Harry Moradian's knuckles were white where his hands gripped the rim of his desk. "Good Lord, Molly!" he cried, staring aghast at the Stewart apparition where bands of soft light flowed through it from the window's blinds. "Are you trying to scare the shit out of me before we even get started?!"335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVmt6b783jA
I'm telling it as I know it. That's what you asked me to do, isn't it? Stewart was unrepentant. Remember, Harry, you're getting it secondhand. I got it straight from them, from the dead---the horse's mouth, so to speak---and believe me I've watered it down for you!
Moradian gulped, shook his head, got a hold of himself. Then something Stewart had said got through to him. "You got it from 'them'? Suddenly I' have this feeling you don't just mean Thago Benedek and John Williams."
No, I've spoken to the Reverend Bowett, too. From Dragos's christening?
"Oh, yes," Moradian wiped his brow. "I see that now. Of course."
Harry! Stewart's sensually soft voice was sharper now. We've got to hurry. Molly's beginning to stir.
And not only the real child, three hundred and fifty miles away in Gloudon, but also its ethereal image where it languidly turned, superimposed over and within Stewart's midriff. It too was stirring, slowly stretching from its fetal position, its baby mouth opening in a yawn. The Stewart manifestations began to waver like smoke, like the heat haze over a summer road.
"Before you go!" Moradian was desperate. "Where do I begin?"
He was answered by the faint but very definite wail of a waking infant. Stewart's eyes opened wide. He tried to take a pace forward, towards Stewart. But the blue shimmer was breaking down, like a television image going wrong. In another moment it snapped into a single vertical line, like a tube of electric blue light, shortened to a point of blinding blue fire at eye-level---and blinked out.
But coming to Moradian as from a million miles away: Get in touch with Morozov. Tell him what you know. Some of it, anyway. You're going to need his help.
"The Russians? But Molly...."
Goodbye, Harry. I'll get---back---to---you.
And the room was completely still, felt somehow empty. The central heating made a loud click as it switched itself off.
Moradian sat there a long time, sweating a little, breathing deeply. Then he noticed the lights blinking on his desk communications, heard the gentle, almost timid rapping on his office door. "Harry?" a voice queried from outside. It was Alan Picardi's voice. "It----it's gone now. But I suppose you know that. Are you all right in there?"
Moradian took a deep breath, pressed the command button. "It's over for now," he told the breathless, waiting HQ. "You'd all better come in and see me. There's time for an 'O'-group before we knock it on the head for the day. There'll be things you're wanting to know, and things we've got to talk about." He released the button, said to himself: "And I do mean 'things.'"
The Russian response was immediate, faster than Moradian might have ever believed. He didn't know that Leonid Brezhnev would soon be wanting all the answers, and that Alik Morozov had only four months left of his year's borrowed time.335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGgiOfkHTJx
They were to meet on the first Friday in September, these two ESPionage chieftains, on neutral ground. The venue was Liomata, Italy, a seedy bar called Sagoma lost in a labyrinth of alleys down in the guts of the city, less than two hundred yards from the waterfront.335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡe2UOySgZQf
Moradian and Picardi got into Liomata's shocking ramshackle airport on Thursday evening; their minder from British Intelligence (whom they hadn't met earlier. They'd made no reservations but had no problems getting adjoining rooms at the Grand Hotel, where they freshened up and had a meal before retiring to the bar. The bar was quiet, almost subdued, where half-a-dozen Italians, two German businessmen, and an American tourist and his wife sat at small tables or at the bar with their drinks. One of the Italians whos at apart, on his own, wasn't Italian at all; he was Russian, KGB, but Moradian and Picardi had no way of knowing that. He had no ESP talent or Picardi would have spotted him at once. They didn't spot him taking photographs of him with a tiny camera, either. But the Russian had not gone entirely undetected. Earlier he'd been seen entering the hotel and booking a room.
Moradian and Picardi were in a corner of the bar, on their third Vecchia Roagnas, and talking in lowered tones about their business with Morozov tomorrow, when the bar telephone rang. "For me!" Moradian said at once, starting upright ton his barstool. His talent always had that effect on him: it startled him like a mild electric shock.
The barkeep answered the phone and looked up. "Signor....." he began.
"Moradian?"" said Moradian, holding out his hand.
The barkeep smiled, nodded, handed him the phone. "Moradian?" he said again into the mouthpiece.
"Breidigan here," said a soft voice. "Mr. Moradian, try not to act surprised or anything, and don't look up or go all stealthy. One of the people in the bar with you is a Russian. I won't describe him because then you'd act differently and he'd notice it. But I've been on to London and put him through our computer. He's dressed Eyetie but he's definitely KBG, name of Eldar Polyakov. He's a top field agent for Andropov. Just thought you'd like to now. There wasn't supposed to be any of this stuff, was there?"
"No," said Moradian, "there wasn't."
"Tut-tut!" said Breidigan. "I should be a bit sharp with your man when you meet him tomorrow, if I were you. It really isn't good enough. And just for your piece of mind, if anything were to happen to you---which I think unlikely----be sure Polyakov's a goner too, OK?"
"That's very reassuring," said Moradian grimly. He gave the phone back to the barkeep.
"Problems?" Picardi raised an eyebrow.
"Finish your drink and we'll talk about it in our rooms," said Moradian. "Just act naturally. I think we're on Candid Camera. " He forced a smile, swallowed his brandy at a gulp, stood up. Picardi followed suit; they left the bar unhurriedly and went up to their rooms; in Moradian's room they checked for electronic bugs. This was as much a job for their psychic sensitivity as for their five mundane senses, but the room was clean.
