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Image of the Beast and Blown

Page 23

by Philip José Farmer


  they were not human, as he knew human—and they

  might easily detect the jism. Should he move on? If so,

  where? To the same circuit?

  He had been running long enough. It was time to

  fight fire with fire.

  Fire.

  He looked through the opening. The door of the

  room was still shut. Loud voices came through it. A

  savage squeal which chased cold over him. It sounded

  like an enraged hog. More shouts. Another squeal. The

  voices seemed to drift away, down the hall. He crept out

  and inspected the room and found what he wanted.

  There were books in the shelves, the pages of which he

  tore out. He crumpled up a Los Angeles Times and piled

  crumpled book-pages over them and ripped open several

  pillows and sprinkled their contents on the pile. The cig-

  arette lighter in the purse touched off the papers, which

  soon blazed up and began feeding on the wall-drapes

  under which the fire had been built.

  He opened the door to the hall to open the way for a

  draft—if it should exist. Taking the classified ad sec-

  tions of the Times and a number of books, he went

  into the passageway. Having found a one-way mirror,

  he broke it with the hilt of his sword to make another

  draft or a reinforcement of the first. He started a fire

  in the passageway, which was made of old and dry

  wood and should soon be blazing like the underbrush

  in the hills at the end of a long dry season. He then

  entered the room with the broken mirror and built a

  fire under a huge canopied bed.

  Why hadn't he done this before? Because he had been

  too harried to have time to think, that was why. No

  more. He was fighting back.

  If he could find a room with windows to the outside,

  he would go through it, even if it meant a drop from the

  second story. He'd let them worry about the fire while

  he got over the walls to his car and then to the police.

  He heard voices outside the door to the room and

  went back into the passageway. He ran down it, using

  his flashlight, although the fire was providing an adequate

  twilight for him. A corner took him away from it, how-

  ever. He stopped and sent the beam down one corridor

  to check ahead of him. Nothing there. He started to turn

  to probe the corridor on the other side of the intersection,

  and he froze. Something had growled at the far end.

  Faint clicks sounded. Claws or nails on the naked

  boards of the floor?

  A howl made him jump.

  It was a wolf.

  Suddenly, the clicking, which had been leisurely, be-

  came rapid. The wolf howled again. He turned his flash-

  light on the corner of the passageway at the far end just

  in time to see a big gray shape come around it, eyes

  glowing in the beam. Then the shape, snarling, was

  bounding toward him.

  And behind it came another.

  Childe thrust almost blindly at the hurtling shape.

  His sword traveled in the general direction of the beast

  as it sprang, but its speed and ferocious voice discon-

  certed him. Despite this, the blade struck it squarely

  somewhere. A shock ran along his arm, and, although he

  had leaned forward in what he hoped was a reasonable

  imitation of a fencer's lunge, he was thrown backward.

  He landed on his rump but scrambled to his feet, yelling

  as he did so. The flashlight, which had fallen, was point-

  ing down along the floor at the second wolf. This was

  several yards away and crouching as it advanced slowly

  toward Childe.

  It was smaller, the bitch of the pair, and presumably

  had slowed down to find out what was going on before

  it attacked.

  Childe did not want to expose his side to the bitch,

  but he did not want to meet her charge without a weapon.

  He grabbed the hilt of the rapier, put his foot on the

  body, and pulled savagely. The carcass was palely illu-

  minated in the side-wash of the flashlight. The sword

  shone dully, and darkness stained the fur around the

  beast's neck. The rapier had gone in three-quarters of its

  length, through the neck and out past the bottom rear of

  the skull.

  The rapier pulled out reluctantly but swiftly. The she-

  wolf snarled and bounded forward, her nails clicking

  briefly. Childe had a few inches of blade to withdraw

  yet and would have been taken on the side. Her jaws

  would probably have clamped on his shoulder or head,

  and that would have been the end of him. A wolf's jaws

  were strong enough to sever a man's wrist with one

  snap.

  The bitch, however, slipped on something and skidded

  on one shoulder into the rump of the dead wolf. Childe

  leaped backward, taking the sword with him and then

  as quickly lunged and ran her through the shoulder as she

  bounded to her feet. She snarled again and her jaws

  clashed at him, but he pushed with all his weight against

  the hilt and drove her back so that she fell over the dead

  wolf. He continued to push, digging his heels into the

  wood. The blade sank deeper and presently the tip

  ground against the floor. Before that, the bitch was silent

  and still.

