What was she to make of it? Alan Goresci and Garth Trevalin had heard the call? All the way back to her hiding place in the small hotel, B.J. had worried about it. They had heard the call—Radu’s call, obviously—and she hadn’t? What was going on here? She had tried calling both men, but their telephones had just rung and rung. And the dog-Lord’s return not scheduled for another two months. Oh, really? So why were the Ferenczys, possibly the Drakuls, too, up in the Cairngorms so early? What did they know, and Radu’s other thralls, that B.J. Mirlu didn’t?
But her course was set and no changing it now. She, too, must wait for Radu’s call. Until then there was nothing to do except worry over why she was the last to hear it, and to wonder what was on the dog-Lord’s mind …
And in Sicily, in Le Manse Madonie:
Anthony Francezci had never felt more alone in his life; never in his long, his too-long life.
Despite that he and his brother were rarely in complete accord, still he missed Francesco. Without him, Le Manse felt like some great stone tomb. A house of vampires, and the oldest of them all seething in his pit in the very bowels of the place. And the daily horror, when Anthony took to his bed, of never knowing what his dreams would be; but knowing quite definitely that when they came they would be nightmares, even to a monster. And knowing, too, what they would bring with them.
It had been only nine or ten days since the morning when Katerin had stumbled from his room clutching at her throat and vowing to tell no one what she had seen. Nor would she for her life’s sake, he was sure. But what difference did it make that no one else knew of his condition, the onset of his mutation? None at all, for Anthony himself knew. Knew that however long it took, the day would dawn when he was as his father was now. And that fact alone—its certainty—paled every other eventuality to insignificance, bringing him ever closer to the living, frothing horror that was Angelo Ferenczy.
Ten days, yes, in which short period of time, out of all the centuries of his time, Anthony had become as a ghost. Now he wafted through Le Manse Madonie much as a vampire thrall in the early days of conversion, spending most of his time in the cavern of the pit. And those of his men who saw him—hardened vampires who yet feared him for what he was, Wamphyri—could only marvel at the change in Anthony: his sunken cheeks, slumped shoulders, and fevered eyes. But only old Katerin and his father knew what troubled him.
Ah, my son, Angelo told him one time, where he leaned on the wall of the pit. It puts all other problems to flight, eh? As it was for me, so it is for you. Terrible! Terrible! But can you possibly believe that your brother will be as accommodating to you as you were to me that time all those years ago? Did you think I did not know? Oh, I knew. If not for you—your vision, your foresight—I would have been a dead thing, a truly dead thing, a long time ago. And who can say, perhaps that were for the best. The Old Ferenczy was at his most lucid, and his most tantalizing.
“How do you mean?” But Anthony was listless, enervated; he was sleeping badly, as from now on he always would.
In these latter centuries, without my guidance, my advice—without me as your “oracle” —you would have been more like an original. You would have had to be Wamphyri! But now … ?
Anthony had offered a shrug. “It’s a modern world. In order to live in it, we had to be modern, too.”
And sacrifice your vampire powers? I have thought long and long on it. Perhaps it was because I no longer had any real use for my powers that they started to overtake me. I was a dam and they were the water piling up within. When the pressure was too great, and they could no longer be contained, they burst forth. First the cracks, then the flood.
“Are you saying our passions were pent? Too constrained?”
Yours especially, the other answered. Francesco gave vent to his desires. As a child I had to curb him. He and I … were never close. Nothing strange in that: we are Wamphyri! But when opportunity presented, he went out into the world—perhaps to be away from me? And you were the home bird. You learned wisdom while he … learned! He was ever the more lustful, avaricious, bloody! Which was why, in this “modern”world, I must curb him. But the truth is that he was more the original, too. Even now.
“So, because Francesco ‘gave vent,’ as you have it,” Anthony replied, “and still gives it, he has probably saved himself from this? But I had thought the opposite was true: that a muscle atrophies through disuse.”