Moradian told Picardi about the call in the bar. Picardi was an extremely wiry man of about thirty-five, prematurely balding, soft-spoken but often aggressive, and very quick-thinking. "Not a very suspicious start," he growled. "Still, I suppose we should have expected it. This is what your common-or-garden-variety secret agent comes up against all the time, I'm told."
"Well, it's not on!" Moradian was angry. "This was supposed to be a meeting of minds, not muscle."
"Do you know which one of them it was?" Picardi was practical about it. "I think I can remember all of their faces. I'd know any of them again if we should bump into him."
"Forget it," said Moradian. "Breidigan doesn't want a confrontation. He's geared to get nasty, though, if things go wrong for us."
"Charmed, I'm sure," said Picardi.
"My reaction exactly," Moradian agreed.
Then they checked Picardi's room for bugs and, finding none, called a day.
Moradian took a shower, got into bed. It was uncomfortably warm so he pushed his blankets onto the floor. The air was humid and oppressive. It felt like rain, and if a storm blew up it would probably be a dandy. Moradian knew southern Italy in the autumn, also knew that it had some of the worst storms imaginable.
He left his beside light burning, settled down to sleep. A door, unlocked, stood between the two rooms. Picardi was right next door, probably asleep by now. The city's traffic was giving it hell out beyond the louvered window shutters. London was a tomb by comparison. Tombs hardly seemed a fitting subject to fall asleep to, but----Moradian closed his eyes; he felt sleep pulling him down, soft as a woman's arms; and he felt....
....something else pulling him awake!
His lamp was still on, its shade forming a pool of yellow light on the mahogany bedside table. But there was now a second source of illumination, and it was blue! Moradian snatched himself back from sleep, sat bolt upright in his bed. It was Molly Stewart, of course.
Alan Picardi came bounding through the adjoining door, dressed only in his pajama bottoms. He pulled up short, backed off a pace. "Oh my God!" he said, his mouth hanging open. The Stewart apparition---woman, sleeping child and all---turned through ninety degrees to face him.
Oh, don't be afraid," said Stewart.
"You can see her?" Moradian wasn't quite awake yet.
"Lord, yes," Picardi breathed, nodding. "And hear her, too. But even if I couldn't, I'd still know she was here."
A psychic sensitive, said Stewart. Well, that helps.
Moradian swung his legs out of bed, switched off the lamp. Stewart stood out so much better in the darkness, like a hologram of infinitely fine neon wires. "Alan Picardi," Moradian said, his skin prickling with the sheer strangeness of this thing he'd never get used to, "meet Molly Stewart."
Picardi stumblingly found a chair close to Moradian's bed and flopped into it. Moradian was awake now, fully in control. He realized how insubstantial it must sound, how hollow and commonplace when he asked: "Molly, what are you doing here?"
And Picardi almost laughed, however hysterically, when the apparition answered: I've been talking to Thago Benedek, using my time to my best advantage----for there's precious little of it to waste. Every waking hour makes Molly II stronger and me less able to resist her. It's her body and I'm being subsumed, even absorbed. Her little brain is filling up with its own stuff, squeezing me out or maybe compacting me. Pretty soon I'll have to leave her, and then I don't know if I'll ever be corporeal again. So on the way back from Thago, I thought I'd drop in on you.
Moradian could almost feel Picardi's near-hysteria; he glanced waringly at him in the light of the soft blue glow. "You've been talking to the old Thing in the ground?" he repeated. "But why, Molly? What is it you want from him?"
He's one of them, a vampire, or he was. The dead aren't much bothered with him. He's a pariah among the dead. In me he has, well, if not a friend, at least someone to talk to. So we trade: I converse with him, and he tells me things I want to know. But nothing's easy with Thago Benedek. Even dead he has a devious mind. He knows that the longer he strings it out, the sooner I'll be back. He used the same tactics with Dragan, remember?
"Oh, yes," Moradian nodded. "And I also remember what happened to Dragan. You should be careful, Molly."
Thago's dead, Harry, Stewart reminded him. He can do no more harm. But what he left behind might....
"What he left behind? You mean Dragos Matei? I've got men watching the place in Devon until I'm ready for him. When we're sure of his patterns, when we've assessed everything you've told us, then we'll move in."
I didn't exactly mean Dragos, though certainly he's part of it. But are you telling me you've put espers on the job? Stewart seemed alarmed. Do they know what they might have to deal with if they're marked? Are they fully in the picture?"
"Yes, they are. Fully. And they're equipped. But if we can we'll learn a little more about them before we act. For all that you've told us, still we know so very little."
And do you know about John Williams?
Moradian felt his scalp tingle. Picardi, too. And this time it was Picardi who answered. "We know he's no longer in his grave in the cemetery in Blaydon, if that's what you mean. The doctors diagnosed a heart attack, and his wife and the Mateis were there at his burial. So much we've checked out. But we've also been there and had a look for ourselves, and John Williams wasn't where he should be. We figure he's back at the house with the others."
The Stewart manifestation nodded. That's what I mean. So now he's undead. And that will have told Dragos Matei exactly what he is! Or maybe not exactly. But by now he must be pretty sure he's a vampire. In fact, he's only a half-vampire. John, on the other hand---he's the real thing! He has been dead, so what's in him will have taken total control.