  Shaking, breathing raspingly as if his lungs needed

  oil, he pulled the rapier out and wiped it on the she-wolf's

  fur. He picked up the flashlight and ran its beam over the

  wolves to make sure they were dead. Their outlines

  were becoming indistinct. He felt dizzy and had to shut

  his eyes and lean against the wall. But he had seen what

  the bitch had slipped on. A smear of his semen.

  Voices drifted around the corner from which the

  wolves had come. He ran down the passageway, hoping

  that they would become too occupied with fighting the

  fires to chase him. The corridor ran into another at right

  angles to it, and he took the left turn. His beam, dancing

  ahead of him, picked out a section of wall and a locking

  mechanism. He went through it, his sword ready, but he

  was unable to restrain his wheezing. Any occupant of

  the room, unless he were deaf, would be warned.

  The room was broad and high-ceilinged, so high that

  it must have displaced two rooms above it and may have

  gone almost to the roof. The walls were paneled in dark

  oak, and huge rough-hewn oak beams ran just below the

  heavily shadowed ceiling. The floor was dark polished

  oak. Here and there was a wolf or bear skin. The bed

  was a framework with eight thick rough-hewn oaken

  logs, low footboard and headboard, and planks laid

  across the framework.

  Lying on the planks was a huge oak log squared off

  at the corners. It had been gouged out on its top with axe

  and chisel. The gouge was wide and deep enough to hold

  a tall man. It did hold a man. The baron, covered with a

  bearskin to his neck, lay on his back in the hollow. There

  was dirt beneath him and dirt humped under his head

  for a pillow.

  His face
was turned straight upward. His nose looked

  huge and long. His lower lip had slipped a little to reveal

  the long white teeth. His face was as greenish-gray as if

  he had just died. This may have been because of the

  peculiar greenish light flickering from four fat green

  candles, two at each corner of the log-coffin.

  Childe pulled the bearskin back. The baron was naked.

  He put his hand on the baron's chest and then on his

  wrist pulse. There was no detectable heartbeat, and the

  chest did not move. An eyelid, peeled back, showed only

  white.

  Childe left the baron and pulled two drapes back.

  Two enormous French windows were grayly bared. It

  was daytime, but the light was very dark, as if night

  had left an indelible stain. The sky was dark gray with

  streamers of green-gray dangling here and there.

  Childe looked in the darkness under the planks sup-

  porting the log-coffin. He found a roughly-worked oaken

  lid. He felt cold. The silence, the sputtering green candles,

  the heavy dark wood everywhere, the ponderous beams,

  which seemed to drip shadows, the roughness, indeed,

  the archaicness, of the room, and the corpse-like sleeper,

  who was so expected and yet so unexpected—these fell

  like heavy shrouds, one over the other, upon him. His

  breath sawed in his throat.

  Was this room supposed to be a reproduction of a room

  in the ancestral castle in Transylvania? Why the ubiqui-

  tous primitively worked oak? And why this coffin when

  Igescu could afford the best?

  Some things here accorded with the superstitions

  (which, as far as he was concerned, were not supersti-

  tions). Other things he could not account for.

  He had a hunch that this room was built to conform

  to specifications far more ancient than medieval ones,

  that the oak and the log and the candles had been in use

  long before the Transylvanian mountains were so named,

  long before Rumania existed as a colony of the

  Romans, long before the mother city, Rome, existed,

  and probably long before the primitive Indo-European

  speakers began to spread out of the homeland of what

  would someday be called Austria and Hungary. A type of

  this room, and a type of this man who slept in the log, in

  one form or another, had existed in central Europe, and

  elsewhere, when men spoke languages now perished

  without a record and when they still used flint tools.

  Whatever the origin of his kind, however closely or

  distantly he resembled the creature of folklore, legend,

  and superstition, Igescu was forced to be as good as dead

  when daylight arrived. The rays of the sun contained

  some force responsible for diurnal suspended animation.

  Perhaps some other phenomenon connected with the im-

  pact of the sunlight caused this strange sleep. Or, per-

  haps, it was the other way around, with the absence of

  the moon? No, that wasn't logical because the moon was

  often present in the daytime. But then, maybe the moon's

  effect was greatly reduced by the other luminary.

  If Igescu had not been forced to do so, he would never

  have quit the search for Dolores and Childe. Why, then,

  had he not made sure that he would not be vulnerable?

  He knew that both Dolores and Childe were in the

  intramural passageways.

  Childe felt colder than before except for a hot spot

  between his shoulder blades, the focus of something hid-

  den somewhere and staring at his back.

  He looked swiftly around the room, at the ceiling,

  where the shadows clung above the beams, under the

  oaken frame of the bed, although he had looked there

  once, and behind the few chairs. There was nothing.

