Chapter 37.
ITALY (1492)
The red ball of energy manifested itself over the caldera of Mount Vesuvius. The Time Lord known as the Doctor had cost it a valuable opportunity to keep mankind marooned on Earth, forever! Now, it would have to use the geothermal energy of this volcano to replenish itself before returning to the nucleus of its main energy spiral to plan anew.
"Things didn't go so well for you in San Martino. Did they, Sparky?"
The Mandragora Fragment was naturally quite astounded at not having detected this new arrival.
"Who. . .?!"
"The name's Sahjhan. And, if you're interested in getting revenge against the Doctor, I can help. Meet me here, again, in five hundred years and we'll talk some more."
The Timeshifter then dematerialized before any reply could be offered.
* * * * *
SILICON VALLEY, CALIFORNIA (1992)
David Bromley looked on from behind the pane of glass overlooking the sub-basement operating room. The ghouled surgeons (lent him by the Brujah Prince of Los Angeles) were now extracting the brain from the cloned body of Lothos. And the slow pace they were exhibiting, while understandably vital, was nonetheless agonizing!
Ten minutes later, though, he heaved a massive sigh of relief.
"Well?" he demanded over the intercom, next to him.
The chief surgeon hit the button on the corresponding intercom.
"It's in perfect shape, sir! What do you want us to do with the former host body?"
Bromley's reply was immediate and unequivocal: "Burn it."
Sahjhan, who had quietly materialized in the viewing room behind Bromley, smiled to himself before departing just as quietly. Bromley not once suspecting the non-corporeal Granok demon had ever been there! Consequently, the latter was just as blissfully unaware of the former's next rendezvous point.
Somewhere near the ruins of Pompeii.
"They just finished removing it. You can move in anytime you want, Sparky."
The Mandragora Fragment literally glowed with anticipation.
"Excellent!"
* * * * *
HANSEN'S ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA
SEPT. 19, 1993 (5:00 P.M./EDT)
The moment his pocket pager began beeping, Agent Doyle of the Defense Research Initiative went over to the radiotelephone operator attached to the company of marines sent down from Camp LeJeune in North Carolina. When the RTO handed him the receiver, Doyle briefly tilted his head to the left. The marine nodded and quickly walked off out of ear shot. Whereupon, Doyle spoke three little words.
"Yes, Mr. Director?"
"Sit-rep!"
"Dr. Stark was badly injured. Several cracked ribs and a sprained neck! A Coast Guard chopper is airlifting him to a naval hospital ship as we speak."
"And that patient from the West Coast?"
Doyle looked at his approaching partner, Agent Manetti. But, the latter merely shook his head.
"Still no sign of him, sir. I'm afraid we have to assume the worst: the intruders made good their escape with him."
There was a tense pause before the Director of the Initiative was calm enough to ask his next question.
"Was he still claiming to be Stark's son during the last interrogation?"
"Yes, sir. And still claiming that his own son's life was in danger back in California."
"Very well! Grab Manetti and get back to the mainland, ASAP. I want you two on the first military transport headed west that you can discretely find. Understood?"
"Yes, sir! Will do."
Manetti shook his head in frustration as Doyle hung up.
"Does the Old Man really think D'Amour will be stupid enough to head for Dos Pueblos?"
"Not so much stupid as deluded," replied the older agent: "Still, even loose cannons hit the bull's eye once in a while."
"English translation?"
Doyle grinned: "If he's right about the Russian Mob crashing Matthew Hamilton's hundredth birthday, looking for the real Brian Stark, then maybe we should, too."
* * * * * HARRY D'AMOUR'S P.O.V.
ROOM 104,
HALF-WAY INN,
DOS PUEBLOS, CAL.
I stood as still as possible while Cassandra touched a piece of quartz crystal to my (that is, Brian's) forehead with her right hand. While doing the same thing, with her left hand, to the forehead of my real body.
"Well?" asked Merrick.
Cassandra opened her eyes (which she had closed when she began concentrating).
"You were right; astral transposition."
The transparent hands of Eunice St. Clair's own astral body flew to my body's facial cheeks.
"Oh, Brian. My poor baby!"
"Oh, Grandma!" I heard my body's mouth sigh in protest.