"What?" Moradian was bemused. "I don't...."
Let me tell you the rest of Thago's story, Stewart cut in. See what you make of that.
Moradian could only nod his assent. "I suppose you know what you're doing, Molly." The room was already colder. Moradian gave a blanket to Picardi, wrapped another around himself. "OK, Molly," he said. "The stage is all yours......"
The last thing Thago remembered seeing was the Benedek's bestial animal face, his jaws open in a gaping laugh, displaying a crimson forked tongue shuddering like a speared snake in its alien passion. He remembered that, and the fact that he'd been drugged. Then he'd gone down in an irresistible whirlpool, down, down to black lightless depths from which his resurgence had been slow and fraught with nightmares.
He'd dreamed of yellow-eyed wolves; of a blasphemous banner device in the form of Satan's head, with its forked tongue much like Benedek's own, except that on the banner it had dripped gouts of blood; of a black castle built over a mountain gorge, and of its master, who was something other than human. And now, because he knew that he'd dreamed, he also knew he must be waking up. And the thought came to him: how much was dream and how much reality?
Thago felt a subterranean cold, cramps in all his limbs, a throbbing in his temples like a reverberating gong in some great sounding cavern. He felt the manacles on his wrists and ankles, the cold slimy stone at his back where he slumped, the drip of seeping moisture from somewhere overhead, where it hissed past his ear and splashed in the hollow of his collarbone.
Chained naked in some black vault in the castle of the Benedek. And no need now to ask how much of it had been a dream. All of it was real.
Thago came snarling to life, strained with a giant's strength against the chains that held him powerless, ignored the thunder in his head and the lancing pains in his limbs and body to roar in the darkness like a wounded bull. "Benedek! You dog, Benedek! Treacherous, misshapen, misbegotten...."
The Wallach warlord stopped shouting, listened to the echoes of his curses dying away. And to something else. From somewhere up above he'd heard his bellowing answered by a door slamming, heard unhurried footsteps descending towards him. And with his cold skin prickling and his nostrils flaring----from rage and terror both---he hung in his chains and waited.
The darkness was very nearly utter, streaks of nitre alone glowed with a chemical phosphorescence on the walls, but as Thago held his breath and the hollow footsteps came closer, so too came a flickering illumination. It issued in an unevenly penetrating yellow glow from an arched stone doorway in what must otherwise be a solid wall of rock; and while Thago watched with hated breath, so the shadows of his cell were thrown back more yet as the light grew stronger and the footsteps louder.
Then a sputtering lantern was thrust in through the archway, and behind it was the Benedek himself, crouching a little to avoid the wedge of the keystone. Behind the lantern his eyes were red fires in the shadows of his face. He held the lantern high, nodded grimly at what he saw.
Thago had thought he was alone but now he saw that he wasn't. In the flare of yellow lamplight he discovered that there were others here with him. But dead or alive----? One of them seemed alive, at least.
Thago narrowed his eyes as the glare from the Benedek's lantern brightened, lighting up the whole dungeon. Three other prisoners were with him here, yes, and dead or alive it wasn't hard to guess who they'd be. As to how or why the castle's master had brought them here---that was anyone's guess. There were of course Thago's Wallach companions, and also old Xylon of the Szgany. Of the three, it seemed to be the stumpy Wallach who'd survived: the one who was all chest and arms. He lay crumpled on the floor where stone flags had been laid aside to reveal the black soil underneath. His body seemed badly broken, but still his barrel chest rose and fell with some regularity and one of his arms twitched a little.
"The lucky one," said the Benedek, his voice deep as a pit. "Or maybe unlucky, depending on one's point of view. he was alive when my children took me to him."
Thago rattled his chains. "Was? Man, he's alive now! Can't you see him moving? See, he breathes."
"Aye!" the Benedek moved closer, in the soundless, sinuous way of his. "The blood surges in his veins, and the brain in his broken head functions and thinks frightened thoughts----but I tell you he is not alive. Nor is he truly dead. He is undead!" He chuckled as at some obscene joke.
"Alive, undead? Is there a difference?" Thago yanked viciously on his chains. How he would love to wrap them round the other's neck and squeeze till his eyes popped out.
"The difference is immortality." His tormentor thrust his face closer yet. "Alive he was mortal, undead he 'lives' forever. Or until he destroys himself, or some accident does the job for him. Ah, but to live forever, eh, Thago the Wallach? How sweet life is, eh? But would you believe it can be boring, too? No, of course not, for you have not known the ennui of the centuries. Women? I have had such women! And food?" His voice took on a slyness. "Ah! Gobbets you've not yet dreamed of. And yet for these last hundred---nay, two hundred----years, all of these things have bored me."
"Bored with life, are you?" Thago ground his teeth, put every last effort into wrenching his chains' staples from the sweating stone. It was useless. "Only set me free and I'll put an end to your----uh!----boredom."
The Benedek laughed like a baying hound. "You will? But you already have, my son. By coming here. For, you see, I have waited for one such just as you. Bored? Aye, that I have been. And indeed you are the cure, but it's a cure we'll apply my way. You'd slay me, would you? Do you really think so? Oh, I've my share of fighting to come, but not with you. What? I should fight with my own son? Never! No, I'll go forth and fight and kill like none before me! And I'll lust and love like twenty men, and none shall say me nay! And I'll do it to all the ends of the earth, to such excess that my name shall live forever, or be stricken forever from man's history! For what else can I do with passions such as mine, a creature such as I am, condemned to life?"
