

“He don’t even know her name, Pop,” said the other brother of the apparently dishonored Estrellita.

“Señor Mendoza owns and operates this bistro,” Zanka said to Adam. “Perhaps you’ve been wondering why I chose such a low dive for our initial rendezvous, señor Van Helsing. Well, it was due to an unfortunate condition from which I suffer…horniness, you might call it.”

“Hey, Pop, he called our establishment a low dive.”

“My ears have heard, now my eyes would like to witness his trouncing,” said old Mendoza.

Adam studied the three belligerent men for a few seconds. Though he didn’t say anything, his look was enough to focus the attention of the trio on him. Finally he said, “My friend and I will be going now.”

One of the Mendoza boys said, “Pop, he’s going to—”

“Let him.” The old man turned away.

Adam caught Zanka by the elbow. “Let’s move on.”

When they were some yards away from the Mendoza café, Zanka said, “I appreciate your helping out, Van. I might have been able to handle them alone, but—”

“Listen now,” Adam said in a low even voice as he increased, momentarily, the pressure on the smaller man’s arm, “the next time anything like that happens, I’ll let them kill you. I may even pitch in, I’m here on this island to do a job. Don’t, Zanka, do anything more to screw it up.”

Zanka, after swallowing twice, assured Adam, “No, I won’t.”

“This is a better part of town.” Zanka slid into his side of the booth in the dimly lit cocktail lounge. “What will you have?”

“Nothing now,” Adam told him, “except conversation. Since I’m on Côte de Soleil and the consul knows something of my reputation, he—”

“Ah, then you did not come to the island specifically to—”

“I had other reasons.” Adam wasn’t going to tell this curly-haired little private detective that he’d followed a girl here. A girl he was in love with, a girl that his father had vowed to kill. “The consul is concerned with several disappearances of American citizens which have occurred here in the past few months. I’m something of an expert on the supernatural, and he seems to think the voodoo cult on the island may be involved.”

A slim blonde waitress appeared out of the gloom.

Zanka smiled at her, looked at Adam and dropped the smile, tried to hide what was left of it under his bushy mustache. “The usual, Monique. Nothing for my friend.”

Monique nodded, slightly puzzled, and went away toward the bar.

“What,” Adam asked, “can you tell me about Papa Jumbee?”

Zanka scratched at his head. “Papa Jumbee is a very important man in the voodoo setup hereabouts; they swear he can even make the dead walk. Nobody, though, seems to know quite who he is. It’s rumored that many have disappeared while en route to attend his voodoo ceremonies.” He rested his elbows on the black tabletop. “Now Papa puts on a public zombie show, one he stages mostly for tourists…about as tame as a Disneyworld concession. However, off in the wilds someplace, in the jungle deep, he practices the real thing.”

Monique brought his drink, some sort of rum concoction. “You mad at me, Zanka?” she whispered.

“No, no, far from it,” he assured her, risking a swift pat on her backside. “I am merely in a businesslike mood this evening. We will meet again.”

“You sure?”

“You have the word of a Zanka.” When she had departed, Zanka asked Adam, “You think your missing Americans have been the victims of voodoo?”

Adam replied, “That’s what I have to find out.”

Chapter 3

The dusty night window reflected Vampirella, who’d thrown on her leopard-skin coat over her taut scarlet costume, and the sleepy-eyed Pendragon. Beyond the smeared glass, illuminated only by a small pink-shaded lamp far back in the tiny shop, were venerable cases and cabinets. Each was crammed with occult debris—yellowed bones, rat-nibbled scrolls, cloudy crystals, unwound runes, faded parchments, fat old-leather pouches, a jawless skull.

“Ah, the dust of the ages (not to mention the crumbs and leftovers of tonight’s dinner) has settled on everything within,” observed Pendragon, after running his tongue over his lips. “Makes one a mite thirsty (but then, what doesn’t?).”

“You’re amply fortified for tonight,” the dark-haired girl told him.

“I was anticipating our having our rendezvous with señor Ajo in some spacious and convivial bistro, where over a few cups of cheer we could—”

“Damn it, Pendragon,” said Vampirella, angry, “we’re trying to locate some relatives of yours who—”

“Distant relatives, I mean to add.”

“Why don’t you knock off your road-show W. C. Fields act for a while.”

“A simple fondness for alcoholic libations, my dear, isn’t all that serious,” said the magician. “You’re hardly the one to be calling the kettle black, anyway. If that crackpot physician hadn’t come up with your blood-substitute serum, you’d still be sinking a fang in the nearest human thro—”

“Never mind!” Nostrils flaring, the long-legged girl moved to the door of the narrow curio shop. She turned the knob.

Adjusting his plaid cloak, Pendragon followed her. “Forgive me, child. I’m (once again, alas) in one of my nasty phases. Excuse it.”

Vampirella didn’t reply. She opened the door, silently, and crossed the threshold. Exotic odors mingled in the thick, musty air—incense, spice, musk.

“Great galaxies,” mumbled Pendragon, “I do believe I’ve stepped upon a stuffed alligator. No, by all that’s holy, it’s alive.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s carved out of wood.”

“Never in my wide experience have I seen a wooden alligator switch its tail from side to side.”

The street door had closed behind them, but no one had appeared to offer greetings.

“Aha, here we have a very fine specimen of a shrunken head (reminds me of how I feel in one of my morning-after moods).” Pendragon lifted the leathery object up by its long black hair. “What a charming memento mori this makes (let’s all sing from the tables down at memento mori’s to the place where Louis dwells). I must remember to inquire about the price. Is it considered quite proper to haggle over the price of a shrunken head? Or must one—”

“Hush,” suggested the girl. Eyes narrowed, she was scanning the shadowy shop. The strange and mysterious objects with which the place was crammed seemed to fuse with their shadows. “The man who’s going to lead us to señor Ajo should be here,” she said.

“Polly want a cracker?” Pendragon had lifted a stuffed raven off a dusty shelf. “Or would you (like any sensible fellow) prefer a snootful?”

Vampirella moved carefully toward the rear of the curio shop.

“Here’s something exceedingly strange,” remarked the magician. “I didn’t know they stuffed whole people (and fully clothed at that). I wonder which tribe specializes in this sort of handicraft?”

The girl spun around and joined him. “You idiot, that’s a dead body.”

“Indeed? They certainly sell some unusual things in this establishment.”

Vampirella pushed the unsteady illusionist aside and knelt beside the body on the floor. “Still warm,” she said. “He was strangled, not very long ago.”

“Is he, by chance, the very lad who was to guide us through the labyrinths of this benighted isle to the illusive señor Ajo?”

Vampirella nodded at the plump-faced dead man. “Yes, he told me he knew where Ajo could be found.”

“Then I greatly fear (if you’ll overlook and forgive the obvious pun) that we’ve come to a dead end, my dear.”

“On the contrary,” said a voice from out of the shadows, “you have found señor Ajo…and more.”

The automobile roared, bouncing and rattling, along the twisting jungle road. “I’m driving so carefully,” said Zanka, “because I don’t want to attract the attention of the civil police. Ever since General Cordero came to power, you can’t fix a traffic ticket without a hell of a lot of trouble.”

“This girl we’re going to see,” said Adam, “you’re certain she knows something? She’s not simply one more girl you’re anxious to go to bed with?”

Dozens of yellow-winged insects were suddenly illuminated by the jabbing headlights. A score of them smashed against the windshield.

“Perhaps, Van, you don’t completely understand my affliction,” said Zanka. “I’m anxious to go to bed with just about every available girl from the age of fifteen to fifty. But I assure you there’s no romance going on between me and Elena Velásquez. See, Elena happens to be a very intelligent girl and, unfortunately, the brighter they are, the less I am able to charm them. The result has been my shacking up with some splendid-looking but basically dumb broads who—”

“She definitely has information about Papa Jumbee?”

“As I told you back at the bar, Elena was a reporter, a very good one, on The Daily Truth. Thanks to her father’s opposition to the general, Elena’s no longer on the staff. Señor Velásquez used to be a professor of literature at the university. He doesn’t have a job any more, either. Still, they’re lucky. A couple of other reporters and professors who opposed General Cordero have vanished entirely.”

“She was working on a story about the disappearances?”

“Elena was trying, quietly, to find out what had happened to her colleagues. From there she got onto the missing voodoo fans thing. She believes it’s all tied together.”

“Politics and voodoo?”

“Not an unusual combination on some of these islands.”

A squealing of brakes sounded from around a bend up ahead. Just as their car reached a crossroads, another vehicle came hurtling from the opposite direction. Horn honking, it made a two-wheel turn in front of them.

“Where’s that road go?” asked Adam, watching the taillights rush downhill on his right.

“Small fishing village down there.” Frowning, Zanka pressed down harder on the gas. “We’d better get to the Velásquez house fast. The prof and his daughter are the only people who live out on this part of the road…and that sure wasn’t the professor’s car.”

Chapter 4

“Pendragon…” said Vampirella, a note of warning in her voice.

“Now, now, my dear. I see no reason to refuse señor Ajo’s kind offer (even though he and his minions have quite a selection of formidable weapons pointed at our vitals),” said the magician. “Pour away, señor.”

The plump black man grinned and chuckled as he poured Scotch into the tumbler on the table at his side. “Indeed, this can be a perfectly friendly and amiable discussion all around,” Ajo said as he pushed the glass in Pendragon’s direction.

They had been brought into the small back room of the curio shop. Ajo had three men with him, each equipped with a drawn pistol. One of the men stood behind Vampirella’s chair, another next to Pendragon.

“Something like the friendly chat you had with the poor guy who owned this shop?” asked the girl.

“I said, lovely miss, that things can be pleasant, not that they necessarily will be.”

“Well, cheers and down the hatch,” said Pendragon, going to work on his drink.

“I have a curiosity,” said Ajo, grinning across the few feet which separated him from the girl. “When someone, especially someone as stunning as you are, begins to ask questions about me, I am naturally curious. And you have been asking about me all over the island.”

“You already know,” said Vampirella, “whom we’re looking for.”

Ajo spread his fat hands wide apart. “But, no, lovely lady, I am at a loss. What is it that you do seek on our delightful island?”

“The Pendragon women,” she answered. “You had something to do with their disappearance.”

“I?” The fat hands came together to rest on his chest. He winked at one of his men. “What does this ravishing young woman believe of poor Ajo? That I am a white slaver, or something equally melodramatic?”

Pendragon’s empty glass clicked on the tabletop. “Not the best Scotch I’ve ever swallowed, but I wonder if I might trouble you for another dram of…oh.…my…” He attempted to rise from his chair, couldn’t. Groaning, he tumbled off to the floor, his cloak settling in a wrinkled heap around him.

Vampirella moved to get up. “What have you—”

Something cracked against the back of her skull and she, too, fell.

The old man was dying. Very slowly, very politely, but dying nonetheless.

Zanka shook his head, slowly. “I don’t think.” he said quietly to Adam, “a doctor can help.”

“No, it’s too late.”

Professor Velásquez had been beaten, left sprawled in the tile courtyard in front of his house. Zanka had carried him in here and placed him carefully on a leather sofa in the large beam-ceilinged living room.

He went down on one knee next to the dying man. “Where is Elena?”

“They took…took her, Zanka…” His hand grasped, after two misses, the other man’s hand. “…to Jumbee…”

“We’ll get her back,” Zanka promised the broken old man. “Who did this? The general’s men?”

For some seconds only weak breath rattled out of Velásquez. “Sí…sí, Cordero…he is behind it…but…” The voice faded away.

“But what?”

“…those who took her, Zanka…muerte…dead men…”

“Zombies?”

The old man nodded, and then his life left him, shaking his thin body.

Chapter 5

This is what the blind man saw. Sitting in his dark hotel room under the slowly chucking ceiling fan, he had a vision of his son, Adam, and the girl, Vampirella. Adam and that vicious vampire, together, arms around each other.

Old Van Helsing slammed his fist down on the arm of his chair. This was a vision of the future he was seeing inside his head, something which might happen. It would happen unless he tracked Vampirella down and killed her, killed her the only way you can kill a vampire. With a wooden stake driven through her heart.

Since Adam’s father had lost his sight, he’d developed new gifts, new talents. His precognitive ability was incredible, almost completely reliable. Other people might have hunches which sometimes proved true, but Van Helsing’s hunches were always right. He’d had a premonition that Vampirella had come to this island of Côte de Soleil, she and the seedy magician she’d chosen to travel with.

Van Helsing’s fist again struck the chair. “Adam is here, too,” he said aloud. “He’s followed that creature, but not to destroy her…No, not to destroy her.”

The old man had become one of the leading occult investigators in the world, aided considerably by his son. Ever since that time, long ago now, when his wife had been killed by a…“No, no, that’s all buried in the past,” the blind man told himself. “No need to keep dredging it up. You have to concentrate on the present, on Adam and Vampirella. Once she is destroyed and Adam realizes what she was, then everything will be just as it was between us.”

Van Helsing rose up out of the chair. “There’s work to be done,” he said. Reaching down, he picked up his black satchel.

Lately it hardly seemed worth the trouble. All the unbuckling and unstrapping to do, tugging his highly polished boots off, hanging up his medal-heavy tunic…Sighing, General Cordero lowered himself onto the ornate chair which faced his ornate fourposter bed. This part of his life he enjoyed less and less. In fact, he got less joy out of everything since…No, no use thinking about him.

Stretched out on the wide soft bed already, the naked girl was beckoning to him, murmuring words of affection.

The thickset general smiled absently at her while he unlaced one of his boots. Without his glasses the dictator couldn’t see the girl as anything but a blur. She would be pretty, though. They always were.

If only—

The gilded phone on the marble-topped bedside table rang. Something important.

“Excuse me, little dove.” General Cordero grunted up out of the chair to make his way to the phone. “Sí?”

“Forgive me for calling you away from your heavy load of state affairs, respected general,” came the voice of señor Ajo. “However, I wish to report considerable progress in several areas.”

“Sí, sí, get on with it, Ajo.”

“The esteemed and stubborn professor will not trouble you and the progress of our admirable island any longer,” reported Ajo. “His daughter, the beautiful Elena, is now our guest.”

The general rubbed stubby fingers over his fat cheek. “See that Elena Velásquez is taken into the jungle. We will make use of her tomorrow night.”

“Yes, most respected leader. An excellent notion. It will be done,” said Ajo. “I am pleased to report that we also have acquired the ravishing beauty known as Vampirella, as well as the doddering wreck who calls himself the Great Pendragon. Would Vampirella not also be suitable for the ceremonies of tomorrow evening?”

General Cordero said, “Perhaps, but I wish to question her first. Take her to the old prison.”

“And what of the magician?”

“Get rid of him,” said the general, and he hung up.

Dirt floor, no windows. Walls made of heavy stone blocks.

Someone had been sick in this room recently. A splattered wall and a sour smell in the soggy air gave evidence of that. A squat, sputtering candle sat on a wooden shelf next to the thick wood-beam door.

