Kyle stared at her. ‘That's a good idea, Irma — but what about you? Won't you be setting yourself up? Won't they give you a hard time?'

‘What?' She looked surprised at the suggestion. ‘Is it my fault I was alone here when I took that telephone call?

Is it me for blaming that my taxi took a wrong turning and I couldn't find you to stop you from burning the hills? All these country tracks looking the same to me!'

Krakovitch, Kyle and Quint, all three grinned at each other. Sergei Gulharov was mainly out of it, but he sensed the excitement of the others and stood up, nodding his head as if in agreement. ‘Da, da!'

‘Right,' said Kyle, ‘let's do it!' And on impulse, he grabbed Irma Dobresti, pulled her close and kissed her soundly.

Monday night.

9.30 middle-European time, and in England 7.30 P.M.

There was fire and nightmare on the cruciform hills under the moon and stars and the looming Carpatii Meridionali, and the nightmare transferred itself westward across mountains and rivers and oceans to Yulian Bodescu where he tossed on his bed and sweated-the chill, rank sweat of fear in his garret room at Harkley House.

Exhausted by the unspecified fears of the day, he now suffered the telepathic torments of Thibor the Wallach, the vampire whose last physical vestiges were finally being consumed. There was no way back for the vampire now; but unlike Faethor, Thibor's spirit was unquiet, restless, malignant. And it ached for revenge!

Yuliaannn! Ah, my son, my one true son! See what is become of your father now.

‘What?' Yulian talked in his sleep, imagined a blistering heat, flames that crept ever closer. And in the heart of the fire, a figure beckoning. ‘Who... who are you?'

Ah, you know me, my son. We met but briefly, and you were still unborn at that meeting, but you can remember if you try.

‘Where am I?'

For the moment, with me. Ask not where you are, but where I am. These are the cruciform hills — where it started for you, and where it now ends for me. For you this is merely a dream, while for me it is reality.

‘You!' Now Yulian knew him. The voice that called in the night, unremembered until now. The Thing in the ground. The source. ‘You? My... father?'

Indeed! Oh, not through any lover's tryst with your mother. Not through the lust or love of a man for a woman. No, but your father nevertheless. Through blood, Yulian, through blood!

Yulian fought down his fear of the flames. He sensed that he only dreamed — however real and immediate the dream — and knew he would not be hurt. He advanced into the inferno of fire and drew close to the figure there. Black billowing smoke and crimson flames obscured his view and the heat was a furnace all around, but there were questions Yulian must ask, and the burning Thing was the only one who could answer them.

‘You have asked me to come and seek you out, and I will come. But why? What is it you want of me?'

Too late! Too late! the flame-wreathed apparition cried out in anguish. And Yulian knew that his pain was not horn of the consuming fire but bitter frustration. I would have been your teacher, my son. Yes, and you would have learned all the many secrets of the Wamphyri. In return

-... can't deny that there would have been a reward in it for me. I would have walked again in the world of men, known again the unbearable pleasures of my youth! But too late. All dreams and schemes to no avail. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. .

The figure was slowly melting, its outline gradually changing, rendering down into itself.

Yulian must know more, must see more clearly. He penetrated the very heart of the inferno, came close up to the burning Thing. ‘I already know the secrets of the Wamphyri!' he cried above the roar and crackle of blazing trees and the hiss of molten earth. ‘I learned them for myself!' -

Can you put on the shapes of lesser creatures?

‘I can go on all fours like a great dog,' Yulian answered. ‘And in the night, people would swear I was a dog!'

Hah! A dog! A man who would be a dog! What is that for an ambition? It is nothing! Can you form wings, glide like a bat?

‘I... haven't tried.'

You know nothing.

‘I can make others like myself!'

Fool! That is the simplest of things. Not to make them is much harder! -

‘When harmful men are nearby, I sense their minds. .

That is instinct, which you got from me. Indeed, everything you have you got from me! So you read minds, eh? But can you bend those minds to your will?

‘With my eyes, yes.'

Beguilment, hypnotism, a stage magician's trick! You are an innocent.

‘Damn you!' Yulian's pride was hurt at last, his patience all used up. ‘What are you anyway but a dead thing? I'll tell you what I've learned: I can take a dead creature and draw out its secrets, and know all that it knew in life!'

Necromancy? Is it so? And no one to show you how? That is an achievement! There is hope for you yet.

‘I can heal my own wounds as though they never were, and I've the strength of any two men. I could lie with a woman and love her — to death, if I desired — and not even weary myself. And only anger me, dear father, and then I could kill, kill, kill! But not you, for you're already dead. Hope for me? I'll say there is. But what hope is there for you?'

For a moment there was no answer from the melting Thing. Then —Ahhh! And indeed you are my son, Yuliaannn! Closer, come closer still.

Yulian moved to less than arm's length from the Thing, facing it squarely. The stench of its burning was monstrous. Its blackened outer shell began to crumble, rapidly disintegrated and fell away. The flames immediately attacked the inner image, which Yulian now saw almost as a reflection of himself. It had the same features, the same bone structure, the same dark attraction. The face of a fallen angel. They could be peas from the same pod.

‘You... you are my father!' he gasped.

I was, the other groaned. Now I am nothing. I am burning away, as you see. Not the real me but something I left behind. It was my last hope, and through it and with your help — I might have been a power in the world once again. But it's too late now.

‘Then why do you concern yourself with me?' Yulian tried to understand. ‘Why have you come to me — or drawn me to you? If I can't help you, what's the point of this?'

Revenge! The burning Thing's voice was suddenly sharp as a knife in Yulian's dreaming mind. Through you!

‘I should avenge you? Against whom?'

Against the ones who found me here. The ones who even now destroy my last chance for a future. Against Harry Keogh and his pack of white magicians!

‘You're not making sense.' Yulian shook his head, gazed in morbid fascination as the Thing continued to melt. He saw his own features liquefying, streaming away and falling from the burning creature in molten tatters. ‘What white magicians? Harry Keogh? I don't know anyone of that name.'

But he knows you! First me, Yulian, and then you!

Harry Keogh knows us — and he knows the way: the stake, the sword, and the fire! You tell me you can sense the presence of enemies — and have you not sensed just such enemies close to you even now? They are one and the same. First me, and then you!

Even dreaming, Yulian felt his scalp crawling. The secret watchers, of course! ‘What must I do?'

Avenge me, and save yourself. That, too, is one and the same. For they know what we are, Yulian, and they cannot abide us. You must kill them, for if you don't they'll surely kill you!

The last scrap of human flesh fell from the nightmarish entity, revealing at last its true, inner reality. Yulian hissed his horror, drew back a little way, gazed upon the face of all evil. He saw Thibor's bat's snout, his convoluted ears, long jaws, crimson eyes. The vampire laughed at him — the bass booming of a great hound — and a split tongue flickered redly in a cave of teeth. Then, as if someone had applied a giant's bellows to the task, the flames roared up higher still and rushed in, and the image blackened at once and turned to glowing cinders.