Thibor's blood surged one last time in his veins. He could still die a man. ‘Then if you'll not give me a clean death, I'll give myself one!' He gritted his teeth and wrenched on his manacles until the blood flowed freely from his wrists; and still he jerked on the irons, deepening his wounds. Faethor's long drawn-out hisssss stopped him. He looked up from his grisly work of self-destruction into… into the pit, the abyss itself.
Hideous face working yet more hideously, features literally writhing in a torment of passion, the Ferenczy was so close as to be the merest breath away. His long jaws opened and a scarlet snake flickered in the darkness behind teeth which had turned to daggers in his mouth. ‘You dare show me your blood? The hot blood of youth, the blood which is the life?' His throat convulsed in a sudden spasm and Thibor thought he was going to be ill, but he was not. Instead he clutched at his throat, gurgled chokingly, staggered a little. When he had regained control, he said: ‘Ah, Thibor! But now, ready or not, you have brought on that which cannot be reversed. It is my time, and yours. The time of the egg, the seed. See! See!'
He opened his great jaws until his mouth was a cavern, and his forked, flickering tongue bent backwards like a hook into his throat. And like a hook it caught something and dragged it into view.
Gasping, again Thibor drew down into himself. He saw the vampire seed there in the fork of Faethor's tongue: a translucent, silver-grey droplet shining like a pearl, trembling in the final seconds before… before its seeding?
‘No!' Thibor hoarsely denied the horror. But it would not be denied. He looked in Faethor's eyes for some hint of what was coming, but that was a terrible mistake. Beguilement and hypnotism were the Ferenczy's greatest accomplishment. The vampire's eyes were yellow as gold, huge and growing bigger moment by moment.
Ah, my son, those eyes seemed to say, come, a kiss for your father.
Then — The pearly droplet turned scarlet, and Faethor's mouth
fastened on Thibor's own, which stood open in a scream that might last forever.
Harry Keogh's pause had lasted for several seconds, but still Kyle and Quint sat there, wrapped in their blankets and the horror of his story.
‘That is the most —, Kyle started.
Almost simultaneously, Quint said, ‘I've never in my life heard —,
We have to stop there, Keogh broke in on both of them, something of urgency in his telepathic voice. My son is about to be difficult; he's going to wake up for his feed.
‘Two minds in one body,' Quint mused, still awed by what he'd heard. ‘I mean, I'm talking about you, Harry. In a way you're not unlike —,
Don't say it. Keogh cut him off a second time. There's no way I'm like that! Not even remotely. But listen, I have to hurry. Do you have anything to tell me?
Kyle got a grip of his rioting thoughts, forced himself back to earth, to the present. ‘We're meeting Krakovitch tomorrow,' he said. ‘But I'm annoyed. This was supposed to be exclusive, entirely an inter-branch exchange — a bit of ESP détente, as it were — but there's at least one KGB goon in on it too.'
How do you know?
‘We've a minder on the job — but he's strictly in the background. Their man comes close up.'
The Keogh apparition seemed puzzled. That wouldn't have happened in Borowitz's time. He hated them! And frankly, I can't see it happening now. There's no meeting ground between Andropov's sort of mind-control and ours. And when I say ‘ours' I include the Russian outfit. Don't let it develop into a shouting match, Alec. You have to work with Krakovitch. Offer your assistance.
Kyle frowned. ‘To do what?'
He has ground to clear. You know at least one of the sites. You can help him to do it.
‘Ground to clear?' Kyle got up off his bed. Hugging his blanket to him, he stepped towards the manifestation. ‘Harry, we still have our own ground to clear in England! While I'm out here in Italy, Yulian Bodescu is still freewheeling over there! I'm anxious about it. I keep getting this urge to turn my lot loose on him and —‘
NO! Keogh was alarmed. Not until we know everything there is to know. You daren't risk it. Right now he's at the centre of a very small nest, but if he wanted to he could spread this thing like a plague!
Kyle knew he was right. ‘Very well,' he said, ‘but —,
Can't stay, the other broke in. The pull is too strong. He's waking, gathering his faculties, and he seems to include me as one of them. His neon-etched image began to shimmer, its blue glow pulsing.
‘Harry, what "ground" were you talking about, anyway?'
The old Thing in the ground. Keogh came and went like a distorted radio signal. The hologram child superimposed over his midriff was visibly stirring, stretching.
Kyle thought: we've had this conversation before! ‘You said we know at least one of the sites. Sites? You mean Thibor's tomb? But he's dead, surely?'
The cruciform hills… starfish… vines… creepers in the earth, hiding.
Kyle drew air in a gasp. ‘He's still there?'
Keogh nodded, changed his mind and shook his head. He tried to speak; his outline wavered and collapsed; he disappeared in a scattering of brilliant blue motes. For a moment Kyle thought his mind still remained, but it was only Carl Quint whispering: ‘No, not Thibor. He's not there. Not him, but what he left behind!'
Chapter Seven
11.00 P.M., the first Friday in September, 1977: in Genoa Alec Kyle and Carl Quint were hurrying through rain-slick cobbled alleys toward their rendezvous with Felix Krakovitch at a dive called Frankie's Franchise.
But seven hundred miles away in Devon, England, the time was 10.00 P.M. on a sultry Indian summer evening. At Harkley House, Yulian Bodescu lay naked on his back on the bed in his spacious garret room and considered the events of the last few days. In many ways they had been very satisfactory days, but they had been fraught with danger, too. He had not known the extent of his influence before, for the people at school and later Georgina had all been weak and hardly provided suitable yardsticks. The Lakes had been the true test, and Yulian had sailed through that with very little difficulty.
George Lake had been the only real obstacle, but even that had been an accidental encounter, when Yulian wasn't quite ready for him. The youth smiled a slow smile and gently touched his shoulder. There was a dull ache there now, but that was all. And where was ‘Uncle George' now? He was down in the vaults with his wife, Anne, that's where. Down where he belonged, with Viad standing guard on the door. Not that Yulian believed that to be absolutely necessary: it was a precaution, that's all. As for the Other: that had left its vat, gone into hiding in the earth where the cellars were darkest.
Then there was Yulian's ‘mother', Georgina. She was in her room, lost in self-pity, in her permanent state of terror. As she had been for the last year, since the time he did it to her. If she hadn't cut her hand that time it might never have happened. But she had, and then shown him the blood. Something had happened to him then — the same thing that happened every time he saw blood — but on this occasion it had been different. He had been unable to control it. When he had bandaged her hand, he'd deliberately let something… something of himself, get into the wound. Georgina hadn't seen it, but Yuiian had. He had made it.
She had been ill for a long time, and when she recovered… well, she had never really recovered. Not fully. And Yulian had known that it had grown in her, and that he was its master. She had known it too, which was what terrified her.