That same Saturday at noon, Dragos Matei decided he'd had enough of his "uncle" John Williams. Rather, he decided that the time had come to use Williams in his quest for knowledge. His specific aim was simple: he desired to know how a vampire could be killed, how one of undead might be made more surely dead---forever, never to return---and in this way learn how best to protect himself from any such demise.429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCnUa2SPXOv
They could die by fire, of course, that much he knew already. But what about the other methods? Those methods specified in the so-called "fictions." John would provide the ideal test material. Better far than the Other, which was more a dull tumor than a healthy intelligence.
When a vampire comes back from the dead, the thought suddenly struck Dragos, he comes back stronger!
He had put something into Zoe, Cornelia and Penelope, something of himself. But he had not killed them. Now they were his. John he'd killed, or at least caused to die, and John was not his. He obeyed him, yes, or had until now. But for how much longer? Now that John was over the initial shock, he was growing strong. And hungry!
Twice during the night, striving restlessly for sleep, Dragos had sprung awake feeling oppressed, menaced. And twice he'd sensed Williams's skulking, furtive movements down in the cellars. The man prowled down there in the darkness, his body aching, thoughts seething. And a monstrous thirst was on him.
He'd taken from the woman, from the veins of his own wife, but her blood had not been much to his taste. Oh, blood's blood---it would sustain him----but it wasn't the blood he craved. That blood flowed only in Dragos. And Dragos knew it. Which was the other reason he'd determined to kill John. He'd kill him before he himself was killed (for sooner or later John would surely try it), and before John could drain Penelope; oh yes, for if not there'd soon be two of them to deal with! It was like a plague, and Dragos thrilled to the thought that he was the source, the carrier.
And then there was a third reason why Williams must die. Somewhere out there---in the sunlight, in the woods and fields, lanes and villages---somewhere there were people who watched the house even now. Dragos's senses, his vampire powers, were weaker by day, but still he could feel the presence of the silent watchers. They were there, and he feared them. A little.
That man last night, for example. Dragos had sent Vlad to fetch him, but Vlad had failed. Who had he been, that man? And why did he watch? Maybe John's return had not gone entirely unnoticed. Was it possible that someone had seen him emerge from his grave? No, Dragos doubted that; the police, in their innocence, would have mentioned it. Or then again, maybe the police had not been satisfied with his reaction that day they came here with their report of vile grave-robbing.
And John with his bloodlust: what if he should break out one night? He was a vampire now, John, and growing stronger. How long could Vlad contain him? No, better far if John died. Gone without a trace, leaving no shred of evidence, no jot of proof of the evil at work here. He would die a vampire's death this time, from which there'd be no returning.
At the rear of the house, a great stone chimney rose from earth to sky, buttressed at the bottom and flaring up through the gable end. Its source was a huge iron furnace in the cellars, a relic of older generations. Though the house was centrally heated now, a heap of dusty coke still lay in the furnace room down there, nesting place for mice and spiders. Twice, when the winters had been brutally cold, Dragos had stoked up the fire and watched the iron flue glow red where its fat cylindrical conduit joined the furnace to the chimney's firebrick base. It had served to heat the back of the house admirably. Now he would go down there and sweat a little and fire the thing up again, albeit for a different purpose. But his sweat would be well worth the effort.
There was a trapdoor under one of the back rooms which, since John had been down there, Dragos had kept boarded up. That left only the entrance from the side of a house, where Vlad kept his vigil as usual. Dragos took a steak, thick and bloody, from the kitchen out to the dog where he guarded the cellars, left him growling and tearing at this food while he descended the narrow steps down one side of the ramp and shoved open the door.
Then, as he stepped into darkness---he had maybe thirty seconds' warning of what was waiting for him. It was enough.
John Williams's mind was a bubbling pit of crimson hatred. Many emotions were trapped in there, controlled until that last half-second, lust, self-loathing, a hunger beyond human hunger, which was so intense it was in fact an emotion, disgust, jealousy so strong it burned, but mainly hatred. For Dragos. And in the moment before John struck, the bile of his mind touched Dragos's like acid, so that he cried out as he avoided the blow in the dark.
For darkness had been Dragos's element long before John discovered it, a fact which the new, half-mad vampire had failed to take into account. Dragos saw him crouching behind the door, saw the arc of the mattock as it swung towards him. He ducked under the rushing, rusty, vicious head of the took, came up inside the circle of the swing and closed fingers like steel on John's throat. At the same time, with his free hand, he wrenched the mattock away from him and hurled it aside, and drove his knee repeatedly into John's groin.
For any ordinary man the fight would have been over then and there, but John Williams was no longer ordinary, and no longer just a man. Forced to his knees as Dragos's fingers tightened on his throat, he glared back at the youth through eyes like coals under a bellows' blast. A vampire, his gray undead flesh shrugged off the pain, found strength to fight back. His legs straightened against all Dragos's weight, and he smashed at Dragos's forearm to break his grip. Astonished, the youth found himself tossed back, saw the other springing at him to rip his throat out.
And again Dragos knew fear, for he saw now that his "uncle" was almost as strong as he himself. He feinted before John's charge, thrust him sprawling, snatched up the mattock from the stone floor. He hefted the tool murderously in his powerful hands, advancing on John when he came surging to his feet. At which moment Cornelia----Dragos's dear "Auntie" Cornelia----came ghosting and gibbering out of the shadows and the darkness to throw herself between Dragos and her undead husband.
"Oh, Dragos!" she wailed. "Dragos, no. Please don't kill him! Not---again!" Naked and grimy she crouched there, her eyes full of animalistic pleading, her hair wild. Dragos thrust her aside just as John made his second spring.
"John," he grated through clenched teeth, "that's twice you've gone for me with this. Now let's see how you like it!"
Flakes of rust splintered from the sharp point of the mattock as it slammed into John's forehead and punched a neat hole one and a half inches square just above the triangle formed of eyes and nose. The sheer force of the blow checked John's forward impetus, snapping him upright like a puppet on a string.
"Gak!" he said, as his eyes filled with blood and his nose spurted crimson. His arms rose up at 45-degrees, his hands fluttering as if he'd been plugged into a live light socket. "Gug-ak-arrrggghhh!" he gurgled. Then his bottom jaw fell open and he toppled backwards like a felled tree, crashing to the floor on his back, mattock still fixed firmly in his head.
Cornelia came scrambling, threw herself down wailing on top of John's twitching body. She was in thrall to Dragos but John had been her husband. What he had become was Dragos's fault, not his own. "John, oh John!" she wailed. "Oh, my poor dear John!"
"Get off him!" Dragos spat. "Help me!"
They dragged John by his ankles to the furnace room, the mattock's handle clattering on the uneven floor. In front of the cold furnace, Dragos put a foot on the vampire's throat and wrenched the mattock free of his head. Blood and grayish-yellow pulp welled up to fill the crater in his forehead and overflow the rim, but his eyes stayed open, his hands continued to flutter, and one heel thumped the floor in a continuous series of galvanic spasms.
"He'll die, he'll die!" Cornelia wrung her grimy hands, sobbed and cradled John's shattered head.
"No, he won't." Dragos worked to get the furnace going. "That's just it, you stupid creature. He can' t die---not like that, anyway. What's in him will heal him. It's working on his crushed brain even now. He could be as good as new, maybe even better--except that's something I can't have!"
The fire was set. Dragos struck a match, held it to paper, opened the iron draught grid squealingly so that the flames would draw, and closed the furnace door. As he turned from the furnace, he heard Cornelia gasp: "John?"
The hammering of John's spastic heel on the stone floor had been absent for some time...
Dragos spun on his heel....and the Thing he had made crashed into him and forced him back against the furnace door! As of yet there was no heat, but the wind was driven from Dragos's lungs in a huge gasp. He drew air painfully, held the other at bay. John's feral eyes glared through blood and mucus from the hole in his head; his teeth, like little daggers, chomped in his twisted face; his hands flopped against Dragos like blind things. His ruptured brain was functioning, barely, but already the vampire in him was mending his wound. And his hatred was as strong as ever.
Dragos gathered his strength, hurled John from him. Unable to control the impaired functions of his limbs, he crashed down on the pile of coke. Before he could rise again Dragos glared all around in the gloom, moved to take up the mattock.
"John! John!" Cornelia went to intercede.
"Get out of my way!" He thrust her aside.
Ignoring John where he crawled after him, hooked hands reaching, he loped to the arched entrance where the stone walls were massively thick. And there without pause he swung the shaft of the mattock against the stonework. The hardwood shaft broke, splintering diagonally across its grain, and the rusty head went clattering into darkness. Dragos's hands were left numb where they clutched a near-perfect stake: 18 inches of hardwood, narrowing down to an uneven but deadly sharp point.
Well, it had been his intention to discover the full range of a vampire's vitality, hadn't it?
John had somehow managed to lurch to his feet. Eyes sulphurous in the semi-darkness, he came after Dragos like some demonic robot.
Dragos glanced at the floor. Here there were thick stone paving slabs, pushed up a little in places by some force from below. The Other, of course, in its mindless burrowing. John was closer, stumbling spastically, mouthing thick, phlegmy noises unrecognizable as words. Dragos waited until the crippled vampire took another lurching pace towards him, then stepped forward and slammed the stake into John's chest slightly left of center.
The hardwood point ripped through John's linen burial shift and grated between his ribs, shedding splinters as it went. It skewered his heart and almost severed it. John gasped like a speared fish, fumbled at the stake with useless hands. There was no way he was going to pull it out. Dragos watched him staggering there---watching in disbelief, astonishment, almost in admiration---and wondered: would it be this hard for someone to kill me? He supposed so. After all, John had tried hard enough.
Then he kicked John's jelly legs out from under him and went in search of the broken mattock head. A moment later and he returned, and still John squirmed and gagged and wrestled with the stake in his chest. Dragos grabbed one of his twitching legs, dragged him to a spot where black soil showed between the broken jointing of displaced flags. He got down on his knees beside him, used the mattock head as a hammer to drive the stake right through him and into the floor. Finally, jammed between two of the flags, the stake would go no further. John was pinned like some exotic beetle on a board. Only two or three inches of the stake stood up from his chest, but there was little blood to be seen. His eyes were still open, wide as doors, and there was white froth on his lips, but no more movement in him.
Dragos stood up, wiped his hands down his trousers, went in search of Cornelia. He found her crouching in a dark corner, whimpering and shivering, looking for all the world like a discarded doll. He dragged her to the furnace room and pointed to a shovel. "Stoke that fire," he ordered. "I want it hotter than hell, and if you don't know how hot hell is, then allow me to show you! I want that fire glowing red. And whatever else you do, don't go near John. Leave him completely alone. Do you understand?"
She nodded, whimpered, shrank back away from him. "I'll be back," he told her, leaving her there by the furnace, which was now just beginning to roar.
On his way out, Dragos spoke to Vlad, "Stay, watch." Then he went back into the house. Upstairs, passing his mother's room, he heard her moving. He looked in. Adelina was pacing the floor wringing her hands and sobbing. She saw him.
"Dragos?" Her voice was as tremor. "Oh, Dragos, what's to become of you? And what's to become of me?"
"What was to become has become," he answered coldly, unemotionally. "Can I still trust you, Adelina?"
"I---I don't know if I trust myself," she eventually answered.
"Mother,"----he used the term without thinking----"do you want to be like John?"
"Oh, God! Dragos, please don't say...."
"Because if you do," he stopped her, "it can be arranged. Just remember that."
He left her and went to his own room. Penelope heard him coming. She gasped at the sound of his quiet, even footfalls and threw herself on his bed. As he came in through the door she lifted her dress up to display the lower half of her body. She was naked under the dress. He saw her, the way her face worked: trying to smile through a mask of white terror. It was as if someone had thrown powdered chal on the face of a clown.
"Cover yourself, slut!" he said.
"I thought you liked me like this!" she cried. "Oh, Dragos, don't punish me. Please don't hurt me!" She watched him stride to a chest of drawers, take out a key and unlock the top drawer. When he turned towards her he was grinning his sick grin, and in his hands he weighed a shining new cleaver, a horrible thing with a seven-inch blade that weighed as much as a small axe.
"Dragos!" Penelope gasped, her mouth dry as sawdust. She slid off the bed and shrank away from him. "Dragos, I...."
He shook his head, laughing a weird, bubbling laugh. Then his face turned blank again. "No," he told her, "it's not for you. You're safe as long as you're----useful to me. And you are useful. I'd have to pay a lot to find one as sweet and innocent as you. And even then---like all women---she wouldn't be worth it." He walked out and closed the door noiselessly behind him.
Downstairs, as he left the house again, Dragos noticed the column of blue smoke rising from the chimney stack at the back. He smiled to himself and nodded. Cornelia was working hard down there. But even as he studied the smoke, the fluffy September clouds parted a little and the sun struck through. Struck bright, hot, searing!
The smile twisted on Dragos's face, became a snarl. He'd left his hat indoors. Even so, the sun shouldn't burn this way. His flesh almost felt scalded! And yet, looking at his naked forearms, he could see no blisters or burns.
He guessed what it must mean: the change had speeded up in him and his last metamorphosis was beginning. Then, shrinking from the sun, gritting his teeth to keep from crying out as the pain increased, he hurried back to the cellars.
Down below Cornelia worked at the furnace. Her breasts and buttocks were shiny with sweat and streaked with grime. Dragos looked at her and marveled that this had been "a lady." As he approached, she dropped the shovel, backing away from him. He carefully put down his cleaver, so as not to dull its edge in any way, and advanced on her. The sight of her like this---wild and naked, hot and perspiring and filled with fear----had triggered his lust.
He took her on the heaped coke, filled her with himself, with the vampire thing in him, until she cried out her immeasurable horror----her unthinkable pleasure?---as his alien protoflesh surged inside her.....
Finished at last, he left her sprawling exhausted and battered on the coke and went to inspect John.
He found the Other inspecting him, too. Up from the gaps between strained flags, protoplasmic flesh had crept in doughy flaps and tendrils, binding John Williams to the floor while the Other examined him. There was no curiosity in the thing, no hatred, no fear (except maybe an instinctive fear of even the slightest degree of light) but there was hunger. Even the amoeba, which "knows" very little, knows enough to eat. And if Dragos had not returned when he did, certainly the Other would have devoured John, absorbed him. For there was no denying that he was food.
Dragos scowled at the Other's flaccid, groping pseudopods, its quivering mouth and vacuous eyes. No! He sent out the sharp thought, like a drill on the creature's nerve-endings. Leave him! Begone! And whatever else it failed to understand, definitely the Other understood Dragos.
As if searched by a torch, the pseudopods and other anomalies lashed, retracted, disappeared with squelching sounds below. It took only a second or two; but this had been only part of the Other. Dragos wondered how big it had grown now, just how much of it filled the compacted earth under the house.....
Dragos took his cleaver and got down beside John. He placed his hand on his midriff just under the stump of stake. Something at once moved convulsively in him. Dragos sensed it coiling itself like a prodded caterpillar. John might look dead, should be dead, but he wasn't. He was undead. The thing that lived in him----that which had been Dragos's, but grown now and controller of John's mind and body----merely waited. The stake alone had not been enough. But that came as no real surprise, Dragos had not been especially sure that it would be.
He took up his cleaver and wiped the shining blade on his rolled shirt sleeve. And the yellow eyes in John's gray, mutilated face moved in their blood-rimmed orbits to follow his movements. Not only was the vampire's body in John's body, but its brain was in his brain, grafted to it like a festering parasite. Good!
Dragos struck rapidly, three times: hard, chopping blows that bit into John's neck and cut through flesh and bone with perfect ease. In another moment his head rolled free of his neck.
Dragos gripped the severed head by its hair and stared into the core of the neck stump. Something green- and gray-mottled drew itself out of sight into fibrous mucus. Nothing Dragos could see looked like it should. The man-part of this thing was a mere envelope of flesh, a shell or disguise to protect the beast within. Likewise the body; when Dragos propped up the headless trunk with his knee, a sinuous something slipped quickly down into the bloody pipe of John's yawning gullet.
Perhaps in two parts the vampire would eventually die, but it wasn't dead yet. Which left only one sure way, one tried and true means of disposal. Fire.
Dragos kicked the head in the direction of the furnace. It rolled past Cornelia where she lay exhausted, barely conscious in her extremity of terror. She had seen all that Dragos had done. The head came up against the foot of the furnace, rebounded a little way and stopped. Dragos dragged the body to the furnace and threw open the door. Inside, all was an orange and yellow shimmer. Heat blasted out; a shaft of heat roared up into the flame.
Without pause Dragos picked up the head and threw it into the furnace, as far to the back as he could get it. Then he propped up John's body against the open door, and levered him shoulders first into the inferno. Last to go in were the legs and feet, which were already starting to kick. Dragos needed all his strength to control the thrashing limbs until he at last got them up over the rim of the door and slammed it shut. The door at once banged open, impelled by a raw, steaming foot. Again Dragos thrust the member inside and slammed the door, and this time he shot the bolt. For long seconds, in addition to the roaring of the fire, there came thumping vibrations from within.
In a little while, however, the noises subsided. Then there was only a long, sustained hissing. Finally only the fire's roar could be heard. Dragos stood there for long moments with his own private thoughts, before at last turning away.
By 11:00 p.m. that Saturday, Harry Moradian and Alex Picardi, Alik Morozov and Eldar Polyakov were on a scheduled Alitalia flight for Bucharest, which would arrive just after midnight.
Of the four, Morozov had spent the busiest day, arranging all the paraphernalia of entry into a Soviet satellite for the two Englishmen. He'd done this the easy way: by phoning his Second in Command at the Castillo Mikhailov----one Bogdan Bodrov, a rarely talented "deflector"---and getting him to pass the details on to his high-powered go-between on Brezhnev's staff. He had also asked that it be arranged for him to have maximum assistance, if he should need it, from the Soviet Union's "comrades" in puppet Romania. They were still an insular lot, the Romanians, and one could never be absolutely sure of their cooperation.----Thus Morozov's afternoon was taken up in making and answering calls between Liomata and Moscow, until all arrangements were in hand.
Not once through all of this did he mention the name of Makar Alexeyeva. Ordinarily he would have taken his complaint to the very top---to Brezhnev himself, as the Party Leader had ordered---but not in the present circumstances. Morozov had only Moradian's word that Alexeyeva was temporarily and not permanently detained. As long as he remained ostensibly in ignorance of the KGB agent and his affairs, then all would be well. And if indeed Alexeyeva were safe and merely (for the time being) "secure"----time enough later to bring charges of interference against Yuri Andropov. Morozov did marvel, though, that the KGB had got on to his supposedly secret mission to Italy so fast. It made one wonder: were E-Branch officials order KGB surveillance all of the time?
As for Harry Moradian; he too had made an international call, to the Duty Officer at INTESP. That had been later in the afternoon, when it had looked fairly certain that he and Picardi would be accompanying the two Russians to Romania. "Is that Sharp? How are things going, Jordan?" he asked.
"Harry?" the answer came back. "I've been expecting you to give us a ring." Jordan Sharp had two talents; one of them "dodgy," branch parlance for an as yet undeveloped ESP ability, and the other quite remarkable and possibly unique. The first was the gift of far-seeing: he was a human crystal ball. The only trouble was he must know just where and what he was looking for, otherwise he could see nothing. His talent didn't work at random but must directed: he must have a definite target.
His second string made him doubly valuable. It could well prove to be a different facet of his 1st talent, but on occasions like this it was a godsend. Sharp was a telepath, but one with a difference. Yet again he must "aim" his talent: he could only read a person's mind when he was face to face with that person, or when talking to him, even on the telephone, if he knew the person in question. There was no lying to Jordan Sharp, nor any need for a mechanical scrambler. That was why Moradian had left him on permanent duty at HQ while he was away.
"Jordan," said Moradian, "how are things at home?" And he also asked: What's happening down on the ranch, in Devon?
"Oh, well, you know...." Sharps's answer sounded sketchy.
"Can you explain?" What's up? But careful how you answer.
"Well, see, it's young DM," came back the answer. "It seems he's cleverer than we thought. I mean, he's inquisitive, you know? Sees and hears too much for his own good."
"We must give him credit for it," Harry tried to sound casual while, in his mind, he added urgently: You mean he's talented? Telepathy?
"I suppose so," answered Sharp, meaning probably.
Jesus Christ! Is he on to us? "Anyway, we've had tough customers before," said Moradian. "And our salesman are in possession of the full brief...." How are they armed?"
"Well, yes, they've got the standard kit," said Sharp. "Still, it's a bit leery, I'll tell you! Set his dog on one our blokes! No harm done, though. As it happens it was old DC---and you know how wary he is! No harm will come to that one."
Devon Phitts? Thank God! Moradian breathed more easily. Out loud he said, "Look, Jordan, you'd better read my file on our silent partner. You know, from eight months ago?" The first Stewart manifestation. "Our blokes might well need all the help they can get. And I really don't think that in this case standard kit is sufficient. It's something I should've thought of before, except I didn't anticipate young DM's foxiness." 9mm automatics might not stop him---or any of the others in that house. But there's a description in the Molly Stewart file of something that will---I think. Get the squad armed with crossbows!
"Just as you say, Harry, I'll look into it at once," said Sharp, no sign of surprise in his voice. "And how are things with you?"
"Oh, not bad. We're thinking of moving up into the mountains---tonight, really." We're off to Romania with Morozov. He's OK---I hope! As soon as I've got anything definite I'll get back to you. Then maybe you'll be able to move in on Matei. But now until we know all there is to know about what we're up against.
"Lucky you!" said Sharp. "The mountains, eh? Beautiful at this time of year. Ah, well, some of us must work. Do drop me a card, now, won't you? And do take care."
"Same goes for you," Moradian spoke light and easy, but his thoughts were sharp with concern. For God's sake make sure those lads down in Devon are on the ball! If anything were to happen, I....
"----Oh, we'll do our best to keep out of trouble," Sharp cut him off. It was his way of saying, "Look, we can only do as much as we can do."
"OK, I'll be in touch." Good luck. And then he had broken the connection....
For a long time he'd stood in his room looking at the telephone and chewing his lip. Things were warming up and Harry Moradian knew it. And when Picardi came in from the room next door, where he'd been taking a nap----one look at his face told Moradian that he was right. Picardi looked rough around the edges, suddenly more than a little haggard.
He tapped his temple. "Things are starting to jump," he said. "In here."
Moradian nodded. "I know," he answered. "I've a feeling they're starting to jump all over the place...."
In her tiny room in what had once been Molly Stewart's Gloudon flat, whose window looked out over a graveyard, Molly Junior was falling asleep. Her father, Brian Cowell, shushed the baby and lulled him with soft humming sounds. She was only five weeks old, but she was clever. There were lots of things happening in the world, and she wanted in on them. She was going to make very hard work of growing up, because she wanted to be there now. He could feel that in her; her mind was like a sponge, soaking up new sensations, new impressions, thirsting to know, gazing out of eyes that did not seem to be hers and striving to envelop the whole wide world.
Oh, yes, this could only be his baby, and Kate, his wife, was glad she'd had him. If only Molly could have been her mother, if only she had Molly Jr. and Molly, too. But in a way he had both, right here in little Molly Stewart Cowell. In fact, he had her in a bigger way than he might ever have suspected.
Just what the baby's namesake's work had been with British Intelligence (he assumed it was them) Brian and Kate didn't know. They only knew that Molly Stewart, Brian's first girlfriend, had paid for it with her life. There had been no recognition of her sacrifice, not officially, anyway. But checks arrived every month in plain envelopes, with brief little covering notes that specified the money as being for the "ward of the state." Brian and Kate never failed to be surprised: British Intelligence must have thought very highly of Molly. The checks were rather large, twice as much as she could have ever earned in any everyday kind of work. And that was wonderful, for they could give all of their time to Molly.
"Oh, Molly, Molly," he crooned at her. "If only you'd had a chance to meet the girl I named you after."
Occasionally Brian felt pangs of guilt. It was less than a year since she'd died, and already he was over it. It all seemed so wrong somehow. Wrong that he no longer cried, wrong that he gotten married to another woman, entirely wrong that she had gone to join that great majority who so loved her. The dead, long fallen into decay and dissolution.
Not necessarily morally wrong, but wrong conceptually, definitely. He didn't feel Molly Sr. was dead. Maybe if he'd seen her body it'd be different. But he was glad that he hadn't seen it. Dead, it wouldn't have been Molly at all.
Enough of this morbid thinking! He touched the baby's tiny button nose with the knuckle of his index finger. "Bonk!" he said, but very, softly. For little Molly Stewart was asleep.....
Molly felt the baby's whirlpool suction ebb, felt the tiny brain relax its constraint, aimed herself into and through a transdimensional "door" and found herself adrift once again in the Darkness Absolute of the Mobius continuum. Pure mind, she floated in the flux of the metphysical, free of the distortions of gravity and mass, heat and cold. She reveled like a swimmer in that great black void which stretched from never to forever and nowhere to everywhere, where she could move into the past no less rapidly than into the future.
Molly could go anywhere and everywhere---and everywhen---from here. It was just a matter of knowing the correct direction, of using the right "door." She opened a timedoor and saw the blue light of all Earth's living billions streaming into unimagined, ever-expanding futures. No, not that one. Molly selected another door. This time the myriad blue lifethreads streamed away from her and contracted, narrowing down to a far-distant, dazzling, single blue point. It was the door to time past, to the very start of human life on Earth. And that wasn't what she wanted either. Actually, she'd known that neither of these door was the right one; she was just exercising her talents and powers, nothing more.
For the fact was that if he she didn't have a mission----but she did have one. It was almost identical with the mission which had cost her her corporeal life, and it was still unfinished. Molly put all other thoughts and considerations aside, using her unerring intuition to point herself in the right direction, calling out to that one she knew she would find there.
"Thago?" Her call raced out into the black voice. "Only answer me and I'll find you, and we can talk."
A moment passed. A second or a millennium, it was all the same in the Mobius continuum. And it made no difference to the dead. Then:
Ahhhh! came back the answer. Is it you, Mollllyyyy?
The mental voice of the old Thing in the ground was a beacon: she homed in on it, came up against a Mobius door, and passed through it.
....It was midnight on the cruciform hills, and for 200 miles in all directions, most of Romania remained asleep. No need for Molly and her infant simulacrum to materialize here, for there was no one to see them. But knowing that she could be seen there, if there were eyes to see, gave Molly a feeling of corporeality. Even as a will-o'-the-wisp she would feel that she was somebody, not just a telepathic voice, a ghost. She hovered in the glade of stirless trees, above the tumbled slabs and close to the tottering entrance of what had been Thago Benedek's tomb, and formed about her focus the merest nimbus of light. Then she turned her mind outwards, to the night and the darkness.
If she had had a body, Molly might have shivered a little. She would have felt a chill, but a purely physical chill and not one of the spirit. For the undead evil which had been buried here 500 years ago was gone now, was no longer undead but truly dead. Which fact begged the question: had all of it been removed? Was it dead---entirely? For Molly Stewart had learned, and was still learning, of the vampire's monstrous tenacity as it clung to life.
