Dark Shadows. Edmund Glasby

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СКАЧАТЬ as he spoke as quietly as he could to the other in his own language, a gun in his hand.

      The big man snorted his displeasure at something. He then returned his knife to a belt sheath and turned his attention to the shackles that held Myers. With an audible click, the lock which held his left hand sprang open. The tall thug moved into position and began to pick the remaining manacle. When he couldn’t get it to open, he gave a grunt and with a superhuman effort wrestled it from the wall.

      “Thanks,” Myers said coolly. Had he been feeling up to it he might have considered taking a swing at his liberator, using the length of chain that now dangled from his right wrist as a weapon. Before he could make such a foolhardy move, a vice-like hand clamped down on his shoulder and he was roughly steered forward, out of the cell.

      The man with the gun led the way along a dank stretch of passage before arriving at a flight of stone steps that went up to a small door. A terrible smell struck the backs of their nostrils, their feet splashing through the small puddles that had gathered on the ground. Rats scurried along the tunnel and Myers couldn’t help but notice the strange way in which the large rodents seemed to be paying acute attention to their movements.

      The door on the short landing was opened and in the torchlight Myers could see that he was in a large cavern that looked like an abandoned mine. Heaps of rubble and collapsed roof supports lay on the ground and nearby there was a sprawl of thick and rusty metal chains along with some huge cogs and dented buckets. More chains dangled from the cavern roof. In the centre, some piece of long-forgotten mining machinery lay broken and twisted, its rusted components resembling a giant, upturned, multi-legged insect. Over to their right, a further passage wound its way elsewhere and to their left, a tunnel-like ramp descended into the unlit depths. Directly opposite them, against one wall, was a rickety, wooden ladder.

      “Move it!”

      Myers was viciously pushed forward.

      The smaller Bulgarian stopped suddenly, his eyes wide like those of a frightened rabbit’s behind his thick lenses. He muttered something and pulled a chain with a small crucifix on it from beneath his collar.

      Myers knew the other was scared and what was more, given what he had seen Nikolai transform into, he had good reason to be so. He too was frightened. The fear was like an unreachable prickling between his shoulder blades; a cold heat that raised sweat to his forehead. Now that the three of them had stopped he could detect sounds, barely audible sounds, like the burrowing of worms as heard by someone buried alive in a coffin or the fluttering of birds heard by someone drowning in a pool. The sounds grew louder. And now he was sure of both the source and the cause. Rats…scampering up the ramp, streaming from the deeps—a whole pattering, verminous horde, hungry for blood and eager for flesh.

      Suddenly, out of the darkness they came—a plague of rats and a dark tide of misshapen grotesques; their faces twisted and repellent, their peasant clothes torn and filthy. Some brandished primitive weapons—sticks, knives and sickles—but most of the score or so were unarmed, their teeth and claws more than compensating. Several hunched, scabrous horrors rushed forward, their hideous faces and whiskered snouts matted with blood and dirt no doubt gathered from a lifetime of looting graveyards and gnawing on corpses.

      As one, the three men screamed and rushed for the ladder.

      Myers got there first and started to frantically pull himself up. His limbs ached and his mind was a riot of thoughts. The ladder went up maybe forty feet or so, ending at a stout trapdoor lid. Hanging on with one hand, he pushed with all of his might and it mercifully swung open. Pale yellow sunlight bathed the wrecked room into which he scrambled, temporarily stinging his eyes. He turned, tempted for a moment to slam the lid shut on the two ascending Bulgarians. When he saw the gun the shorter man had levelled at him he changed his mind and pulled back further, permitting the other to climb free.

      And then came a loud, splintering crack followed by bloodcurdling screams.

      Heart thumping, Myers watched as the small man glanced down the trapdoor, noting the way in which the other winced as though he had been a spectator to something extremely gruesome. Myers assumed from the other’s reaction and the noises he had heard, that the ladder had given way causing the big man to fall into the midst of the bestial degenerates. The remaining Bulgarian slammed the wooden lid down. At least those horrors wouldn’t be climbing up.

      “Now then, Mr. Myers, let me introduce myself,” the man said, panting from the exertion of the climb. “My name is Dragomir Sarac.”

      Myers was thrown by the man’s perfect English and the use of his name.

      “The agency I work for is very keen to acquire those files that were stolen from our research station. So much so that I am prepared to make you a deal. Unless you were just—as you English say—‘saving your bacon’ back in the cell, you claim to know where they are. If you hand them over to me I may let you live.” Sarac’s face was as cold as his voice.

      “You may let me live?” Myers said incredulously. “I think it more likely that we’re both going to die here.” He found it hard to believe how this man could still be so calm after what had just happened. Right now he couldn’t give a damn about the top-secret data. All he wanted was to get as far from here as possible. There were things under their very feet that had no right to be. Surely even the shadowy world of national allegiance and covert operations went by the wayside when faced with this. They should be uniting to stamp out this abomination, this threat to civilised existence, instead of continuing in their game of cloak and dagger.

      “Unlike Krastio,” Sarac crossed himself, “I knew exactly what was going on here. I am of the Roma and we have come to live with such things.”

      A fresh wave of unreality pounded at Myers. “You know about these monsters?”

      “They are the vrkolak—the shadow men. Vampire-like shapeshifters, creatures born of nightmare. I recognised them the moment I saw them. Even in their human forms they are discernible to one who knows what to look for. Their shadows are darker than yours or mine. It is daylight now and they will not willingly venture outside. For the time being they will retreat to their lairs, bury themselves in their underground warrens. They are as old as the land. Their skeletons are sometimes unearthed, found staked down with iron rods.”

      There was a question Myers had to ask. “Why did they take me prisoner? Why didn’t they kill me?”

      “Simply because you are very fortunate. Tonight is the night when the moon is at its darkest. It is tonight that you were to be offered to the matriarch of this clan.”

      “You knew all this…and yet you still came down to free me.”

      “As I said, I want those files. Besides, I have my own protection. The crucifix I carry will keep most of them at bay.”

      Myers wanted out of here. The room was becoming oppressive and there was a bad stench rising up through the trapdoor. “Come on then. I’ll show you where I’ve hidden the documents.” With the gun trained on him, he headed for the door, opened it and stepped outside.

      The early morning sunlight was weak but welcome. Myers noted with some surprise that he was actually only a couple of hundred yards away from the building which he took to be the tavern from which he had escaped earlier that morning. He had only seen it in the darkness but he was fairly sure it was the one. Parked over to one side he saw a car, no doubt the one in which the two agents had travelled here in.

      “Believe me, I won’t hesitate to shoot you,” Sarac warned. “What’s more, I won’t kill you. I’ll just cripple you СКАЧАТЬ