Necroscope: The Plague-Bearer by Brian Lumley Read Free Book Online Page B

sick. So I’d tried to eat my favourite foods as usual, good Sicilian foods. But they made me even sicker, and I let myself get hungry. Too hungry! And then… then there was the girl.”
    “Yes,” said Anthony, “and now you can stop, because we know the rest of it. She was a capo’s girl—one of Mario Stefano’s—and you had had her before. And you’d been warned off! Indeed she was one of the reasons we called you up here the first time around, because we didn’t want any trouble brewing between Vito Milazzo and his people and the Stefano family. And yet you went back to her and—”
    “—And she was one great fuck!” Even knowing he was losing it, perhaps because he was losing it, Mike couldn’t contain himself a moment longer. “So before I even realized what I was doing, I’d done it to her! But it was you guys who did it to me!”
    “And now you are accusing us!” Francesco snarled, coming to his feet, scowling again, and leaning over the great table.
    “I’m not accusing you,” Mike answered, sensing movement behind him, and feeling them approaching out of the shadows. “I’m just stating a fact. And as for the rest of it—”
    “Haven’t I told you we know the rest of it?” Anthony snarled. “They found her floating off Castellammare bay. Stefano’s people knew who to blame; they’d seen you with her, remembered you from those previous troubles, the sit-down with your uncle. But this time there would be no sit-down. They came looking for you—luckily for them in daylight, for they were merely human—and found you sleeping at your place in Palermo. Naked, with three guns at your head and a hot afternoon sun blazing outside, you couldn’t run and certainly couldn’t out run a burst of bullets from their Uzis! So before they could cut your balls off or splatter your brains or both, you told them you were one of our so-called ‘made men’ in Palermo! You dared to invoke the Francezci name! And in fact the only secret you kept to yourself was what we’d ‘made’ you into! If they had discovered that …right now you’d be screaming your life out in a certain pit!”
    Francesco took it up. “Knowing our reputation—our name if not our nature, and fearing it—too cowed to do anything else, they let you go, gave you your miserable life. But should we do the same? Perhaps not. For you’ve not only broken the rules and failed us, Mr. Milazzo, but caused us a great deal of embarrassment and trouble in the bargain!”
    There was movement behind Mike and he sensed it, knew there were Francezci thralls, if not how many, approaching out of the shadows. He felt his body tensing, coiling inside like a spring but there was nothing he could do about it. Without his weapons and with Wamphyri twins just waiting for him to make a move, he had lost his edge and knew it wouldn’t be like the last time.
    But what the hell? Whatever was coming he couldn’t just sit still and wait for it! And so he came surging to his feet.
    In that selfsame moment: “Hey, Mike,” said a sinister voice from close behind. “I’ve got a little something for you.”
    Self-preservation—Mike’s instinct, pure or otherwise—at once surfaced. Whirling, he saw in the forefront a thin, feral-eyed man with three other, vaguer figures behind him. He failed to recognize any of them, but was instantly aware of the gun in the thin man’s hand. Without pause he sprang headlong, toppling his chair…and in a sort of mental slow-motion, as if frozen there in midair, he saw the muzzle of the gun give a jerk where it was pointing at him.
    The thin man almost blurred as he moved aside, and Mike hit the floor. He made a single attempt to rise but found it futile…with an anaesthetic dart pinning the collar of his shirt to his neck he simply couldn’t get up! Even enhanced vampire blood was powerless against a drug that worked that fast!
    Then as a whirling darkness descended, smothering his mumbled, incoherent protests and