"Thago," said Molly, "I'm here. Against the advice of all the teeming dead, I've come again to talk to you."
Ahhhhh! Mooooolllly----you are a comfort, my dear. Indeed, you are my only comfort. The dead whisper in their graves, talking of this and that, but me they shun. I alone am truly----alone! Without you there is merely oblivion.....
Truly alone? Molly doubted it. Her sensitive ESP warned her that something else was here---something that held back, biding its time---something dangerous still. But she hid her suspicions from Thago.
"I made you a promise," she said. "You tell me the things I want to know, and I in turn will not forget you. Even if it's just for a moment or two, I'll find time now and then to come and talk to you."
Because you are good, Moollllllyyyy. Because you are kind. While my own sort, the dead, they are unkind. They continue to hold this grudge!
Molly knew the old Thing in the ground's wiles: how he would avoid at all cost the issue of the moment., Molly's principal purpose in being here. For vampires are Satan's own kith and kin; they speak with his tongue, which speaks only lies and deception. Thus Thago would attempt from the outset to turn the conversation, this time to his "unfair" treatment by the Great Majority. Molly wouldn't tolerate it.
"You have no complaint," she told him. "They know you, Thago. How many lives have you cut short in order to prolong or sustain your own? They are unforgiving, the dead, for they've lost that which was most precious to them. In your time you were the great taker of life; not only did you bring death with you, but even on occasion undeath. You can't be surprised that they shun you."
Thago sighed. A soldier kills, he answered. But when he in turn dies, do they turn away from him? Of course not! He is welcomed into the fold. The executioner kills, also the maniac in his rage, and the cuckold when he discovers another in his bed. And are they shunned? Perhaps in life, some of them, but not after life is done. For then they move on into a new state. In my life I did what I had to do, and I paid for it in death. Must I go on paying?
"Do you want me to plead your case for you?" Molly wasn't even half-serious.
But Thago was quick-witted: I had not considered that. But now that you mention it....
"Rubbish!" Molly cried. "You're playing with words---playing with me---and that's not why I'm here. There are a million others who genuinely desire to talk to me, and I waste my time with you. Oh, well, I've learned my lesson. I'll bother you no more."
Molly, wait! Panic was in Thago Benedek's voice, which came to Molly quite literally from beyond the grave. Don't go, Molly! Who will talk to me if you don't? There is no other Mollyscope!
"That's a fact you'd do well to keep in mind."
Ahhhhh! Don't threaten me, Molly. What am I---what was I---after all, but an old creature entombed before his time? If I have seemed to be difficult, forgive me. Come now, tell me what it is that you want from me?
Molly allowed herself to be mollified. "All right. It's this: I found your story very interesting."
My story?
"Your tale of how you came to be what you were. As I recall it, you had reached that stage where Thrulk had trapped you in his dungeon, and transferred or deposited in you...."
.....His egg! Thago cut him off. The pearly seed of the Wamphyri! Your memory serves you well, Molly Stewart. And so does mine. Too well---- His voice was suddenly sour.
"You don't wish to continue with that story?"
I wish I had never started it! But if that is what it takes to keep you here---Molly said nothing, just waited, and after a moment or two:
I see that is what it takes, the ex-vampire groaned. Very well.
And after a further sullen silence, Thago continued the telling of his story.....
Picture it, then, that strange old castle up in the mountains: it's walls wreathed in mist, its central span arching over the gorge, its towers reaching like fangs for the rising moon. And picture its master: a creature who was once a man, but no longer. A Thing which called itself Thrulk Benedek.
I have told how he----how he kissed me. Ah, but no son was ever kissed by his father like that before! He lodged his egg in me, oh yes! And if I had thought that the bruises and gouges of battle were painful......
To receive the seed of a vampire is to know an almost fatal agony. Almost fatal, but never quite. No, for the vampire choses his egg-bearer with great care and cunning. He must be strong, that poor unfortunate; he must be keen-witted, preferably cold and callous. And I admit it, I was all of those things. Having lived a life like mine, how could I be otherwise?
And so I experienced the horror of that egg in me, which fashioned tiny pseudopods and barbs of its own to drag itself down my throat and into my body. Swift? The thing was quicksilver! Indeed, it was beyond quicksilver! A vampire seed can pass through human flesh like water through sand. Thrulk had not needed to horrify me with his kiss, he had just desired to horrify me! And he had succeeded.
His egg passed through my flesh, from the back of my throat to my spinal column, which it explored the way a curious mouse explores a cavity in the wall---but on feed that burned like Greek fire! And with each touch on my naked nerve endings came fresh waves of agony!
Ah! How I writhed and jerked and tossed in my chains then. But not for long. Finally the thing found a resting place. Newborn, it was easily tired. I think it settled in my bowels, which instantly knotted, causing me such pain that I cried out for the mercy of death! But then the barbs were withdrawn, the thing slept.
The agony departed me for a moment, so swiftly indeed that the sensation was a kind of agony in itself. Then, in the sheer luxury of painlessness, I too slept....
When I awoke I found myself free of all manacles and chains, lying crumpled on the floor. There was no more pain. Despite my thinking that my cell should be in darkness, I found that I could see as clearly as in brightest daylight. At first I failed to understand; I sought in vain for the hole which let the light in, tried to climb the uneven walls in search of some hidden window or other outlet. To no avail.
Before that, however, before this futile attempt of mine to escape, I was confronted by the others who had shared my dismal cell. Or by what they'd become.
