Dhampire

by Baker, Scott

  I went back inside the cave. Uncle Peter was awake and putting on his overalls. He smiled when he saw me.

  "I didn't kill her! She wasn't there!"

  "Tell me about it," I suggested. We walked outside together, sat down on the log by the fire pit.

  "As soon as I began to change I sensed danger from you and from the silver you were carrying. It seemed to take me a long time to get control of my body, but it must not have really been very long at all, because while I was struggling for control you seemed to be moving in slow motion. Before you could pull the chains tight and lock me in them I got enough control over myself to slash you in the arm."

  There was a half-proud look on his face. "Go on," I said.

  "You dropped the scourge and backed away for a moment. I managed to get to my feet before you got your courage up to pick it up again. You threatened me with the scourge and tried to corner me in the cave but I was too fast for you and I ran around you and out into the woods. I ran for hours until I came to my neighbors' farm. They weren't home, but I was filled with my bloodlust and I killed two of their sheep. I might have killed more then, but their dog tried to stop me. He was a lot bigger than I was and a lot heavier, but he was slow and I tore his throat out.

  "As soon as I'd killed him and partially satisfied my blood-lust I realized that there was a bitch in heat locked up inside the house. I could smell her. I broke in through a window. She was afraid of me but I snarled at her and she let me mount her anyway. Afterwards I killed her like I'd killed the other dog."

  Regret and remembered pleasure fought for control of his voice. Regret finally won. "I'll send them some money," he decided. "I'll have to find out their names somehow."

  "You don't know their names?"

  "No. The only times I ever see them is when I go to their farm as a wolf. I can't make it that far on foot as a human being."

  So they might not even exist. And it was obvious that, hate himself for it as he might, my uncle lived for these once-a-month nights of fantasy. But I still had to try to tell him the truth. I owed it to him in a way. Not because he'd trusted me—I'd forced that trust on him—but because having forced that trust on him, having forced him to believe that I wouldn't hurt him and wanted to help him, I owed it to him to do what I could to alleviate his pain. Otherwise I was no better than Michael or Uncle Stephen.

  I didn't expect him to believe me, and before I went back to Illinois I was going to have to turn away any memories he might have retained of what I'd told him, but the information would still be there somewhere in his memory and perhaps someday he'd be able to face it and make use of it.

  "Listen," I said. "Let me tell you what I saw you do last night.

  "First you fell over and shook for a while. Then you got up on your hands and knees and began acting like a wolf. You weren't a wolf, you were just acting like you thought you were a wolf—"

  I told him what I'd seen and what I hadn't seen, that for thirty years the family had been fostering his delusions so as to keep him in a position where he wouldn't dare resist the use they wanted to make of him. I showed him my arm, reminded him of how he'd remembered slashing it. I told him he could go back and live among people again, that he could return to the seminary if he wanted to.

  He didn't believe me. I'd known he wouldn't. But at least for the first time in thirty years somebody had told him the truth, and it was there, waiting for him, if he ever wanted it or needed it.

  He guided me back to the gate and unlocked it for me. We sat by the road just outside the gate for perhaps an hour while I turned him away from everything I'd told him or showed him or shared with him that could have been dangerous to either one of us to have him remember, then left him there and drove back to Illinois.

  Less than five minutes after I'd walked in the door a servant I didn't recognize told me there was a phone call for me.

  "Ah, David." Uncle Stephen's voice. "I've just rented a house near the estate and I was hoping you could drop by."

  Which meant that he'd been following my movements, or at least had somebody in the house waiting to tell him when I returned.

  "I'd very much like to talk to you," I said. "But I don't really feel like driving very far. Could I meet you at, oh, say the Howard Johnson's about three miles from here? In the dining room, in about forty-five minutes?"

  I was eating my second cheeseburger when he arrived. He was dressed, as always, in black, and the fluid way he moved made him look almost as much younger than he was as Uncle Peter had looked older: he could have passed for a man in his late thirties.

  He sat down next to me and ordered coffee.

  "What did you want to discuss?" I asked him.

  "I've got an offer to make you, but before I make it I think you should know that I already know that Gregory entrusted a confidential letter for you to his lawyer, and that after reading the letter you were able to pass the guardians and reach the landing above the cavern before you turned back."

  "What makes you think so?"

  "The whole house is bugged. Microphones, cameras, videotape, all the latest equipment. Installed by Michael at my suggestion."

  "Does Michael know yet?"

  "Not yet. He won't know until tonight, when he gets back. At which time, I might add, he will also become aware of your successful attempt at hypnotizing two of his servants, and of the fact that you've just returned from a visit to Peter."

  He sat smiling, waiting, sipping his coffee, until I said, "You said you had an offer to make me."

  "Yes. Because Michael hates me and will be giving me to Gregory as soon as he thinks he's exhausted my usefulness. With you I hope to do better."

  "You still haven't told me what you're offering me. Nor what you want from me in return."