"You speak in riddles," Thago spat on the floor. "You're a madman, crazed by your lonely life up here with nothing but wolves for company. I can't see why the Vlad fears you, one madman on his own. But I can see why he'd want you dead. You are---loathsome! A blemish on mankind. Misshapen, split-tongued, insane; death's the best thing for you. Or locked up where natural men won't have to lay eyes upon you!"
The Benedek drew back a little, almost as if he were shocked at Thago's vehemence. He hung his lantern from a bracket, seated himself on a stone bench. "Natural men, did you say? Dare you talk to me of nature? Ah, but there's more in nature than meets the eye, my son! Indeed there is. And you think that I'm unnatural, eh? Well, the Wamphyri are rare, be informed, but so is the saber-tooth. Why, I haven't seen a mountain cat with teeth like scythes in----three hundred years! Maybe they are no more. Maybe men have hunted them down to the last. Aye, and it may be that one day the Wamphyri shall be no more. But if that day should ever come, believe me it shall not be the fault of Thrulk Benedek. No, and it shall not be yours."
"More---riddles---meaningless mouthings----madness!" Thago spat the words out. He was helpless and he knew it. If this monstrous being wanted him dead, then he was as good as dead. And it was no use to reason with a madman. Where is the reason in a madman? Better to insult him face to face, enrage him and get it over with . It would be no pleasant thing to hang here and rot, and watch maggots crawling in the flesh of men he'd once called his comrades.
"Are you finished?" the Benedek asked in his deepest voice. "Best to be done now with all hurtful ranting, for I've much to tell you, much to show you, great knowledge and even greater skills to impart. I'm weary of this place, you see, but it needs a keeper. When I go out into the world, someone must stay here to keep this place for me. Someone strong as myself. It is my place and these are my mountains, my lands. One day I may wish to return. When I do, then I shall find a Benedek here. Which is why I call you my son. Here and now I adopt you, Thago of Wallachia. Henceforth, you are Thago Benedek. I hive you my name, and I give you my banner: Satan's head! Oh, I know these honors tower above you; I know you do not yet have my strength. But I shall give it to you! I shall bestow upon you the greatest honor, a magnificent mystery. And when you become Wamphyri, then..."
"Your name?" Thago growled. "I don't want your name. I spit on your name!" He shook his head wildly. "As for your device: I've a banner of my own."
"Ah?" the creature stood up, flowed closer. "And what are your signs."
"A bat of the Wallachian plain," Thago answered, "astride the Christian dragon."
The Benedek's bottom jaw fell open. "But that is most propitious. A bat, you say? Excellent! And riding the dragon of the Christians? Better still! And now a third device: let Satan himself surmount both!"
"I don't need your infernal master." Thago shook his head and scowled.
The Benedek smiled a slow, sinister smile. "Oh, but you will, you will." Then he laughed out loud. "Aye, and I shall avail myself of your symbols. When I go out across the world I shall fly Satan, bat, and dragon all three. There, see how I honor you! Henceforth we carry the same banner."
Thago narrowed his eyes. "Thrulk Benedek, you play with me as a cat plays with a mouse. Why? You call me your son, offer me your name, your sigils. Yet here I hang in chains, with one friend dead and another dying at my feet. Say it now, you are a madman and I'm your next victim. Is this not so?"
The other shook his wolfish head. "So little faith," he rumbled, almost sadly. "But we shall see, we shall see. Now tell me, what do you know of the Wamphyri?"
"I know nothing. They're a legend, a myth. Freakish men who hide in remote places and spring out on peasants and little children to scare them. Occasionally dangerous murderers, vampires who suck blood in the night and swear it gives them power. 'Viesczy,' to the Russian peasant; 'Obour,' to the Bulgar; 'Vrykoulakas' in Greekland. They are names which demented men attach to themselves. But there is something common to them in all tongues: they are liars and madmen!"
"You do not believe? You have looked upon me, seen the wolves which I command, the terror I excite in the hearts of the Vlad and his priests, yet still you do not believe?"
"I've said it before and I'll say it again," Thago gave his chains a last, frustrated jerk. "The men I've killed have all stayed dead! No, I do not believe."
The other gazed at his prisoner with burning eyes. "That is the difference between us," he said. "For the men I kill, if it pleases me to kill them in a certain way, do not stay dead. They become undead----" He stood up, stepped flowingly close. His upper lip curled back at one side, displayed a downward curving fang like a needle-sharp tusk. Thago looked away, avoided the man's breath, which was like poison. And suddenly the Wallach felt weak, hungry, thirsty. He was sure he could sleep for a week.
"How long have I been here?" he asked.
"Four days." The Benedek began to pace back and forth. "Four nights gone you climbed the narrow way. Your friends were unfortunate, as you recall. I fed you, gave you wine; alas, you found my wine a little strong! Then, while you, er, rested, my familiar creatures took me to the fallen ones where they lay. Faithful old Xylon, he was dead. Likewise your scrawny Wallach comrade, broken by sharp boulders. My children wanted them for themselves, but I had another use for them and so had them dragged here. This one---" he nudged the blocky Wallach with a booted foot "---he lived. He had fallen on Xylon! He was a little broken, but alive. I could see he wouldn't last till morning, and I needed him, if only to prove a point. And so, like the 'myth,' the legend,' I fed upon him. I drank from I'm, and in return gave him something back; I took of his blood, and gave a little of mine. He died. Three days and nights are passed by; that which I gave him worked in him and a certain joining has taken place. Also, a healing. His broken parts are being mended. He shall soon rise up as one of the Wamphyri, to be counted in the narrow ranks of the Gray Skulls, but ever in thrall to me! He is undead!" The Benedek paused.