Vampirella hugged herself, wrapping her leopard-skin coat tighter around her supple body. She stood in a corner of the dismal cell; there was no place to sit even if she’d wanted to, huddled slightly. She was beginning to shake, and her tongue was darting nervously between her sharp front teeth.

“Pendragon,” she called, with no hope of an answer.

Vampirella had awakened here, wherever here was, nearly an hour ago. Her head ached from the harsh blow which had knocked her unconscious. She’d been out a long while, she was certain of that.

Too many hours had passed. Her thoughts kept filling with blood. Fisting one hand, she ran it along her bare inner thigh.

Something had to happen. She should have taken the blood-substitute serum hours ago. When she and Pendragon traveled together, he usually carried the tubes, in their compact black case, in an inner pocket of his cloak.

But where was Pendragon?

She had none of the serum with her, none at all.

That meant she must find real blood again.

Her fist scored a red line along the flesh of her thigh.

She didn’t want to do that any more. When she had first come to this world there was no other way, she’d had no choice. But then the man who’d called himself Dr. Westron had worked out the blood-substitute serum, and everything had changed.

Now, though, it was as if the past few good months had never happened.

She had to have blood.

That’s all there was to it. Blood taken from a living person.

But there was no possibility of that, locked here in this stone-walled cell.

Something rattled on the other side of the thick door. A key was slipped into the lock.

Vampirella shrugged out of her, coat, tensing. She smiled, showing her teeth. It was a horrible smile.

A thin mist hung over the jungle.

“There,” whispered Zanka, “is the village where the car must have taken Elena.”

Adam saw a dozen orange lights floating downhill beyond the edge of the jungle. “What’s the most likely spot?”

“I’d put my money either on the old warehouse, at the edge of town,” said his curly-haired associate, “or on the remains of the once-flourishing prison. Some of the cell compounds still stand. Both spots are worth checking out.”

Swiftly and silently the pair moved down through the trees. Crouched low, they worked their way down the grassy hillside.

The village was composed of roughly a score of still-intact stone cottages and at least that many which had fallen into ruin.

Near the large, hollow warehouse a rickety wooden pier stretched out over the waters of the small harbor.

“Something on the pier,” whispered Zanka.

A flashlight beam showed out there.

The two men hurried along the dirt streets of the village.

“What in the name of all that’s holy is in progress here?” demanded a voice out on the pier. “I’m in no mood to try some kind of Houdini act (escape’s not my specialty, anyway) and I’d appreciate your—”

There was a silence and then a loud splash.

Chapter 6

The lantern burned a foul-smelling oil and gave off sooty bluish smoke. The guard’s hands were thick and knobby, one clutching the lantern and the other gripping a pistol. “Hey, puta,” he croaked through the half-open cell door, “come out of there now. They want to talk to you.”

In a corner of her cell, masked by the open door, Vampirella reached up and killed the flame of the candle between her fingers. Darkness closed in around her. The girl was breathing heavily now, breasts quivering, lips parted.

The heavyset guard pushed the door farther open with a booted foot. He shoved the lantern into the cell, saying, “I’ve no time for foolishness, cadella. You come on out of here, damn quick!”

Vampirella made a moaning, desperate sound and leaped. She got hold of the guard before he even sensed her approach.

With two chopping strokes of her palm she knocked his gun and his lantern away from him. The lantern smashed to flaming bits on the floor, spilling and splashing light.

“You—”

Her fingers dug into his throat, squashing any further slurs.

Vampirella spun him around and threw him across the cell.

The guard sidestepped, stumbled, and fell against a stone wall. His skull whacked hard against the stones.

He realized he must call out for help. But the thought didn’t get into words.

The dark-haired girl was upon him. Her digging fingers found his throat again.

He had to stay on his feet. He tried to strike at her, to knock her away from him. She was only a girl, after all.

But he couldn’t seem to hit her; his arms and hands felt useless. He couldn’t keep standing. One knee slammed into the floor, then the other. His knees went, and he was flat on his face. Vampirella pushed down on the back of the guard’s thick neck with both hands, flattening his face against the floor. She kept up the pressure on his throat until he blacked out.

She knelt beside him now, shaking, breath rasping in and out of her lungs.

For a few seconds she thought perhaps she’d be able to hold out. But she could not.

Vampirella bent low over the man. She sank her teeth into the flesh of his throat.

Zanka’s head emerged from the water. He sucked in a breath and remarked, “They ought to do something about this pollution,” and dived once again into the waters of the small harbor.

On the ramshackle pier Adam was tussling with the two men who’d just consigned the weighted Pendragon to the deep.

“Hijo de—” began one of the men. A blow in the sternum caused him to leave the insult incomplete and, further, to go bicycling backwards across the slippery planking. Arms flapping, he hesitated on the edge and then plunged over into the misty water.

Adam concentrated on the remaining thug. “Ahoy,” called Zanka from the water. “I’ve found the sunken treasure.”

That distracted Adam for a few seconds, allowing the thug to push by him and go running along the pier toward land.

Adam let him go and hurried over to help Zanka. “They tied a few lead weights to him,” announced Zanka, who was holding Pendragon’s head above water. “I cut most of ‘em off.”

Adam dropped to his knees, reached over, and caught the water-soaked Pendragon. The magician’s cloak hung heavy with water. As he lifted him up onto the planks a bouquet of plastic flowers fell out of a slit pocket in the cloak and popped into blossom. “I thought I recognized the voice—and the rhetoric,” said Adam. “We’ve just fished out the Great Pendragon.”

Zanka boosted himself up onto the pier. He shook the water out of his curly hair and shrugged several times in his soaked suit. “What field is he great in? I hope it’s not romance, since I got enough—”

“He’s a magician.”

“…shouldn’t have had that last one…” murmured Pendragon, eyes closed, as Adam got him out of his soggy cloak. “…she was right (as usual)…what a sorry business this all is…hunting for zombies…hardly a respectable occupation for a man of my fame…”

Adam clutched the magician’s shoulders. “Pendragon,” he said, “where’s Vampirella? What’s all this about zombies?”

Pendragon’s eyelids flickered. “Voice of a heckler is heard in the land. Yet there’s something oddly familiar…” He opened his eyes. “Nell’s bells! It’s Adam Van Helsing, as I live and breathe. Or have I ceased breathing?”

“We got you away from Mother Ocean in time,” said Zanka.

“Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you, sir. I am none other than the Great Pendragon, Master of Mysteries, Prince of Sorcer—”

“Where’s Vampirella?” Adam’s grip on the older man’s shoulders tightened.

“I can tell by the tone of your voice,” said Pendragon, “that you’re still smitten with my fair assistant.” He shook his head sadly, which caused water to splash on his two rescuers. “It’s all my fault. They’ve taken her prisoner.”

“Who?”

“One of them is named señor Ajo,” said Pendragon, “and I gather the whole lot of them have something to do with this beastly island’s voodoo cult.”

Chapter 7

Señor Ajo wouldn’t sit down. “This is a filthy place, if you don’t mind my saying so,” he said, wrinkling his nose.

“Good enough for those we bring here.” General Cordero was dressed in dark civilian clothes, his medals left at home. He sat, stiffly, in a feeble wooden chair in the center of the damp stone room.

Ajo poked at something on the dirty floor with the toe of one brightly polished shoe. “Rat droppings.”

“Not unusual, since this place is infested with the creatures.”

Ajo moved farther away from the walls, which were splotched with some purplish kind of fungus. “I’ve been thinking, most respected general,” he said, “about your intention of making use of the charming Elena Velásquez in tomorrow evening’s ceremonies.”

“Our intention,” corrected Cordero.

“I’m wondering if we ought to risk getting rid of both the professor and his charming daughter at the—”

“It’s necessary that we provide a certain number of sacrifices,” said the general. “Particularly since we have entered into our…little bargain with our benefactor from North America.”

The fat man ran his tongue over his lips several times. “Respected captain of our ship of state, I often feel very uneasy about our…benefactor,” he said. “It seems to me—”

“Listen to me, gordito!” General Cordero leaned forward and clamped one hand on his own knee. “I rule this island. I ruled it before we made our deal, and I will continue to rule it so long as I so please.” He fisted his palm. “I am extremely anxious to question this girl who calls herself Vampirella. Your imbecile guard should have delivered her to us by now.”

“Might I point out, esteemed head of state, that this particular guard was added to your staff at the explicit request of your venerable cousin in—”

“Go find out what’s keeping him.”

Ajo went.

Her body had seemed to be burning. Then she would start to shiver. Vampirella, shaking her head, rose up and away from the body of the guard. Her lips and her face were streaked with blood. Smears of blood were clotting on her fingers, drying in jagged stripes along her smooth bare arms.

“I wasn’t going to…” She didn’t want to look at the man any more. Unsteady, Vampirella started for the doorway.

She remembered her coat. Finding it in the dark corner where she’d flung it, the girl slipped into it, wrapping it tightly around her body.

She thrust her bloody hands deep into the pockets of the coat.

The corridor outside her cell was lit with a flickering lantern hung from a hook. There was no sound out there, no indication anyone else was about.

Vampirella emerged from the cell and closed the door without looking again at the guard. “I’ve got to find Pendragon,” she told herself. “He’ll be able to help me…if anyone can.”

A murmuring from the corridor end, men talking.

She moved silently, in that direction.

“This is a filthy place, if you don’t mind my saying so.” That was Ajo certainly.

“Good enough for those we bring here.” A harsher voice, more forceful.

The girl, watchful, eased along the dim corridor.

The men were talking in a cell at the north end of the building. Vampirella stationed herself a few feet from the open door and listened. She could see neither of them from where she stood.

She quickly realized the other man with Ajo was the dictator of the island, General Cordero himself. And the esteemed general was quite deeply involved with the voodoo cult which flourished on Côte de Soleil.

After another moment the impatient dictator ordered Ajo to go fetch Vampirella and her guard.

The girl removed her blood-splattered hands from her pockets. The craving had passed, the desperate need for blood. Ajo was safe on that count. Vampirella would grab him, incapacitate him, and then go after the general.

Fat señor Ajo took three steps beyond the doorway, and the gunfire started.

“Madre de Dios!” he exclaimed, clutching himself, halting.

The shooting was outside, accompanied now by cursing and the sounds of a free-for-all struggle.

Before Vampirella could lay hands on Ajo, the fat man spun around and dived back into the cell. “Trouble out in the yard, most honored…General? Where are you?”

Vampirella stepped into the shaft of light cast into the corridor by the cell’s lanterns. Apparently General Cordero knew of another way out of that particular cell. There was only the immaculate Ajo within now, looking perplexed.

“We’ll have to have our chat without him,” said the girl, smiling into the cell at Ajo.

He grabbed for the pistol tucked into his waist.

The girl moved fast, slapped his plump hand away, and tugged the weapon out herself.

“You…you’re all bloody.” Her stained hands had made scarlet lines across his middle. “You’ve befouled my shirt and trousers.” He started backing away from her, intent on avoiding the bloody hands as well as the slimy cell walls. “How did you get so bloody?” He’d noticed the smears of blood on her cheeks.

Pointing his gun at him, Vampirella asked, “What have you done with Pendragon?”

“He is, I am much afraid, at the bottom of the bay by now, lovely lady,” said Ajo, trying for a smile. “It was, I hasten to assure you, not my idea.”

“Full fathom five Pendragon lays (or is it lies? for that matter, might it not be full fathom six?) No matter, I am pleased to announce I have risen from my watery grave.” The magician, still rather damp, was standing in the corridor. “Nothing like a brisk dip to sober a man up, I might add. Have you been put upon, my child?”

Vampirella moved to his side, keeping the gun covering the nervous Ajo. “No, Pendragon, but…” She touched, with her free hand, the caked blood on her face. “You must know what I’ve done…I didn’t think I would any more, but—”

“I see, I see. But no matter, my child.” The magician put an arm around her shoulders. “I’m sure a bit of backsliding won’t have any—”

“But I meant to stop altogether, not do it any more at all.”

“Unusual circumstances (Lord knows) are bound to arise.” He reached out gently and took the gun from her hand. “Allow me to take charge of our fat friend. You freshen up. We have company.”

“You had help breaking into this place?”

“Of course. Pendragon is not the Errol Flynn type (well, possibly in the area of affairs of the heart, but not when it comes to daring one-man rescues),” he explained. “You’ll never guess who happened to be passing by whilst I was being given my informal baptism in the deep blue sea. Adam Van Helsing and—”

“I don’t want to see him now.” Vampirella moved around him and went into the corridor. “I don’t want to see anyone.” She left him.

Chapter 8

Thunder shook the windows of the hotel room; wind and rain came slapping down.

“I don’t think the general will try anything overt against us yet,” said Adam as he paced in front of the row of high windows.

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that.” Zanka was sitting in an enormous flowered sofa chair, feet up on a huge flowered hassock.

Pendragon suggested, “He may not even know we’re aware of his part in this.” The magician was pouring himself several fingers of Scotch. “After all, he doesn’t know Vampirella overheard his little tête-à-têe with Ajo.”

“Yeah, but he does know we caught Ajo,” said Adam. “Ajo’s the type who’s going to talk.”

Zanka toyed with his mustache. “This is what they call one of your ticklish situations,” he observed. “We can’t go to the local law about Ajo, since the head of the whole damn island is in cahoots with him. The American consul wants to find out about the disappearing American tourists, but he can’t make too many waves since U.S. policy at the moment favors leaving Cordero in power. It’s a good thing I have some connections of my own on Côte de Soleil.”

Lightning suddenly illuminated the midnight room. Vampirella, dressed in a simple black cocktail dress, was sitting at the edge of the room, hands folded.

Adam glanced across at her. “I don’t know why you won’t talk to me,” he said.

“I’ll talk to you. What would you like me to say?”

“After what happened on that other island, I thought you and I—”

“We can go into that later,” said the girl.

“Okay, Vampirella, we’ll change the subject,” said Adam. “You’re certain you heard Cordero and Ajo say Elena Velásquez was going to be some part of the voodoo rites tomorrow night?”

“Yes, they mean to kill her.”

Zanka said, “Papa Jumbee has been known to include a human sacrifice or two in his ceremonies.”

“This is something more than a voodoo sacrifice,” said Vampirella.

“What do you suspect?” Adam asked her.

She shook her head, not replying.

Zanka gave his mustache a more vigorous twist. “First thing in the morning I’ll find out where Papa Jumbee plans to hold his gathering. Matter of fact, Ajo may tell us.”

“Might these zombie devotees,” put in Pendragon, “move the site of their impending festivities? To compensate for the possibility of señor Ajo’s blabbing?”

“That’s possible.”

“I want to talk to Ajo,” said Vampirella, “right now.”

Adam moved closer to her. “Okay, we’ll do that.”

Zanka, unfolding, dug for his car keys. “I’ll be most happy to drive Miss Vampirella to—”

“You stick here with Pendragon in his suite.” Adam took the keys from the little detective’s hand. “I’ll look after Vampirella…if that’s okay with her.”

The dark-haired girl shrugged. “I won’t object.”

Zanka sighed and turned away to watch rain slam against the high windows.