  The bathroom was empty. So was the room beyond the

  thick rough oaken door on the west wall. Nothing living

  was there, but a massive mahogany coffin with gold trim-

  ming and goldplated handles stood in one corner.

  Childe raised the lid, fully expecting to find a body.

  It was empty. Either it had housed a daylight sleeper at

  one time or it was to be used in some emergency by the

  baron. Childe pulled up the satin lining and found earth

  beneath it.

  He went back to the oaken room. Nothing had visibly

  changed. Yet the silence seemed to creak. It was as if

  intrusion of another had hauled in the slack of the at-

  mosphere, had hauled it in too tightly. The shadows

  abruptly seemed darker; the green light of the candles

  was heavier and, in some way, even more sinister.

  He stood in the doorway, sword ready, motionless,

  repressing his breathing so he could listen better.

  Something had come into this room, either from the

  passageway entrance or through the door at the west wall.

  He doubted that it had used the passageway entrance,

  because any guard stationed there would have challenged

  him before he could get into the room.

  It had to have been in the other room, and it must

  have been watching him through some aperture which

  Childe could not see. It had not moved against him

  immediately because he had not tried to harm the baron.

  Perhaps the feeling was only too-strained nerves. He

  could see nothing, nothing at all to alarm him.

  But the baron would not have left himself unguarded.

  19

  Childe took one step forward. There was still no sound

  except that which his mental ear heard. It was a crack-

  ling, as if the intrusion of a new mass had bent a

  magnetic field. The lines of force had been pushed out.

  The rapier held point up, he advanced toward the

  enormous log on the bed. The noiseless crackling be-

  came louder. He stooped and looked under the frame.

  There was nothing there.

  Something heavy struck him on his back and drove him

  face down. He screamed and rolled over. Fire tore at his

  back and his hips and the back of his thighs, but he was

  up and away, while something snarled and spat behind

  him. He rounded the bed and whirled, the sword still in

  his hand although he had no memory of consciously

  clinging to it or of even thinking of it. But if his spirit

  had unclenched for a moment, his fist had not.

  The thing was a beauty and terror of white and black

  rosetted fur, and taut yellow-green eyes which seemed to

  reflect the ghastly light of the candles, and thin black

  lips, and sharp yellow teeth. It was small for a leopard

  but large enough to scare him even after most of the

  fright of the unexpected and unknown had left him. It

  had hidden in the cavity of the log, crouching flattened on

  top of Igescu until Childe had come close to it.

  Now it crouched again and snarled, eyes spurting

  ferocity, claws unsheathed.

  Now it launched itself over the bed and the coffin.

  Childe, leaning over the baron's body, thrust outward.

  The cat was spitted on the blade, which drove through the

  neck. A paw flashed before his eyes, but the tips of the


  claws were not quite close enough. Childe went over

  backward, and the rapier was torn from his hand. When

  he got up, he saw that the leopard, a female, was kicking

  its last. It lay on its right side, mouth open, the life in its

  eyes flying away bit by bit, like a flock of bright birds

  leaving a branch one by one as they started south to

  avoid the coming of winter.

  Childe was panting and shaking, and his heart was

  threatening to butt through his ribs. He pulled the sword

  out, shoving with his foot against the body, and then

  climbed upon the oaken frame. He raised the sword be-

  fore him by the hilt with both hands. Its point was down-

  ward, parallel with his body. He held it as if he were a

  monk holding a cross up to ward off evil, which, in a way,

  he was. He brought the blade down savagely with all

  his weight and drove it through the skin and heart

  and, judging from the resistance and muted cracking

  sound, some bones.

  The body moved with the impact, and the head turned

  a little to one side. That was all. There was no sighing or

  rattling of breath. No blood spurted from around the

  wound or even seeped out.

  The instrument of execution was steel, not wood,

  but the hilt formed a cross. He hoped that the symbol

  was more important than the material. Perhaps neither

  meant anything. It might be false lore which said that a

  vampire, to be truly killed, must be pierced through the

  heart with a stake or that the undead feared the cross

  with an unholy dread and were deprived of force in its

  presence.

  Also, he remembered from his reading of Dracula,

  many years ago, something about the head having to be

  removed.

  He felt that probably there were many things said

  about this creature that were not true and also there

  were many things unknown. Whether the lore was

  superstition or not, he had done his best, was going to

  do his best, to ensure that it died a permanent death.

  As for the leopard, it might be just that—a leopard. He

  suspected that it was Ngima or Mrs. Pocyotl because it

  was so small. It did not seem likely that Pocyotl, who

  was Mexican, some of whose ancestors undoubtedly

  spoke one form or another of Nahuatl, would be a

 

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