Prince Vladimir's eyes went to the sack before him and his mouth twitched at one corner.

‘Open it,' I told him. ‘Tip it out. And you priests, come closer. See what I've brought you.'

Among the thronging courtiers and guests, I spied grim-faced men edging closer. This couldn't last much longer. Close by, a high-arched window looked out on a balcony and the gardens beyond. Vladimir's hands trembled towards the sack.

‘Open it!' I snapped, prodding him. He took up the sack, tugged at its thong, tipped the contents onto the table. All stared, aghast.

‘The very essence of the Ferenczy!' I hissed.

The part was big as a puppy, but it had the colour of disease and the shape of nightmare. Which is no shape at all but a morbid suggestion. It could be a slug, a foetus, some strange worm. It writhed in the light, put out fumbling fingers and formed an eye. A mouth came next, with curving dagger teeth. The eye was soft and mucous damp. It stared about while the mouth chomped vacuously.

The Vlad sat there white as death, his face twisting grotesquely. I laughed as the vampire stuff wriggled closer to him, and he gave a cry and toppled himself over backwards in his chair. The thing had intended no harm; it had no intent. Larger and hungry it might be dangerous, or if it were alone with a sleeping man in a dark room, hut not here in the light. I knew this, but Vladimir and the court didn't.

‘Vrykoulakas, vrykoulakasP the Greek priests began to scream. And at that, though few could have known what the word meant, the great hall became the scene of furious chaos. Ladies cried out and fainted; everyone drew back from the huge table; guests crushed together at the door. To give the Greeks their due, they were the only ones who had any idea what to do. One of them took a dagger and pinned the thing to the table. It at once split open, slipped free of the blade like water. The priest pinned it again, cried, ‘Bring fire, burn it!'

In the pandemonium now reigning, I jumped down from the table, up into the window embrasure, and so on to the low balcony. As I vaulted the balcony wall into the garden, a pair of angry faces appeared at the window behind me. The VIad's bodyguard, all brave and bristling now that the danger was past. Except that for them it wasn't yet past. I glanced back. The two were now out onto the balcony.

They shouted and waved swords, and I ducked low. Bolts whistled overhead out of the dark garden; one pursuer was taken in the throat, the other in the forehead.

The noise from the hall was an uproar, but there were no more pursuers. I grinned, made away .

We camped that night in the woods on the outskirts. All of my men slept, for I posted no guards. No one came near.

In the morning light we sauntered our horses through the city, then turned and headed west for Wallachia. My new standard still fluttered from its pole over the palace wall. Apparently no one had dared remove it while we were near. I left it there as a reminder: the dragon, and tiding its back the bat, and surmounting them both the livid red devil's head of the Ferenczy. For the next five hundred years those arms would be mine.

My tale's at an end, said Thibor. Your turn, Harry Keogh. Harry had got something of what he wanted, but not

everything. ‘You left Ehrig and the women to burn,' he voiced his disgust. ‘The women — vampire women — I think I can understand that. But would it have been so hard to give them a decent death? I mean, did they have to burn... like that? You could have made it easier for them. You could have —‘

Beheaded them? Thibor seemed unconcerned, gave a mental shrug.

‘And as for Ehrig: he had been your friend!'

Had been, yes. But it was a hard world a thousand years ago, Harry. And anyway, you are mistaken — I didn't leave them to burn. They were deep down under the tower. The broken furniture I piled around the central pillar was to shatter it, bring the stone steps down into the stairwell and block it forever. Burn them, no — I simply buried them!

Harry recoiled from Thibor's morbid, darkly sinister tone. ‘That's even worse,' he said.

You mean better, the monster contradicted him, chuckling. But better far than even I guessed. For I didn't know then that they'd live down there forever. Ha, ha! And how's that for horror, Harry? They're down there even now. Mummied, aye — but still ‘alive' in their way. Dry and desiccated as old bones, bits of leather and gristle and —Thibor came to an abrupt halt. He had sensed Harry's

keen interest, the intense, calculating way in which he seized on all of this and analysed it. Harry tried to back off a little, tried to close his mind to the other. Thibor sensed that, too.

I suddenly have this feeling, he very slowly said, that I may have said too much. It comes as something of a to learn that even a dead creature must guard its thoughts. Your interest in all of these matters is more than merely ‘usual, Harry. I wonder why?

Dragosani, for so long silent, broke in with a burst of laughter. Isn't it obvious, old devil? he said. He's outsmarted you! Why is he so interested? Because there are vampires in the world — in his world — right now! It's the only answer. And Harry Keogh came here to find out about them, from you. He needs to find out about them for the sake of his intelligence organisation, and for the sake of the world. Now tell me: does he really need to tell you the present circumstances of that innocent you corrupted while he was still in his mother's womb? He has already told you! The boy lives — and yes, he is a vampire! Dragosani's voice died away. .

There was silence in the motionless glade, where only Harry's neon nimbus lit the darkness to give any indication of the drama enacted there. And finally Thibor spoke again. Is it true? Does he live? Is he—?

‘Yes,' Harry told him. ‘He lives — as a vampire — for now.'

Thibor ignored the implications of that last. But how do you know he is... Wamphyri?

‘Because already he works his evil. That's why we have to put him down — myself and others who work for the same cause. And certainly we must destroy him before he ‘remembers" you and comes to seek you out. Dragosani has said that you would rise up again, Thibor. Now how would you set about that?'

Dragosani is a brash fool who knows nothing. I fooled him, you fooled him — so well, indeed, that you helped him destroy himself — why, any child could make a fool of Dragosani! Take no notice of him.

Hah! cried Dragosani. A fool, am I? Listen to me, Harry Keogh, and I'll tell you exactly how this devious old devil will use what he has made. First —BE SILENT! Thibor was outraged.

I will not! Dragosani cried. Because of you, I am here, a ghost, nothing! Should I lie still while you prepare to be up and about? Listen to me, Harry. When that youth —But that was as much as Thibor was willing to let him say. A hideous mental babble started up — such a blast of telepathic howling that Harry could unscramble no single word of it — and not only from Thibor but also Max Batu. Understandably, the dead Mongol sided with Thibor against his murderer.

‘I can hear nothing,' Harry tried to break into the din and through it to Dragosani. ‘Absolutely nothing!'

The telepathic cacophony went on unabated, louder if anything, more insistent than ever. In life Max Batu had been able to concentrate hatred into a glare that could kill; in death his concentration hadn't failed him; if anything the mental din he created was greater than Thibor's. And since there was no physical effort involved, they could probably keep it up indefinitely. Quite literally, Dragosani was being shouted down.

Harry attempted to lift his voice above all three: ‘If I leave you now, be sure I won't be back!' But even as he issued his threat he realised that it no longer carried any weight. Thibor was shouting for his life, the sort of life he had not known since the day they buried him here five hundred years ago. Even if the others did quieten down, he would go right on bellowing.