Merrick had hurriedly informed Cassandra about our plight. And she, in turn, had telepathically contacted Eunice. So, the latter had projected her astral body to Cassandra's motel room to witness the confirmation of our true identities for herself. Whereupon, she insistently asked the Immortal theurge if it were possible to switch us back, right away!
But, Cassandra was forced to shake her head.
"I'll have to find Chris Caulder, first. If his body really is hosting this Dr. Beckett's mind, I'll need all three hosts present to affect the change."
Eunice now smiled: "Leave that to me! Where did you say the disappearance occurred?"
She addressed that inquiry to me.
"The Bentley High School gym."
Eunice nodded her thanks, and faded away.
* * * * *
HAMILTON/STARK RESIDENCE,
(TWELVE HOURS LATER)
Matthew Hamilton had been born in the township of Indian Mills, New Jersey, on September 20, 1893. His father had owned an apple orchard and those fruits not sold by him at annual farmers' markets were quite often gotten rid of in the form of "applejack" whiskey. And, more often than not, he sold that whiskey to reluctant teetotalers in the dry Burlington County towns of Pemberton and Riverton.
It was this same avocation, practiced by other apple growers, that was supposed to have been the basis for the white lightning bolt on the insignia of the U.S. Army's 78th Infantry Division during World War I. The same outfit in which Matthew served as a company clerk. And, two years after he returned home from the war, he was able to attend the Wharton School of Business, in Pennsylvania, thanks to his father's illicit profits from Prohibition!
That, in turn, led to a brief period of post-graduate employment at the Chicago Stock Exchange, in Illinois, before he moved west to California for his "health" (i.e., his desiring not to be killed for refusing to launder money for a bootlegging gangster).
* * * * *
He settled down in the newly chartered city of Dos Pueblos, where he shortly afterward got a job, as a teller, at the First Mercantile Bank and Trust. Thereby not only making the acquaintance of city manager Jacob Bentley (who was also the bank's president). But, his lovely daughter Sarah, as well! Unfortunately, if he had thought he had gotten away from his former employer's most disgruntled client, he was doomed to be disappointed.
Six weeks after the birth of Jacob Hamilton, while attending to the latter's 3:00 A.M. feeding, he suddenly found himself confronting Giovanni Putanesca.
"Oh my God!" Matthew had started to exclaim: "How. . .?"
"Shhhhh!" replied the Mafioso, putting his left index finger to his lips: "You just got that cute little bambino to sleep. And the last thing you want him to wake up and see is us havin' an overdue heart-to-heart. Capiche?"
The terrified teller nodded his head with eye-blurring speed. So, the gangster continued.
"My family is real disappointed in you, Matt. We give you a golden opportunity for advancement by helpin' us out. And you throw it back in our faces!"
"By 'investing' your dirty money in a nation-wide chain of 'matchmaking services' and funeral parlors?! That would make me an accessory to prostitution and murder, sir. And I say now, as then, I'll have no part of it. Now, however you made your way in here, undetected, kindly take the same way OUT!"
Putanesca grinned: "You really want to know how I got in here? Take a gander at this."
The widening of the gangster's mouth, and the elongation of his canine teeth, made Matthew's left hand fly to his own mouth to keep himself from screaming in abject fright. A sound that would have been loud enough to wake up his wife. Thereby placing her in needless danger!
"I'll be back, this same time, tomorrow night," declared the vampirized villain: "At which point, we're goin' to have ourselves a little chat about what you and your family are goin' to do for my family. . .for the next hundred years."
Mercifully, this flashback ended for Matthew as soon as he opened his eyes.
"Dear God," he muttered to himself: "I haven't thought about that night for almost eighty years. Why would I suddenly be having nightmares about it, now?"
tbc
Mini-glossary
Mandragora Fragment: part of the Mandragora Helix An extra-terrestrial spiral of sentient energy, with a crystalline nucleus, that could fragment itself into equally sentient balls of searing red-hot energy. It could then infuse that energy into corporeal humanoids, making them bio-electrical (among other things). From the Fourth Doctor story arc known as "The Masque of Mandragora."
Putanesca: Sicilian bloodline of the Venetian Giovanni Clan (necromantic version of Clan Tremere).