The Last Aerie

by Brian Lumley

  Shhh! Nestor hushed him. Let me think. It’s this way, if my memory serves me right. Aye, this way!

  What is this way? Canker demanded.

  Meat on the hoof, Nestor told him. And everything else you mentioned. A woman for you—neither virginal nor young, but untainted certainly—and another for me. And the blood of a good strong man to boot. You can have both the man and his wife, and I shall have their daughter. Not the best of thralls, to be sure, but there’s always the provisioning.

  You know this for a certainty? Canker was eager now. That these people are here, I mean? But he could tell that indeed Nestor knew it for a certainty.

  I know it. Down there, maybe four, five miles ahead, a cabin in the woods, all secret and hidden away. Their fire is out by now but its smoke will linger a while. In a minute or two you’ll sniff it out with that great wolf’s snout of yours. That is, now that you know it’s there to be sniffed.

  Huh! Canker grunted in Nestor’s mind, and complained, But the wind’s in the wrong direction! Still, if there’s smoke to be smelled, be sure that Canker will smell it!

  Ahead, a river uncoiled from the night like a silver snake glinting in the starlight. And Nestor remembered a time when he had very nearly drowned in that same river. Only Brad Berea had saved him, and returned him to life in the warmth and security of his cabin in the woods. Except … Brad had been unkind to him, too, at times, and his wife Irma was often surly and grudging; she’d even begrudged Nestor his food, despite that he’d hunted for all of them. Only Glina had truly felt for Nestor, and they had been lovers a while.

  Well, they’d shared sex, at least. But love? No, for Nestor already had a love … or would have had if his olden, forgotten enemy had not stolen her away. But Glina would make a good bed-warmer in Suckscar, be sure, and certainly she could teach some of the other women in Nestor’s harem how to relieve a man of his juices.

  There was no pity in Nestor now. In fact, it puzzled him why he’d held off all this time, knowing where the Bereas were and all. Perhaps it was that for a while he had felt something of pity—for Glina at least, if not for her parents. But that was then and this was now, and pity and all such emotions were Szgany failings, not Wamphyri.

  Smoke! Canker cried in Nestor’s mind. A whiff of it, anyway, lingering on from the evening meal. Aye, and food smells, too, from the same source. Nestor, we’ve passed over them!

  I know it, Nestor replied. Now then, search for a knoll or cliff. That’s where we’ll land, and from there go on afoot.

  Keen Wamphyri eyes scanned the night, and Canker sent his wolf senses vibrating outwards from him like the unheard locating call of a bat into the darkness. And:

  Over there, to the west. He leaned his flyer westward. A knoll, mainly bald, rising out of the woods. It should suit our purpose.

  I remember it, Nestor answered. I’ve hunted there upon a time. Rabbits and the occasional goat.

  Ah, but rarer meat tonight! Canker chuckled. And in the next moment he was businesslike again: Very well, let’s be at it . . .

  Wamphyri senses guiding them safely down, they landed on the knoll in a swirling ground mist and settled to the rounded summit in twin slithers of sliding scree and crushed creepers. And leaving their beasts nodding there, but with easy access to flight, they descended the knoll by its eastern face.

  Then a short, silent, gliding trip through the gloom of the woods, Nestor moving like a shadow, tree to tree, and Canker loping, leaning forwards, stepping so lightly that never a twig was broken. A mile and a half, and:

  We’re there. Nestor’s mental voice was like a waft of cold air in Canker’s mind.

  And the dog-Lord thought, but to himself. How this one has advanced in just one short year, before answering, Where are we? Where?

  This path. It leads from the river to the cabin. The cabin of Brad Berea, his wife and daughter. But remember: Glina Berea is mine. Before … I was hers. This time it will be different. She’ll be mine always, in Suckscar. And unlike the others, who suffer me because I am their Lord, I fancy Glina will love me, because I am a man. And I’ll give her power in my manse, once she’s a vampire.

  They followed the path to the cabin of the Bereas, all shaded under great trees and lost in a tangle of bracken and roots. No light showed through the woven shutters on the windows, but Nestor knew that a small shaded lamp would be burning inside; also knew there was a bolt-hole to the rear: a tunnel cut through the roots of an ancient, fallen ironwood.

