'You want me to bring you the beast, as if it were an offering?'
Is it too much to ask?
The necromancer shrugged. Right now, nothing was too much to ask. He would be doing a little 'asking' himself, shortly. He put away his razor-edged knife and took up the sheep. He carried it to the centre of the circle, crouched down and placed it where last night's offering had lain. Then again he took out his sickle blade. Until now the glade had been quiet, still as the tomb it was, but now Dragosani sensed a gathering. It was as if muscles were suddenly bunched, the silent creep of a cat's paws as it closes on a mouse, the forming of saliva on a chameleon's tongue before it strikes. Quickly, thrilling with horror of the unknown - even a monster such as Dragosani, filled with horror - he drew back the stunned beast's head and made its throat taut. And -No need for that, my son, said Thibor Ferenczy. Dragosani would have leapt away, for in that selfsame moment he knew - but knew too late - that the Thing in the ground had had its fill of piglets and sheep! Not one eighth of an inch had he straightened from his crouch before that phallic tentacle burst from the ground beneath him, shearing through his clothing like a knife and up, into him. And how he would have leapt then, to be free of it, even if the tearing should kill him; he would have leapt - but he couldn't. Growing barbs within him, the pseudopod stretched itself through all the lower conduits of his body and filled him, and drew him down like a fish yanked from water on a hook!
Dragosani's feet flew out from beneath him as he was slammed down against the dark and seething earth; and after that there was no longer room even for the thought of flight. For that was when the pain, the torment, the ultimate agony commenced...
His bowels were melting, his entrails were on fire, he was seated upright on a fountain of acid! And through all the incredible pain Thibor Ferenczy howled his triumph and taunted Dragosani with the truth - the real truth -the one final question whose answer had eluded the necromancer through all these years:
Why did they hate me, my son? My own kith and kin, as it were? Why do all vampires hate other vampires? Why, the answer to that is the very simplest thing! The blood is the life, Dragosani! Oh, the blood of swine will suffice if there's nought better to sup, and the blood of fowls and sheep. Better far, however, the blood of men, as you'll very soon be obliged to discover for yourself. But over and above all other vessels, the true nectar of life may only be sipped from the veins of another vampire!
Dragosani burned in a double hell; he felt torn apart inside; his parasite twin within clove to him in its agony as Thibor's nightmare appendage fastened upon it and leeched its essence. And yet that terrible tentacle did no real harm, no damage. Protoplasmic, it moulded itself to organs without crushing them, penetrated without puncturing. Even its barbs caused no injury, for they were fashioned to hold without tearing. The agony lay in its being there, in its contact with raw nerves and muscles and organs, in its advance through all the tracts of Dragosani's raped physical body. It could not hurt more if some insane doctor had dripped an acid solution into an open vein - but it would not kill. It could kill, certainly, but not now, not this time.
In his torment Dragosani could not know that. And through his torment he cried: 'Get ... it... done with, damn you! Damn your... black heart, liar of liars! Kill... me, Thibor! Do it now. Put an end to it, I ... I beg you!'
He sat there in the darkness under the trees amidst the shattered flags and the crumbling ruins of the ancient tomb, and horror ate at his mind like a rat set loose in his brain and left to eat its way out. Someone had set a meat mincer in motion inside him and it was reducing his guts to squirming red worms. He jerked and threshed, fell to one side. The agony drove him upright again, only to fall the other way. And so he twitched and jerked and lolled and screamed, and still Thibor Ferenczy fed.
Strength you gave me, Dragosani, aye. Strength and bulk in the blood of beasts. But the true life is the blood of a fellow creature - even the thin, immature blood of that child of mine who now gibbers inside you as he grows weak from his loss even as you grow weak from pain. But kill him? Kill you? Nay, nay! What? And rob myself of a thousand feasts to come? We go together into the world, Dragosani, and you in thrall to me until that time when you shall flee. By which time you'll not need to ask but know why all the Wamphyri share a mutual bond of hate!
The vampire was sated. The tentacle slid out of Dragosani and down into the earth out of sight. Its going was, if anything, even worse than its coming: a white hot sword drawn out of him by a careless hand.
He cried out, a shriek that echoed like the cry of a wild thing through the cold, cruel cruciform hills, and toppled over on his side. But hadn't Thibor told him that they named the Vlad 'the Impaler' after him? He had, and now Dragosani could more fully understand just why!
The necromancer tried to stand and could not. His legs were jelly, his brain a seething acid soup in its skull bowl. He rolled, cleared the tainted circle, again tried to rise. Impossible. Will was not enough. He lay still, sobbing in the night, gathering wits and strength both. The vampire had spoken of hate, and he had been right. It was hate that kept Dragosani conscious now. Hate and only hate. His and that of the creature within him. Both of them had been ravaged.
Finally he propped himself up on his side, glared his hate at the black earth which now steamed and smoked as the vapours of hell rose up from it. Cracks appeared in the sub-soil which Dragosani had cleared. The earth bulged upward, began to break open. Something thrust up from below. Then -
That same something sat up - and it was something unbelievable!
Dragosani's lips drew back from his teeth in an involuntary snarl of loathing, and in terror! For this was the Thing in the ground. This was what he had talked to, argued with, cursed and profaned time and time again. This was Thibor Ferenczy, the undead embodiment of his own bat-devil-dragon banner. But worse, it was what Dragosani had doomed himself one day to become!
The thick ears of the thing grew close to its head but were pointed and projected slightly higher than the elongated skull, giving the appearance of horns. Its nose was wrinkled and convoluted, like that of a great bat, and squat to its face. Its skin was of scale and its eyes were scarlet, like a dragon's. And it was... big! The hands where they now appeared and clawed at the soil at its waist were huge, with nails projecting all of an inch beyond the fingers.
Dragosani finally fought back his terror and forced himself to his feet - just as the vampire turned its strangely wolfish head to fix him with a monstrous, almost
startled stare. And its eyes opened wide as their scarlet light fell on him where he tottered. 'I ... I CAN SEE... YOU!' said Thibor then, his risen voice as evil and alien as any of his mental sendings from the tomb. But the statement seemed in no way threatening; it was more as if the fact of sight - and in particular of seeing Dragosani - in some way brought to the creature a mixed measure of relief and disbelief. Whichever, the necromancer cringed back and down; but in that same moment: