You... dog! Thibor howled. You are Wamphyri! Does that mean nothing to you? We may fight among ourselves, but we do not divulge our secrets to others! You are damned for all time, Dragosani!

Old fool, I'm that already! Dragosani snarled.

‘Very well then,' Harry sighed. ‘I can see I'm wasting precious time. That being the case, I'll bid you —‘

Wait! Thibor's voice was all burning anguish. You can't tell me just so much and leave it at that. That's . .

inhuman!

‘Hah!' Harry snorted.

A trade, then. I shall finish my story, and you shall tell me if the child was born and lives. And... how he lives. Agreed?

Harry guessed he'd said too much already, which in itself might be as good a reason as any for going on. There were now four principal things he must try to discover. One: the full range of a vampire's powers. Two: how, exactly, Thibor might try to use Yulian Bodescu. For Dragosani seemed to think it was possible for Thibor to resurrect himself, in Bodescu. Three: the rest of Thibor's story concerning the occurrences a thousand years ago at the castle of Faethor Ferenczy, so that he might know if anything of evil yet remained in that place. And four:

how to kill a vampire, but definitely!

As to the last: Harry had thought he knew that much eight months ago, when he'd waged war on the Château Bronnitsy. But looking back now he saw that Dragosani's death had only come about through a fortunate combination of events. For one thing Dragosani had been blinded: his eyes had been ruined by a reflected mind-bolt when Max Batu's stolen talent had rebounded on him from one of Harry's zombies; for of course Harry had had his zombie Tartars, his shock troops, for back-up in that affray. It had been one of them, called up from the preserving peat, who'd hacked Dragosani's head from his shoulders; and another who'd pinned his parasite vampire to his chest with a wooden stake when it deserted his shattered body. Harry couldn't have done all of these things, maybe not any of them, on his own. In fact, Harry's only real ace had been his mastery of the Möbius continuum: when he'd been very nearly cut in half by machinegun fire, he'd fled his dying body and dragged Dragosani's mind in there with him. In the Möbius continuum he'd hurled Dragosani through a past-time door, which had led the necromancer back to Thibor in his grave. And there an ‘earlier' Dragosani had lured up and killed Thibor, never dreaming that with the same stroke he had also determined his own fate. As for Harry's incorporeal mind: he'd gone forward, found his son's life-thread and joined with it, lay with it in the womb of Brenda waiting to be born. She had been his lover, his wife, and now, in a way, might even be considered his mother. His second mother.

But what if he had left Dragosani's mind in his corpse back at the Château? How long would that broken body have stayed a corpse? That was conjectural .

And Harry wondered: how had the surviving Russian E-Branch members dealt with what remained when all the fighting stopped? What had they made of his zombies? It must have seemed utter madness, an absolute nightmare! Harry supposed that after he left the Château along the Mobius way, the Tartars had fallen once more into quiescence .

Perhaps by now Alec Kyle had the answers to these questions, learned from Felix Krakovitch. Harry would find out eventually, but for now there were fresh problems. Foremost among them: how much dare he tell Thibor about Yulian Bodescu? Very little, he supposed. But, on the other hand, by now the extinct vampire had probably guessed all of it for himself. Which made any continued secrecy pointless.

‘Very well,' said Harry, finally, ‘we trade.'

Fool! Dragosani cut in at once. I had given you some credit, Harry Keogh — I thought you were cleverer than that. And yet here you are attempting to bargain with the devil himself! I see now that I was unlucky in our little contest. You are as big a fool as I was!

Harry ignored him. ‘The rest of your story then, Thibor, and quickly. For I don't know how much time I have...'

The first time the old Ferenczy came, I was not ready for him. I was asleep; but exhausted, half-starved, it's unlikely I could have done anything anyway. The first I knew of his visit was when I heard the heavy oaken door slam, and a bar was dropped into place outside. Four trussed chickens, alive, full-feathered, squawked and fluttered in a basket just inside the door. As I roused myself and went to the door, Ehrig was a pace ahead of me.

I caught him by the shoulder, threw him aside, got to the basket first. ‘What's this, Faethor?' I cried. ‘Chickens? I thought we vampires supped on richer meat!'

‘We sup on blood!' he called back, chuckling a little beyond the door. ‘On coarse meat if and when we must, but the blood is the true life. The fowl are for you, Thibor. Tear out their throats and drink well. Squeeze them dry. Give the carcasses to Ehrig, if it please you, and what's left goes to your "cousin" under the flags.'

I heard him starting up stone steps, called out: ‘Faethor, when do I take up my duties? Or perhaps you've changed your mind and deem it too dangerous to let me out?'

His footsteps paused. ‘I'll let you out when I'm ready,' his muffled voice came back. ‘And when you are ready. .

He chuckled again, but more deeply in his throat this time.

‘Ready? I'm ready for better treatment than this!' I told him. ‘You should have brought me a girl. You can do more with a girl than just eat her!'

For a moment there was silence, then he said, ‘When you are your own master you may take what you like.' His voice was colder. ‘But I am not some mother cat to fetch fat mice for her kittens. A girl, a boy, a goat — blood is blood, Thibor. As for lust: you'll have time for that later, when you understand the real meaning of the word. For now... save your strength.' And then he moved on.

Ehrig had meanwhile taken hold of the basket, was sidling off with it. I gave him a cl6ut which knocked him protesting to the floor. Then I looked at the terrified birds and scowled. But... I was hungry and meat is meat. I had never been a squeamish one, and these birds were plump. And anyway, the vampire in me was taking the edge off all points of mannered custom and nicety and civilised behaviour. As for civilisation: what was that to me? A Wallach warrior, I had always been two-thirds barbarian!

I ate, and so did the dog Ehrig. Aye, and later, when next we slept, so did my ‘cousin' .

The next time I came awake — more strongly, surging awake, refreshed from my meal — I saw the Thing, that mindless being of vampire flesh which hid in the dark earth under the floor. I do not know what I had expected. Faethor had mentioned vines, creepers in the earth. That is what it was like. Partly, anyway.

If you have seen a squashy octopus from the sea, then you have seen something like the creature spawned of the finger which Faethor shed, fattened on the flesh of Arvos the gypsy. The one thing I cannot comment upon was its size; however, if a man's body were flattened to a doughy mass... it would spread a long way. The matter of Arvos had been reshaped.

Certainly the groping ‘hands' which the being put up were stretchy things. There were also many of them, and they were not lacking in strength. Its eyes were very strange: they formed and unformed, came and went; they ogled and blinked; but in all truth I cannot say that they saw. Indeed, I had the feeling they were blind. Or perhaps they saw in the way a newborn infant sees, without understanding.

When one of the thing's hands came up from the soil close to where I lay, I cursed out loud and kicked it away — and how it shot down out of sight then! How well another might fare I could not say, but the vampire thing was certainly wary of me. Perhaps it sensed that I was a higher form — of itself! I remember how at the time, that was a very shuddersome thought.