Chapter Nine

The voice of the extinct vampire faded in Harry Keogh's incorporeal mind. For long moments nothing further was said, and they were empty seconds which Harry couldn't really afford. At any moment he could find himself recalled by his infant son, back through the maze of the Möbius continuum to the garret flat in Hartlepool. But if Harry's time was important, so too was the rest of mankind's.

‘I begin to feel sorry for you, Thibor,' he said, his life-force burning blue as a neon firefly in the dark glade under the trees. ‘I can see how you fought against it, how you did not want to become what you eventually became.'

Eventually? the old Thing in the ground spoke up at last. No eventually about it, Harry — I had become! From the moment Faethor's seed embraced my body, my brain, I was doomed. For from that moment it was growing in me, and growing quickly. First its effect became apparent in my emotions, my passions. I say ‘apparent', but scarcely so to me. Can you feel your body healing after a cut or a blow? Are you aware of your hair or fingernails growing? Does a man who gradually becomes insane know that he is going mad?

Suddenly, as the voice of the vampire faded again, there came a rising babble in Harry's mind. A cry of frustration, of fury! He had expected it sooner or later, for he knew that Thibor Ferenczy was not alone here in the dark cruciform hills. And now a new voice formed words in the necroscope's consciousness, a voice he recognised of old.

You old liar! You old devil! cried the inflamed spark, the enraged spirit of Boris Dragosani. Ah! And how is this for irony? Not enough that I am dead, but to have for companion in my grave that one creature I loathed above all others! And worse, to know that my greatest enemy in life — the man who killed me — is now the only living man who can ever reach me in death! Ha, ha! And to be here, knowing once more the voices of these two — the one demanding, the other wheedling, beguiling, seeking to lie as always — and knowing the futility of it all; but yet yearning, burning to be... involved! Oh, God, if ever there were a God, won't — somebody — speak — to —meeeee?!

Pay no attention, said Thibor at once. He raves. For, as you well know, Harry, since you were instrumental, when he killed me he killed himself. The thought is enough to unhinge anyone, and poor Boris was half-mad to begin with .

I was made mad! Dragosani howled. By a filthy, lying, loathsome leech of a thing in the ground! Do you know what he did to me, Harry Keogh?

‘I know of several things he did to you,' Harry answered. ‘Mental and physical torture seems an unending activity for creatures of your sort, alive or dead. Or undead!'

You are right, Harry! A third voice from beyond the grave now spoke up. It was a soft, whispering voice, but not without a certain sinister inflection. They are cruel beyond words, and none of them is to be trusted! I assisted Dragosani; I was his friend; it was my finger which triggered the bolt that struck Thibor through the heart and pinned him there, half-in, half-out of his grave. Why, I was the one who handed Dragosani the scythe to cut off the monster's head! And how did he pay me, eh? Ah, Dragosani! How can you talk of lies and treachery and loathsomeness, when you yourself— You — were — a — monster! Dragosani silenced Max

Batu's accusations with one of his own. My excuse is simple: I had Thibor's vampire seed in me. But what of you, Max? What? A man so evil he could kill with a glance?

Batu, a Mongol esper who in life had held the secret of the Evil Eye, was outraged. Now hear this great liar, this thief.' he hissed sibilantly. He slit my throat, drained my blood, despoiled my corpse and tore from it my secret. He took my power for his own, to kill as I killed. Hah! Little good it did him. Now we share the same gloomy hillside. Aye, Thibor, Dragosani, and myself, and all three of us shunned by the teeming dead.

‘Listen to me, all of you,' said Harry, before they could start again. ‘So you've all suffered injustices, eh? Well, maybe you have, but none so great as those you've worked. How many men did you kill with your Evil Eye, Max, stopping them dead in their tracks and crumpling their hearts like paper? And were they all bad men? Did they deserve to die? As horribly as that? No, for one at least was my friend, as good a man as you could ever wish to meet.'

The head of your British E-Branch? Batu was quick off the mark. But Dragosani ordered me to kill him!

It was our mission! Dragosani railed. Don't play the innocent here, Mongol. You'd killed others before him.

He also ordered Ladislau Giresci killed, said Batu. One of his own countrymen, and entirely innocent! Ah, but Giresci knew Dragosani's secret — that he was a vampire!

He was a danger to... to the State! Dragosani blustered. I worked only for Mother Russia, and —‘You worked only for yourself!' Harry stopped him.

‘The truth is, you desired to be a power in the land. No, in the whole world! Lie if you must, Dragosani, for it's a trait of vampires, after all, but not to yourself. I've spoken to Gregor Borowitz, remember? And did he too die for Mother Russia? The head of your own E-Branch?'

There you have it, Dragosani, said Thibor, his voice a dark chuckle. Caught on your own barbs!

‘Don't crow, Thibor,' Harry's voice was lower still. ‘You were as bad and probably worse than both of them.'

I? Why, I have — or I had — lain here in the earth for five hundred years! What harm can a poor thing in the ground do, alone with the worms in the cold hard earth?

‘And what of the five hundred years before that?' said Harry. ‘You know as well as I that Wallachia trembled to your tread for centuries! The earth itself is soaked black with the blood you spilled. And don't lay it all at Faethor Ferenczy's feet. He's not entirely to blame. He knew what you were, else he wouldn't have chosen you. .

And is that why you've come? Thibor asked after a moment. To harangue and accuse and denounce?

‘No, I came to learn,' said Harry. ‘Now look, I can't lie as well as you do. I was never much of a liar at the best of times. So I'm sure you'd see through me if I tried any sort of subterfuge. That's why I'll come straight out with it . .

Well then? said Dragosani. Out with it, if you will.

Harry ignored him, was silent for a few seconds. ‘Thibor,' he said at last, ‘a moment ago you asked what harm you'd done, buried here these last five hundred years.'

I can tell you what harm he did! Dragosani would not be ignored. Only look at me! I was an innocent child and he taught me the arts of necromancy. Later, as a youth, he beguiled me with his hypnotism and his lies. As a man he put his vampire egg in me, and when it had matured, he —‘Your history concerns me not at all!' Harry stopped him. ‘Neither that nor any calumny of charges you bring against Thibor or anyone else.'

Calumny? Dragosani was furious.

‘Be quiet!' Harry's patience had broken. ‘Be quiet now, or I leave you at once, immediately, to wait out all the ages in your loneliness. All three of you.'

There was a sullen silence.

‘Very well,' said Harry. ‘Now, as I was saying, I'm not greatly concerned with Thibor's crimes or supposed crimes against you, Boris Dragosani. No, but I am concerned to know about what he did to another. I refer to a woman, Georgina Bodescu, who came here with her husband one winter. There was an accident and the man died. He died here, on this very spot. She was pregnant and fainted at the sight of his blood. And afterwards. .

Ah? said Thibor, his interest quickening. But I've already told you that story. Are you telling me now that

are you saying it took effect?

Beware, Harry Keogh! Dragosani interrupted. Tell him no more. I heard the tale, too, when the old liar told it to you. If that unborn child as was is now a man, he'll be in thrall to Thibor! Aye, even though his master's dead! Can't you see? This devil would see himself alive again — in the body and mind of this new disciple!