  "First of all, David, I'm offering to destroy all record of the fact that Abernathy gave you that letter, of your trip to the cavern, and of your hypnosis of Nicolae and Thomas. Plus any other such records that it becomes necessary for me to keep from Michael, such as the record of the phone conversation that brought you here. More generally, I'm offering to do everything in my power to help you and protect you while you rescue Dara, and then make sure that you succeed in displacing Michael and taking his place as the head of the family. In return, I want you to transfer a share of your power over Gregory to me."

  "Transfer it how?"

  "Sexually, of course. I thought you knew."

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-four

  « ^ »

  Uncle Stephen sat slender and elegant in his tight-fitting black, watching me. Waiting for my response. His eyes alert and ironic, a cool pale green, his dark hair cut close to his head, the hand gripping the white handle of his coffee cup deeply tanned, long-fingered, immaculate. Smiling. A Renaissance fencing master in clerical disguise.

  He terrified me. I had no exaggerated fear of homosexuality—the early experiments at the academy that had convinced me that my interests lay elsewhere had also taught me that homosexuality as such was nothing to be afraid of—but the thought of having sex with Uncle Stephen, of being touched, penetrated, forced to submit to him, threatened me in a way that no physical pain or momentary humiliation could have. Perhaps because of the stories Uncle Peter had told me of his own pain and degradation, of the murdered children he claimed never to have seen but whose existence he'd known to be an essential part of some of the rites in which he'd been forced to participate. Perhaps because I remembered the way Michael had used me to rape Dara, and because of the way I'd recognized the self I had refused to be in him as he used me.

  "I'm interested," I said, keeping my clenched hands under the table where he couldn't see them. "Maybe. But you're going to have to give me a lot more information, and a lot more reason to trust you, before I agree to anything."

  A slight inclination of his head. "But you don't have much time left before Michael gets back, David. And once he's learned what you've done it'll be too late for me to do anything for you."


  I shook my head, managed to smile at him. "No. Have the records destroyed now, before we discuss your offer. As a guarantee of your good faith, and to prove that you really can do the things you claim you can do."

  He seemed pleased. "And what guarantee do you offer me of your good faith, David?"

  "The fact that I need the help you're offering me as much as you need my help."

  "More than I need your help, David. But, fair enough. If you'll excuse me—" He stood, made his way with stiff, almost military grace between the tight-packed tables, where families of six and eight were bolting all the perch they could eat for the special Wednesday-night price, to the pay phone in its half-shell by the door. I could see him dialing, see his lips moving as he spoke into the mouthpiece, but he was too far away for me to hear anything over the restaurant noise.

  Which could only mean that Uncle Stephen had somebody on Michael's household staff, probably whomever Michael trusted to monitor the surveillance system. If there really was such a system, and Uncle Stephen hadn't gained his information about me through some other means. But in either case, it was further proof of his deviousness, of the fact that I could never be sure I'd figured out what he was really up to.

  The waitress came by and refilled my cup of coffee.

  "All right, David," Uncle Stephen said when he sat down across from me again. "You've got your proof of good faith and I'm ready to answer your questions. What do you want me to tell you?"

  "How are you going to rescue Dara?"

  "I'm not. What I'm going to do is help you rescue her. In two ways. First of all, by providing you with knowledge of a way to reach the cavern which Michael doesn't know about, and which he doesn't have guarded, and by arranging to make sure that he isn't in the cavern himself when you go to rescue her. Secondly, by providing you with the supernatural aid you'll need to free her and escape with her afterwards."

  "What kind of supernatural aid?"

  "A familiar spirit. Which is to say, a low-ranking demon or imp that's taken the form of a small animal, like a witch's black cat or a toad or a—"

  "I know what a familiar is. And that you have to make a pact with Satan to get one."

  "Rather, that you have to make a pact with any one of a number of demons to get one. But that, you see, is where I come in: I make the pact, I take the risks and I pledge whatever needs to be pledged, and you get the benefit of the familiar's services."

  "And I won't be required to make any sort of pact, explicit or implicit, with any of the demons with which you'll be dealing, including the familiar itself?"

  "No. The only explicit pact you'll be required to make is with me and that's what we're in the process of working out right now. As for implicit pacts—The operations I will be undertaking for you will involve the command of demons, true, but since they will not involve the submission of either of us to those demons they could be said to belong to what is traditionally thought of as High, or White, Magic. In any case your soul will not be jeopardized."

  "Granting that for the moment, what assurance will I have that you'll live up to your share of our agreement?"

  "What good would a share in your dominion over Gregory be if you had none?"

  "But the familiar will obey you, not me."

  "Yes. But you'll be present at the ceremony in which SUSTUGRIEL grants it to me, and you'll be there when I instruct it to obey you in all things not contrary to our agreement."

  "What happens if something goes wrong while I'm trying to rescue Dara?"

  "Nothing can go wrong, as long as you follow the familiar's instructions exactly."

  "And if it asks me to do something impossible, or I make a mistake?"

  "If you fail to follow its instructions you could end up killing yourself in all sorts of unpleasant ways. But you won't have to do anything too difficult, and if you pay attention you shouldn't have any trouble."

  I took a sip of coffee, put the cup down. "Do you know why I stopped where I did, there on the landing, instead of continuing the rest of the way on down to the cavern floor instead?"

