Wamphyri

‘Madness!' Thibor moaned.

‘As for this one —, The Ferenczy stepped into shadows on the far side of the cell, where the light did not quite reach. The legs and one arm of Thibor's second Wallach comrade protruded from the darkness, until Faethor dragged all of him into view. ‘This one will be food for both of them. Until the mindless one hides himself away, and the other takes up his duties as your servant here.'

‘My servant?' Thibor was bewildered. ‘Here?'

‘Do you hear nothing I say?' Faethor's turn to scowl. ‘For more than two hundred years I have cared for myself, protected myself, stayed alone and lonely in a world expanding, changing, full of new wonders. This I have done for my seed, which now is ready to be passed on, passed down, to you. You will stay behind and keep this place, these lands, this "legend" of the Ferenczy alive. But I shall go out amongst men and revel! There are wars to be won, honours to be earned, history is in the making. Aye, and there are women to be spoiled!'

‘Honours, you?' Thibor had regained something of his former nerve. ‘I doubt it. And for a creature "alone and lonely", you seem to know a great deal of what is passing in the world.'

Faethor smiled his ghastliest smile. ‘Another secret art of the Wamphyri,' he chuckled obscenely in his throat. ‘One of several. Beguilement is another — which you saw at work between myself and Arvos, binding his mind to mine so that we could talk to each other over great distances — and then there is the art of the necromancer.'

Necromancy! Thibor had heard of that. The eastern barbarians had their magicians, who could open the bellies of dead men to read their lives' secrets in their smoking guts.

‘Necromancy,' Faethor nodded, seeing the look in Thibor's eyes, ‘aye. I shall teach it to you soon. It has allowed me to confirm my choice of yourself as a future vessel of the Wamphyri. For who would know better of you and your deeds, your strengths and weaknesses, your travels and adventures, than a former colleague, eh?' He stooped and effortlessly flopped the body of the thin Wallach over onto its back. And Thibor saw what had been done. No wolf pack had done this, for nothing was eaten.

The thin, hunched Wallach — an aggressive man in life, who had always gone with his chin thrust forward —seemed even thinner now. His trunk had been laid open from groin to gullet, with all of his pipes and organs loose and flopping, and the heart in particular hanging by a thread, literally torn out. Thibor's sword had gutted men as thoroughly as this, and it had meant nothing. But by the Ferenczy's own account, this man had already been dead. And his enormous wound was not the work of a sword . .

Thibor shuddered, turned his eyes away from the mutilated corpse and inadvertently found Faethor's hands. The monster's nails were sharp as knives. Worse, (Thibor felt dizzy, even faint,) his teeth were like chisels.

‘Why?' The word left Thibor's lips as a whisper.

‘I've told you why.' Faethor was growing impatient. ‘I wanted to know about you. In life he was your friend. You were in his blood, his lungs, his heart. In death he was loyal, too, for he would not give up his secrets easily. See how loose are his innards. Ah! How I teased them, to wrest their secrets from him.'

All the strength went out of Thibor's legs and he fell in his chains like a man crucified. ‘If I'm to die, kill me now,' he gasped. ‘Have done with this.'

Faethor flowed close, closer, stood not an arm's length away. ‘The first state of being — the prime condition of the Wamphyri — does not require death. You may think that you are dying, when first the seed puts out its rootlets into your brain and sends them groping along the marrow of your spine, but you will not die. After that...‘ he shrugged. ‘The transition may be laboriously slow or lightning swift, one can never tell. But of one thing be sure, it will happen.'

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?'