Necroscope

'Around Ploiesti? None — not one — not as long as they've kept records, so far as I can discover.' Giresci smiled grimly and leaned forward. 'But if you were a vampire, Dragosani, would you take victims right on your own doorstep?'

'No, I don't suppose I would,' Dragosani frowned. 'Where, then?'

'North, my friend, in the Meridionali itself! Where else but the Transylvanian Alps, where all vampire stories seem to have their roots? Slanic and Sinaia in the foothills, Brasov and Sacele beyond the pass. And none of them more than fifty miles distant from Ferenczy's house, and all shunned for their evil reputations.'

'What, even now?' Dragosani feigned surprise, but he remembered what Maura Kinkovsi had had to say on the subject three years ago.

'Stories linger down the years, Dragosani. Especially ghost stories. They take no chances, the mountain folk. If you die young up there and there's no simple explanation, it's the stake for you for sure! As to actual case histories: the last child to die of a vampire's bite did so in Slanic in the winter of forty-three. Yes, and she was buried with a stake through her heart, like a great many 'innocents before her. What? There had been eleven that year alone, in the villages around!'

'In forty-three, you say?'

Giresci nodded. 'Oh, yes, and I see you've already made the connection. That's right, it was just a few months before Ferenczy died. She was his last victim, or at least the last we know of. Of course, with the war going on he'd be far less restricted, his victims more readily disposed of. He may well have taken many we don't know about, people who simply "went missing" during air-raids in the countryside around — and there were plenty of those, believe me.' He paused. 'Any more questions?'

'You said that those towns you named were up in the mountains, fifty miles from Ploiesti. That's rough country; the ground rises rapidly, through two thousand feet in places; so how did Ferenczy do it? Did he become a bat and fly to his hunting grounds?'

'Folklore says he has that power. Bat, wolf, wraith — even flea, bug, spider! But… I think not. There's no hard evidence anywhere to be found. But you ask, how did he get to his kill? I don't know. I have my own ideas… but no proof at all.'

'What ideas?' Dragosani asked, and waited half-anxiously for Giresci to answer. He already knew the correct answer to the question — or believed he did — but now he would discover just how clever Giresci really was. And how dangerous… What? He once again propped himself upright in his chair. What the hell was going wrong with his thought processes?

'A vampire,' the other slowly answered, carefully for mulating his thoughts, 'is not human. I saw enough on the night Ferenczy died to convince me of that. So what is he? He is an alien creature, a co-habitant of man's body and mind. He is at best symbiotic, a gestalt-creature, and at worst a parasite, a hideous lamprey.'

Correct! Dragosani snapped his agreement — but silently, to himself. And at once he felt dizzy and confused. He had known for a fact that Giresci was right in his assessment of the vampire — but how had he known? And even as he wondered what was happening to him, now Dragosani heard himself say:

'But isn't he supernatural? Surely he would need to be, to go about his business and still escape detection down all the years.'

'Not supernatural, no,' Giresci shook his head. 'Super human! Hypnotic, magnetic! Creature of illusion, in no way a magician but in every way a great trickster! Not a bat but silent as a bat! Not a wolf, but swift as a wolf! Not a flea but a monster with a flea's appetite for blood — on a scale unprecedented! That's my idea of the vampire, Dragosani. Fifty miles to a creature like that? A healthy evening's walk! He would be able to compel his human shell to excesses of effort undreamed of…'

All correct, all of it, Dragosani mentally agreed, and out loud: The name, Ferenczy. You say it's common enough. Why, being so clever, and taking into account all your research and what have you, haven't you tracked down other Ferenczys? You say that the vampire is territorial, and this region belonged to Faethor. Surely then there must have been other territories — and who lords or lorded it over them, eh?'

His voice was a rasp, harsh as a file. Once more Giresci

was a little taken aback. 'Why, you've pre-empted me!' he finally answered. 'Shrewd stuff, Dragosani. Very astute. If Faethor Ferenczy had single-handedly held Moldavia and eastern Transylvania in his thrall for seven hundred years and more, what of the rest of Romania? Is that what you're saying?'

'Romania, Hungary, Greece — wherever vampires still dwell.'

'"Still" dwell, Dragosani? God forbid!'

'Have it your own way,' Dragosani snapped. 'Where they used to dwell, then.'

Giresci drew back from him a little way. 'A Castle Ferenczy in the Alps blew itself right off the mountain back in the late Twenties. That was put down to marsh-gas, methane, accumulated in the vaults and dungeons. An ill-regarded place, no one missed it. Anyway, so far as is known, its owner went with it. A baron or count or some such, his name was Janos Ferenczy. But documentation? History? Records? Forget it! That one's page in history has been erased even more surely than old Faethor's in the Fourth Crusade. Which in my book, of course, only serves to make him more suspect.'

'Rightly so,' Dragosani agreed at once. 'He was blown to hell, eh, old Janos? Good! And have you tracked down any other vampires, Ladislau Giresci? Come, tell me now: were there no Ferenczys who paid for their crimes and were put down in their heyday? How say you? What of the Western Carpatii, say beyond the Oltul?'

'Eh? But that should be familiar ground for you, Dragosani,' said the other. 'You were born there, after all. Knowing as much as you do, and being so "clever" in your own right — yes, and with this keen interest of yours in vampires — surely by now you'll have made your own investigations and searches?'

Dragosani nodded. 'Indeed, indeed! And five hundred years ago in the west there was such a creature; he butchered the vile Turk in his thousands and was slain for his so-called "unnatural" zest!'

'Good!' Giresci thumped the table, no longer seeming to notice the change which had come over his guest. 'Yes, you're right: his name was Thibor, a powerful Boyar, destroyed in the end by the Vlads. He had great power over his Szekely followers — too much power — so that the princes feared and were jealous of him. Also, it's likely they suspected he was one of the Wamphyri. It's only us modern, sophisticated men who doubt such things. The primitive and the barbarian, they know better.'

'What else do you know of this one?' Dragosani growled.

'Not much,(Giresci gulped more whisky, his eyes less sharp and his breath beginning to reek,) 'not yet. He's to be my next project. I know that he was executed — '

'Murdered!' Dragosani cut in.

'Murdered, then — somewhere west of the river, below lonesti, and that he was staked and buried in a secret place, but — '

'And was he decapitated, too, this Thibor?'

'Eh? I found no records to that effect. I — '

'He was not!' Dragosani hissed from between clenched teeth. 'They weighted him down with silver and iron chains, put a stake in his vitals and entombed him. But they let him keep his head. You of all people should know what that means, Ladislau Giresci. He was not dead. He was undead. He still is!'

Giresci struggled upright in his chair. Finally he had sensed that something was desperately wrong. His eyes had been a little glazed but now they came back into focus. Seeing the snarl on Dragosani's face, he began to tremble and pant. 'It's far too dim in here,' he gasped.