  He was suddenly very still. "No. Why, David?"

  "Because there was a Naga at the head of the stairs and it wouldn't let me past."

  "Ah." His face lost all expression for a moment, as though he'd gone somewhere else to think. "The only reason the Naga was able to stop you was because you were wearing its token. That thing on your arm. Once you remove it the Naga will lose whatever power it has over you. And you'll have to remove it anyway, at least until you and Dara make it back to the surface, because the spirits with which we'll be dealing have a deadly hatred for Nagas. Michael wouldn't have been able to defeat your father the way he did if the spirits Gregory should have been able to call up hadn't been reluctant to obey him."

  It was plausible, and Uncle Stephen had been the one who'd supplied Dara with the ointment that had enabled me to follow the Naga to the cavern that first time, but it was too quick, too glib. For all I knew the Naga on my arm represented the only chance Dara and I would have to ever break free of Uncle Stephen.

  "But Michael and I are both half Naga," I said. "So is Dara."

  "It doesn't matter. In dealing with spirits the symbol is often far more important than the reality behind it."

  "Assume we've made it back to the surface safely," I said. "What happens then?"

  "As soon as you've made it back I'll teach you how to take control of Gregory away from Michael, thus fulfilling my half of the bargain."

  "And that will involve what? Another rite?"

  "In a sense, but one which involves neither demons nor anything else you might find morally repugnant. It's a way of focusing and directing your personal power, nothing more."

  "And in return you want what?"

  "In return I want your participation—yours alone, David, not Dara's—in an act of sex magic that will join my power to yours in such a way that neither of us can command Gregory without the other's participation and consent. So that to command him you'll have to pass through me, and I through you. Think of a telephone system where each of us acts as operator for the other but where there is no other contact between us. So that you'll never be able to use your influence over Gregory to act against me, and so I'll be able to share in the power that you, as a member of the generation succeeding ours, have to command him…"

  When he'd explained the intricacies of the process I asked, "And what, exactly, will this act of sex magic involve?"

  "Ritual sex—which is to say, anal intercourse, with you as the passive partner." Again the avuncular smile, the white teeth behind narrow lips. "Plus a ceremonial mingling of our blood, and a certain amount of mutual anger, hatred, fear and physical pain. The last as a result of a scourging, both for purificatory purposes and to obtain the blood we'll need."

  "And that's all?"

  "Yes. No murdered babies or sacrificed virgins, no castrations or mutilations or unexpected appearances by the Devil. You don't even have to jump up and down on a crucifix and swear to deny Christ forever. Just a lot of formal preparations and ritual acts and words—drawing circles, bathing, chanting the praises of God. That sort of thing."

  Which left only the one real question: how much, if any of what he'd told me could I trust, and what could I do if he was lying?

  I questioned him for three more hours without catching him in a contradiction or in anything I could be sure was a lie, finally agreed to meet him just before dawn at the house he'd arranged for us to use. I knew that he was lying somewhere, if only by omission, but I'd exhausted every other possibility available to me for rescuing Dara.

  As he well knew.

  I wrapped the golden Naga in a cloth, then put it with my father's letter in a heavy-duty plastic trash bag which I sealed and buried by the side of the road a short ways from the house where I was to meet Uncle Stephen, close enough so that I could get to it on foot if I had to. I spent the rest of the night driving around trying to think of a way out, or a way to protect myself. Unsucc
essfully.

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-five

  « ^ »

  The house was set back from the road, at the end of a long looping potholed gravel driveway, half-hidden by a small stand of maples. It was an old wooden farmhouse, two-storied, big, with once-white paint peeling from its narrow-boarded sides.

  Uncle Stephen was waiting for me at the door, wearing a robe of white linen and a cap of the same material. He put his finger to his lips, reminding me of the instructions he'd given me the night before, then motioned me to follow him as he led me up a single-spiral staircase to a room on the second floor. He motioned me through the door, closed it behind me.

  The room smelled of paint. The ceiling and floor were Chinese red, the walls white. The room contained a desk, a straight-backed wooden chair, and a table on which a robe and cap similar to those Uncle Stephen had worn lay neatly folded. There was a thick book bound in red leather on the desk: Uncle Stephen's grimoire, or rather, a copy of it, since he alone could use the original. The pages alternated red, black, white; the book lay open to one of the red pages.

  An open door in the far wall led to a connecting bathroom, also painted a spotless white, which contained a huge sunken bathtub already filled with warm perfumed water. A piece of parchment had been thumbtacked to the wall above the tub: the Preparatory Orison. As far as I could tell it was identical with the Orison I remembered from the copy of the Grimoire Verum in my aunt's collection. I found myself wishing I'd done more than skim through those grimoires in languages accessible to me.

  But so far, at least, everything had been as Uncle Stephen had said it would be. I took off my clothes, setting them on the floor to my right and a little behind me, then read the Orison from the parchment:

  "Lord God Adonai, who hast made man in Thine image and resemblance out of nothing! I, debased sinner though I am, beg Thee to deign to bless and sanctify this water, so that it may be healthy for my body and soul, and that all wrongness should depart from it.