Necroscope

'Knowledge,' Dragosani answered at once. 'I'm just a man, with a man's knowledge of women,' he lied, 'and - '

He paused in confusion, for the old one was chuckling! It had been a mistake to lie to him.

Oh? A man's knowledge of women? A 'complete' man's knowledge, eh, Dragosani?

He gritted his teeth, choked out: 'There hasn't been time ... my work, studies ... the opportunity hasn't arisen.'

Time? Studies? Opportunity? Dragosani, you are not a child. I was eleven when I tore through my first maidenhead, a thousand years ago. After that - virgin, bitch, whore, what did it matter? I had them all, in all ways -and always wanted more! And you? You have not tasted? You have not soaked yourself in the sweat and the juice and the hot sweet blood of a woman? Not one? And you call me a dead thing!

The old one laughed then, laughed uproariously, outrageously, obscenely. He found it all so ecstatically ridiculous! His laughter went on and on, became a deluge, a tidal wave, a howling ocean of laughter in Dragosani's head, threatening to drown him.

'Damn you!' he stood up and stamped on the earth, spat on it. 'Damn you!' he shook his knotted fists at the black soil and tumbled slabs. 'Damn you, damn you, damn you!'

The old one was quiet in a moment, oozing like some nightmare slug in Dragosani's mind. But I'm already damned, my son, he said, after a little while. Yes, and so are you...

Dragosani snatched out his knife, reached for the shu

Wait! Not so hasty, Dragosani. I have not refused. But tell me: since it would appear that like some puny priest you've abstained for all these long years, why now?

Dragosani thought about it, decided he might as well tell the truth. The old devil in the ground had probably seen through him, anyway. 'It's the woman. She aggravates me, taunts me, flaunts her flesh.'

Ahhh! I know the sort.

'Also, I believe she thinks I've been with men - or at least she has wondered about it.'

Like the Turks? The old one's mental response was sharp, touched with hatred. That is an insult!

'I think so too,' Dragosani nodded. 'So... will you do it?'

You are inviting me into your mind, am I correct? Tonight, when this woman comes to you?

'Yes.'

And it is an invitation, made of your own free will?

Dragosani grew wary. 'Just this once,' he answered. 'It will have no permanence.'

Again you flatter yourself, the other chuckled. I have -or will have - my own body, Dragosani, which is nothing so weak as yours!

'And you can do it? And will I learn from it?'

Oh, I can do it, my son, yeeessss! Have you forgotten the fledgling? And didn't you learn something that time, too? Who made you a necromancer, Dragosani? Yes, and this time you will learn... much!

'Then I want nothing more from you - for now, anyway.' He began to back away from the tomb, moving downhill, away from that place of centuried horror. And -

But what of the piglet? asked the thickly glutinous voice in his head. And more hurriedly: For the earth, Dragosani, for the earth.

In the deep, unquiet gloom, Dragosani narrowed his eyes. 'Oh, yes, I very nearly forgot,' he said, his tone not quite sarcastic. 'The piglet, of course. For the earth Quickly he returned, slit the insensate animal's throat, tossed its pink body down. And then, without looking back, he made silently away.

A little way down the slope, against the bole of a tree where great roots forked, trapped there and unable to roll any farther, he saw something strange and stopped to pick it up. It was last night's offering, or what remained of it. A tightly interwoven ball of pink skin and crushed bones, all dry as crumpled cardboard. A beetle crawled on it, seeking in vain for some morsel of sustenance. Dragosani let it fall and roll out of sight.

Oh, yes, he thought - but guarded his thoughts carefully there in the darkness beneath the pines - oh, yes. For the earth. Only for the earth...

Dragosani got back to the Kinkovsi place in time to eat supper with the family again; for the last time, though he couldn't know that then. During the meal Use showed little or no interest in him, which was as well for he felt tense and on edge. He was not sure he'd done the right thing; the old devil in the ground was no fool and had stressed that this would be at Dragosani's own invitation; his old revulsion was gradually mounting in him as the time approached; but at the same time his body ached for release from years of sexual self-denial. For the first time since his arrival here the food seemed tasteless to him, and even the beer was flat and lifeless.

Later, in his room, he paced and fantasised, growing ever more angry with himself and fretful as the hours slipped by. For the third or fourth time since supper he took out the half-dozen volumes he'd brought with him on vampirism, read through the relevant passages, put the books away again, out of sight in a suitcase. According to legend, one must never accept any invitation from a vampire; and, equally important, one must never invite a vampire to do anything! In this the conscious will of the victim (by accepting or making an invitation) was all-important. It meant in effect that it was his decision to be a victim. The will was like a barrier in the mind of the victim which the vampire was reluctant, even unable, to surmount without the aid of the victim himself. Or perhaps, psychologically, it was a barrier the victim must surmount: before he could become a victim, he must first believe ...

In Dragosani's case it was a question of the depth of his belief. He knew the thing in the ground was there, so that didn't come into it. But as yet he did not know what power - or the extent of the power - the creature could exert externally. Perhaps even more important, now that he had 'invited it in', as it were, he didn't know the limits of his own resistance, or if he would be able to resist at all. Or if he would want to ...

Well, doubtless he would find out soon enough.

The hour between midnight and 1:00 a.m. passed incredibly slowly, and as the trysting time approached Dragosani began to hope that Use would think better of it and stay away. She might be sound asleep even now, with no intention of meeting him here. It could simply be a game she played with all of her father's guests - to make them look and feel foolish! In fact, she might well feel the same way about men as Dragosani - until now -had been caused to feel about women.

A half-dozen and more times that thought had come to him, that she was making an utter fool of him, and each time he had gone to the open window to close it and draw his moon-silvered curtains. But on every occasion he had paused, something had stopped him, and he'd snarled silently at his own incompetence in this thing and gone back to sit on his bed in the darkness of the room.

Now, at two minutes past the hour, cursing himself for a buffoon and rushing to the window yet again, he was on the point of slamming it shut when - down there in the moonlit farmyard, making its way like a shadow amongst shadows, a figure, dark and gauzy, fleeting - and Use Kinkovsi's bedroom window open a little way, seeming to smile up at him with her face, her knowing eyes. She was coming!

God, how Dragosani needed the old one now! And how he did not want him. Did he need him, really? But... dare he make do without him?

Elation vied with terror in Dragosani and was very nearly overwhelmed at the first pass. Terror born not alone of the tryst itself, nor even the purpose of the tryst, but perhaps more out of his own ability - or inability? -to carry it through. He was a man now, yes, but in matters such as this still a boy. The only flesh he had known, whose secrets he had delved, had been cold and dead and unwilling. But this was live and hot and all too willing!

Revulsion climbed higher in him, coursed through him like a flood. He had been a boy, just a boy... pictures filled his head in bestial procession, which he had thought were forgotten, thrust out... the visit to his aunt's house ... his cousins...the beast-thing which he knew had been only a rutting man! God, that - had - been - a -nightmare!