  Give me a moment to make my way to the back, he told the dog-Lord. There is a secret door. Inside, the girl Glina has a bed against the back wall, behind a curtain. She sleeps only a step away from the bolt-hole. But when you go in the front here, let her run. Be sure she won’t run far, for I’ll be waiting. Look for a ladder which climbs to a bed under the roof. That’s where Brad and Irma will be. They are yours. But careful, the man’s a good shot and keeps a powerful crossbow to hand both day and night.

  Thanks for the warning. Canker’s answer was a mental grunt. But you need not worry for me. I can smell them up there even now, and what they’re doing. The girl smells a little sweeter, true, but we have a deal.

  Good, said Nestor, and swiftly disappeared into darkness.

  Canker gave him a count of twelve, then loped to the door, put his great shoulder to it, and smashed right through. Torn from leather hinges in a tangle of shattered withes, the door fell to the hard-packed floor inside. Canker’s glaring scarlet eyes took in everything at a glance: a curtain hanging open a crack at the rear of the cabin … frightened eyes peering as the shade was snatched from a lamp … then the billowing of the curtains as the girl fled. And because his vampire senses were alert as never before, he even heard her faint gasp of horror before she bundled herself into the bolt-hole.

  While from up above:

  The smell of sex had been replaced—by the acrid stench of fear! Brad Berea’s voice was hoarse, calling, “Glina! What is it?” His bearded face—eyes wide and staring, mouth agape as in a yawn—peered down from the platform under the roof.

  “Nothing much,” Canker snarled at him. “Only me!”

  Brad’s face disappeared; in a moment he was back, swinging his legs down onto the upper rungs of the ladder, hanging there as he aimed a crossbow at the spot where Canker had been. But Canker was no longer there. Instead he had stepped to the foot of the ladder, where now he swept his arm like a knife through its brittle wooden legs, bringing the whole contraption crashing down. And Brad came with it.

  As Brad smashed down among the ladder’s ruins, Canker kicked the crossbow from his nerveless fingers and sent it clattering across the floor. “Ho!” cried the dog-Lord. “And would you shoot a poor old wolf like me? Shame on you!” He caught Brad under the arm and dragged the dazed man to his feet. Brad struggled a little then, and Canker felt his great strength. Nestor had been right: this burly barrel of a man would make a good strong vampire thrall. And so, before Brad could recover further:

  Canker bit him, sinking elongating ivory fangs deep into his neck. Brad choked something out, a word, inarticulate, and writhed in Canker’s grip like a crippled snake. Until the dog-Lord crashed a fist into his ear and stilled his struggles.

  Then:

  “Brad!” A shriek went up. Canker glanced overhead, saw a woman’s terrified face gazing back at him. And:

  “Madame,”—Canker bowed grotesquely—“your husband is mine now—and so are you.”

  He let Brad crumple to the earthen floor, crouched down a little, leapt high and caught the edge of the platform. And dragging himself up, he saw Irma where she had fallen back onto a pallet bed. Her hand covered her mouth and her eyes were wide as windows. She would be thirty-eight or -nine, but was still in fine fettle. Especially he noted her breasts, in the brief moment before she snatched up a coarse sheet. They were large and loose, Irma Berea’s breasts, and Canker liked them.

  “Ah … ah … ah!” she gasped, as his hand found his belt and loosened it, and his red
eyes seemed to drip like candles. And: “Ah … ahhh!” she half panted, half gasped again, as she saw him revealed.

  “Oh, indeed,” Canker gurglingly, greedily agreed, advancing on her and tearing the blanket away, and reaching for her body. And as Irma’s cries tore the silence of the night, so the dog-Lord repeated her gasp over and over and over again, filling her head and her body with the sound of his panting, and with more than just sound:

  “Ahhh … ahhh … ahhh … ahhh … ahhhhhh!”