"Mad dog!" Thago accused again, but with something less than conviction. For the Benedek had spoken of these nightmares so easily, with no obvious effort at contrivance. He could not be what he claimed to be---no, of course not---but surely he might believe that he was.
The Benedek, if he heard Thago's renewed accusation of madness, ignored or refused to acknowledge it. " 'Unnatural,' you called me," he said. "Which is to claim that you yourself know something of nature. Am I correct? Do you understand life, the 'nature' of living, growing things?"
"My fathers were farmers, aye," Thago grunted. "I've seen things grow."
"Good! Then you'll know that there are certain principles, and that sometimes they may seem illogical. Now let me test you. How say you: if man has a tree of favorite apples, and he fears the tree might die, how may he reproduce it and retain the flavor of the fruit?"
"Riddles/"
"Indulge me, pray."
Thago shrugged. "Two ways: by seed and by cutting. Plant an apple, and it will grow into a tree. But for the true, original taste, take cuttings and nurture them. It is obvious: what are cuttings but continuations of the old tree?"
"Obvious?" the Benedek raised his eyebrows. "To you, maybe. But it would seem obvious to me---and to most men who are not farmers----that the seed should give the real taste. For what is the seed but the egg of the tree, eh? Still, you are of course right, the cutting gives the true taste. As for a tree grown from seed: why, it is spawned of the pollens of trees grown from seed: why, it is spawned of the pollens of trees other than the original! How then may its fruit be the same? 'Obvious'---to a tree-grower."
"Where does this all lead?" Thago was surer than ever of the Benedek's madness.
"In the Wamphyri," the castle's master gazed full upon him," " 'nature' requires no outside intervention, no foreign pollens. Even the tree needs a mate with which to reproduce, but the Wamphyri do not. All we need is----a host."
"Host?" Thago frowned, felt a sudden tremor in his great legs---the dampness of the walls, stiffening more cramps into his limbs.
"Now tell me," Thrulk went on, "what do you know of fishing?"
"Eh? Fishing? I was a farmer's son, and now I'm a warrior. What would I know of fishing?"
Thrulk continued without answering him: "In the Bulgars and in Turkey-land, fisherman fished in the Greek Sea. For years without number they suffered a plague of starfish, in such quantities that they ruined the fishing and their great weight broke the nets. And the policy of the fishermen was this: they would cut up and kill any starfish they hauled in, and hurl it back to the fish. Alas, the true fish does not eat starfish! And worse, from every piece of starfish, a new one grows complete! And 'natural,' every year there were more. Then some wise fishermen divined the truth, and they began to keep their unwanted catches, bringing them ashore, burning them and scattering their ashes in the olive groves. Lo and behold, the plague dwindled away, the fish returned, the olives grew black and juicy."335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZKyG8X96gJ
A nervous tick jumped in Thago's shoulder: the strain of hanging so long in chains, obviously. 'Now you tell me," he answered, "what starfish have to do with you and I?"
"With you? Nothing. Not yet. But with the Wamphyri....why, 'nature' has granted us the same boon! How may you cut down an enemy if each lopped portion sprouts a new body, eh?" Thrulk grinned through the yellow bone mesh of his teeth. "And how may any mere man kill a vampire? Now see why I liked you so well, my son. For who but a hero would come up here to destroy the indestructible?"
In the eye of Thago's memory, he heard again the words of a certain contact in the Kievian Vlad's court: They put stakes through their hearts and cut off their heads....better still, they break them entirely and burn all the pieces----even a small part of a vampire may grow whole again in the body of an unwary man.....like a leech, but on the inside!
"In the bed of the forest," Thrulk broke into his morbid thoughts, "grow many vines. They seek the light, and climb great trees to reach the fresh, free air. Some 'foolish' vines, so to speak,' may even grow so thickly as to kill their trees and bring them crashing down; and so destroy themselves. You've seen that, I'm sure. But others just use the great trunks of their hosts; they share the earth and the air and the light between them; they live out their lives together. Indeed some vines are beneficial to their host trees. Ah! But then comes the drought. The trees wither, blacken, crumble, and the forest is no more. But down in the fertile earth the vines live on, waiting. Aye, and when more trees grow to fifty, in a hundred years, back come the vines to climb again towards the light. Who's the stronger; the tree for his girth and sturdy branches, or the slender, insubstantial vine for his patience? If patience is a virtue, Thago of Wallachia, then the Wamphyri are virtuous as all the ages...."
"Trees, fishes, vines." Thago shook his head. "You rave, Thrulk Benedek!"
"All of these things I've told you," the other was undeterred, "you will understand....eventually. But before you can start to understand, first you have to believe in me. In what I am."
"I'll never....." Thago began, only to be cut short.
"Oh, but you will!" the Benedek hissed, his awful tongue lashing in the cave of his mouth. "Now listen: I have willed my egg. I have brought it on and it is forming even now. Each of the Wamphyri has but one egg, one seed, in a lifetime; one chance to recreate the true fruit; one opportunity to carve his changeling 'nature' into the living being of another. You are the host I have chosen for my egg."
