Before Luchov could enquire further, Khuv had passed through a bulkhead door and so out of sight…
In his private quarters, Vasily Agursky stared at himself in a mirror on his toilet wall. He stared, and had difficulty believing what he saw. As yet no one else appeared to have noticed, but then no one took a great deal of interest in him. But Agursky knew himself very well indeed, and he also knew that what he saw in the mirror was more than the sum total of his parts. Of his parts.
His first reaction, when he'd noticed the early changes, had been to distrust the mirror, a distrust which had quickly turned to a strong dislike. Ridiculous for a man to dislike a mirror, but it was true, he did. He disliked all mirrors, probably because they reminded him of certain undeniable alterations, which he'd be only too happy to forget about.
The changes were… weird! He wouldn't have believed them possible.
He had positioned this mirror on the wall himself, so that his face would be exactly centered in the glass. But now he had to bend his knees a little to get the same effect. He had gained two or more full inches in height. That fact should have delighted him, who had always considered himself as being little more than a dwarf, but instead it terrified him. For he could actually feel the ability of his body to be tall! And if the vampiric growth continued — then someone would notice.
His hair, too, was undergoing something of a metamorphosis. Its dirty-grey down was darkening, showing signs of a long-delayed virility, and the halo was contracting toward the centre of his head's dome, filling itself in. No one had noticed that, either, but he supposed they must when finally the growth was complete. Why, already he looked — and felt — years younger. Felt ready now for… almost anything. And yet for a little while longer he must continue to play the part of the old Vasily. The old, despised, neglected and contemptuously treated Vasily…
Still gazing at himself, Agursky was surprised to feel a growl rising unbidden in his throat. It came up soft, purring from his chest, then thickened to a snarl. His lips curled back from his teeth — from his strong, white, animal teeth, whose canines had grown so as to interlock with each other more surely than they ever had in all his previous life — and he snarled like a beast! But he cut it off right there, took a grip on himself. For a moment there'd been a power in him like none he'd ever known before; and knowing where it came from, he knew too that he must control it. As long as he could.
For at the Perchorsk Projekt, they had this habit of burning things like Vasily Agursky.
Finally he took off his thick-lensed spectacles. The old curved lenses were gone now, removed from their frames and disposed of. In their place, flat discs of common glass which he'd cut in the workshop: 'eyepieces for my instruments,' as he'd explained it. No need now for aids to eyesight which had improved to an entirely incredible degree. Why, he could even see in the dark!
But in connection with his eyes, there was something else which might soon begin to show, though what he could do about that was quite beyond him to imagine. Contact lenses? By the time he could order and receive them it might well be too late. In a way that frightened him, too, but in another way… it was fascinating.
Slowly he reached out a hand to the cord of the light-switch, gave it a single sharp tug. Click! — and the light went out.
But in the mirror two lesser lights had taken its place. Agursky couldn't suppress the strange smile, the wolfish grin, which spread over his darkly-mirrored features then. A smile in which the pupils of his eyes burned like tiny censers, filled with hell's own sulphur…
20. Harry and 'Friends' — The Second Gate
Harry had slept the clock round, and toward the end he dreamed. Not knowing he dreamed, it seemed to him that he had always existed in this timeless, lightless limbo, and that now someone called to him from far, far away.
Harry! Harry! You're asleep, Harry Keogh — but the dead are awake! They've begged a boon of me — of me! — whom hitherto they shunned utterly. And I have agreed to talk to you; but when I sought you out, I discovered only a sleeping mind. Jumbled memories and dreams and intricate mind-puzzles. Pictures of an existence beyond existence! A strange thing, your sleeping mind, Harry, and not one with which I may readily converse. So stir yourself! Faethor Ferenczy offers his services…
Faethor? Harry snapped awake, sat bolt upright in his bed. Cold sweat drenched his brow, slimed his trembling limbs. A nightmare, yes: he'd dreamed that Faethor Ferenczy called to him in his sleep. A man shouldn't dream about creatures like Faethor, not even when they were dead and no longer capable of mischief. A dream like that was the worst possible omen. But -
A dream? The glutinous, far-away voice sounded again in Harry's Mobius-orientated mind. A nightmare? Hardly flattering, Harry! And Faethor's ancient, dead-undead mental chuckle came across all the miles between, came unerringly, tingling at the edges of Harry's still sluggish perceptions. But he was awake now, and the thing was no longer nightmare but reality. It was his business; it was what a Necroscope is all about; and now that he knew it was real it was no longer frightening. His limbs stopped shaking and he peered about the room. The blinds were drawn but slices of light made faded bands on the wall opposite the windows. An electric bedside clock said that the time was three in the afternoon.
'Faethor?' Harry said. 'The last time I spoke to you was at your old place under the Moldavian Alps. At that time I got the impression I'd heard the last from you. Has something changed that? Anyway, I'm still in your debt, so if there's something…?'
What? the other's dark chuckle was sly now, insinuating. Something you can do for me? That's a fine macabre sense of humour you have there, Harry! No, there's nothing you can do for me. But perhaps there is something 1 can do for you. Didn't you hear what I said? Were you that deeply asleep? I said that the teeming dead have begged my assistance, and that I have agreed to help — if I can.
'Eh? The dead, talking to you?' Harry slowly shook his head in astonishment. 'There must be something they want pretty badly.'
Aye, but not for themselves, Harry — for you! They've spoken to me of a quest, your quest, and asked for my guidance. And in this they've shown a deal more wisdom than you. For who would know better the secret source of vampires than an ex-member of the Wamphyri himself, eh?
Harry gaped. The source of vampires! The place where they originated! The world in which they were spawned, to come through into this world — as they had now started to come through the gate in Perchorsk!
'And do you know this secret source?' Harry couldn't conceal the eagerness in his voice and thoughts. 'Did you yourself come from that place?'
Myself? Was I once an inhabitant of that world of vampire legend? Ah, no, Harry — but my grandfather was.
'Your grandfather? Do you know where he lies, where his remains are buried?'
Buried? Old Belos Pheropzis? Alas, no, Harry. The Romans crucified and burned him a hundred years before your Christ. And my father: the last word I had of him was that he was lost at sea, somewhere off the mouths of the Danube in the Black Sea, in the Year 547. He was a mercenary for the Ostrogoths against Justinian, but of course he was on the wrong side. Ah, we Wamphyri were a fierce lot in our day! There was a living to be made, if you'd the stomach for it.
Then how can you help me?' Harry was perplexed. 'It seems to me that something like a thousand years separates your grandfather's era and yours. Whatever he knew about his origins — about this source world — must have died with him.'