“Don’t leave me alone with her,” pleaded Ajo. He was against a window of the whitewashed room, back toward the heavy rain and the thick night jungle outside. “She’ll do terrible things to me, bloody things.”

Adam had dismissed the two men who’d been looking after Ajo. He and Vampirella were alone in the room with him. “I’ll be staying here,” he said.

The girl shook her rain-damp hair and slipped out of her leopard-skin coat. “As long as you don’t interrupt until I’m finished,” she said over her shoulder.

“Finished with what?” demanded Ajo. “You see? She means to do something foul and awful to me.”

“Look at me, Ajo,” the girl ordered him.

His eyes darted; he looked at everything but the girl’s face.

“Look at me.” Raising one hand, she touched one slender finger to her cheek.

The fat black man could hold out no longer. He met her eyes.

Vampirella’s eyes narrowed, seemed to glow in the dimly lit room.

“You realize now,” she told him, “that you must do what I say. There is no way out of it for you.”

The sounds of rainfall and rolling thunder faded. All Ajo was aware of was the girl’s face, her eyes on him, her voice knifing into his brain. “I must do what you say.”

“You will tell me whatever I want to know.”

“Yes, I will.”

Adam moved closer to the two of them.

Vampirella asked Ajo, “What happens to the tourists who disappear?”

“Some are sacrificed to the voodoo gods,” replied the hypnotized man. “Others are sent on.”

“Sent on?”

“I do not know where.”

“Whom are they sent to?”

“I do not know his name, only my esteemed general knows. He calls him our benefactor. I believe he is very rich and that General Cordero has done some great favor for him.”

“Have you ever heard of the Cult of Chaos?”

“Yes, some of our sacrifices must now be made to the demons they call the Servants of Chaos,” replied Ajo. “I think it is a mistake.”

“Pendragon’s relatives, the two Pendragon women,” asked Vampirella, “do you know where they are?”

“The two lovely ladies wished to see a voodoo rite. I escorted them into the jungle and delivered them to Papa Jumbee.”

“And then?”

“They were taken away, I do not know where.”

Vampirella said, “Who is Papa Jumbee?”

“No one knows that, no one.”

Chapter 9

Adam swung the car off the road. They stopped in a clearing above the sea. The pounding rain hid the black ocean. “Okay,” he said, “I think we’d better talk.”

Wind rattled the auto; rain drummed hard on the chassis. “You’ve picked a romantic spot for it,” said Vampirella. She was sitting far across the seat from him, arms folded.

“You know, I’ve been following you around from island to island,” Adam said. “It’s kind of idiotic, since we keep ending up working on the same problems together. We ought to travel together.”

“Your father wouldn’t like that.”

“Dad and I don’t work together any more, you know that.”

“He still means to kill me,” Vampirella said. “Kill me because I’m a vampire.”

“He’s wrong about that. I’ve told him he—”

“But he’s right, Adam,” she said. “I am a vampire.” Her long slender fingers twisted around each other, restless in her lap.

“Not in the way he means. I know about the way things were on your home planet of Drakulon, about the metabolic need for blood,” said Adam. “That’s not the same thing as—”

“Does it make any difference?”

“Of course it does. You’re not one of the undead, the kind of vampire my father has devoted his life to destroying.”

“Your life, too, Adam.”

“Dad and I worked together as occult investigators, which doesn’t mean I share all his views, Vampirella,” said Adam. “I don’t see why you’re so downcast. Now that you have the blood-substitute formula you—”

“That’s not a cure, Adam.” Her hands lifted once, then fell back to her lap. “If I don’t take it regularly, the old urge comes back, gets so strong that you…I don’t know…Then I have to do what I did to that man in the cell tonight. You haven’t said anything about him, but I know you saw him.”

“Yeah, I saw him. I didn’t think there was any need to—”

“Because he was on the other side, a bad guy? Then it’s all right, is that it? Suppose, though, that some night you and I were alone and I ran out of the serum,” said Vampirella. “I’d attack you then, Adam, as surely as I attacked that idiot guard. Yes, I would, I’d have to.”

“That’s ridiculous. You’re talking a fantasy that—”

“Am I? We’re both here on Côte de Soleil, and the voodoo people and Papa Jumbee don’t like either of us. Maybe next time they’ll grab you and me together and toss us in the same cell.”

Adam reached out and took her hand. “I don’t agree with any of this,” he said. “But for now, let’s talk about the job we have to do. That’s a safer topic. I want to get to Papa Jumbee’s voodoo session tonight and save Elena Velásquez. Want to come along on that?”

“Perhaps I’ll join you there,” she said. “But Ajo mentioned that General Cordero sometimes met with his mysterious benefactor at his beach villa. I want to take a look at the place and see if the esteemed general keeps any notes or souvenirs of his visitor.”

“All right, then, I’ll—”

A black shape rose up alongside the car, darker than the night.

“Adam, it’s—”

The door on Vampirella’s side of the car was wrenched open. “Yes, I’ve found you!” cried old Van Helsing. The rain beat at him, and the wind tore at his white hair and dark overcoat. “Unseeing I may be, but my instincts led me straight to you. Now you’ll die, as you should have long ago!” He grabbed her arm and began to pull her out into the storm.

“Dad, for God’s sake!” Adam leaped out of his side of the car. He circled the vehicle, splashing in the mud. Reaching the old man’s side, he took hold of him by the shoulders and pulled him away from the struggling Vampirella.

“Don’t try to stop me, Adam!” The blind man was gripping the sharp wooden stake in one hand. “She must be destroyed! Destroyed before she does you further harm.”

Adam dragged his father farther from the car and pushed him back against the trunk of a tree. “You’re out of your mind, you ought to be locked up!” he shouted.

“You believed in me once, shared my goals,” reminded his father as the rain-laden wind buffeted the two of them. “Now you call me a madman.”

“You’ve got to leave her alone,” said Adam. “You’ve got to stop hounding her. If you don’t, then I’ll…I swear to you, I’ll do something to stop you!”

“How can you talk that way to me?”

“Because I love her,” said Adam. “Do you understand that?”

The blind man’s body went limp and he slumped. “Lord,” he said in a fading voice, “Lord, I’m too late…”

Adam shook his head and left the old man propped against the tree. He had to see how Vampirella was.

Her coat was still on the seat of the car, one arm of it hanging out and damp with rain.

Of Vampirella herself there was no sign.

Chapter 10

The lanky black man in the pale blue undershirt and khaki pants dozed against the whitewashed fence, slouched on an upturned orange crate with a stringless guitar resting across his knees. A half-dozen chickens pecked at the weedy grass that bordered the sagging board fence. When Zanka was still ten feet from him he asked, without opening his eyes, “What you want, bouclé?”

The curly-haired detective trotted down through the slanting field. “Want to talk to Mother Macumba,” he announced. “We’re old friends.”

Yawning, the black man opened his eyes and set his guitar aside. “I remember you, you’re the amoureux.”

“That’s me,” agreed Zanka, “and I have a gift for Mother Macumba.”

Off in the early morning a rooster crowed.

“How much?”

“Fifty bucks.”

“Make it seventy-five and she’ll see you.”

“Done.”

The black man stretched up off the crate, went to the padlocked fence gate, unlocked it, and gave it a languid shove. “You find her the usual place.”

“Much obliged.” Zanka cut across the weedy front yard that surrounded Mother Macumba’s sprawling stone cottage, dodging pecking chickens.

A sprawled-out, one-eyed yellow dog opened its single eye to watch his progress.

Behind the house was a bumpy tiled courtyard, covered over with a tattered striped canvas awning. Underneath the awning was a brass bed. Sitting in the bed, propped up with several fat feather pillows, was a very old black woman. The part of her which showed above the complex quilt was dressed in a bright scarlet silk dress rich with lace. She wore a turban over her yellow-white hair and held a long homemade cigarette in the stiff fingers of her right hand.

She said, “You want something, Zanka? Of course you do. You never come to me unless you want something. Begone, shoo!” She swung at the red rooster which had hopped up onto the foot of her bed.

“Allow me.” Zanka poked the squawking rooster off. “I brought you a little gift, Mother.”

“My minimum price for info is a hundred bucks now, Zanka.”

“Your man at the door said seventy-five.”

“If he knew anything about finances, would he be doorman for a ruined old crone like me? A hundred up front.” She held a dry, weathered hand out toward him.

“Maybe I ought to shop around,” said Zanka, keeping his hands away from his pockets.

“Bullshit,” said the old woman. “You want to find out something about Papa Jumbee. Nobody is going to tell you one damn thing about him…except me.”

After twisting each end of his mustache, Zanka said, “Okay, you’ve convinced me. And besides, I’m a sucker for motherly old broads.”

Mother Macumba took the five $20 bills and slipped them away under the covers.

“Papa Jumbee is holding a ceremony tonight,” said Zanka. “Where’s his hounfort?”

“He’s a very powerful houngan, Zanka. Maybe you don’t want to mess with him.”

“Where’s he setting up his temple?”

“He moves his bagi, there is no one fixed location.”

Zanka sat on the edge of her bed. “Where will his altar be set up tonight?”

The old woman inhaled smoke from her cigarette and blew wisps of it at him as she shook her head. “Stay away from Papa Jumbee tonight,” she advised. “He will sacrifice a goat without horns. Bad place to be tonight.”

“You mean a human sacrifice?”

Mother Macumba nodded, coughing a dry cough.

“A girl?” asked Zanka. “Is it Elena Velásquez he means to kill?”

“You will die, too, if you go near there. Papa Jumbee controls many powerful loas. Yes, even gods who come from the Nethervoid.”

“Sounds like exactly the sort of shindig I want to attend. Where?”

Mother Macumba reached under the covers.

“Perhaps I give you your gift back, send you home safe and sound.”

Zanka, grinning, leaned close to the ancient woman. “Keep the money, Mother. Tell me where they’re meeting tonight.”

She brought her wrinkled hands out empty. “Very well, but your death will be no fault of mine.” She told him what he wanted to know.

“I must admit, dear child, that I’m commencing to feel somewhat like a housemother,” said Pendragon. They were in their dressing room at the rear of the outdoor amphitheater, and their afternoon performance had just concluded. “What was my state of mind when at dawn this morning I, plagued by a fit of insomnia, phoned your room at our hotel to learn you were still out?” He opened a fresh bottle of Scotch.

Vampirella was behind a screen, changing out of her scarlet costume. “I’ve already told you what happened,” she said. “Adam and I questioned Ajo and talked about it afterward.”

“Is that all?”

“All you have to know about.”

“(What’s this swimming in my booze? Scat!) It couldn’t be, could it, that Adam’s rather single-minded papa interrupted your chat?”

Vampirella emerged from behind the screen dressed in a dark pants suit. “Yes, he did. How did you find out?”

The magician was poking a forefinger into his glass. “(Never seen a bug like this before. Perhaps I’ve discovered something completely new and they’ll name it after me.) You forget, dear child, I possess the power to see all and know all,” he said, licking his finger. “Besides which, Adam phoned me this morning to find out what had become of you. He has ensconced the old man in a suite at a hotel some distance from ours and suggested the dear chap refrain from making any more trouble.”

“That’s not likely to work.”

“It might, since old Van Helsing is apparently somewhat under the weather from prowling the wilds of the island last evening,” Pendragon told her. “Adam says none of the plans he discussed with you have changed.”

“Okay, then you do tonight’s show as usual,” said Vampirella, “except you announce that due to a last-minute illness I will not appear with you.”

“Be simpler to cancel the whole blasted thing.”

“No, I don’t want anyone wondering why we aren’t going to perform,” she said. “This way we don’t tip our hand.”

“So while I slave here performing my brilliant magical tricks, you and Adam will be cavorting at the local voodoo orgy, eh?” Giving up the attempt to extricate the insect, he drank down the Scotch bug and all.

“Adam and Zanka are going to the voodoo rites,” said Vampirella. “I have something else to take care of.”

Chapter 11

The wind was screaming. The jungle trees creaked and groaned, and stands of bamboo clattered. A hot, dry wind came rasping harshly through the cracks in the hut, sending dust skittering across the dirt floor.

The wind lashed at the fair-haired girl who was huddled in a shadowy corner of the hut and spat dust and grit at her. She was tied, wrists behind her, and blindfolded. They hadn’t bothered to gag her.

It didn’t matter if she cried out. Elena Velásquez had learned that during the long hours she’d been here. She was someplace in the jungle, far from any city or town, and it made no difference if she screamed and called for help.

The wind kept at her, rubbing at her, scattering the dust. Then, gradually, Elena became aware of another sound.

The drums had begun to beat.

She had lived on this island most of her life. She had heard those drums often, though never this close. The big drums they called maman, and the smaller ones they called seconde. They were beating now.

Dry grass crackled. Someone had come into the hut.

“Who is it?” the girl asked.

There was no reply.

A moment later a hand touched her arm. A cold hand, the hand of a cadavre. The dead hand of a zombie.

The blindfolded girl didn’t scream. She had made up her mind that nothing they did to her, no matter what, would make her crack. She wasn’t going to show fear or weakness.

The dead man’s hand moved along her arm, across her breasts. Then down along her thigh.

The hot night wind kept on worrying the hut walls, whipping through the jungle.

Dry grass crackled again, and more hands touched her body.

Some of the hands were those of Papa Jumbee’s walking dead, but other hands were warm and perspiring. They all touched at the bound and blindfolded girl, fondled her, pinched her.

Elena made no protest; she wouldn’t give them that.

A dry gloating ghost whispered in her ear, “Tonight you will be the bride of Damballa. Tonight you die.”

The hands began tearing the clothes from her.

Dry palm fronds were flying through the air like spears.

Bobbing and weaving on the overblown jungle path, Zanka said, “Forgive me for resorting to clichés, bwana, but your mind seems to be a thousand miles away.”

“Not quite that far.” Adam was dressed in a dark pullover and trousers. A .38 revolver rested in the holster at his waist.

“You’re smitten with Vampirella, huh?”

“I don’t think people get smitten any more.”

Zanka stroked his mustache. “I have very mixed feelings about that girl,” he said. “My horny side tells me she’s a splendid-looking broad, but my instinct for self-preservation advises me to keep a safe distance away from her.”

“So stay away then,” said Adam.

“Yeah, but—” Zanka halted stark still. “Whoa. Better hunker down.” His voice had dropped to a whisper.

Adam heard something now, too. He followed his partner off the path and behind a wide tree trunk.

Someone was coming along the path they had been using. Someone walking slowly and heavily.

Zanka, carefully, ventured to take a look.

A lone figure lumbered along the trail, a tall leathery man in tattered clothes. He walked unsteadily, hands hanging at his sides, eyes staring. His mouth hung open, cracked lips pulled back from his teeth.

“Dead man,” said Adam in a low voice, “a zombie.”

“Now we know for sure we’re in the right neighborhood.”

Vampirella shed her leopard-skin coat and, wearing nothing save her brief crimson costume, stalked through the windy darkness. At her left rose the stone wall of General Cordero’s oceanside villa, and on her right, three hundred feet below, was the black frothy sea. The narrow beach down there was a twisting one, spiked with jagged black rocks.

“Wonder how many of his political enemies have ended up down there.”

The powerful night wind swept salt spray up here.

Heedless of the cold, Vampirella stopped and, hands on hips, scanned the six-foot-high wall which surrounded the 15-acre estate of the island dictator. The individual stones of the wall were rough and uneven. They’d afford handholds and footholds.

Without hesitating she climbed, swiftly and gracefully, up the wall to its top. “No spikes or broken glass? The general’s more hospitable than I thought.”

She remained poised atop the wall for an instant, then dropped to the other side.

She landed, wide-legged, in a vast formal garden. It was thick with shadows now, laid out in neat rows. Gently curving paths wound through flower beds, shrub-lined lanes, immaculately clipped hedges. The wind was tearing leaves from the trees, ripping blossoms from the flowers.

And something else was rattling the foliage.

It emerged quite near Vampirella. A huge silky-black guard dog, snarling, muzzle all gnashing teeth.

“I sympathize with you, Rover, but…” Crouching, she rushed the animal.

With a chesty bark, the dog leaped to meet her.

Vampirella deftly sidestepped and, as the surprised hound shot by her, delivered a chopping blow to the base of its skull.

The guard dog made a whimpering sound and dropped to the ground dazed.

Another blow, and the animal was unconscious.

“Let’s hope the Humane Society doesn’t hear about this,” the girl said. “And now for a view of the inside of this establishment.”

They left Elena alone, after a while. Alone and naked on the dirt floor of the hut. The wind was still strong, forcing its way into the room and rubbing at her body. The drums were louder; more of them were being beaten. Gourd rattles echoed the beat, and bare feet pounded on the earth outside. And there was laughter, harsh, nasty laughter.

How many of them were out there? How many of Papa Jumbee’s followers were out there in the hot windy night, dancing, drinking? It sounded like a hundred, at least, possibly more.

Elena thought again about her father. She was fairly certain he was dead. What they’d done to him, the men who came from the general and the zombies they’d brought with them…No, there was no use hoping any more. He was dead.

“I’ll soon be dead, too.”

That was what the voice had whispered at her. She was to be a sacrifice to Damballa, one of the most vicious of the voodoo gods.

There was someone in here with her again. Someone alive and breathing, smelling of raw rum.

“Time to get ready,” said a whispering voice. “Time to get ready to meet Damballa.”

Elena couldn’t tell whether the voice belonged to a man or a woman.

The point of a knife blade was pressed against one of her breasts. “Going to cut,” said the whisperer, “your ropes free. You try anything smart, you’ll be knocked down.”

The knife moved away, and she felt it slicing at the ropes which bound her wrists.

Elena asked, “What do you—”

A hand slapped her, hard, across the mouth. “Don’t talk, either,” she was told, “or maybe you die earlier than planned.”

The man with the rifle didn’t notice Vampirella until she was a foot away from him. He spun, trying to bring the weapon up into firing position, but it was much too late.

The sparsely clad girl got hold of his throat and applied pressure, and the man fell over into a rosebush.

Vampirella continued on her way to the general’s glass and stone villa.

Seated out on a vast tile patio, a martini in one hand, was a conservatively dressed young black man. He had an account book open on the glass-topped table next to him.

“Look at me,” commanded Vampirella as she stepped out of the darkness.

The startled young man moved his free hand toward the gun he wore beneath his waistcoat. His fingers never touched the little pistol.

Vampirella’s eyes glowed, caught his. “You can’t do anything but what I say.”

The hypnotized Negro replied, “Yes, exactly, miss.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m the general’s confidential secretary. My name is Jean-Baptiste Flaubert.”

“Good,” said Vampirella. “How many people here inside?”

“Only the domestic staff,” said Jean-Baptiste. “Six in all. The general isn’t at home this—”

“I know that,” she told him. “Okay, now I want you to escort me to the general’s private office.”

“Yes, of course, miss.” The hypnotized secretary stood up and set down his drink.

“General Cordero has had some dealings with a rather odd gentleman lately. Do you know who I mean?”

“I most certainly do. He’s been here five or six times the past few months,” said Jean-Baptiste. “I don’t mind telling you he makes my flesh crawl. I mean, there’s something about—”

“Has the general kept any notes of his conversations with him?”

The black private secretary shook his head. “He’s kept no notes,” he said. “However, the secret tape recordings he made might be of some interest to you, miss.”

Smiling, Vampirella said, “We’ll go listen to some of those tapes. Lead on.”

“Right this way, miss,” said Jean-Baptiste.

Zanka heard the voice first. He swung out a hand, halting Adam’s progress. “Unless my old ears deceive me,” he said, “I hear my name being called.”

“Unlikely,” said Adam.

Very faintly, off to their right and in among the high trees and twisting vines, a girl’s voice was calling out something.

“Hear it?” Zanka asked his partner.

“Sounds like a girl. Can’t make out what she’s saying.”

“Willy…Willy, where are you?…You have…to help me.”

“Many girls,” explained Zanka, “refer to me as Willy rather than as William Carlos.”

“Willy…please…help me…They…they killed…father.”

Zanka snapped his fingers “It’s Elena,” he said. “I’m sure.” He cupped his hands to his mouth, calling out, “Elena, I’m here. Where are you?”

Only silence for a moment. Then the girl’s faint voice. “Over here, Willy…I can’t walk any more…Please help…”

“Okay, hold on, I’m coming.” Zanka gave a tug at Adam’s arm. “Come on, it’s Elena.”

“You get her,” said Adam, glancing around at the night jungle. “I’ll wait here.”

“Well…all right.” Zanka pushed aside brush and began working his way away from the trail.

He traveled about a thousand feet, and was out of sight of Adam, when a gun was pressed into his side.

“That will be far enough, Willy.”

“Suckered,” said Zanka. The black man with the gun was the drowsy gatekeeper he’d met this morning at Mother Macumba’s.

“We been waiting for you,” the man said, chuckling.

Chapter 12

They took off the blindfold.

Five of them were in the hut with her—three of them watching her and grinning, the other two staring with the graveyard stare of the walking dead.

A blonde woman, fat, was nearest to Elena. “Put this on, honey,” she said, draping a white robe over the girl’s naked shoulders.

Which one of them was the whisperer? The stocky black man nearest the hut doorway, the old woman with the withered arm, or this hefty blonde…Not that it mattered, not any more.

The man in the doorway nodded at Elena, then at the night outside.

“Time to go, honey.” The fat blonde prodded her.

Elena started walking. The wind tore at the white robe as she stepped from the hut into the night. She made no effort to keep it down. It didn’t matter.

The voodoo drums continued to beat; the gourds rattled. There was a large circular clearing, far across it the remains of a stone house, the main building of some sort of plantation which must have flourished here a generation or more ago. At least a dozen torches burned around the circle, mounted on poles. More than a hundred people were gathered for the voodoo celebration, dancing, cavorting.

Gradually, though the drums kept on, the dancing ceased. They were watching Elena as she was led to the center of the night circle.

A black stone altar had been set up there. On the dirt in front of it a pentagram had been traced in blood.

“Damballa!” cried a hoarse voice.

“Damballa-Wedo!”

“Damballa!”

Soon they were all chanting it, repeating the name of the voodoo god over and over.

Then came sudden silence.

From behind the altar a man had stepped. He was stripped to the waist and barefoot. Round his neck hung a greasy cord with a leather pouch at its end. Over his head he wore a black hood.

“Papa Jumbee!” cried the same hoarse voice.

“Papa Jumbee!”

“Papa Jumbee!”

Two girls moved from the crowd of watchers to join Papa Jumbee. They were naked except for a string of beads and bones worn low around the waist. Each carried a knife.

The voodoo priest raised his hands up high over his head. All sound stopped. The drums fell silent.

Papa Jumbee took one step closer to Elena.

The girl did not flinch. In fact, she realized, she really wasn’t feeling much of anything. She was aware all this was happening, that in a few minutes she would be dead. Yet she had the impression she was watching something taking place a long way off, an event that scarcely concerned her.

Papa Jumbee let one hand fall.

The two young girls came over to Elena and pulled the robe from her.

The other hand dropped.

Four men, two of them the staring zombies who’d come for her in the hut, took hold of the nude girl. They lifted her off her feet and threw her down to the ground. They stretched her out, spread-eagled and face up, on the bloody pentagram.

The drums began to pound again. The crowd started to chant.

Though the words were repeated and repeated, their meaning didn’t register with Elena.

Chanting himself now, Papa Jumbee started to circle the girl’s pinned-down body. Two men held her wrists, two her ankles. They knelt on the ground, chanting along with the voodoo priest.

“Alovi-Ghede, Azagon la Croix, Bossu-Trois-Cornes, Ogoun Batla, Ogoun Shango, Agwe Nono, Congo Zandor!”

Elena heard a chicken squawking in protest. The sound seemed so out of place she wanted to laugh.

Papa Jumbee held a black rooster in his hand, clutching it tight around the neck.

One of the young girls handed him her knife.

“Damballa!” shouted Papa Jumbee. With one vicious slice he cut off the rooster’s head.

The severed head, trailing blood, splashed into the face of one of the zombies who held Elena to the ground. He paid it no attention, didn’t wipe the splatter of fresh blood from his gaunt face and chest.

Papa Jumbee, crouched low, held the body of the rooster over the body of Elena. He let the warm blood spurt out onto her body. He drew a bloody X across her breasts, then smeared her stomach and thighs before tossing the carcass away into the darkness beyond the altar.

The voodoo priest stood back and returned the bloody knife to the girl who’d provided it. He raised his hands high. “Bring us the others,” he commanded. “Damballa will be well served tonight!”

A dozen men appeared out of the blackness. They carried the bound figures of Zanka and Adam Van Helsing. Adam’s head was bloody, and he appeared to be unconscious. Zanka, awake, was arguing with the unheeding men. They carried him and his partner near the altar and dropped them to the dirt near the spread-eagled body of Elena.

“It’s starting to look,” Zanka said across to the girl, “like I’ve botched your rescue, Elena.”

“Oh, Zanka, they have you, too.”

The hooded Papa Jumbee kicked Zanka in the side of his head. “You will be silent in the presence of our gods.”

The second young girl presented him with her knife.

“There will be three sacrificed tonight,” cried the voodoo priest. “We will gain much favor with Damballa.”

A murmuring had started at the edge of the crowd.

Papa Jumbee turned to look at his disciples. “Silence!”

One of his handmaidens saw what the agitation was caused by. She pointed skyward.

A large black bat was slowly circling the clearing, lit by the flickering flames of the torches.

More and more members of the congregation were noticing the bat. Murmuring increased.

“You must be silent!” cried Papa Jumbee.

The bat dived, straight at his head.

Papa Jumbee slapped at the creature and tried to thrust the knife up into its body.

The bat eluded him, rising away again into the night.

“A bad sign,” many of the voodoo worshipers were muttering. “A bad sign. Not safe to stay here.”

“You will stay here!” Papa Jumbee shouted at them. “I command it!”

The bat flew down to hover a few feet from the ground. It seemed to shimmer and flash. Then it was gone and a lovely long-legged, dark-haired girl stood there in the clearing, clad in a scarlet costume, hands on hips.

Her appearance caused further desertions. In a moment the jungle was filled with the sounds of retreat.

“I am Papa Jumbee,” the priest told the girl. “And I forbid—”

“I am Vampirella,” the girl announced, “and I claim these three as mine.” She gestured at Elena, Zanka, and Adam.

Papa Jumbee caught hold of the arm of one of the men who was holding down Elena. “Get her,” he ordered. He urged the other dozen of his minions to go after the girl.

But none of them moved.

“Powerful juju,” said one of the men, backing away slowly.

Vampirella came striding toward the voodoo altar. She took the bloody knife from the gaping handmaiden and shoved her away. She knelt beside Zanka and began cutting the ropes that held him. “Is Adam badly hurt?” she asked in a low voice.

“Don’t think so,” replied the curly-haired agent.

When Vampirella had Zanka freed, she handed him the knife. “Cut Adam loose and look after the girl.”

The two zombies were still holding the blood-smeared Elena down—their living associates had fled shortly after the advent of Vampirella.

The dark-haired girl told the staring dead men, “Let go of her, go away.”

The two rose and went shuffling away toward the surrounding jungle.

“You certainly have a commanding personality, Vampi.” Zanka helped Elena to her feet, then placed the robe around her.

“And as for you…” Vampirella walked up to Papa Jumbee. “Come on out of there, General Cordero.” She grabbed the hood off the voodoo priest’s head.

The unmasked general scowled. “Merde!” he said.

Chapter 13

The sky was brown, a hazy yellowish brown which closed in on their jet as it began dropping down toward the Burbank airport.

Squinting at the glaring brown haze which engulfed their airliner, Pendragon said, “Ah, what a joy! To at last see the fabled land of dreams and illusions. I hadn’t known Los Angeles was the same color as weak Scotch.”

Vampirella was sitting in the aisle seat, hands folded over her seat belt. “What?”

“Alas,” sighed the magician, “your head’s still in the clouds (so is mine, come to think of it). You’re still thinking of our friend Adam.”

“Yes, you’re right,” said the dark-haired girl. “Even though Adam’s father is on the sidelines for a while, I don’t think things will ever work out for the two of us.”

“It’s too bad Adam couldn’t come along on this jaunt with us,” said the magician.

Vampirella said, “According to the taped conversation, General Cordero—”

“Recently deposed ruler of Côte de Soleil.”

“According to the tapes he so thoughtfully made of his conversation with his mysterious benefactor, the man spends a good deal of time in both Los Angeles and London. Since we had this theater engagement and TV appearances lined up in Los Angeles…well, it seemed more logical for you and me to cover the Los Angeles end of things. And for Adam to check out London.”

“Logic is what makes the world go around,” murmured Pendragon.

The plane was settling down for a landing.

“If we can find this benefactor of Papa Jumbee’s,” said Vampirella, “then we may be able to find the missing people.”

“Needle in a haystack,” said the magician as the wheels of the airliner touched the ground. “We don’t even know his name.”

“We know he’s a believer in the Cult of Chaos, we know Papa Jumbee, alias General Cordero, did some exceptional favor for him,” the girl said. “I think I can guess what that was.”

Pendragon noticed their fellow passengers were in the process of leaving the plane. “Time to disembark,” he said. “Come along, dear girl, I’m anxious to fill my lungs with the Scotch-colored air out there.”

“You’ve got a terrific pair of knockers,” said the man in the powder-blue jumpsuit. He reached across his orange-colored desk toward Vampirella.

She took a quick step back. “Why, thank you for noticing.”

“Oh, I’m not trying to cop a feel,” said Plaz Rigby, a smile appearing on his deeply tanned face. “Merely want to shake hands, press the old flesh.”

“The lass doesn’t have to touch you, Rigby,” said Pendragon. “That’s not in our agreement.”

“You’re a hostile old bastard, aren’t you?” said Rigby. “Well, that’s okay, a man gets used to abuse in Hollywood. Would you like to park that beautiful ass of yours on a chair, Vampi?”