  2

  Nestor’s Art

  Glina Berea crouched low, the hair of her head brushed by roots dangling through the soil of the ceiling, her fingers occasionally scrabbling at the stone-paved floor of the bolt-hole tunnel, panting as she fled through the fallen ironwood’s dead root system to the secret exit. Out there the deep dark woods, which she knew like the back of her hand; clouds covering the moon, holding back its light; an owl hooting sleepily in the distance. She could escape, flee into the woods to one of the many hiding places she knew there. But as Glina passed through the disguised outer door and let it swing back on its hinges, her thoughts were not so much for herself as for the fate of her mother, father, and … and one other.

  If only she’d had time to—

  “Time to what, Glina?”

  Barefoot, she skidded to a halt in wet leaf-mold and saw a shadow grow up beside her out of the gloom; but a shadow that knew her name. An even darker blot in the dark of the night, it flowed upon her, towering huge as if to crush her with its awesome power and presence. But …

  That voice. Didn’t she know that voice?

  “And so you do remember,” the shadow sighed with its deep, dark, tantalizing voice, and moved closer still.

  And again she thought, That voice! Can it possibly be? If so, then he had chosen the worst possible time to return. And why was he so still, so very silent?

  As hoarse shouts and a crashing sound erupted from the cabin, and a muted squawking like throttled chickens but in her father’s choked voice—and moments later her mother’s fearful screaming—so Glina realized that the worst of her fears had been utterly selfish: that she would be left on her own. But now, if this stranger really was him …

  Heart fluttering, scarcely breathing, she reached out a trembling hand and touched his arm—and in that same instant the clouds cleared the moon. Pallid light struck through overhanging branches down into the small clearing, and Glina saw that it was indeed Nestor. He stood there with his eyes half-shuttered, handsome as hell, dark in a cloak the colour of night. And clasping his arm, she gasped, “Nestor! It is you! But come, we must run, hide. The Wamphyri are here!”

  “I know,” he said, in that sepulchral voice which was his and yet not his.

  Then … he opened his eyes wider and she saw their scarlet glow, the convolutions of his vampire nose, and the white gleam of his teeth. And she knew that it wasn’t only his voice which was him and yet not him. “Nestor!” Her jaw fell open and she half swooned into his arms.

  But: “Ah, no,” he told her, gathering her up. “Not simply Nestor, Glina, not anymore. For from now on you must call me Lord.”

  As his needle teeth struck into the fluttering veins of her neck, so she succumbed more fully to her faint …

  Glina woke up and thought that she was burning: the roaring, leaping flames, the yellow glare, the wall of heat! But it was only her home that was burning. She saw it through the spread legs of the two who stood there, arms akimbo, apparently admiring their work. Then … her heart leapt within her breast. The cabin!

  “My bairn!” she cried, struggling to sit up. “You’re burning my bairn!” And shrieking like a madwoman—which in that moment she was—she reached up and clawed at Nestor’s legs. But she could only loll there against him, too spent to drag herself upright.

  He shook his leg and, as her words sank in, made to thrust her away from him. “Bairn, Glina? What bairn?”

  “Barn, did she say?” Canker scowled at her. “No barn that, but a cabin! Or it was.”

  “My … my child!” Glina sobbed, swaying like a stricken animal on all fours, and crawling towards the fire. “My poor burned child!” But only halfway there the roof caved in and the flames were fanned outwards, threatening to engulf her. Even so, she would have crawled on if Nestor had not stepped forward, grabbed her up, dragged her back from the inferno.

  “What child, Glina?” His face was an impenetrable, almost emotionless mask in the firelight, unlike Canker’s, which was still swollen with lust and power. “You had no child.”

  “Oh, but I did!” Her voice was a babble, a crazed shriek. “Sixteen sunups ago … your child, Nestor, you black-hearted beast! He’s in there”—she pointed a madly shaking hand at the blazing cabin—“hidden in the wall in his crib. We prayed that if the Wamphyri came, they would fail to find him. And you did fail. But how could I know you’d burn the cabin? And so it’s your own son that you’ve burned, you damned vampire!”

  “I … I fathered a son?” Something of life had come into Nestor’s face, which didn’t look quite so soulless. But in the next moment the cold and the dark were back. What was done was done. Despite that it had not been done deliberately, still it was done. And anyway, Nestor wanted no bloodsons. Not yet.

  He released Glina, who at once fell wailing to the earth at his feet and began beating her fists into the dirt. Until suddenly she stopped, glared up at Nestor, and spat, “And my mother? And my poor father, too? Did you also burn them alive?”