In human terms, according to the physicians of this world, yes. But the skills of the Wamphyri are only ours by virtue of the creature beneath the skin. The leech is our strength, Tony, my Tony! We are each two creatures; and we, the external creatures, believe that we hold the power. In this we are mistaken. We are the muscle that will atrophy, if our vampire leeches are not allowed to use us! But when the balance tilts too far, even the leech loses control.
“And when Francesco sees what is become or becoming of me?” Anthony tried to peer through the miasma rising from the shaft. “You hinted that he’d be less accommodating than I was.”
I could be wrong, (and Anthony sensed a shrug). But even if I am, what is this for “accommodation?” Is this what you want, my Tony? To be a thing in a pit?
“I would rather be dead, even truly dead!”
My sentiments exactly, said the other. And I have seen … I have seen … (He fell silent.)
“You’ve seen—what?”
Nothing! Nothing beyond the fact of the dog-Lord return. Oh, and his coming here, of course! But nothing else, no.
“His coming here!” Anthony hissed. “You’ve made no mention of this before?”
But I did, I did! Those years ago, before this Harry stole into your vault, and stole off with your money. I told you then that Radu would seek us out.
“When?” Anthony gripped the wall, leaned out a little more over the black gulf of the pit. “When will he come?”
He is awake even now.
“I know that,” Anthony barked, “for I’ve spoken with Francesco. He sensed him in the mountains, in Scotland. Radu’s return will be soon now. But … you say he’ll come here? How can that be? Francesco will stop him, surely?”
I think not. Oh, your brother is more like an original, be sure. But Radu is an original!
“Then I’ve got to get out of this place!” Anthony was beginning to panic. He felt the oppression of Le Manse Madonie as surely as any previous prisoner.
He would find you, wherever you go. Commonsense says stay here, defend what you’ve got. Have you strayed so far from your origins that even your territorialism has deserted you ?
“I see right through you!” Anthony snarled. Finally galvanized, he shook off his mood of morbid depression—or his terror did it for him. “You want me to stay here to defend you!”
No, for I see no future for myself. Now be calm, my Tony, my Anthony. Think what you have here: a veritable fortress, and men, your vampire thralls, to defend it. How may Radu come upon you without that you see him? From the rim of the plateau, from the walls of Le Manse Madonie; vampire eyes at night, searching for the great wolf! How can he come but across the plateau jumbles, or along your roads? Have you no watchmen? Also, you know when he will come: when it is his time. One night when the moon is full.
“He will take Francesco—who by your own words is closer far to your damned ‘original’ than me—yet fall before me and mine? Also, if Francesco is on the verge of destruction, as you have hinted, then why should I concern myself with how he might ‘accommodate’ me?” Anthony’s normally pale face had grown livid now and his eyes blazed red. “You trip on your own tongue, Angelo Ferenczy. The things you say don’t add up. You are playing a game with me, which sooner or later will come to light!”
No games, my son, my dear sweet Tony, Angelo replied. The future was ever devious; how may we be sure of anything? Also, these matters are much too serious for games, and I am far too old for them … not to mention too hungry! Deprived, I cannot even think straight. You have not fed me in a while. Some tidbit,
perhaps? Something sweet? Someone young?
“No!” Anthony snapped. Then changed his mind—apparently. “Yes!—when you have told me all you know. For I am sure that you have foreseen the end of all this. As for now …” He stumbled back from the rim. “Now I’m weary. I can’t get enough of—can’t get any—sleep, not with this thing in me, changing me. I’ll leave you to consider your future!”
Staggering to the gears, he lowered the half-grid over the mouth of the shaft and switched on the current. But then, as he made to leave the cavern:
ANGELO LIES! HE LIES, LIES, LIES!The Old Ferenczy’s multi-minds, over which he no longer had total control, were suddenly screaming in Anthony’s head, rocking him on his heels.
“What?” His trembling hands flew to his temples.
ANTHONY, YOUR FATHER IS LYING TO YOU! … YOU ARE RIGHT: HE KNOWS THE OUTCOME AND PREPARES FOR IT EVEN NOW. THE TENACITY OF THE WAMPHYRI! … ANGELO NEITHER WELCOMES NOR FEARS DEATH. WHY, A PART OF HIM IS DEAD EVEN NOW, IN WHICH HE IS BREEDING …
Be quiet! (Angelo would try to shout them down. And Anthony knew that the Old Ferenczy could will himself comatose, and the minds of all his victims with him, if he so desired.)
“How has he lied? Tell me, quickly!” He turned back to the pit, hoping they would “hear” him through his father. “What is he breeding?”
MYRIADS …
Be quiet! (Angelo’s bullfrog grunt, a threat in itself, as he strained to shut himself, and them, down.)
“Myriads of what?” But Anthony saw that already the exhalations from the pit—the vapours that were the “breath” of his father—were thinning.
MYRIADS! That word again. And finally:
Myriads, in a fading whisper, which died away entirely.
Then silence . .
Climbing towards the saner, upper regions of Le Manse Madonie, Anthony fumed. His loathsome father could blame who or whatever he desired for his condition, but Anthony saw it as hereditary. And if Angelo hadn’t contracted it, or if it hadn’t been in his blood in the first place, then it wouldn’t be in Anthony. Well, and now the ancient Thing was hungry again, was he? Nothing new in that. And he wanted something young, something sweet. For he liked them fresh and clean, the Old Ferenczy.
And now Anthony grinned to himself, however viciously. He would satisfy the monster’s lusts—but in his own way. And not until he was satisfied himself: that Angelo had told him all he knew. And until then he could starve. Not that he would starve. No, he would simply shrink, dry out, eventually fossilize! Destroy him with fire? Ah, no—Francesco had it quite wrong. But to seal him in his pit, and let him rot and scream forever down there in the dark … that would be much more in keeping.
Then, because he suspected that his father might be “listening,” Anthony added: “Think on that, you old bastard! And be sure that it isn’t an idle threat.”
As for Angelo’s “tidbit”: Anthony had the very thing. But here he shielded his thoughts as best he might, for he desired that to come as a surprise. Young and sweet? Hah! But when finally his father gave in to his demands, then there would be a reward of sorts, certainly.
Her name was Katerin …
In fact the hideous anomaly that was the Old Ferenczy “heard” none of this. Shut down, his mass of metamorphic matter slept. While moist in a corner of the natural rock cyst that was his cell a deliberately extruded, excised part of him rotted down, vented warm gasses, and stirred with a “life” of its own. Purple strands of cryptogenetic mycelium were threading their way through it even now.
Soon, it would break open to the pressure of the first of many fungus domes. And beneath the black toadstool caps, myriad red spores would form like pollen on the gills of these obscene fruiting bodies …
Harry couldn’t trust reality; indeed, from time to time he wondered if there was such a thing. But deep inside, as an all-too-human being, he was aware of the difference between what could and could not be. Or should not be. And some of the things that had been his life, before the times that he no longer wished to remember, were surely of the latter variety. But here there was no question of what was and wasn’t, or what should and couldn’t possibly be. No past and no future to worry about, only now.
Which was why he had incarcerated himself in this place of safety, this refuge. Since when he really hadn’t bothered thinking much about anything. Yet now he seemed to be conscious, and wondered why he was thinking again—and knew why. Because soon it would be feeding time, when the refuge wasn’t nearly so safe after all.
He went to stretch—and couldn’t. Couldn’t? But he could move his head, to look and see why he was immobilized. And then he remembered, or had this vague, shadowy recollection, of men bringing a heavy, padded armchair into his small, padded room. That had been after a very bad nightmare, when he’d started to scream and couldn’t stop. And he remembered the jacket they’d put him in, before sitting him down in his chair and strapping his wrists to the padded arms.
But these were only very small irritations; they were as nothing compared to the other thing, when he heard dead people talking to him. And it happened all the time: awake and sleeping alike! Awake it wasn’t so bad; he could handle it; he knew how to shut them out. But asleep it brought on the nightmares, when he must struggle and fight and kick to be rid of all that! Hence the … straitjacket? For the people here didn’t seem to understand that if they would only keep him awake he wouldn’t need to be tied down. And they wouldn’t let him explain—probably because he wasn’t very articulate, or because he kept mentioning things they didn’t want to hear—which only frustrated him and made him angry. And then, when he began to yell, they would give him a needle and the teeming dead would start in on him again.
