Deadspeak

They waited, and in a little while Janos came, grunting, whining and panting into the night. He saw them, choked on his terror, gagged and reeled as he stumbled away from them out of the ruins. He was spent; he had no breath; he tottered to the cliff behind the castle and climbed it along a path... and half-way up found Harry and Bodrogk waiting for him. The huge Thracian carried a battleaxe.

There was nowhere left to run. Janos looked outwards to the night and his crimson eyes gazed on empty space. In all his life there'd been only one Wamphyri art he never mastered or counterfeited, and now he must. He held up his arms and willed the change, and his clothing tore as his body wrenched itself into a great blanket, an aerofoil of flesh. And like a bat in the night, he launched himself from the cliffside path.

He succeeded! - he flew! - with the tatters of his ripped clothing fluttering about him like strange wings. He flew... until Bodrogk's hurled battleaxe buried itself in his spine.

Harry and Bodrogk returned to the ruins and found the monster writhing there where he'd crashed down in the rubble. He choked and coughed up blood, but already he'd worked the axe loose and his vampire flesh was healing him. The Necroscope kneeled beside him and looked him in the eye. Man to ... man? Face to terrifying, terrified face.

'Bastard Necroscope!' Janos's eyes bled where they bulged.

'You have a man's body,' Harry answered, without emotion, 'but your mind and the vampire within you were raised from ashes in an urn.' He pointed a steady hand and finger. 'Ashes to ashes, Janos, and dust to dust! OGTHROD AI'F, GEB'L - EE'H.'

The vampire gave a shriek, wriggled frantically, choked, gagged and regained his man-shape.

And the Necroscope continued: 'YOG-SOTHOTH, 'NGAH'NGAI'Y.'

'No!' Janos howled. 'N-n-noooooooo!'

As Harry uttered the final word, 'Zhror, so Janos's entire body convulsed in instant, unbearable agony. He writhed frantically, vibrated, then grew still. Finally his head flopped back and his awful mouth flew open, and the lights went out in his eyes. Then -

- His massive chest slowly deflated as he sighed his last, long sigh. No air escaped him but a cloud of red dust, drifting on the air. The rest of his body, even his head, must be full of the stuff. And as the dust of that devolved vampire leech settled, it reminded the Necroscope of nothing so much as the spores of those weird mushrooms at Faethor's place on the outskirts of Ploiesti.

Which in turn served to remind him of something else as yet unfinished...

Bodrogk's lady Sofia came up out of the ruins, and Sandra came with her.

She came ghosting in the way of vampire thralls, her yellow eyes alive in the night, but Harry knew that she was less than Sandra now. Or more. Briefly, he remembered his precognitive glimpse back at the start of this whole thing: of an alien creature that came to him in the night and lusted after him, but only for his blood. Sandra was now an alien creature, who would lust after men for their blood.

She flew into his arms and sobbed into his neck, and holding her tightly - as much to steady himself as to steady her - he looked over her sallow shoulder to where Bodrogk gathered up his wife. And he heard Sofia say:

'She saved me! The vampire girl found me where Janos had hidden me and set me free!'

And Harry wondered: her last free-will act, before the monstrous fever in her blood claims her for its own?

Sandra's beautiful, near-naked body was cold as clay where it pressed against the Necroscope, and Harry knew there was no way he could ever warm it. A telepath, she 'heard' the thought as surely as if it had been spoken, and drew back a little. But not far enough.

His thin sharp stake, a splinter of old oak, drove up under her breast and into her heart; she took one last breath, one staggering step away from him, and fell.

Bodrogk, seeing Harry's anguish, did the rest...

Epilogue

All night Harry sat alone in the ruins, sat there with his thoughts, with Faethor trapped within him and the teeming dead held at bay without. He let no one in to witness his sorrow.

He had thought he would be cold, but strangely was not. He had thought the darkness and the shadows would bother him, but the night had felt like an old friend.

With the dawn spreading in the east, he sought out Bodrogk and his lady. They had found a sheltered place to light a fire, and now reclined in each other's arms, watching the sun rise. Their faces greeted him with something of sadness, but also with a great resolve.

'It doesn't have to be,' he said. The choice is yours.'

'Our world is two thousand years in the past,' Bodrogk answered. 'Since then... we've prayed for peace a thousand times. You have the power, Necroscope.'

Harry nodded, uttered his esoteric farewell and watched their dust mingle as a breeze came up to blow them away...

And now he was ready.

He returned to the ruins and set Faethor free.

What? that father of vampires raged. And am I your last resort, Harry Keogh? Do you enlist my aid now, when all else has failed you?

'Nothing has failed,' Harry told him. And then, even by his standards, he did a strange thing. He deliberately lied to a dead man. 'Janos is crippled, dying,' he said.

Faethor's fury knew no bounds. Without me? You brought him down without me? He doesn't know I had a hand in it? I want to feel the dog's pain! He crashed out of Harry's mind and discovered Janos - dead!

Astonished, Faethor knew the truth, but of course Harry had known it before him. He triggered Wellesley's talent to shut Faethor out. 'I told you I'd be rid of you,' he said.

Fool! Faethor raged. /'// be back in, never fear. Only relax your guard by the smallest fraction, and we'll be one again, Necroscope.

'We had a bargain,' Harry was reasonable. 'I've played my part. Go back to your place in Ploiesti, Faethor.'

Back to the cold earth, after I've known your warmth? Never! Don't you know what has happened? Janos made no great error when he read the future. He knew that a master vampire - the greatest of them all - would go down from this place when all was done. I am that vampire, Harry, in your body!

'Men shouldn't read the future,' said Harry, 'for it's a devious thing. And now I have to be on my way.'

Where you go, I go!

Harry shrugged and opened a Möbius door. 'Remember Dragosani?' he said. And he stepped through the door.

Faethor shuddered but went in with him. Dragosani was a fool, he blustered. You don't shake me off so lightly.

"There's still time,' Harry told him. 'I can still take you to Ploiesti.'

To hell with Ploiesti!

Harry opened a past-time door and launched himself through it, and Faethor clung to him like the grim death he was. You won't shake me loose, Necroscope!

They gazed on the past of all Mankind, their myriad neon life-threads dwindling away to a bright blue origin. And now Faethor moaned: Where are you taking me?

'To see what has been,' Harry told him. 'See, see there? That red thread among the blue? Indeed, a scarlet thread... yours, Faethor. And do you see where it stops? That's where Ladislau Giresci took your head the night your house was bombed. That's where your life-thread stopped, and you'd have been wise to stop with it.'

Take... take me out of here! Faethor gasped and gurgled, and clung like an incorporeal leech.

Harry returned to the Möbius Continuum and chose a future-time door, where now the billions of blue life-threads wove out and away forever, speeding into a dazzling, ever-expanding future. He drifted out among them, and was quickly drawn along the timestream. And: 'This thread you see unwinding out of me,' he said. 'It's my future.'