First there was old Xylon, who lay in a heap just as Thrulk had left him---or so I thought. I went to him, observed his gray flesh, his withered chest beneath the rags of his torn, coarse shirt. And I laid my hand upon him there, perhaps in an attempt to detect the warmth of life or even a faltering heartbeat. For I had thought I saw a certain fluttering in his bony chest.
No sooner was my hand upon him than the gypsy caved in! All of him, collapsing inwards like a husk, like last year's leaves when stepped upon! Beneath the cage of ribs, which also powdered away, there was nothing. The face likewise crumbled into dust, set free by the body's avalanche; that old, gray unlovely countenance, smoking into ruin! Limbs were last to go, deflating even as I crouched three, like ruptured wineskins! In the merest moment he was a heap of dust and small shards of bone and old leather; and all still clad in his course native clothes.
Fascinated, jaw lolling, I continued to stare at what had been Xylon. I remembered that worm of a finger coming loose from Thrulk's hand and going into him. And was that worm responsible for this? had that small fleshy part of Thrulk eaten him away so utterly? If so, what of the worm itself? Where was it now?
My questions were answered on the instant: "Consumed, Thago, aye," said a dull, echoing voice. "Gone to feed the one which now burrows in the earth at your feet!" Out from the dungeon's shadows stepped on an old Wallach comrade of mine, a man all chest and arms, with short stumpy legs. Aurel had been this one's name---when he was a man!
For looking at him now, I saw nothing in him that was known to me. He was like a stranger with a strange aura about him. Or maybe not so strange, for indeed I thought I knew that emanation. It was the morbid presence of the Bendekzig. Aurel was now his!
"Traitor!" I told him, scowling. "The old Benedek saved your life, and now in gratitude you've given that life to him. And how many times, in how many battles, have I saved your life, Aurel?"
"I have long since lost count, Thago," the other huskily answered, his eyes round as saucers in a gaunt, hollow face. "Enough that you must know I would never willingly turn against you."
"What?! You dare say you are still my man?! I laughed, however scathingly. "But I can smell the Benedek on you! Or maybe you've unwillingly turned against me, eh?" And still more harshly I added, "Why would the Benedek save you but to serve him and him alone?"
"Did he not explain anything to you?" Aurel came closer. "He didn't save me for himself. I'm to serve you---as best I may---after he departs this place."
"The Benedek is mad!" I accused. "He has beguiled you, can't you see? Have you forgotten why we came here? We came to kill him! But look at you now: gaunt, dazed, puny as an infant. How may one such as you serve me?"
Aurel stepped closer still. His great eyes were very nearly vacant, unblinking. Nerves in his face and neck jumped and twitched as if they were on strings. "Puny? You misjudge the Benedek's power's Thago. What he put in me healed my flesh and bones. Aye, and it made me strong. I can serve you as well as ever, be sure. Only try me."
Now I frowned, shook my head in a sudden amaze. Certain of his words made sense, went some little way towards cooling my furious thoughts. "By now, by rights, you should be dead," I agreed. "Your bones were broken, aye, and your flesh torn. Are you saying that the Benedek is truly the master of such powers? I remember now he said that when you recovered you would be in thrall to him. But to him, d'ye hear? So how is it that you stand here and tell me I am still your lord and master?"
"He is the master of many powers, Thago," he answered. "And indeed I am in thrall to him---to a point. He's a vampire, and now I too am a vampire of sorts. And so are you..."
"I?" I was outraged. "I am my own man! He did something to me, granted----put that which was of himself into me, which was surely poisonous---but here I stand unchanged. You, Aurel, my once friend and follower, may well have succumbed, I remain Thago of Wallachia!"
Aurel touched my elbow and I drew back from him. "With me the change was swift," he said. "It was made faster through the Benedek's flesh mingling with my own, which worked to heal me. My broken parts were mended with his flesh, and just as he has bound me together, so has he bound me to himself. I will do his bidding, that is true; mercifully, he demands nothing of me but that I stay here with you."
Meanwhile, while he spoke in his mournful fashion, I had prowled all about the dungeon looking for an escape, even attempted to scale the walls. "The light," I muttered. "Where does it come from? If the light finds its way in, I can find my way out."
"There is no light," Thago," said Aurel, following behind me, his voice doleful as ever. "It is proof of the Benedek's magic. Because we are his, we share his powers. In here all is utter darkness. But like the bat of your standard, and like the Benedek himself, you now see in the night. More, you are the special one. You bear his egg. You will become as great as, maybe greater than the Benedek himself. You are Wamphyri!"
"I am myself!" I said. And I grabbed Aurel by the throat.
And now as I drew him close, I noticed for the first time the yellow glow in his eyes. They were the eyes of an animal; mine, too, if he spoke the truth. Aurel made no effort to resist me; indeed, he went to his knees as I applied greater pressure. "Well then," I cried, "why don't you fight back? Show me this wonderful strength of yours! You said I should try you, and now I take you at your word. You're going to die, Aurel. Aye, and after you, so to your new master---the very moment he stick's his dog's nose into this dungeon! I at least have not forgotten my reason for being here!"
I grabbed up a length of the chain which had bound me to the wall and looped it around his neck. He choked, gagged; his tongue lolled out; still he made no effort to fight me. "Useless, Thago," he gasped, when I released the pressure a little. "All useless. Choke me, suffocate me, break my back. I will mend. You may not kill me. You cannot kill me! Only the Benedek can do that. A fine jest, eh? For we came here to kill him!
I tossed him aside, ran to the great oak door, raged and hammered at it. Only echoes came back to me. In desperation I turned again to Aurel. "so then," I panted, "you are aware of the change taken place in you. Of course, for if it's plain to me it must be plainer still to you. All right, but tell me: why then am I the same as before? I feel no different. Surely no great change is wrought to me?"
