by Brian Lumley
‘The explanation’s simple, “Comrade”,’ the voice had
grown harder still. ‘I know what you did to Sir Keenan Gormley. He was my friend. An eye for an eye, Dragosani, and a tooth for a tooth. That’s my way, as you’ve already seen. You’re a dead man.’
‘Oh?’ Dragosani laughed sardonically. ‘I’m a dead man, am I? And you, too, have ways with the dead, don’t you, Harry?’
‘What you saw at Shukshin’s was nothing, “Comrade”,’ said the icy voice. ‘You don’t know all of it. Not even Gormley knew all of it.’
‘Bluff, Harry!’ said Dragosani. ‘I’ve seen what you can do and it doesn’t frighten me. Death is my friend. He tells me everything.’
‘That’s good,’ said the voice, ‘for you’ll be speaking to him again soon — but face to face. So you know what I can do, do you? Well think about this: next time I’ll be doing it to you!’
‘A challenge, Harry?’ Dragosani’s voice was dangerously low, full of menace.
‘A challenge,’ the other agreed, ‘and the winner takes all.’
Dragosani’s Wallach blood was up; he was eager now: ‘But where? I’m already beyond your reach. And tomorrow there’ll be half a world between.’
‘Oh, I know you’re running now,’ said the other contemptuously. ‘But I’ll find you, and soon. You, and Batu, and Borowitz…’
Again Dragosani’s lips drew back in a hiss. ‘Perhaps we should meet, Harry — but where, how?’
‘You’ll know when it’s time,’ said the voice. ‘And know this, too: it will be worse for you than it was for Gormley.’
Suddenly the ice in Keogh’s voice seemed to fill Dragosani’s veins. He shook himself, pulled himself together, said: ‘Very well, Harry Keogh. Whenever and wherever, I’ll be waiting for you.’
‘And the winner takes all,’ said the voice a second time. There came a faint click and the dead line began its intermittent, staccato purring.
For long moments Dragosani stared at the receiver in his hand, then hurled it down into its cradle. ‘Oh, I surely will!’ he rasped then. ‘Be sure I’ll take everything, Harry Keogh!’
Chapter Fourteen
Back at the Chateau Bronnitsy in the middle of the following afternoon, Dragosani found Borowitz absent. His secretary told him that Natasha Borowitz had died just two days ago; Gregor Borowitz was in mourning at their dacha, keeping her company for a day or two; he did not wish to be disturbed. Dragosani phoned him anyway.
‘Ah, Boris,’ the old man’s voice was soft for once, empty. ‘So you’re back.’
‘Gregor, I’m sorry,’ said Dragosani, observing a ritual he didn’t really understand. ‘But I thought you’d like to know I got what you wanted. More than you wanted. Shukshin is dead. Gormley too. And I know everything.’
‘Good,’ said the other without emotion. ‘But don’t talk to me now of death, Boris. Not now. I shall be here for another week. After that… it will be a while before I’m up to much. I loved this argumentative, tough old bitch. She had a tumour, they say, in her head. Suddenly it grew too big. Very peaceful at the end. I miss her a lot. She never knew what a secret was! That was nice.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Dragosani said again.
At that Borowitz seemed to snap out of it. ‘So take a break,’ he said. ‘Get it all down on paper. Report to me in a week, ten days. And well done!’
Dragosani’s hand tightened on the telephone. ‘A break would be very welcome,’ he said. ‘I may use it to look up an old friend of mine. Gregor, can I take Max Batu with me? He, too, has done his work well.’
‘Yes, yes — only don’t bother me any more now. Goodbye, Dragosani.’
And that was that.
Dragosani didn’t like Batu, but he did have plans for him. Anyway, the man made a decent travelling companion: he said very little, kept himself more or less to himself, and his needs were few. He did have a passion for slivovitz, but that didn’t present a problem. The little Mongol could drink the stuff until it came out of his ears, and still he would appear sober. Appearance was all that mattered.
It was the middle of the Russian winter and so they went by train, a much interrupted journey which didn’t see them into Galatz until a day and a half later. There Dragosani hired a car with snow chains, which gave him back something of the independence he so relished. Eventually, on the evening of that second day, in the rooms which Dragosani found for them in a tiny village near Valeni, finally the necromancer grew bored with Batu’s silence and asked him: ‘Max, don’t you wonder what we’re doing here? Aren’t you interested to find out why I brought you along?’