Vampirella seated herself in one of the licorice-hued lucite chairs facing the producer’s desk. “I admire your courtly style, Mr. Rigby.”

Rigby laughed. “I don’t much like brainy broads,” he told her. “You can keep your smart-ass comebacks to yourself. Around here at Rigby-Dynamite Productions, Inc., the only wise-ass is me. We all have our specialties. Mine is clever remarks, yours is nice tits.”

Pendragon had located the producer’s built-in bar. It was beside a huge window which overlooked the parking lot of Big Star Studios. “I intend to take umbrage at your crude language, sir,” he muttered, “as soon as I pour myself a libation or two.”

“Yeah, that’s right, you’re a lush,” said Rigby. “Okay, I don’t care how much sauce you belt down, so long as you don’t screw up on our show.” He sat down in his orange chair. “Care for a cup of coffee or tea, Vampi?”

“No, thanks.”

“Come on, have something. I want to show off my magnificent-looking new secretary.”

“Very well.”

The producer flicked a switch on his silver-plated intercom. “Nadja, get your ass in here with a cup of coffee for our guest.”

“Yeah, okay,” replied a voice out of the intercom.

“She’s still a little rough around the edges,” explained Rigby, “but what a colossal body. Now, let’s us get down to business. You’re both familiar with the Ludd Brothers show, of course.”

Vampirella replied, “No, I’ve never seen it.”

“Never seen it? Holy shit, the top-rated variety show in America. Where have you been?”

The girl’s left eyebrow rose. “Elsewhere, and otherwise occupied.”

Pendragon took a healthy gulp of his Scotch. “From what little I’ve seen of the Ludd Brothers, I’d say they’re a pair of nances.”

“There are three of them, you senile idiot.”

“Ah, a ménage à trois of nances,” said the magician. “Hollywood is indeed as mysterious and strange as I expected.”

The office door hissed open to admit a statuesque blonde girl of nineteen. She carried a mug of coffee on a purple tray. “Who gets the Java?”

“The young lady,” said Rigby. “Isn’t she terrific, Vampi? Just look at that keister.”

“Hey, dumbo,” said Nadja to the producer, “remember what I told you about dirty remarks? So knock it off already. Here.” She handed the tray to Vampirella, turned and strolled from the office.

“A bit unpolished in some respects,” said Rigby, watching the exit of his secretary. “Still, that fantastic body more than compensates. Now, back to work. Well be taping your portion of the show on Friday. This is Tuesday and—”

“It’s Wednesday,” said Vampirella.

The tan producer frowned across his orange desk at her. “I really don’t go for a bimbo who flaunts her brains. But have it your way, then, it’s Wednesday. Be that as it may, you and this rummy Mandrake here will rehearse on Thursday, starting at 9 a.m. That’ll be in Studio J over there.” He poked a finger in the direction of a window. “We’re giving you six minutes for the magic act. Then, you, Vampi, will also do the hospital sketch with the Brothers and Devastator.”

Pendragon, after draining his glass, asked, “Who, pray tell, is Devastator?”

“Jesus, you two are really out of touch,” said Rigby. “Devastator is the biggest rock star to come out of this area in the last three months. That’s who Devastator is.”

Pendragon said, “It will be an honor to work with a star of such magnitude.”

Chapter 14

The warm rain fell straight down through the night, thrumming on the venerable boardwalks, hitting at the gritty San Amaro beach, chopping at the yellow surf. Under a shadowy boardwalk stood a bristly gray man in a suit which had made it through the years no better than he had. He wanted a smoke, but didn’t want to risk it. The little business deal to be transacted tonight wasn’t the kind you wanted to attract attention to.

He took his hands out of his pockets and rubbed them together. He felt as though the rain were falling right through the planking above and drenching him, getting under his clothes.

“Where the hell is he?” he asked himself. He brought his wrist halfway up to his face before he remembered he’d sold his watch two weeks ago.

The rain kept on. It had always been raining and would keep on forever.

Someone was approaching from far underneath the boardwalk. A vague, illusive figure, approaching swiftly around the pilings.

“About time,” said the gray man. “It’s damp enough under here to grow mushrooms. You got the—”

Strong hands caught his throat and bottled up all sound inside him. He struggled, but the fingers kept at it.

The sound of the rain grew louder, until it was the only sound in the world.

The gray man fell to the sand. He felt sharp teeth cutting into the flesh of his throat. It was the last thing he ever felt.

A silence you could feel, a soft gray-edged silence. The domed circular room was large. Thick gray draperies covered its curved walls and all but one of its curved windows. That tall, thin window showed the rainy hillside and, far away below, the blurred lights of Hollywood. At one side of the room an urn rested upon a slim marble column; a golden flame flickered in the urn.

“Hey!” called out the stocky man who’d come slogging into the room out of the rainy night.

The silence resumed.

The stocky man struggled out of his raincoat and tossed it over his arm. “Hey!” he reiterated. “Let’s have somebody on deck.”

One of the gray draperies parted. A thin, pale man wearing a gray robe appeared. “Who else but Lieutenant Levant of the LAPD,” he said.

“Took you a long time to get into your nightgown, Acton.”

“I was—and I realize this is difficult for you to understand, Lieutenant Levant—deep in meditation,” said Acton as he glided nearer to the policeman. “Coming back to this grosser plane of existence is not a—”

“Enough crap,” said Levant. “I’ve got a few more questions.”

“The Temple of Tranquillity is always ready to answer the questions of the troubled.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sure enough troubled.” The lieutenant tugged a thick notebook out of his coat pocket “Mrs. Andrew Playglass,” he read from a page of the book.

“Yes?”

“You recognize the name, don’t you, Acton? Mrs. Andrew Playglass, age forty-three, height 5’ 4”, weight 130,” said Lieutenant Levant. “She’s a member of your congregation…or rather, she was.”

“Names, Lieutenant, are only unnecessary labels which—”

“This Playglass dame is missing, Acton. Since she’s a widow and living alone, it took a few days for anybody to notice.” The policeman turned to another page in his notebook. “In the past three or four months three of your other disciples have vanished.”

“Perhaps they’ve transcended into a different plane of existence.”

“Yeah, and perhaps you had something to do with helping them over into that plane,” said Levant. “Perhaps you got yourself some extra contributions out of them first…jewels, maybe, cash, negotiable bonds. Perhaps you then got rid of them.”

“You know Los Angeles even better than I do, Lieutenant. All sorts of people vanish from an area this size.” Acton smiled a slow, quiet smile. “And you simply don’t understand that here at the Temple of Tranquillity we think not of money but of—”

“Enough crap. I’ve looked over your records, Acton. You pay a big rent on this joint…you got six cars out in the garages…you got a nice portfolio of stocks.”

“I’m afraid that I know absolutely nothing about poor Mrs. Playglass. She was making considerable progress here at the Temple of Tranquillity and now…If you have no further shouting to do, Lieutenant, I must begin to prepare for this evening’s service.”

Levant stuffed the notebook back into his pocket. “I’ll be talking to you again, Acton—soon.” He walked away across the silent room.

“Good evening,” said Acton.

The man with the very white face was sitting stiffly in the tube chair. “I don’t like it,” he said.

Acton, wearing a dark suit now, was behind a small desk in the small gray room. “It means nothing,” he said. “If the police had anything, they’d take action. Lieutenant Levant’s visit is simply one more example of harassment.”

“The usefulness of your organization,” said the very pale man, “may be at an end.”

“I hardly think so,” said Acton. “We’ve provided you with over a half-dozen…ah…subjects. The police are only suspicious, and with no real proof, of our connection with two of the disappearances. I see no reason—”

“This is a life-or-death thing to me, you idiot,” said the pale man: “I’m not dealing with some screwball cult made up out of back issues of Fate magazine and old B-movies. I have to keep making the sacrifices. Perhaps you don’t realize the full power of Chaos and his Seven Servants.”

“Yes, yes,” said Acton, the trace of a smirk on his lips. “I’ve glanced through your copy of The Crimson Chronicles, and I am well aware of the grand claims and promises—”

“Claims and promises, man!” Very slowly the white-faced man stood up. “Look at me! I was dead, dead and about to be embalmed, when some of my people got Papa Jumbee to help them. With his powers, and by making a fearful bargain with the powers of Chaos, I was returned to life.”

Acton swallowed. “I wasn’t actually aware that—”

“You’re not actually aware of much.” He sank slowly back into his chair. “I am one of the wealthiest men in the world, but that didn’t keep a heart attack from hitting me while I was vacationing in the Caribbean two years ago. Fortunately I had already discovered The Crimson Chronicles and knew something of the powers it could give, powers to those who were willing to enter into pacts with such demons as Chaos controls. Demons like Asmodeus—”

“This sort of talk makes me decidedly uneasy.”

The dead man’s laugh was thin and dry. “Yes, I imagine anything which really smacks of the supernatural would frighten you, Acton.”

“That’s not so,” said Acton. “It’s merely that I—”

“Now listen to me. You and your idiot partner will continue to receive funds and other favors from me only so long as you serve me without attracting undue attention,” said the pale man. “I know why you’re so anxious to keep on my payroll. It’s so you can continue to carry out your foolish experiments, the experiments that have become an obsession with you and your disreputable colleague.”

“Foolish? How can you categorize the work as foolish, when Dr. Bensen and I have achieved such marvelous results?”

“The work strikes me as foolish.”

Acton hunched over and leaned across the desk. “Don’t you realize that Dr. Bensen and I have succeeded in doing something no one else has ever done before?” he said in a low, angry voice. “We did it with our own ingenuity, not by calling out demons and fiends out of hell. We have created artificial life.”

“You’ve found the secret of artificial life, and what have you done with it?” asked the dead man. “You have made a rock singer.”

“We wanted to create someone who would get some of our investment back as fast as possible,” said Action. “The expenses have been fantastic.”

Chapter 15

Vampirella’s high heels clicked on the planks as she walked rapidly along the Playland boardwalk. Raindrops glistened on her long black hair. Very few people were roaming the San Amaro amusement park tonight, so many of the concessions were shut up and dark.

The rain was drifting down slowly. An old man with a bamboo cane was standing forlornly in front of a silent shooting gallery. “Try your luck, miss?” he inquired when Vampirella went briskly by.

She smiled across at him through the gentle rain. “Other things take precedence.”

The old man shrugged and tipped his straw hat at her.

Prince Starbuck’s signs were dark. When Vampirella tried the door of his little building she found it locked. After a quick glance, around, she circled the narrow wooden building. Light showed at a rear window. Vampirella approached the back door and knocked.

The door opened slightly. “Yeah?”

“Prince Starbuck?”

The door opened wider. “I wasn’t figuring on doing any readings tonight, honey, but in your case—”

“Thank you so much.” She pushed at the door, causing the prince to back into his tiny living room.

“You’re a terrific-looking girl,” he said. He’d apparently been eating dinner when she knocked. He gathered up a coffee cup and a TV dinner tray and took them into the Pullman kitchen. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you around before. You in show business or something?”

“As a matter of fact, I am.”

“Yeah, that figures. A girl as terrific-looking as you ought to make it big,” said the prince, returning to face her. “Course, in this tinsel town you never can tell. Some great-looking broads never got anywhere. You can’t always tell. How’d you hear about me?”

Vampirella said, “I heard about you in the Caribbean.”

“Oh, yeah? I didn’t think my rep had spread that far,” said Prince Starbuck. “To be perfectly honest with you, I’ve had a few bad breaks. But things are getting better, lots better. And now I’ve met you and—”

“It was on Côte de Soleil that I heard your name mentioned,” Vampirella told him. “A gentleman who was visiting General Cordero happened to make a passing reference to you.”

The prince rubbed at his cheek. “Wait a sec,” he said. “Who did you say you were?”

Her eyes grew wide, captured his. “I am Vampirella,” she said. “You are going to talk to me now.”

The prince nodded. “Yeah, I am,” he said.

“What is that stuff out there?” muttered Pendragon as he sat up in bed. “Gad, it’s sunlight (what horrible stuff!).” He and the sheets were equally rumpled. Yawning and gasping, the magician tumbled out of bed. “I now realize one of the major benefits of smog. It keeps that dreadful sunlight at bay.” He weaved over and drew shut the window draperies. “Ah, that’s better, a pleasant, smoothing gloom.”

Pendragon wandered about the morning room, scratching at himself. “Dare I look in the mirror yet? Nay, best wait a few minutes before that confrontation.” Very carefully he bent to pick up the empty Scotch bottle which was a souvenir of last night’s drinking. He flung it into a wastebasket. “Ahem. Ahem. Yes, the famed golden voice is returning (though a few froggy echoes still linger). I should be able to summon room service. Best order food, though a bit of the hair of the proverbial dog…”

Pendragon took up the phone and dialed the room service number. “Aha, this is the suite of the Great Pendragon. The maestro would like two slices of plain toast, marmalade on the side (easy, oh stomach mine), a chilled glass of tomato juice, and a pot of tea. Also the morning newspapers. Thank you and farewell.”

An hour later, when Vampirella tapped on the connecting door and then entered, Pendragon was in relatively decent condition. He lounged in an armchair, reading the paper and sipping tea.

“Tut-tut,” he said to her.

“Meaning?” She sat on the edge of his bed, crossing her long slim legs.

“I suppose we all have our little flaws, child.” He tapped the front page of the newspaper. “Still, I do think you might refrain from—”

“What are you babbling about? I can tell from the tone of your voice you mean to be nasty.”

“You were, I believe, contemplating a little jaunt to the San Amaro beach amusement area last evening.”

“I went there, yes,” said Vampirella. “I found out a good deal from Prince Starbuck. If you’d been anything like sober last night when I got home, I’d have told you then what I learned.”

The magician cleared his throat and took in a bit more tea. “That taste of blood you got down on the island seems to have knocked out the foundations—”

The raven-haired girl came stalking across the room. She snatched the newspaper from his hands, nearly upsetting his teacup. She spotted the story at once. “‘Vampire Murderer Kills Again.’ ” she read. ” ‘…bloodless victim…under boardwalk…suspected narcotics peddler…third victim in LA area in last 2 months…’ And you think that’s my work?”

Pendragon spread his thin hands wide. “Let’s face it, love. How many practicing vampires are there likely to be in the Los Angeles area?”

She rolled the paper up into a tube and held it up under his aquiline nose. “Listen, you pickled prestidigitator! I’ve been taking that vile blood-substitute stuff faithfully. I did not kill anyone in San Amaro last night. And if your senile brain wasn’t floating in booze, you’d have noticed that the story says this is the third murder. The first one was committed two months ago. Two months ago—need I remind you?—we were elsewhere.”

“Enough, child, enough (more than enough actually).” The magician held up a hand. “I surrender. Now that you have shed light on the matter, I realize that you have not been at fault.” He scratched at his sharp chin. “Which means there’s a vampire loose in Southern California.”

“That’s not all that’s loose,” Vampirella said.