"Your egg?" Thago wrinkled his nose, scowled, drew back as far as his chains would allow. "Your seed? You are beyond help, Thrulk."
"Alas," said the other, lip curling and great nostrils flaring, "but you are the one who is beyond help!" HIs cloak belled as he flowed towards the broken body of old Xylon. He hoisted the gypsy's corpse upright in one hand, like a bundle of rags, perched it, head stiffly lolling, in a niche in the stone wall. "We have no sex as such," he said, glaring across the cell at Thago. "Only the sex of our hosts. Ah! But we multiply their zest a hundred times! We have no lust except theirs, which we double and redouble. We may, we do, drive them to excesses---in all of their passions---but we heal their wounds, too, when the excess is too great for human flesh and blood to endure. And with long, long years, even centuries, so man and vampire grow into one being. They become inseparable, except under extreme duress. I, who was a man, have now reached just such a maturity. So shall you, in maybe a thousand years."
Once again, futilely, Thago tugged at his chains. Impossible to break or even strain them. He could put a thumb through each link!
"About the Wamphyri," Thrulk continued. "Just as there are in the common world widely differing kinds of the same basic creature----owl and gull and sparrow, fox and hound and wolf---so are there varying Wamphyri states and conditions. For example: we talked about taking cuttings from an apple tree. Yes, it might be easier if you think of it that way."
He stooped, dragged the unconscious, twitching body of the squat Wallach away from the area of torn up flags, tossed old Xylon's corpse down upon the black soil. Then he tore open the old man's ragged shirt, and glanced up from where he knelt into Thago's mystified eyes. "Is there sufficient light, my son? Can you see?"
"I see a madman clearly enough," Thago gave a brusque nod.
The Benedek returned his nod, and again he smiled his hideous smile, the ivory of his teeth gleaming in lantern light. "Then see---this!" he hissed.
Kneeling beside old Xylon's crumpled form, he extended a forefinger towards the gypsy's naked chest. Thago watched. Thrulk's forearm stuck out free of his robe. Whatever the Benedek was up to, there could be no trickery, no sleight of hand here.
Thrulk's nails were long and sharply pointed at the end of his even, slender fingers. Thago saw the quick of the pointed finger turn red and start to drip blood. The pink nail cracked open like the brittle shell of a nut, flapped loosely like a trapdoor on a finger bloating and pulsating. Blue and gray-green veins stood out in that member, writhing under the skin; the raw rip tip visibly lengthened, extending itself towards the dead gypsy's cold gray flesh.
The pulsating digit was no longer a finger as such: it was a pseudopod of unflesh, a throbbing rod of living matter, a stiff snake shorn of its skin. Now twice, now three times its former length, it vibrated down at an angle to within inches of its target, which appeared to be the dead man's heart. And all of this Thago watched with bulging eyes, bated breath and gaping mouth.
And until this moment Thago hadn't really known fear, but now he did. Thago the Wallach---warlord of however small and ragged an army, humorless, merciless killer of the Pechenegi---utterly fearless Thago, until now. Until now he'd not met a creature he feared. In the hunt, wild boar in the forests, which had wounded men so badly as to kill them, were "piglets" to him. In the challenge: let any man only dare fling down his gauntlet, Thago would fight him any way he chose. All knew it, and none chose! And in battle: he led from the front, stood at the head of the charge, could only ever be found in the thick of the fighting. Fear? It was a word without meaning. Fear of what? When he had ridden out to battle, he'd known each day might be his last. That had not deterred him. So black was his hatred of the invaders, of all enemies, that it simply engulfed fear and put it down. No creature, or man, or threat of any device of men had ever unmanned him since----oh, before he could remember; since he was as child, if ever he'd been one. But Thrulk Benedek was something other than all of these. Torture could only maim and must kill in the end, and there's no pain after death, but what the Benedek threatened seemed an eternity of hell. Mere moments ago it'd been a strange fantasy, the dreams of a madman, but now....?
Unable to tear his eyes away, Thago groaned and grew pale at the sight of that which followed.
"A cutting, aye," Thrulk's voice was low, trembling with dark passions, "to be nurtured in flesh already tainted and falling into decay. The lowest form of Wamphyri existence, it'll come to nothing so long as it has no living host. But it will live, devour, grow strong---and hide! When there is nothing left of Xylon it will hide in the earth and wait. Like the vine, waiting for a tree. The cut-off leg of a starfish, which does not die but waits to grow a new body---except this thing I make waits to inhabit one! Mindless, unthinking, it will be a thing of the most primitive instincts. But it can nevertheless outlast the ages. Until some unwary man finds it, and it finds him...."
His incredible, bloody, throbbing forefinger touched Xylon's flesh---and leprous white rootlets sprang forth, slid like worms in earth into the gypsy's chest! Small flaps of fretted skin were laid back; the pseudopod developed tiny glistening teeth of its own; it began to gnaw its way inside. Thago would have looked away but he couldn't. Thrulk's "finger" broke off with a soft ripping sound and quickly burrowed its way out sight inside the corpse.
Thrulk held up his hand. The severed member was shrinking back into him, pseudoflesh melting into his flesh. The cancerous colors went out of it; it assumed a more normal shape; the old fingernail fell to the floor, and right before Thago's eyes a new, pink shell started to form.
"Well then, my hero son who came to kill me," Thrulk slowly stood up and held out his hand toward Thago's bloodless face. "And could you have killed this?"