Aurel, rubbing his throat, came easily to his feet. He had great bruises on his neck from the chains; other than this it seemed he suffered no ill effects from my manhandling; his eyes burned as before and his voice was doleful as ever. "As you say," he said, "the change in me has been wrought, as iron is wrought in the furnace. The Benedek's flesh has taken hold of me and bent me to its will, as iron bends from the fire's heat. But with you it is different, more subtle. The vampire's seed grows within you. It grafts itself to your mind, your heart, your very blood. You are like two creatures in one hide, but slowly you will mold, fuse into one."429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡA5opqkJGPt
This was what Thrulk had told me. I sagged against the damp wall. "Then I am no longer master of my destiny," I groaned.429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn4JsYGcyiK
"But you are, Thago, you are!" Aurel was eager now. "Why, now that death no longer holds any terrors, you can live forever! You have the chance to grow more powerful than any many before you! And what is that for destiny?"429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEbXdNwqsjw
I shook my head. "Powerful? In thrall to the Benedekzig? Surely you mean powerless! For if I'm to be his man, then how may I be my own? No, that shall not be the way of it. While yet I have my will, I shall find a way." I prodded my chest and grimaced. "How long before....before this demon within commands me? How much time do I have before the guest overpowers the host?"429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡivFyzzDGM4
Slowly, sadly I thought, he shook his head. "You insist on making difficulties," he said. "The Benedek told me it would be so. Because you are wild and willful, he said. You will be your own man, Thago! It shall be like this: that the thing inside cannot exist without you, nor you without it. But where before you were merely a man, with a man's frailties and puny passions, now you shall be....."429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIp8WCIbAkB
"Hold!" I told him, my memory suddenly whispering monstrous things in my mind. "He told me....he said....that he was sexless! He said: 'The Wamphyri have no sex as such.' And you talk to me of my 'puny passions'?"429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoVuqXx8lET
"As one of the Wamphyri," Aurel patiently insisted, as doubtless the Benedek had ordered him to insist, "you will have the sex of the host. And you are that host! You will also have your lust, your great strength and cunning---all of your passions---but magnified many times over! Picture yourself pitting your wits against your enemies, or boundlessly strong in battle, or utterly stirring in bed!"429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgOUtJMPhqN
My emotions raged within me. Ah! But could I be sure they were mine? All mine? "But----it----will---not---be----me!" Emphasizing each word, I slammed my balled fist again and again into the stone wall, until blood flowed freely from my riven knuckles.429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡH6d8Z1InLm
"But it will be you," he repeated, drawing near, staring at my bloodied hand and licking his lips. "Aye, hot blood and all. The vampire in you will heal that in a very little while. But, until then, let me tend to it." He took my hand and tried to lick the salt blood.429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡH8mRKR7nef
I hurled him away. "Keep your vampire's tongue to yourself!" I cried.429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡniXLEzfWGG
And with a sudden thrill of horror, maybe for the first time, I began to truly understand what he had become. And what I was becoming. For I had seen that look of entirely unnatural lust on his face, and I had suddenly remembered that once there were three of us......429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHjfB0KqqDO
I looked all around the dungeon, into all of the corners and cobwebbed shadows, and my changeling eyes penetrated even the darkest gloom. I looked everywhere and failed to discover what I sought. Then I turned back to Aurel. He saw my expression, began to back away from me. "Aurel," I said, following, closing with him. "Now tell me, pray---what has become of the poor mutilated body of Gennadi Where, pray, is the corpse of our former colleague, the slender, ever aggressive----Gennadi?"429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGk7cAbMO2e
In a corner, Aurel had tripped on something. He stumbled, fell---amidst a small pile of bones flensed almost white. Human bones.429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFSH6ANcW8R
After long moments I found voice. "Gennadi?"429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡffu8ayTuCe
Aurel nodded, shrank back from me, scuttling like a crab on the floor. "The Benedek, he----he has not fed us!" he pleaded.429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡidmcF7XWto
I let my head slump, turned away in disgust. Aurel scrambled to his feet, carefully approached. "Keep well away," I warned him, my voice low and filled with loathing. "Why did you not break the bones, for their marrow?"429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡptF16QrXNA
"Ah, no!" said Aurel, as though explaining to a child. "The Benedek told me to leave Gennadi's bones for...for the burrower in the earth, that which took shape in old Xylon and ate him. It will come for them when all is quiet. When we are asleep....."429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8gVKjTmCot
"Sleep?" I barked, turning on him. "You think I'll sleep? Here? With you in the same cell?"429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJie1yVGjIF
He turned away, shoulders slumping. "Ah, you are the proud one, Thago. As I was proud. It goes before a fall, they say. Your time is still to come. As for me, I will not harm you. Even if I dared, if my hunger was such that....but I would not dare. The Benedek would cut me into little pieces and burn each one with fire. That is his threat. Anyway, I love you like a brother."429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmnIjlE2nco
"As you loved Gennadi?" I scowled at him where he gazed at me over his hunched shoulder. He had no answer. "Leave me in peace," I growled then. "I have much to think about."429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ62CDMZSz9b
I went to one corner, Aurel to another. There we sat in silence.429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3gdFy6q3e1
Hours p assed. Finally I did sleep. In my dreams---for the most part unremembered, perhaps mercifully---I seemed to hear strange slitherings, and sucking sounds. Also a period of brittle crunching.429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhgksl4Mhz5
When I awakened, Gennadi's bones had disappeared.....429Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfH8lQzeY3s