Chapter 16

Zanka came down the lane leading two bicycles, one with each hand. The curly-haired detective was wearing a tweedy suit and a plaid cap. “I got a ten-speed racer for myself,” he announced, “figured you could get by with this three-speed.”

Adam Van Helsing was sitting on a time-worn bench in front of the Cap & Bells Inn, where they were staying. He was also casually dressed, but not so tweedy as his partner. “I guess I’m lucky you didn’t rent me a tricycle.”

“I meant no offense. I didn’t know if you were the bike buff I am. We can switch if—”

“Zanka,” called a pretty blonde girl from the doorway of the inn. “Are those for our picnic?”

“Um,” said Zanka, avoiding Adam’s gaze, “I’m afraid, Miss Compton-Burnett, that we’ll have to postpone our mutual exploration of the Barsetshire countryside. Perhaps, instead, a late supper at—”

“I see,” said the blonde, a bit sadly. “Business comes first,” She vanished in the shadows of the inn.

Adam crossed and took the three-speed cycle. “You’re ingratiating yourself with considerable speed hereabouts.”

“Yeah, Van, it’s somewhat awesome, isn’t it? I mean, I don’t work this part of the world at all, except in special cases like this one. A trip to England is a rarity for me…and yet after only two days here I’ve made several conquests. The most interesting thing is that this Compton-Burnett girl is quite smart in the head. I usually don’t charm the smart ones.”

“Now I want to take a look at Waveny Castle,” said Adam.

“Precisely why I got us the bicycles. We tool out into the Barsetshire countryside, decorated with cameras and wearing our best tourist faces, and we’ll be able to case the joint with ease.”

“Find out anything about Brian Josefsen?”

Zanka scratched his head. “The local gentry don’t care much for him. However, they all agree that Brian Josefsen has resided at Waveny Castle for some years, and his ancestors before him.”

“He was mentioned in the tapes Vampirella located at the general’s,” said Adam.

“According to pub gossip, Josefson is away at the moment, but expected back at the castle quite soon.” Zanka gripped the handlebars, jogged his bike along for a few yards, and then hopped on. “Chap owns his own jet plane, apparently, and pops off to all sorts of spots around the planet. Frightfully rich, they say.”

Adam mounted his bicycle and followed. “Meaning he could have visited Papa Jumbee and also kept an eye on whatever it is that’s going on in Los Angeles.”

“Money and a jet, you could make mischief any place,” said Zanka. “I also hear Josefson employs quite a staff of plug-uglies.” Zanka waved at a plump redhead who was leaning in the doorway of a tobacco shop. “She’s not as bright as Miss Compton-Burnett, but more amply endowed. Name of Gracie.”

They left the village and went cycling through the green countryside. Gently inclining hills and wooded areas still filled this part of England.

After a half-hour Zanka was somewhat winded. “Waveny Castle coming up on your left, and none too soon,” he called ahead to Adam. The road grew steeper, and Zanka jumped off his ten-speed bike to walk it up. “Supposed to be a good deal of woodland beyond the castle.”

“Enough woodland to hide us while we watch the place?” Adam stayed on his cycle.

“Ample foliage,” replied Zanka, after panting.

A brownish squirrel came over to watch them. It stopped about ten feet from Zanka, went up on its hind legs, and rubbed its paws together.

Adam squatted beside an oak tree, binoculars trained on the castle below.

Zanka took a handful of unshelled peanuts out of his tweedy jacket, selected a fat one, and flipped it to the squirrel.

The squirrel scrambled up a tree trunk. After a few seconds on a low branch, it returned to the ground to pick up the peanut.

“Very clever little fellow,” observed Zanka. “Wouldn’t be surprised if he’s smarter than that redhead dame at the tobacco shop.”

“Another truck,” said Adam.

“Oh, she’s not that wide in the ass…Oh, you mean down there at Waveny Castle,” He tossed another peanut to the squirrel before turning to look downhill at the sprawling castle.

The castle grounds took up several acres and were surrounded by a high and thick stone wall. The castle was rich with turrets and spires and circular courtyards.

And patrolling the high-walled grounds were a dozen men.

A gray panel truck had just driven through the opened iron gates. “That’s the third truck that’s come in since we’ve been watching,” said Adam, handing Zanka the glasses.

“Maybe Brian Josefsen has everything delivered.” He adjusted the binoculars to his eyes and hunched forward slightly. “This one was Beemis Greengrocers. Probably just supplies.”

“Watch where it goes. See, the same way the others did. Around the castle and into the great stone warehouse at the back.”

“It’s a big joint, could be that’s the pantry.”

“One of the other trucks was supposed to be from a laundry. It drove inside the same warehouse. And it was there nearly a half-hour, remember?”

Zanka paused to toss another peanut to the waiting squirrel. “You think the trucks are fake? That they’re delivering something else to Josefsen’s castle?”

“It’s a possibility.”

Zanka studied the castle grounds through the binoculars. “I just noticed that the lad who’s puttering in the rose garden is wearing a shoulder holster,” he said. “Which means that in addition to the twelve guys who are obviously guards, some of the other castle employees can double as tough guys.”

“Another reason for thinking Josefsen is involved in something sinister.”

“So what do we do next?”

“For now, we keep on watching,” Adam said, taking back the binoculars.

“There goes my early supper with Miss Compton-Burnett,” said Zanka. “I’m glad I filled more than one pocket with peanuts.”

Chapter 17

“So you had (out of m’ path, heathen!) what might be termed a profitable evening with this Prince Stardust, child?” said Pendragon as he drove their rented sports car down the wide morning street.

“He calls himself Starbuck, and watch out for that old lady with the baby carriage.”

“You obviously don’t understand the code of the road which prevails in Southern California (Jove! That’s not a baby in the carriage, it’s a case of beer, More power to you, gram!) Here, it is the pedestrian’s duty to watch out for the motor vehicle.”

Sitting, not very relaxed, in her bucket seat, Vampirella said, “We’re going to be late for rehearsal.”

“Never fear. The deft hand of the master of magic and mystery will guide our chariot to its goal in a few shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

“I can sure enough feel the shakes. You shouldn’t have had those drinks before we left.”

“You make it sound as though (Move that Mercedes, you nouveau riche lout!) I swilled in the stuff,” Pendragon protested. “Actually it was but a little hair of the dog.”

“Enough hair to stuff a sofa.”

“You certainly are a grouch at this time of day.” Pendragon swung their car, much to the surprise of several of the cars behind and around them, into the turn lane and then got the crimson sports car onto the street which led to the Big Star Studios. “I’m glad I don’t (Back on the curb, you whey-faced moppet!) arise at this ungodly hour every morn.”

“I’m starting to wonder why you arise at all.”

This particular street was lined with rather faded and bedraggled palm trees. After watching the progress of two platinum-haired hookers along the sidewalk toward a Moorish-style motel, Pendragon said, “I was inquiring (Are they going to work or returning from?) about what you learned from Prince Starcross.”

Vampirella folded her arms under her breasts. “The prince is a recruiter,” she said. “Sometimes he passes a likely prospect along to an outfit called the Temple of Tranquillity.”

“Sounds peaceful. What is it, a saloon?” He slowed, then stopped at the studio gates.

“Religious cult, up in the hills,” the girl answered. “A mixture of phony mysticism and occult stuff.”

“Got a pass, buddy?” asked the fat-waisted studio guard.

Pendragon let go of the steering wheel and shot his cuffs. “Observe (my obese bumpkin), sir,” he said. “I have a pass.” He flicked his left wrist and a studio pass appeared in his hand. “And for you (may you be allergic to them) a bunch of posies.” A full-blown bunch of purple flowers appeared in the magician’s right hand.

“Hey, that’s pretty cute.”

“Indeed it is.”

“Go right on in, sir. Park it in Section X. Have a nice day.”

“The same to you, old boy (and may you be stone cold dead by nightfall).” The gate swung open, and the magician drove across the vast studio lot to the designated section. “Not the most desirable section of parking area. Apparently they don’t know what a unique talent I am.”

Vampirella swung her long legs out of the car.

The bright sun made Pendragon wince.

Vampirella said “I’m anxious to look around at the Temple of Tranquillity.”

“I’m sure we’ll be able to concoct a suitable subterfuge.” With a courtly gesture he reached out to open the door of the studio they were seeking.

“One of our fellow guests on the Ludd Brothers show may be able to help us.”

“Oh, so?”

“Yes, the noted rock artist Devastator is a protégé of the gentlemen who run the temple,” the girl said.

“Ah,” said Pendragon.

The young man with the braided golden hair leaped into the air. He landed in a wide-legged crouch, hugging his stone-studded guitar to himself. “If you won’t be my girl,” he sang, in his raw howling voice, “then…I’m gonna destroy the world. Unhuh…‘cause I’m the Devastator…Yeah, the Devastator…”

“You can’t (with much grace) rhyme girl and world,” muttered Pendragon into his styro coffee cup.

He and Vampirella were standing beyond the lighted rehearsal area watching the golden-haired Devastator run through the number he’d be doing on the show.

“It’s not couplets he’s selling,” said the girl. “What’s that you’re drinking?”

“Merely herbal tea, love,” replied the magician, “provided by a kindly old crew member.”

A score or so of stagehands were moving around in the shadows. A chubby man in a coverall went by carrying a miniature orange tree; a wrinkled blonde woman with an armload of tufted cushions followed.

“We’re going to have to do something about your breasts.” A small man, with a clipboard under his arm, had halted in front of the scarlet-clad Vampirella.

She said, “Beg pardon?”

The electric bass in Devastator’s group doubled its volume.

“Your breasts!” shouted the little man. “They stick out much too far, too much of them shows even for these tolerant days.” He pointed at Vampirella’s scant costume. “We can show about this much breast on the program.” He demonstrated with two fingers held apart. “And I’m afraid even then they’re going to glisten. Morrie, what do you think about these breasts?”

Morrie was another small man. Up under his arm he carried not a clipboard but a makeup kit. “Too large,” he said, stopping to squint at Vampirella’s chest. “Yes, large and too shiny. The size I can maybe cut down, and we can kill some of the glare.”

In the bright rehearsal area Devastator cried out a final “I’m the Devastator!” and fell to the floor. This snapped the neck of his guitar.

“So we’re definitely going to have to work on her breasts, Morrie?”

“Yes, yes. Let me think about it, Arch. Right now I’ve got to see about that midget’s black eye.” He hurried away across the sound stage.

“We’ll have to do something.” The other small man departed.

“Ah, what a declining era,” sighed Pendragon, “wherein breasts are more important than magic.”

“Breasts have always been more important than magic,” said Vampirella.

“Um…hello.” Devastator, carrying a fresh guitar, had appeared. “Couldn’t…um…help noticing you. You’re Vampirella, right?”

“Yes, I am. And you must be Devastator.”

“(Gad, what a brilliant exchange of chitchat). I’m Pendragon, should anyone ask, and I’m off to fortify myself with a bit more herbal tea (pray that I can find the old chap with the flask).” Readjusting his cape, the magician left them.

“Um…I’ve heard a lot of nice things about you.” Devastator smiled at her. “All…um…true, I see. Um…you’re surely a lovely girl. I hope you…um…don’t mind my being forthright. There’s so much…um…hypocrisy in the world and yet…um…so little time to live and enjoy. My idea…um…is that we all have to say exactly what we feel.”

“So is mine,” said Vampirella. “So let me say, Devastator, that I’ve been very anxious to meet you.”

Chapter 18

Another night of warm rain.

“I’ve…um…always been fanatically honest,” Devastator was saying. He parked his silver Jaguar in the huge garage. “Some people…um…find the habit unsettling. People like Plaz Rigby, for instance. There are too many people…um…like Plaz Rigby in this business, as I…um…suppose you know.”

Vampirella was studying the Temple of Tranquillity. It stood a hundred yards uphill from them. Its enormous dome-room was faintly illuminated by soft pale-yellow spotlights. The rain softened the yellow glow even further. “This is an interesting place to live.”

Devastator grinned. “It’s…um…sort of odd, really,” he said as he turned off the ignition. “But Mr. Acton and Dr. Bensen have been very kind to me. I…um…had a serious accident and they…um…took me in afterward. I still can’t remember…um…a lot of my past. They’ve helped me along in show business, too. So I feel…um…obliged to live here with them and…um…share my good fortune with them.”

“What percentage?”

The golden-haired young man ran around to open Vampirella’s door for her. “You know, I’m…um…not exactly sure. Mr. Acton does most of the bookkeeping and he handles the financial details.” He laughed. “I’ve got enough money for…um…three lifetimes. What’s money, anyway? You heard the song I did about that…Money Don’t Really Buy Nothing. It sold two million singles.”

The girl allowed the rock singer to take her arm and lead her up the rainy hillside to the rear entrance of the temple. “I’m very glad you invited me to attend one of the services here.”

“One thing about…um…Mr. Acton,” said Devastator, “is that he’s…um…sincere. I think you’ll really get a lot out of tonight’s service.”

“Oh, I’m sure I will.”

Devastator turned the knob on a gray door. The door opened silently inward. “Acton isn’t a charlatan or anything like that. He’s a sincere man.”

“What size gathering will it be tonight?” They stepped into a softly lit gray corridor which smelled faintly of wild flowers.

“Seeing as how it’s…um…a weeknight and raining…we probably won’t get more than a hundred worshipers.”

“What sort of people are they?”

“Not rich,” said Devastator. “The Temple of Tranquillity isn’t one of those…um…places set up simply to con rich, gullible people out of their money. These are mostly nice…um…middle-class folks. Lonely, some of them. You’d be surprised at how many of the worshipers are people who…um…live all alone and don’t have a relative in the world.”

“No,” said Vampirella, “I’m not surprised to hear that at all.”

She saw him among the worshipers gathered in the circular room. There were, as Devastator had predicted, nearly a hundred people present for the service in the temple. Acton, in his gray robe, stood beside one of the flaming urns. The crowd knelt on the gray-carpeted floor. The pale man knelt, too. He was at the edge of the circle, only faintly touched by the light of the three urns. He watched not the robed priest, but the crowd.

She sensed what he really was. Vampirella knew that this man was dead, years dead, and that the illusion of continuing life had been achieved by some demonic means. Means which no doubt involved a pact with the Seven Servants of Chaos.

The man kneeling there, behind a frail old woman with blue hair and a grumpy-looking bald man in a suit he’d bought when he was much fatter, was one of the undead.

The white-faced man became aware of Vampirella. His eyes, deeply ringed with black, turned to stare at her.

“…is it not the ability to relate to the universe?” the robed Acton was saying to the gathering. “Is not tranquility that state which puts us in tune with…”

“What’s…um…wrong?” Devastator asked, close to Vampirella’s ear.

The question she only dimly heard. Her eyes were on the dead man. He was the one she was searching for, the one who made the sacrifices to the demons who served Chaos. And he would know where the victims not yet sacrificed were held.

The pale man had moved back, further into the shadows. His eyes still watched Vampirella.

She looked hard at him. “You will do what I say.” She thought the command rather than said it. “You will leave this place with me.”

For a moment it seemed as though she’d caught hold of his mind, that he would do as she ordered. But then he was on his feet.