‘No, not really,’ answered the moon-faced Mongol. ‘I’ll find out when you’re ready, I suppose. Actually, it makes no difference. I think I quite like travelling. Perhaps the Comrade General will find more work for me in strange parts.’
Dragosani thought: No, Max, there’ll be no more work for you — except through me. But out loud he said only, ‘Perhaps.’
Night had fallen by the time they had eaten, and that was when Dragosani gave Batu the first hint of what was to come. ‘It’s a fine night tonight, Max,’ he said. ‘Bright starlight and not a cloud in sight. That’s good, for we’re going for a drive. There’s someone I want to talk to.’ On their way to the cruciform hills they passed a field
where sheep huddled together in a corner where straw had been put out for them. There was a thin layer of snow but the temperature was at a reasonable level. Dragosani stopped the car. ‘My friend will be thirsty,’ he explained, ‘but he’s not much on slivovitz. Still, I think it’s only fair we should take him something to drink.’
They got out of the car and Dragosani went into the field, scattering the sheep. ‘That one, Max,’ he said, as one of the animals strayed close to the Mongol where he leaned on the fence. ‘Don’t kill it. Merely stun it, if you can.’
Max could. He crouched, his face contorting where he directed his gaze through the bars of the fence. Dragosani averted his face as the sheep, a fine ewe, gave a shrill cry of terror. He looked back in time to see the animal bound as if shot, and collapse in a shuddering heap of dense wool.
Together they bundled the animal into the boot and went on their way. After a little while Batu said: ‘Your friend must have the strangest appetite, Comrade.’
‘He does, Max, he does.’ And then Dragosani told the other something of what he could expect.
Batu thought about it for some minutes before he spoke again. ‘Comrade Dragosani, I know you are a strange man — indeed we are both strange men — but now I am tempted to believe you must be mad!’
Dragosani bayed like a hound, finally brought his booming laughter under control. ‘You mean you don’t believe in vampires, Max?’
‘Oh, indeed I do!’ said the other. ‘If you say so. I don’t mean that you’re mad to believe — but you are certainly mad to want to dig the thing up!’
‘We shall see what we shall see,’ Dragosani growled, more soberly now. ‘There’s just one thing, Max. What ever you hear or see — no matter what may happen — you are not to interfere. I don’t want him to know you’re even here. Not yet, anyway. Do you understand what I’m saying? You’re to stay out of it. You’re to be so still and quiet that even I forget you’re there!’
‘As you will,’ the other shrugged. ‘But you say he reads your mind. Perhaps he already knows I’m with you.’
‘No,’ said Dragosani, ‘for I can sense when he’s trying to get at me and I know how to shut him out. Anyway, he’ll be very weak by now and not up to fighting with me, not even mentally. No, Thibor Ferenczy has no idea that I’m here, Max, and he’ll be so delighted when I speak to him that he won’t think to look for treachery.’
‘If you say so,’ and Batu shrugged again.
‘Now,’ said Dragosani, ‘you have said I must be mad. Far from it, Max. But you see this vampire has secrets that only the undead know. They are secrets I want. And one way or the other I intend to get them. Especially now t
hat there’s this Harry Keogh to deal with. So far Thibor has frustrated me, but not this time. And if I have to raise him up to get at these secrets… then so be it!’
‘And do you know how? — to raise him up, I mean?’
‘Not yet, no. But he’ll tell me, Max. Be sure of that…’
They were there. Dragosani parked the car off the road under the cover of overhanging trees, and in the cold bright light of the stars they trudged slowly up the overgrown fire break together, snaring the burden of the twitching sheep between them.
Approaching the secret glade, Dragosani took the animal on his shoulder and whispered: ‘Now, Max, you’re to stay here. You may follow a little closer if you wish, and watch by all means — but remember, keep out of it!’
The other nodded, came a few paces closer, huddled down and wrapped his overcoat tightly about himself. And alone Dragosani went on under the trees and up to the tomb of the Thing in the ground.