Thago drew back his face, head and body, tried to cringe into the very stone to avoid that pointing finger. But Thrulk merely laughed. "What? You think that I would...? But no, no, not you, my son. Oh, I could, be sure! And forever you'd be in thrall to me. But that's the second state of the Wamphyri and not worthy of you. No, for I hold you in the very highest esteem. Why, you shall have my very egg!"
Thago tried to find words but his throat lacked moisture, was dry as a desert. Thrulk laughed again and drew back that threatening hand of his. He turned away and stepped to where the squat Wallach lay humped on the stone flags, gurglingly breathing, face down in a dusty corner. "He is in that second state," Thago's tormenter explained. "I took from him and gave him something back. Flesh of my flesh is in him now, healing him, changing him. His tears and broken bones will men and he will live---for as long as I will it. But he will always be slave to me, to do my bidding, obey my every command. You see, he is vampire, but without vampire mind. The mind comes only from the egg and he is not grown from a seed but is merely---a cutting. When he wakes, which will be soon, then you will understand."
"Understand?" Thago found his voice, however cracked. "But how can I understand? Why should I want to understand? You are a monster, I understand that! Xylon is dead, and yet you---you did that to him! Why? Nothing can live in him now but maggots."
Thrulk shook his head. "No, his flesh is like fertile soil....or the fertile sea. Think of the starfish."
"You will grow another----another you? Inside of him?" Thago was very nearly gibbering now.
"It will consume him," Thrulk answered. "But another me---no. I have mind. It will not have mind. Xylon cannot be a host for his mind is dead, do you see? He is food, nothing else. When it grows it will not be like me. Only like----what you saw." He held up his pale, newly formed index finger.
"And the other?" Thago managed to nod in the direction of the man---that which had been a man---snorting and gasping in the corner.
"When I took him he was alive," said Thrulk. "HIs mind was alive. What I gave him is now growing in his body and his mind. Oh, he died, but only to make way for the life of the Wamphyri. Which is not life but undeath. He will not return to true life but to undeath."
"Madness!" Thago moaned.
"As for this one..." The Benedek stepped into shadows on the far side of the cell, where the light did not quite reach. The legs and one arm of Thago's second Wallach comrade protruded from the darkness, until Thrulk dragged all of him into view. "This one will be food for both of them. Until the mindless one hides himself away, and the other takes up his duties as your servant her."
"My servant?" Thago was bewildered. "Here?"
"Do you hear nothing that I say?" Thrulk's turn to scowl. For more than two hundred years I have cared for myself, protected myself, stayed alone and lonely in a world expending, changing, full of new wonders. This I have done for my seed, which is now ready to be passed on, passed down, to you. You will stay behind and keep this place, these lands, this 'legend' of the Benedek alive. But I shall go out amongst men and revel! There are ways to be won, honors to be earned, history in the making. Aye, and there are women to be spoiled!"
"Honors, you?" Thago had regained something of his former nerve. I doubt it. And for a creature 'alone and lonely,' you seem to know a great deal of what is passing in the world."
Thrulk smiled his ghastliest smile. "Another secret art of the Wamphyri," he chuckled obscenely in his throat. "One of several. Beguilement is another---which you saw at work between myself and Xylon, binding his mind to mine so that we could talk to each other over great distances---and then there is the art of the necromancer."
Necromancy! Thago had heard of that. The eastern barbarians had their magicians, who could open the bellies of dead men to read their lives' secret in their smoking guts.
"Necromancy," Thrulk nodded, seeing the look in Thago's eyes, "aye. I shall teach it to you soon. It has permitted me to conform my choice of yourself as a future vessel of the Wamphyri. For those who know better of you and your deeds, your strengths and weaknesses, your travels and adventures, than a former colleague, eh?" He stopped and effortlessly flopped the body of the thin Wallach over onto its back. And Thago saw what had been done. No wolf pack had done this, for nothing was eaten.
The thin, hunched Wallach----an aggressive man in life, who had always gone with his chin thrust forward----seemed even thinner now. His trunk had been laid open from groin to gullet, with all of his pipes and organs loose and flopping, and the heart in particular hanging by a thread, literally torn out. Thago's sword had gutted men as thoroughly as this, and it had meant nothing. But by the Benedek's own account, this man had already been dead. And his enormous wound was not the work of a sword.....
Thago shuddered, turned his eyes away from the mutilated corpse and inadvertently found Thrulk's hands. The monster's nails were as sharp as knives. Worse (Thago felt dizzy, even faint), his teeth were like knives.
"Why?" The word left Thago's lips as a whisper.
"Have I not said why?" Thrulk was growing impatient. "I wanted to know about you. In life he was your friend. You were in his blood, his lungs, his heart. In death he was loyal, too, for he would not give up his secrets easily. See how loose are his innards. Ah! How I teased them, to wrest their secrets from him."
All the strength went out of Thago's legs and he fell in his chain s like a man crucified. "If I'm to die, kill me now," he gasped. "Have done with it."
Thrulk flowed closer, closer, stood not an arm's length away. The first state of being---the prime condition of the Wamphyri---does not require death. You may think that you are dying, when first the seed puts its rootlets into your brain and sends them groping along the marrow of your spine, but you will not die. After that...." he shrugged. "The metamorphosis may be laboriously slow or lightning swift, one can never tell." But of one thing be sure, it will happen."