  Canker stepped forward and glared at her where she sprawled. She was homely at best, with brown lustreless hair, nose a little too sharp, heavy buttocks, and breasts too large and pendulous despite her youth. Canker couldn’t see what Nestor wanted with her, him being so handsome and all.

  “You, Glina,” he snarled at her. “Your mother and father are alive. They lie sleeping in the grass, safe from the fire but burning from a different heat now that the fever of my bite courses through their veins. Rising up before the dawn, they’ll head for Starside to be mine in Mangemanse.” And to Nestor:

  Does she speak the truth? Have you known her before? Well, obviously you have, else how could you find your way back here? But a child? Your child?

  She speaks the truth, Nestor answered. Can’t you read it in her mind?

  I read hatred in her mind! Canker answered at once. And a longing for death … or better still, revenge! Ah, but she has strength, this one! She’s awake well before her time, and she squawks too much. You want my advice? Put an end to her, and now. Or if you wish, I’ll do it for you. He made as if to grab Glina’s hair, but the other put himself in the way.

  The threat to her child woke her up, Nestor told him. Else my bite would have kept her down. But … she is strong, yes, and will take command of all my women in Suckscar.

  Canker shook his great wolf’s head. My friend, you’re making a mistake.

  Then it’s my mistake.

  “Kill me!” Glina cried. “I don’t want to be a vampire. I don’t want to live in a cold aerie on Starside. Not without my bairn. Not without our baby, Nestor!”

  The cabin was now a gutted shell, a red-roaring bonfire like a livid skull, whose blackened window eyes gushed smoke and flames. Nothing was alive in there, not possibly, but it seemed to Glina that she heard a baby’s crying in every lick of fire and whoosh of falling timbers. And when finally she knew that it was over, then she sank down again to the earth and cried a little, and quickly rocked herself to sleep.

  “Now my bite works on her,” Nestor said, satisfied.

  “You should strike ’em in the ear, as I do,” the dog-Lord grunted, swatting the air with his fist. “Knock them down and they stay down, and the fever burns that much faster.”

  Nestor shook his head. “No, for that way you’ll lose some by breaking their skulls. And I prefer thralls, not idiots!”

  “Huh!” the other snorted. “Skulls mend. Most of them.”

  But a mood was on Nestor now, and it was not the mood
for argument. “Have it your own way,” he muttered. And stooping to pick Glina up, he tossed her over his shoulder and headed for the knoll.

  “Can’t she make her own way, like her mother and father?” Canker called after him.

  “I have my needs, much like you,” Nestor answered, without looking back. “Some of which are immediate and may not be kept waiting. But I want her awake. Strange as it may seem to you, this girl knew how to satisfy me, upon a time.” And to himself: Indeed, she was my teacher and mistress, when I knew nothing.

  Behind him, Canker went down on one knee in the grass and put his hands on the foreheads of his new thralls. And: Come to me, he told them in their sleep, in Mangemanse. And if any man or woman shall say to you, “You are mine,” then tell him, or her, that you belong to Canker Canison. For the other vampire Lords—aye, and a certain Lady, too—they are as nothing to me! But only fail to answer my call, then be sure I’ll seek you out wherever you have been stolen away, and eat your living hearts … and your seducer’s, too! So be it!

  Following which he loped swiftly after Nestor, to catch up with him …

  Only an hour or so into sundown, and already we’re three fine thralls better off. Canker chortled in Nestor’s mind when they had been aloft for some little time.

  And more thralls to go, I fancy, the other answered, training his concentration on the terrain below as they winged back towards the barrier mountains. Can’t you sense them?

  “What?” Canker burst out, staring across the gulf at him.

  The air was still now and they flew only a little distance apart, so that shouting was unnecessary. But the dog-Lord was annoyed; his senses were perhaps superior to all others of his ilk; what could Nestor have sensed that he did not? More smoke, furtive movement in the night, the frightened thoughts of Travellers seeking a hiding place till sunup? If so, then why did Canker sense nothing? Ah, but this Nestor was a curious one: an enigma! And Canker was fascinated by him.