Death had done something to his mind, made it impossible for Vampirella to hypnotize him. She leaped up.

All else was fading away, the slow drone of Acton’s sermon, the repeated questions of the golden-haired Devastator. Vampirella was, increasingly, aware only of herself and the dead man.

He ran toward one of the blazing urns, grabbed it up, and hurled it toward the approaching girl.

The worshipers began to shout, to scream, to cry out.

The urn fell short of Vampirella, but its flames leaped to the crinkly flowered dress of a frail old woman a few feet away. The dress began to burn.

“My God!” screamed the blue-haired woman. “She’ll burn up.”

“That man is crazy!”

“What’d you do that for, buddy?”

Vampirella hesitated only an instant, then she pushed the frail woman to the floor. She rolled her over once, snatched an overcoat off the shoulders of the closest old man, and beat out the last of the flames.

“Why’d he do that?”

“Crazy, one of those Hollywood crazy people.”

“Please, please,” said Acton, trying to soothe the congregation. “This was an unfortunate incident, but I’m sure there’s been no great harm done.”

“I’ve seen that man here before, never did like his looks.”

Vampirella, hands on hips, scanned the room. There was no sign of the dead man. He had gotten away. Well, there was still Devastator. He ought to know something.

Except that, she noticed now, Devastator was also gone from the Temple of Tranquillity.

Chapter 19

Nothing stopped him. Not rain, nor smog nor any kind of bad weather. He jogged five miles along the beach every night at this time. Didn’t matter if he had a script to finish or if Dina had, as tonight, invited some of her nitwit friends over to dinner. Every night at 10:30 he slipped into his warmup suit, laced up his Adidas running shoes, and came down the redwood steps from their house to the beach.

Sort of like some kind of idiotic superman, having to put on the sweatsuit and all before he felt right about running. No, that’s okay. You have a system. What’s life, anyway, but playing games with death? Schedules and systems, they’re all games.

That games-with-death line didn’t sound bad. Might be something he could use in the Klauswitz: District Attorney script he was batting out this week. Sure, Klauswitz could toss off the remark when he’s in the slammer talking to the Chicano kid. Klauswitz was enough of a prick to say something like that.

The rain speckled his face as he jogged along on the sand. The surf whispered.

That’s not a bad image. Have that rich broad talk about how the surf whispers to her at night, about love and death. Good.

He jogged on, keeping a steady pace.

There was the old Kent-Thompson place on his left. It was going to tumble over into the sea one of these days. Ever since the colonel died three years ago, nobody had come near the place. A real 1940s sort of place, built back when Hollywood was still Hollywood and—

Somebody standing there. Standing near the collapsed beach stairs. Couldn’t see him very well.

The runner slowed. Nobody there at all…only the way the shadows look. After all, this isn’t New York City. You’re not likely to get mugged.

That might make an interesting opening for the next Stark: Detective show he did. Guy getting mugged out on a lonely stretch of—

“What do you want?” he asked the figure which had left the shadows of the ruined porch to come loping toward him.

It was a young man, smiling and golden-haired.

Maybe the kid was just lost, looking for his girl friend’s house.

That might make a nice switch for something. Guy thinks it’s a mugger, but it’s only a lost kid. Make it a littler kid, though, about eleven or twelve.

“Lost your—”

Devastator jumped him. “Got to…um…do it,” he whispered. “You can understand. Got to have…um…blood.”

“What kind of crazy—”

The strong fingers tightened around his throat. Devastator threw him to the ground. The sand was damp, and the rain sprayed down on his face. He was choking, trying to push Devastator off him.

“One of the…um…flaws,” Devastator murmured as he tightened his grip, “Made me…um…just about perfect. Except…um…except I have to have blood. New blood every…um…day. You don’t know what that’s like. You get so you…um…can’t think of anything else. If you don’t get it, you…um…you die.”

What was the kid talking about? The mumbled words didn’t seem to mean anything. The writer struggled to get the fingers from around his throat.

His vision was going; the night sky was dimming. There was something fluttering nearby.

Is that death? Is that what death looks like? Like a black angel, fluttering around you.

It was a bat. A large bat.

The creature sank its teeth into Devastator’s hand.

The golden youth screamed. He let go the gasping writer and stood up and away. He slapped at the circling bat. “Leave me…um…alone!”

The bat rose through the rain. It flickered and was gone. Transformed into the form of a dark-haired, long-legged girl.

On the wet beach the writer, trying to catch his breath, trying to swallow, believed he was hallucinating. A bat couldn’t change into a lovely girl. Not in real life. Not on the beach in front of your house where you jog every night, for God’s sake.

“Um…Vampirella,” said Devastator. “You stay away, sweetheart. I need…um…blood. I’ll take it from you if I can’t get it from him.”

“I know about that,” the girl told him. “I know a good deal about you. Some I learned from Prince Starbuck, and tonight I had a talk with Acton.”

“Yeah…um…he’s my father,” said Devastator. “He and Dr. Bensen. Both my fathers…um…in a manner of speaking. They…um…built me up. Made me of human parts and from metal and wire.” He held his hands up, fingers spread wide. “Keep back. Don’t try to do anything.”

“They made a deal with Brian Josefson to finance the work on you,” said Vampirella. “Turned people over to him, people to be sacrificed to Chaos and his demons. All for you.”

“It was…um…worth it,” said Devastator. “I’m unique. Special. There’s nothing like me in the whole wide world.” He smiled his beautiful smile at her. “I was drawn to you right off. You’re…um…like me. Don’t know exactly how kindred we are, Vampirella, but we’re…um…we’re alike.”

“A little,” said the dark-haired girl. “Not much. I want you to come along with me now, Devastator.”

“No, not likely.” He took a step back.

On the ground the writer was sitting up, massaging his throat.

“Don’t force me,” warned Devastator, “to hurt you, Vampirella.”

“There’s no need for any hurting,” she said quietly. “But you have to come with me.”

“No! Not…um…never!” He threw himself at her, hands ready to clutch her throat.

Vampirella sidestepped and kicked out at him.

He fell and banged into a chunk of driftwood. “You’ll…um…die now! It’s a pity, but…um…you will!”

She didn’t wait for him to rise. She closed in and dealt a chopping blow to his neck.

Devastator had been halfway to his feet. The blow sent him sprawling again. “Kill you,” he snarled. His golden braids undone, his hair fell free and flapped as he got up once more.

Vampirella avoided his latest charge. She caught his arm as he went by and levered him away from her.

Devastator went stumbling along the sand, his booted feet digging holes in the sand. He stumbled once more, falling toward a jagged piece of driftwood. A sharp upthrust branch stabbed through his body as he fell onto the sea-worn log.

From out of the wound the jagged wood had ripped in his body flowed a little blood. Along with it came a glistening spurt of machine oil and tiny coils of wire. Acrid smoke fumed from his nostrils and out from his ears. Devastator’s body shivered, rattled, then was still.

Vampirella walked across the beach to stand over him. “I didn’t want it to end like this,” she said.

After pouring himself a cup of coffee, Lieutenant Levant carried it back to his desk. He sat down in his creaky swivel to face Vampirella. “Crazy things happen in Southern California,” he said. “Everybody knows that, but—oy!—tonight is…” He turned away from the girl to watch the rain drift down outside his office window.

Vampirella said, “It would be nice if you could keep the details off television and out of the papers until the whole business gets cleared up.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’m not going to issue any statement alluding to the fact that one of our most prominent billionaires is really a zombie…I don’t think I believe half of what’s happened tonight myself,” said Levant, trying some of his coffee. “You mentioned the whole business. Does that mean all the screwiness here is only part of something bigger?”

“Yes,” replied the girl, “but I think I’m going to have to go to England for the final answers.”

Lieutenant Levant stared into his coffee for several seconds. “Okay, let’s get back to the local stuff. I’ve seen the remains of this Devastator guy. What exactly was he?”

“I suppose you’d have to call him an android, a synthetic human,” said Vampirella. “Acton and his partner, Dr. Bensen, have been working on the basic concept for years. With help of financing from Josefson, they came up with Devastator, their first real success.”

“I still haven’t seen Bensen,” said the lieutenant. “Guess I will, now he’s been picked up.”

“Dr. Bensen spent most of his time in the lab they’d built underneath the Temple of Tranquillity.”

“So what went wrong with Devastator? Why did he become a vampire?”

Vampirella rubbed her hands slowly together. “Hard to say, some tiny flaw in his structure,” she answered finally. “He had to have blood to keep going. So, most nights, he went out seeking it.”

“I hope I can figure out something to tell the press about all of this,” said Levant. “We can’t just say the guy was an android and a vampire, him being one of the big rock heroes of the moment.”

“You might say he died as a result of an accident.”

“Yeah, I suppose.” Lieutenant Levant gave a weary shrug. “Now, as to Acton and his doctor buddy, they were working their cult racket to get enough dough for the lab stuff, huh?”

“Yes, that’s it.” Vampirella had used her hypnotic abilities and questioned both Acton and Dr. Bensen before getting on the trail of Devastator. “When Josefson approached them and asked them to provide victims for his sacrificial rites, they accepted the deal. It meant more funds for their researches.”

“Sacrificial rites?” Levant got out his thick little notebook. “That means Josefson killed these missing people? Mrs. Playglass and the rest of them?”

“Not all of them, not yet,” answered Vampirella. “From what I learned at the temple, some of the people were taken out of the country. Josefson has a large estate in England.”

“Okay, maybe Acton can tell me which ones are dead.”

“He doesn’t know,” said Vampirella. “When I get to England, then we’ll know.”

Levant snapped his book shut and stuffed it away in a pocket. “That’s enough screwy stuff for tonight,” he said. “Let’s all go home. Good luck to you, Vampirella.”

“Thank you,” she said.

Chapter 20

Pebbles at the window?

Zanka was doing kneebends on the hooked rug in his room at the Cap & Bells Inn when he heard them.

Another handful of pebbles rattled against the north window, the window which faced the inn’s parking area.

“Should I stick my head out with a rose between my teeth?” He padded over to the window, fluffed his mustache, and then looked out into the moonlit night.

A slim blonde girl was standing below, beside a silver-gray Jaguar. It was Miss Compton-Burnett.

“What ho?” inquired Zanka.

“Could you come down here, please?”

“At once,” he told her.

While locating his shoes, Zanka told himself,

“You’ve been hunkered down for two days watching that damn castle. Turn in and forget about that blonde. Yeah, but let’s not forget she’s the intellectual type. It’s a switch for you.”

He got his shoes on and dashed, silently since it was late, out of his room and downstairs. The lobby was deserted; the large fireplace held only a few smoldering fragments of wood. Zanka gave his mustache another twist as he stepped out into the romantic night.

Gravel crunched under his feet, some of which very gravel the fair hand of Miss Compton-Burnett had recently flung up at his windowpanes.

“I trust I didn’t awaken you,” said the pretty blonde.

“Not at all. I was doing my exercises.”

“Yes, I would have guessed you’re the sort of man who keeps himself in shape.”

“Sound in mind, sound in body. What’s up?”

“Oh, I’ve been out in my Jag, driving the lanes and byways,” said the girl. “When I came back, I noted a light in your window. It occurred to me, and I don’t often give in to such impulses, that if I threw a few small rocks at your window, it might attract your attention.”

“It did, and I am here.”

“Yes, that’s splendid.” She smiled at him. “Since you weren’t able to keep our supper date, I thought you might like to take a drive with me now. Or are you too fatigued?”

“In this sweater she’s wearing now she’s almost as ample-chested as the bimbo in the tobacco shop,” thought Zanka. Aloud he said, “Certainly, Miss Compton-Burnett. Shall I drive?”

“Let me, there are a few little out-of-the-way spots I discovered on my earlier drive and I’d like you to see them.” She slid in behind the wheel.

“Nice legs, too,” thought Zanka. “Maybe I should move to England.” He climbed into the seat beside her.

“By the way,” said the blonde while backing the powerful little car out onto the lane, “you might as well call me Delphine. And your first name is?”

“Call me Zanka,” said Zanka. “The whole name is William Carlos Zanka, and some people call me Willie. But you’re not the sort of girl to do that.”

Delphine smiled. “Zanka, then,” she said. She handled the car wheel, drove them quickly out of the town and into the dark countryside. “And what were you up to the past few days, Zanka?”

“I wish I could talk to you about it, Delphine. The thing is—”

“You’re not in government work, are you?”

“Not exactly, no.”

The girl said, “Well, don’t feel you owe me any explanations, Zanka. I’m not the sort of girl who likes to probe and pry.”

“Were I at liberty to chat about my work, Delphine, you’re exactly the kind of person I’d confide in.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“Yeah, certainly. You struck me as a bright girl from the moment I noticed you in the tearoom discussing Dickens and Thackeray with that old gent. I have to admit that I’m usually attracted to a less intellectual sort of girl.”

“I trust I won’t be a disappointment to you, Zanka,” said the lovely blonde. “Oh, here’s a lovely ruin.”

She gave the wheel a sudden jerk, and the Jaguar purred off the roadway and into a rutted driveway. “I do believe this cottage dates back to the seventeenth century. What do you think, Zanka?”

He leaned his head against the windshield. “To be perfectly frank, Delphine, I can’t see the damn thing at all.” The headlights showed only a rutted driveway, much overgrown with nettles and wild shrubs.

“I forgot I discovered the place in broad daylight. Well, we’ll be there in a moment.”

“Look out,” warned Zanka suddenly.

A man had appeared on the driveway. He had a gun in his right hand.

“Don’t do that, Zanka,” said the girl as she pressed a pistol barrel into his side. With her free hand she clicked off the ignition.

Zanka stopped reaching for his own gun. “I should have known,” he said, mustache drooping. “If a brainy one goes for me, there’s got to be something fishy.”

“You really are an attractive chap,” Delphine assured him. “However, I was hired to keep an eye on you and bring you here tonight.”

“Hired by who?”

“If you’ll get out of the car now, you’ll meet him.”

Zanka obliged and got out.

The man with the gun told him, “Walk on into the cottage, mate.”

“This is the last time I fall for pebbles at the window,” said Zanka.

The pale man sat on a campstool beside an overturned barrel on which rested a candle in a cracked saucer. “Ah, the romantic Mr. Zanka,” he said.

“That’s me. And would you be the lord of the manor? I heard Brian Josefson just jetted in from elsewhere today.”

“Yes, I’m Brian Josefson,” said the dead-white man. “You’ve been making inquiries about me.”

“I might as well confess it, Mr. Josefson,” said Zanka as the gunman behind him prodded him further into what had once been the parlor of the cottage. “Actually, I’m a reporter with the London Times and we’re anxious to do a story on your castle. It’s my habit to ask around in the neighborhood before I—”

“You’re a private detective,” cut in Josefson. “You and your cronies have already fouled up things for me on Côte de Soleil.”

“We screwed up Papa Jumbee a bit, I have to admit.”

“You and Adam Van Helsing and a girl called Vampirella, the three of you, aided by a drunken illusionist, have caused me considerable trouble. Vampirella just disrupted things in Los Angeles.”