He paused at the rim of the circle, but farther out than when last he’d visited. ‘How now, old dragon?’ he softly said, letting the trembling, half-dead ewe thump to the hard ground at his feet. ‘How now, Thibor Ferenczy, you who have made a vampire of me!’ He spoke softly so that Max Batu could not hear, for as always he found it easier to speak out loud than merely think his conversation at the vampire.
Ahhhh! came the mental hiss, drawn out and sighing, like the waking breath of one roused from deepest dreams. And is it you, Dragosani? Ho! — and so you’ve guessed, have you?
‘It didn’t take much guesswork, Thibor. It has been only a matter of months, but I’m a changed man. Indeed, not entirely a man.’
But no rage, Dragosani? No fury? Why, it seems to me that this time you come almost humbly! Why is that? I wonder.
‘Oh, you know why, old dragon. I want rid of this thing.’
Ah, no (a mental shake of some monstrous head) unfortunately not. That is quite impossible. You and he are one now, Dragosani. And did I not call you my son, right from the very beginning? It is only fitting, I think, that my real son now grows within you. And he laughed in Dragosani’s mind.
Dragosani couldn’t afford the luxury of anger. Not yet. ‘Son?’ he pressed. ‘This thing you put in me? Son? Another lie, old devil? Who was it told me that your sort have no sex?’
/ think you never listen, Dragosani, the vampire sighed. You, his host, have determined his sex! As he grows and becomes more properly part of you, so you become more like him. In the end it is one creature, one being.
‘But with his mind?’
With your mind — but subtly altered. Your mind and
your body too, but both changed a little. Your appetites will be… sharper? Your needs… different. Listen: as a man your lusts, passions and rages were limited by a man’s strength, a man’s capabilities. But as one of the Wamphyri… What end would it serve to have that great engine in you with nothing to drive but a bundle of soft flesh and brittle bones? What — a tiger with the heart of a mouse?
Which was more or less what Dragosani had expected from the monster. But before coming to a final, perhaps irrevocable decision, he tried one last time, made one last threat. ‘Then I shall go away and give myself into the hands of physicians. They’re a different breed to the doctors you knew in your day, Thibor. And I shall tell them a vampire is in me. They’ll examine, discover, cut the thing out. They have tools you wouldn’t dream of. When they have it they’ll cut it open, study it, discover its nature. And they’ll want to know how and why. I shall tell them. About the Wamphyri. Oh, they’ll laugh, measure me up for a strait-jacket — but they won’t be able to explain it away. And so I shall bring them here, show them you. It will be the end. Of you, of your “son”, of an entire legend. And wherever the Wamphyri are, men will seek them out and destroy them…’
Well said, Dragosani! Thibor was dryly sardonic. Bravo!
Dragosani waited, and after a moment: ‘Is that all you have to say?’
It is. I don’t converse with fools.
‘Explain yourself.’
Now the voice in his mind grew extremely cold and angry, a controlled anger now, but real and frightening for all that. You are a vain and egotistical and stupid man, Boris Dragosani, said Thibor Ferenczy. Always it is “tell me this” and “show me that” and “explain”! I was a power in the land for centuries before you were even spawned, and even that would not have happened but for
me! And here I must lie and let myself be used. Well, all that is at an end. Very well, I will “explain myself as you demand, but for the very last time. For after that… then it will be time for proper discussion and proper bargaining. I’m tired of lying here, inert, Dragosani, as you well know, and you have the power to get me up out of here. That is the only reason I’ve been patient with you at all! But now my patience is no more. First let us deal with your assessment of your situation.
You say that you will give yourself into the hands of physicians. Well, by now certainly the vampire will be discernible in you. It is there, physically and tangibly, a real organism existing with you in a son of symbiosis — a word you taught me, Dragosani. But cut it out? Exorcise it? Skilled your doctors may well be, but not that skilled! Can they cut it from the individual whorls of your brain? From the fluids of your spine? From your tripes, your heart itself? Can they wrest it from your very blood? Even if you were fool enough to let them try, the vampire would kill you first. It would eat through your spine, leak poison into your brain. Surely by now you have come to understand something of our tenacity? Or did you perhaps think that survival was a purely human trait? Survival — hah! — you do not know the meaning of the word!