It was a cycle he couldn’t break out of—despite that he had broken in!—and it detracted from his security. It wasn’t the refuge he’d envisaged. Perhaps we would leave and find some safer place, but that would mean going through those doors that didn’t exist … and he’d done that for the last time, too! And anyway, he couldn’t move, not tied down like this. But that was OK; the solitude and silence and stillness were good, weren’t they? Except, he didn’t know what to do about the feeding.
He sat in his chair, itched and couldn’t scratch, ran his tongue over the roughened areas of his gums above and below his front teeth; the rough, raw areas of torn skin where Willis had forced the sharp spoon into his mouth. And he felt the crusted rims of dried food clinging to his nostrils and ears, where the sadistic intern had stuffed the mush when Harry wouldn’t accept it driven savagely into his mouth. The next time Willis came—which would be soon now—he’d bring a wet sponge with him and clean Harry up a little, before starting again. And while Harry wasn’t sure what he could do about it exactly, still he knew he must do something about the feeding …
… But right now someone was speaking to him, a live someone, and Harry realized he’d been answering out loud. Well, not necessarily answering, but speaking at least; voicing his complaints, probably.
“You see,” said the voice, “I just don’t know what we are dealing with here. If I knew who you were it would help. And it would be even better if I knew how you got in here. But all you had on you was a notebook with a lot of scribble, none of which made any sense, and the only person you’ve spoken about is this Harry. Is that you? No second name? And no desire to … communicate?”
“Second name,” Harry said, trying desperately hard to focus his eyes, his mind. “Snaith … or Keogh … or Kyle.” And finally he got his bearings, brought the room out of blur.
Director Cyril Quant saw Harry’s eyes swim into focus and sat still in the lightweight folding chair he had brought with him to Harry’s cell. Willis was outside in the corridor, where Quant had told him to wait. But doubtless he’d heard this mysterious inmate‘s—this “illegal” inmate’s—mumbled, incoherent accusations. And Quant could see for himself the litter of dried-out slop on Harry’s face.
“But if you fight your feeding,
” he said reasonably, “you must expect to be made to eat. We can’t have you dying on us—er, Harry?—and not even know who you are! Now can we?”
Harry hung on to his vision, clung to the idea that somehow this man might be able to help him with this food problem. What he saw was weird; his eyes weren’t right; they hadn’t focused properly for—oh, for however long he’d been here. But Quant would look funny, if he didn’t look so grotesque! It was some sort of weird telescopic effect. Quant’s body was tiny on an even smaller chair, swelling up into round humped shoulders supporting a hugely bloated head. Balding, with a few strands of red hair slicked back behind smallish ears, and peering at Harry through thick-lensed spectacles that made his eyes look bigger yet, the man was batrachian, some kind of super-frog!
“Are you smiling?” Quant said. “Do you understand any of this at all?”
“No, do you?” Harry tried to ask him—which came out of his dry throat as a croak, a mumble. But in any case it was all too much. Only let it continue, they’d lure him back into their world, which no longer had any meaning for him. Best to simply let it slip.
And Quant snorted his disappointment as Harry’s eyes slid out of focus again and his head lolled from side to side …
Out in the corridor, Quant spoke to Willis. “He doesn’t seem to like you, Mr. Willis.”
“It cuts both ways,” Willis answered. “I heard what he was on about. Feeding time? It’s like feeding a rabid dog! I try to get something into him—he spits it right back at me! How am I supposed to feed him if he won’t keep his … head still?” Just for a moment he’d almost said “his fucking head,” and Quant was looking at him curiously. “I mean,” Willis continued hurriedly, “can’t we put him on a drip, feed him intravenously? And what’s he still doing here, anyway? He’s not ours; he isn’t a legitimate inmate. Shouldn’t we—I don’t know—give him to the authorities or something?”