“Imagine what we could do if we all worked full-time.”

“I instructed the helpful Miss Compton-Burnett to—”

“Call her Delphine, I do.”

“To bring you here. We’ll keep you here a while until I decide what to do with you.”

“I’m not good enough to stay in the castle, huh?”

“You may yet see the inside of Waveny Castle,” the pale man told him. “For now you will be kept here. Before I leave you this evening, I have a few questions to ask you.”

“I’m not in the mood to answer questions.”

“We’ll put you in the mood,” promised Josefsen.

Chapter 21

Pendragon was plucking gold coins out of the air. He bestowed one on the stewardess who’d delivered his latest drink. “Ah, I feel a distinct gladdening of the heart (or is it merely the first sign of an approaching stroke?) as we wing our way to Merrie Olde England,” said the magician to Vampirella.

“It’s no doubt the alcohol.”

“Now, now, child. Nobody can get very drunk on airline drinks (though, I admit, it’s a challenge to try),” Pendragon said. “By the by, you’ve had a dour expression all the way across the Atlantic. Don’t you feel elated? After all, we should be close to rescuing my cousin’s kin. And you’ll soon be gazing upon the dashing Adam.”

“Clearing all this up,” said Vampirella, “will be fine. Knocking out one more branch of the Cult of Chaos is worth doing. After that, though, there’s still Adam’s father to worry about.”

“I hear the doddering old spook-chaser is taking a rest cure at some Caribbean spa, my child. Nothing to fear from him.”

“Not right away, perhaps.”

Pendragon said, “We’re going to have to tangle with this billionaire chappie soon, this Josefsen. Don’t you think we might hire a few assistants, some private police or similar band of armed men? If you’re going up against Josefsen, I advise you to have as many helpers as possible trot along in your wake.”

“I don’t need any help,” said Vampirella.

Zanka was watching the rat.

The rat was watching Zanka.

Having considerably more mobility than the trussed-up detective, the rat was able to view him from several different angles.

“Vegetarian diets are gaining more and more popularity every day,” Zanka told the rat.

The fat gray rodent sniffed at Zanka’s ankles and then at the thick ropes which tied them together.

“Rope is pretty tasty,” suggested Zanka, “has a rich nutlike flavor. How about you chew through a few of those?”

The rat decided against nibbling at either the curly-haired agent or his bonds. He returned to the hole in the rotting cottage floor whence he’d come.

Zanka was stretched out on the floor, near what had once been a window seat. It was morning—he could see the sky through the holes in the roof.

Apparently there were no other humans in this vicinity, Zanka had yelled for help frequently since his captors had departed. No response had followed.

“Well, Adam’s almost certain to find me,” Zanka told himself. “Except…”

Zanka couldn’t remember what he’d been forced to tell Brian Josefsen. He remembered the hypodermic, and he also remembered, though less clearly, a few moments of intense pain. But of what he had said to Josefsen about Adam and himself…he had no memory.

The bell over the apothecary shop door rang as Delphine Compton-Burnett stepped out onto the bright morning street. There was considerable activity all around, for preparations were being made for the town fair to be held on the following afternoon. Streamers were being strung across the narrow streets and lanes, booths set up, a reviewing stand raised. Delphine paused, across the way, to watch the three workers who were constructing the stand. It reminded her of a gallows.

Zanka would very likely be killed. In a way…no, no need to brood about him. That didn’t get you anywhere. He’d chosen his way of life; he had to put up with the risks.

Delphine turned down a lane that twisted casually downhill to a sweetshop she’d become fond of in the weeks she’d been in town. She’d buy herself a half pound of—

“Okay, where is he?”

Strong hands had grabbed her, pulling her into a thin alleyway between two shops. One hand pressed over her mouth; the other gripped her arm.

The gagging hand was lifted an inch. “Where’s Zanka?”

“I’m sure I haven’t the shadow of a—”

“Save it,” said Adam. “I saw the little scene you staged in the courtyard last night. Should have followed you then, but I didn’t want to spoil Zanka’s romance. Now I know better.”

“I’m afraid you—”

“He didn’t come back last night, or this morning,” Adam told the blonde girl. “You did come home. Where’d you leave him?”

“Very well, if you must know. Zanka and I did go for a bit of a drive last evening. Your friend, I’m sorry to say, misunderstood my feelings toward him. His behavior became quite impossible, and I asked him to get out of my car. Perhaps he’s still somewhere in the—”

“I’ve been tailing you since you left the inn this morning,” Adam said. “A half-hour ago you had breakfast at the teashop with Brian Josefsen.”

“Which has absolutely nothing to do with your friend Zanka,” said the girl. “Mr. Josefsen has been asked to speak at the opening ceremonies of tomorrow’s town fair, and he wished by advice on his proposed speech. Although Mr. Josefsen is not universally esteemed in these parts, he feels that as owner of Waveny Castle he ought to—”

“I know who Josefsen is. Since you’re working for him, you know, as well. Now…is Zanka at the castle?”

“No, I have no idea where he—”

“It’s not just me you have to worry about, Miss Compton-Burnett,” Adam said. “I’ll turn you over to the police if—”

“I…I wouldn’t want that to happen,” said the girl. “Suppose I tell you where to find Zanka…what then?”

“I let you go. You’re on your own.”

Delphine studied his face and finally said, “He’s not being kept at the castle. He’s in an old cottage some ten miles to the south of town.” She told Adam how to locate the ruined cottage. “Now, if you’ll honor your promise and let me go.”

Adam maintained his hold on her arm. “I’m going to put you in a safe place until I find Zanka,” he said. “When he’s free and a few other details have been taken care of, then you’re free.”

“But that’s not fair.”

“Nevertheless, it’s the deal.”

Chapter 22

Billows of fog swooped down through the trees. Adam moved through the woods almost as silently as the fog. He had to get quite near the ruined cottage before he could even see it.

There was one of Zanka’s guards, too. A red-haired man slouching against the front of the place, a .45 automatic showing in the pocket of his patch-elbow jacket.

The mist was settling in all around, turning everything cold and gray.

Adam worked his way to the rear of the cottage. No sign of another guard, though there could be somebody inside. He hunkered in the brush for several minutes, watching the partially tumbled-down back wall of the cottage, listening.

Twice he heard Zanka’s voice, but no one else’s.

Adam, keeping low, left the protection of the woods and ran across the foggy yard. No need to use a window, he could see inside through the gaps in the ruined stone wall.

Shadows and silence inside.

“Come on,” he heard Zanka say, “don’t make all those nifty books I read as a kid turn out to be full of bullshit. Eat the ropes, huh? Rats are supposed to do that. It’s a longtime rat tradition.”

Adam stepped through the wall.

“Are you the same rat I was talking to earlier?” Zanka was saying. “Maybe you’re too young to have been told about some of the family traditions. Maybe you could go back to your lair and send out the old man. Yeah, the king of the rats is who I need.”

Zanka noticed his partner then. He grinned, nodded, winked.

There was no one else in the room with the bound-up agent. Adam gave him a mock salute and crossed the rotten floor. He pressed himself against the wall just to the left of the doorway.

Zanka yelled, “Hey, guard! Hey, help, help, quick!”

“Shut your ruddy mouth, mate,” said the red-haired man without moving from outside.

“Hey, come in here quick!” shouted Zanka. “No kidding, we got trouble. The rats are taking me up on it. Only it’s me they’re snacking on.”

“More power to ‘em.”

“Yeah, but your boss isn’t through questioning me,” the curly-haired detective called out. “When he gets here and finds me all gnawed up, it’s going to be your ass in a sling, matey.” He gave out a pathetic scream. “Agh, they’re at my throat.”

Whether he wanted to stop the rats from attacking Zanka’s throat or was merely anxious to watch it happen, the red-haired guard started to come into the room.

He only got three steps in when Adam chopped him across the back of the neck.

He went down like a falling tree, but the sound of cracking wood came as he slammed into the ruined floorboards.

“I’m chagrined,” said Zanka, watching Adam unclasp his pocket knife and go to work on the ropes.

“You should be,” said Adam. “If you recall our first meeting on the island, you’ll remember I warned you that the next time you got in trouble with a girl, I’d let you suffer the consequences.”

“You weren’t referring to this kind of trouble, though, Van,” said Zanka. “I mean, I didn’t even get my fly unzipped this time.”

“Well, I’ll give you this. The girl didn’t look all that suspicious to me at first, either.”

“It’s back to dimwits for me,” said Zanka. “I guess being in such an intelligent country, the land of Shakespeare, Dickens, F. Anstey, made me think—”

“Who’s F. Anstey?”

“A genius. Haven’t you ever read—”

“Hold it!”

A sound from outside.

Adam bounded to the doorway. Then he laughed and ran out of the cottage.

By shrugging and twisting, Zanka shuffled out of the rest of the ropes. “I feel like an unwanted Christmas present, left half-unwrapped like this.” Shaky, he stood up and rubbed at his prickly-feeling arms and legs.

After a moment he made his way to the threshold and peered out into the fog.

Adam had his arms around the dark-haired Vampirella. “When did you get here?”

“Oh, a while ago.”

“How’d you know I was out here? I didn’t tell any—”

“It’s simply a feeling I had,” the girl replied. “I seemed to know, to feel it really, where you’d be.”

“That implies…well, I’m not quite sure what it implies. But it sounds good.”

“Yes, doesn’t it?” She kissed him.

“Hey,” said Zanka into the fog, “I thought I was the hero of this episode. How come you get the clinch?”

The two men sat in the stone room, Josefsen in a large carved wooden chair, a glass of brandy in one hand. “I see no reason to be timid,” he said.

His companion was a bulky man in a tight-fitting suit. He stood near a castle window, gazing down into the swirling fog. “I’m more cautious than you,” he said. “I have a feeling that things are going wrong here in England, too. You should move on.”

“A small setback,” the pale man said.

“The Compton-Burnett girl has disappeared, that oily little island detective has gotten free somehow…Surely these are more than small setbacks, Brian.”

Josefsen said, “I have the sacrificial victims here, Bassett. The night for the next sacrifice to Chaos and his Seven Servants has not yet arrived. Don’t you understand? If I don’t continue to make the sacrifices, they’ll take my life away again. They’ll take me over to the Nethervoid. That must not happen, must never happen.”

“If we’re arrested, then that will stop the sacrifices, too ” said Bassett.

“We’ll stay here until the night of sacrifice,” said Josefsen. “You were there on Côte de Soleil when Papa Jumbee first brought me back, Bassett. You know that I’d be nothing more than a mindless zombie if a bargain hadn’t been made with Chaos that night. No, we’ll stay, and the rite of sacrifice will take place as planned.” He leaned back in his chair. “Besides, I have another reason for staying.”

Bassett asked, “What do you mean?”

“You forget that I am to make a little speech at the opening of the town fair tomorrow,” said Josefsen. “I’m rather looking forward to that.”

Chapter 23

There was still a low fog in the early morning hours of fair day, but by 11 a.m., the sun had burned it away. The decorated streets, crowded with visitors, turned bright. When the local dignitaries mounted the stand to make their welcoming speeches, the day was clear and warm.

At the edge of the fairly large crowd of fairgoers who’d stopped to listen to the speeches a distraction was caused by a tipsy juggler who wouldn’t stop juggling six oranges and an alarm clock when the local Member of Parliament started his address.

A series of nudges from his long-legged, dark-haired assistant got him to cut down to three oranges and then to stop juggling altogether.

Brian Josefsen spoke third. He scanned the crowd as he commenced his speech on the history of the town and on the venerable Waveny Castle. Barely a minute into the talk, he spotted Vampirella.

She stood next to Pendragon’s makeshift booth holding an ancient book in her hands. It was open to an illuminated page, and Vampirella was reading something from the page, lips moving.

Josefsen managed to continue with his speech. But he knew what that book was. The Crimson Chronicles, the ancient book which held all the secrets of the Companions of Chaos. His eyes stayed on her.

“That’s it,” thought Vampirella, as she continued to read the spell from the book she had kept with her since she’d first met Pendragon. “Look at me, Josefsen. It makes it easier to destroy you.”

The spell, a chanting mixture of demons’ names, Latin and Greek phrases, Middle English curses, was one which revoked the bargain Vampirella knew Josefsen must have made with Chaos and his Servants.

The fairgoers were murmuring now. Josefsen was stumbling in his speech, his hands gripping the railing of the stand. Staring at the brazenly dressed girl at the juggler’s booth, he cried out, “Stop, damn you! You’ll destroy me!”

Vampirella continued to read from the book. She felt very cold, and she was losing awareness of everything around her.

“I’ll kill you!” screamed Josefsen, his voice rattling in his throat. “I’ll kill—”

The sun died. The day grew black.

Josefsen’s flesh swiftly dried, cracked, began to fall away. His body bent in the middle and fell over onto the rail. A dreadful odor, of death and corruption, swept across the place. The last of his flesh turned to dust, his skeleton jaw dropped open, and his skeleton hands dangled and rattled.

The day returned. The people’s cries and shouts reached Vampirella. The coldness began to leave her.

“Lord in heaven, I didn’t realize he’d …” Pendragon left his sentence unfinished.

“Let’s worry about the living,” Vampirella said. “We have to get to the castle now and rescue the victims who are still alive.” She left Pendragon and made her way through the frightened crowd.

The vast castle stood silent in the midday sun. No one within its walls seemed to take notice of their approach.

“Easy now,” said Adam when they’d reached the open gates that led into the courtyard.

Vampirella frowned. “It’s safe,” she said.

The courtyard was empty. The thick oaken door of the castle’s main hall stood half open.

Zanka scurried up the wide stone steps to take a look inside. “Empty,” he announced.

“They’re gone,” said Vampirella. “I thought perhaps my…unmasking of Josefsen in public would give them the idea. I’m sure all his underlings have cleared out.”

“What a place for echoes,” said Zanka, wandering in the giant domed hallway.

“One of Josefsen’s boys came hurrying in here while we were watching out front,” said Adam. “He must have spread the alarm and they took off out some back way.”

“Yes, I’m sure that’s what happened,” said Vampirella.

“Now let’s start looking for the victims,” said Adam.

They found them far down beneath the castle, in the low, damp rooms which had once been the castle dungeons.

Pendragon went down the stone steps. The steps twisted round and down and down and round and brought him into a large gloomy room near the dungeons.

A dozen people were there—frail and shadow-eyed, some of them. Some of them hurt, some unable to rise.

There were the two women he’d been seeking. The wife and daughter of his unloving cousin. They were both sitting on the stone floor near a wall which was smeared with the rust of centuries-old chains. His cousin’s wife and daughter. They’d been hurt, too, but they were on this side of saving.

The magician straightened his tie, adjusted his cloak, and walked carefully through the room to stand before them.

Neither of them recognized him at first. Then Alicia realized who he must be. “You’re Dad’s cousin,” she said, “the magician.”

Pendragon bowed. “The Great Pendragon, at your service, my dears.” A bouquet of fresh yellow roses appeared in his right hand.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23