Dragosani was silent.
We made promises, you and I, the Thing in the ground finally continued. / have kept my part of the bargain. Now then, what of yours? Is it not time I was paid, Dragosani?
‘Bargain?’ Dragosani was taken aback. ‘Are you joking? What bargain?’
Have you forgotten? You wanted the secrets of the Wamphyri. Very well, they are yours. For now you are a Wamphyri! As he grows within you, so the knowledge will come. He has arts which you will learn together.
‘What?’ Dragosani was outraged. ‘My impregnation by a vampire, with a vampire, was your part of the bargain?
What the hell was that for a bargain? I wanted knowledge, wanted it now, Thibor! For myself — not as the black, rotten fruit of some unnatural, unwanted liaison with a damned parasite thing!’
You dare spurn my egg? For each Wamphyri life there is but one spawning, one new life to move on down through the centuries. And I gave mine to you…
‘Don’t act the proud father with me, Thibor Ferenczy!’ Dragosani raged. ‘Don’t even try and make out I’ve hurt your pride. I want rid of this bastard thing in me. Do you tell me you care for it? But I know you vampires hate one another even worse than men hate you!’
The Thing in the ground knew that Dragosani had seen through him. Proper discussion, proper bargaining, he said, coldly.
‘The hell with bargaining — I want rid of it!’ Dragosani snarled. Tell me how… and then I’ll raise you up.’
For long moments there was silence. Then -
You cannot do it. Your doctors cannot do it. Only I can abort what I put there.
‘Then do it.’
‘What? While I lie here, in the ground? Impossible! Raise me up… and it shall be done.
Now it was Dragosani’s turn to ponder the vampire’s proposition — or at least to pretend to ponder it. And finally: ‘Very well. How do I go about it?’
Thibor was eager now: First, do you do this of your own free will?
‘You know I do not!’ Dragosani was scornful. ‘I do it to be free of the hag in me.’
But of your own free will? Thibor insisted.
‘Yes, damn you!’
Good. First there are chains here, in the earth. They were used to bind me but have long since worked loose of wasted tissues. You see, Dragosani, there are chemical ingredients whi
ch the Wamphyri find intolerable. Silver
and iron in the correct proportions paralyse us. Even though much of the iron has rusted away, its essence remains in the ground. And the silver is here, too. First, then, you must dig out these silver chains. ‘But I haven’t the tools!’ You have your hands.
‘You wish me to grub in the dirt with my hands? How deep?’
Not deep at all but shallow. Through all the long centuries I’ve worked these silver chains to the surface, hoping someone would find them and take them for treasure. Is silver precious still, Dragosani? ‘More than ever.’
Then take it with my blessing. Come, dig. ‘But — ‘ (Dragosani did not want to appear to be stalling, but on the other hand there were certain arrangements still to be made). ‘ — how long will it take? The entire process, I mean? And what does it involve?’
We start it tonight, said the vampire, and tomorrow we finish it.
‘I can’t actually bring you up out of the ground until tomorrow?’ Dragosani tried not to show too much relief. Not until then, no. I am too weak, Dragosani. But I note you’ve brought me a gift. That is very good. I shall derive a little strength from your offering… and after you have taken away the chains — ‘Very well,’ said the necromancer. ‘Where do I dig?’ Come closer, my son. Come to the very centre of this place. There — there! Now you can dig …
The flesh crept on Dragosani’s back as he got down on hands and knees and tore at the dirt and leaf-mould with his fingers. Cold sweat started to his brow — but not from his effort — as he remembered the last time he was here, and what had happened then. The vampire sensed his apprehension and chuckled darkly in his mind: Oh, and do you fear me, Dragosani? For all your bluff and bluster? What? A brave young blood like you, and old Thibor Ferenczy just a poor undead Thing in the ground? Bah! Shame on you, my son!
Dragosani had scraped most of the surface soil and debris to one side and was now five or six inches deep. He had reached the harder, more solidly frozen earth of the grave itself. But as he drove his fingers yet again into that strangely fertile soil, so they contacted something hard, something that clinked dully. He worked harder then, and the first links he uncovered were of solid silver — and massive! The links were at least two inches long, and forged of silver rods at least half an inch thick!