Thago's blood surged one final time in his veins. He could still die a man. "Then if you'll not give me a clean death, I'll give myself one!" He gritted his teeth and wrenched on his manacles until the blood flowed freely from his wrists; and still he jerked on the irons, deepening his wounds. Thrulk's long drawn-out hisssss stopped him. He looked up from his grisly work of self-destruction into---into the pit, the abyss itself.
Hideous face working yet more hideously, features literally writhing in a torment of passion, the Benedek was so close as to be the merest breath away. His long jaws opened and a scarlet snake flickered in the darkness behind teeth which had turned to daggers in his mouth. "You dare show me your book? The hot blood of youth, the blood which is the life?" His throat convulsed in a sudden spasm and Thago thought he was going to be ill, but he was not. Instead he clutched at his throat, gurgled chokingly, staggered a little. When he had regained control, he said: "Ah, Thago! But now, ready or not, you have brought on that which cannot be reversed. It is my time, and yours. The time of the egg, the seed. See! See!"
He opened his great jaws until his mouth was like a cavern, and his forked, flickering tongue bent backwards like a hook into his throat. And like a hook it caught something and dragged it into sight.
Gasping, again Thago drew down into himself. He saw the vampire seed there in the fork of Thrulk's tongue: a translucent, silver-gray droplet shining like a pearl, trembling in the last seconds before----before its seeding?335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6iJREAeQ1x
"No!" Thago hoarsely denied the horror. But it would not be denied. He looked in Thrulk's eyes for some hint of what was coming, but that was a terrible mistake. Beguilement and hypnotism were the Benedek's greatest accomplishment. The vampire's eyes were yellow as gold, huge and growing bigger moment by moment.335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0BEBlZ9eBy
Ah, my son, those eyes seemed to say, come, a kiss for your father.335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWRo5p1p1oV
Then----335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡc2vBpYCk4I
The pearly droplet turned scarlet, and Thrulk's mouth fastened on Thago's own, which stood open in a scream that might last forever.......335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNWm2UE316E
Molly Stewart's pause had lasted for several seconds, but still Moradian and Picardi sat their, wrapped in their blankets and the horror of her story.335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡERTWsq3PZv
"That is the most...." Moradian started.335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTflyZIXJyf
Almost simultaneously, Picardi said, "I've never in my life heard...."335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5pBmHVUgtX
We have to stop there, Stewart broke in on both of them, something of urgency in her telepathic voice. My daughter is about to be difficult; she's going to wake up for her feed.335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvOwviICzHC
"Two minds in one body," Picardi mused, still awed by what he'd heard. "I mean, I'm talking about you, Molly. In a way you're not unlike...."335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn2KEvzaqfh
Don't say it, Stewart cut him off a second time. There's no way I'm like that! Not even remotely. But listen, I have to hurry. Do you have anything to tell me?335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5LvYXVKXPQ
Moradian got a grip on his rioting thoughts, forced himself back to earth, to the present. "We're meeting Morozov tomorrow," he said. "But I'm annoyed. This was supposed to be exclusive, entirely an inter-branch exchange....a bit of ESP détente, if you like----but there's at least one KGB goon in on it too."335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhn4N7kRIS0
How do you know?335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡraLeu8frjZ
"We've got a minder on the job----but he's strictly in the background. Their man comes close up."335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6wClAGygZM
The Stewart apparition seemed puzzled. That wouldn't have happened in Semnyonovich's time. He hated them! And frankly, I can't see it happening now. There's no meeting ground between Andropov's sort of mind-control and ours. And when I say "ours" I include the Russian outfit. Don't let it develop into a shouting match, Harry. You have to work with Morozov. Offer your help.335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡshIAaz99IK
Moradian frowned. "To do what?"335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡowQr6FXqwO
He has ground to clear. You know at least one of the sites. You can help him do it.335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNwdaFcbMG2
"Ground to clear?" Moradian got up off his bed. Hugging his blanket to him, he stepped toward the manifestation. "Molly, we still have our own ground to clear in England! While I'm out here in Italy, Dragos Matei is still free-wheeling over there! I'm anxious about it. I keep getting this urge to turn my lot loose on him and....335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKUNq0saPpZ
NO! Stewart was alarmed. Not until we know everything there is to know. You daren't risk it. Right now he's at the center of a very small nest, but if he wanted to he could spread this thing like a plague!335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6lYb7cGb7B
Moradian knew she was right. "Okay," he said, "but...."335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIzzLgiJDx3
Can't stay, the other broke in. The pull is too strong. She's waking, gathering her faculties, and she seems to include me as one of them. Her neon-etched image began to shimmer, its blue glow pulsing. 335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGtJ4Q396Mo
"Molly, what 'ground' were you talking about, anyway?"335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4LqzGs8Mc8
The old Thing in the ground. Stewart came and went like a distorted radio signal. The hologram child superimposed over her midriff was visibly stirring and stretching.335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoAjoZ77SGP
Moradian thought: we've had this talk before! "You said we know at least one of the sites. Sites? You mean Thago's tomb? But he's dead, surely?335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnvlCnUFjhb
The cruciform hills....starfish....vines....creepers in the earth, hiding.....335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIauwVDqZaL
Moradian drew air in a gasp. "He's still there?"335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡORmTgG1byn
Stewart nodded, changed her mind and shook her head. She tried to speak; her outline wavered and collapsed; she vanished in a scattering of brilliant blue motes. For a moment Moradian thought his mind still remained, but it was only Alan Picardi whispering: "No, not Thago. He's not there. Not him, but what he left behind!"335Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHparHNUzFW
