by Brian Lumley
But Max’s work had not stopped there, for only an hour or so ago Dragosani had sent the Mongolian out upon another crucial mission; which meant that the necromancer was now alone — or to all intents and purposes alone — as he approached the tomb of the vampire and sent his words and thoughts before him to penetrate the cold gloom beneath dark and stirless trees.
‘Thibor, are you sleeping? I’m here as directed. The stars are bright and the night chill, and the moon is creeping on the hills. This is the hour, Thibor — for both of us.’
And after a moment: Ahhhh! … Dragosaaaniiti? Sleeping? I suppose I was. But I have slept a grand sleep, Dragosani. The sleep of the undead. And I dreamed a grand dream — of conquest and of empire! And for once my hard bed was soft as the breasts of a lover, and these old, old bones were not weighed down but buoyant as the step of a lad when he meets his lass. A grand dream, aye, but… alas, only a dream for all that.
Dragosani sensed… despondency? Alarmed for his plan, he asked: ‘Is anything wrong?’
On the contrary. All goes well, my son — except I fear it may take a little longer than I thought. I took strength from your offering of yestereve, indeed I did! — and I fancy I’ve even put on a little flesh. But still the ground is hard and these old sinews of mine stiff from the salts of the earth…
And then, more eagerly: But did you remember, Dragosani, and bring me another small tribute? Not too small, I hope? Something, perhaps, to compare with my last repast?
For answer the necromancer came to a halt on the rim of the circle, tossed down from his shoulder to the ground at his feet the inert mass of the ewe in a grunting heap. ‘I didn’t forget,’ he said. ‘But come on, old dragon, tell me what you mean. Why will it take longer than you thought?’ Dragosani’s disappointment was real; his plan depended upon raising the vampire up tonight.
Have you no understanding, Dragosani? came Thibor’s answer. Among the men who followed me when I was a warrior, many were so injured in battle that they were carried to their beds. Some would recover. But after months of lying still, often they were wasted and full of aches and torments. Picture me, then, after five hundred years! But… we shall see what we shall see. Even as we talk I grow more eager to be risen up — and so perhaps, after a little more refreshment — ?
Dragosani wryly nodded his understanding, drew out a ” small glinting sickle of honed brightness from its sheath in his pocket, and stooped towards the ewe.
Hold! said the vampire. As you surmise, Dragosani, this may well be the hour — for both of us. An hour of great moment! For both of us. For my own part, I think we should treat it with the respect it warrants.
The necromancer frowned, cocked his head on one side. ‘How do you mean?’
So far, my son, I think you would agree that I have not stood on ceremony. For all that I have had my food hurled at me, as if I were some rooting pig, I have not complained. But I would have you know, Dragosani, that I too have supped at table. Indeed, I’ve dined in the courts of princes! — aye, and will again, with you perhaps seated upon my right hand. May I not, therefore, expect treatment more nearly gracious? Or must I always remember you as a man who poured my food over me like slops into a pigsty?
‘A bit late for niceties, isn’t it, Thibor?’ Dragosani wondered what the vampire was up to. ‘What exactly do you want?’
Thibor was quick to note his apprehension. What? And do you still distrust me? Well, and I suppose you have your reasons. Survival was mine. But come, have we not agreed that when I’m up and about, then that I’ll drive out the seed of my own flesh from your body? And in that moment, will you not be entirely in my hands? It seems a foolish thing, Dragosani, that you would put your faith in me walking abroad but not in my grave! Surely if I were so inclined, I’d be capable of more harm to you up than down? Also, if it were my plan to harm you, who then would be my guide in this new world I’m about to enter? You shall instruct me, Dragosani, and I you.
‘You still haven’t said what you want.’
The vampire sighed. Dragosani, I am forced to admit a small personal flaw. I have in the past accused you of a certain vanity, yet now I tell you that I, too, am vain. Aye, and I would celebrate my rebirth in a manner more fitting. Therefore, bring unto me the ewe, my son, and lay it down before me. This one last time, let it be by way of a genuine tribute — even as a ritual sacrifice to one who is mighty — and not merely swill and roughage for the
fattening of swine. Let me eat as from a platter, Dragosani, and not out of a trough!
‘Old bastard!’ thought Dragosani, while continuing to keep his thoughts secret. So he was to be the vampire’s serf, was he? Just another poor gypsy dolt to be cuffed about and follow at heel like a whining dog? ‘Ah, but I’ve news for you my old, my too old friend!’ and Dragosani hugged his secret thoughts tightly to himself. ‘Enjoy this, Thibor Ferenczy, for it’s the very last time a man will fetch and carry for the likes of you!’ And out loud he said:
‘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:
I ‘Ho, Thing from the earth!’ said Max Batu, stepping out from cover.
” Thibor Ferenczy’s head shot round on his neck in the direction of the Mongol’s voice. Seeing Batu where he stood, his great dog’s jaws fell open and he hissed from between teeth like blades of bone which dripped slime. And without pause Batu took one look at that face, then aimed and fired Ladislau Giresci’s crossbow.
The lignum vitae bolt was five-eighths of an inch thick and steel-tipped. It sprang from the weapon and plunged at almost point-blank range into and through the vampire’s heaving chest, transfixing him.
Thibor gave a hissing shriek and tried to draw himself back down into the steaming earth, but the bolt jammed in the sides of the hole and prevented him, tearing his grey flesh. He gave a second shriek then — a soul-wrenching thing to hear — and tossed himself to and fro with the bolt still in him, cursing and spewing out slime from his chomping, grimacing mouth.
Batu loped quickly to Dragosani’s side, supported him, handed him a full-sized sickle whose edge gleamed silver from a recent sharpening. The necromancer took it, shook Batu off, staggeringly advanced upon the struggling monster trapped half-in, half-out of its grave.
‘The last time they buried you,’ he gasped, ‘they made one big mistake, Thibor Ferenczy.’ And the muscles of is neck and arm bunched as he drew back the sickle. ‘They left your fucking head on!’
The monster tugged at the shaft in its chest, stared at Dragosani with a look beyond his comprehension. There was something of fear in it, yes, but more than this there was that baffled astonishment, as if the beast could not take in or understand this sudden reversal.
‘WAIT!’ it croaked as he drew close, the cracked bass sound of its voice like so many saplings snapping in an avalanche. ‘CAN’T YOU SEE? IT’S ME!!!’
But Dragosani didn’t wait. He knew who and what the monster was, knew also that the only real way he could inherit its knowledge, its powers, was this way: as a necromancer. Yes, and such a wonderful irony in it, for Thibor himself had given him the gift! ‘Die, you bastard Thing!’ he snarled, and the sickle became a blur of steel as it sheared the monster’s head from its trunk.
The awful head sprang aloft, fell, bounced. And even rolling it cried, ‘FOOL! DAMNED FOOL!’ before lying still. Then the scarlet eyes closed. The mouth opened one last time and a gob of red-tinged filth shot out — and a final word, the merest whisper: ‘Fool!’
Dragosani’s answer was to swing the sickle a second time, splitting the head in two parts like some great grey overripe melon. Inside the skull, the brain was a mush with a writhing core: in effect two brains, one human and shrivelled and the other — alien! The brain of the vampire. Without pause, without fear, knowing for once exactly what he did, Dragosani stuck his hands deep into the two halves of the skull cavity and let his trembling fingers feel the reeking fluids and pulp. All the secrets and the lore of the Wamphyri were here, here, just waiting for him to search them out.
Yes! Yes!
Even now the brains were rotting, falling into the natural decay and corruption of centuries… but Dragosani’s necromantic talent was already tracking the undead (now utterly dead) monster’s secrets through the very juices of its crumbling brain. Grey as stone, his eyes standing out obscenely in his head, he lifted up the mess to his face — but too late!
Before his frantic eyes everything rotted away, boiled into smoke, trickled in streams of dust through his twitching fingers. Even the misshapen skull, dust in his hands.
With a cry almost of anguish, wildly swinging his arms like a windmill run amok, Dragosani spun and made a headlong dive for the vampire’s headless body where it still sat upright in its grave. The severed neck was beginning to steam away, settling into the scaled chest which itself slumped down into the unseen trunk below. And even as the necromancer plunged his hand and arm down into that hole, into the rot and the stench, so the earth belched up a great mushrooming cloud of poisonous vapour and collapsed in upon the now
almost liquid corpse.
Dragosani howled like a banshee and drew out his arm from the quag, then crawled away from the shuddering, belching hole as the ground quickly settled into quiescence. At the edge of the circle he paused, head hanging limply, shoulders slumped, and sobbed his frustration long and rackingly.
Breathless, shaken to his roots by all he had seen, Max Batu watched the necromancer a little while longer then slowly came forward. He got down on one knee beside Dragosani and gripped his shoulder. ‘Comrade Dragosani,’ Batu’s voice was hushed, little more than a dry, croaking whisper. ‘Is it over?’
Dragosani stopped sobbing. He let his head continue to hang down while he considered Batu’s question: was it all over? It was all over for Thibor Ferenczy, yes, but only just beginning for the new vampire, the as yet immature creature which even now shared Dragosani’s body with him. They would supply each other’s needs,(however grudgingly,) learn from each other, become as one being. The question still remained as to whose will would eventually achieve dominance.
Against any ordinary man the vampire must, of course, be the winner. Every time. But Dragosani was not ordinary. He had the power in him to accumulate his own lore, his own talents. And why not? Perhaps somewhere in his learning, in his gathering of secrets and strange new powers, he might yet find a way to be rid of the parasite. But until then…
‘No, Max Batu,’ he said, ‘it’s not over yet. Not for a while yet.’
“Then what must I do now?’ the squat little Mongol was anxious to be of assistance. ‘How can I help? What are your needs?’
Dragosani continued to stare at the dark earth. How could Batu help? What were the necromancer’s needs? Interesting questions.
Pain and frustration died in Dragosani. There was much to do and time was wasting. He had come here to gather new powers to himself in the face of whatever threat was posed by Harry Keogh and the British E-Branch, and that was a job he still must do. Thibor’s secrets were beyond him now, dead and gone forever like the vampire himself, but that must not be the end of the matter. However weak and battered he felt right now, still he knew that he had not been permanently dam aged. The pain may well have scarred his mind and soul (if he still had a soul), but those were scars which would heal. No, he had suffered no real or lasting injury. He had merely been — depleted.