Wamphyri

His eyes opened a crack as my words sank in, then gaped wide in sudden understanding. I threw back my cowl so that he might see me, and smiled in a ma

I threw earth down upon him.

'Mercy!' he cried out loud.

‘Mercy? But are you not Thibor the Wallach, given the name Ferenczy and commanded to tend in his absence the lands of Faethor of the Wamphyri? And if you are, what do you here, so far from your place of duty?'

‘Mercy! Mercy! Leave me my head, Faethor.'

‘I intend to!' I tossed in more dirt.

He saw my meaning, my intention, and went mad, shaking and vibrating and generally threatening to tear himself loose from his stake. I put down a long, stout pole into the grave and tapped home the stake more firmly, driving it through the bottom of the coffin itself. As for the coffin's lid, I merely let it stand there on its side in the bottom of the hole. What? Cover him up and lose sight of that frantic, fear-filled face? ‘But I am Wamphyri!' he screamed.

‘You could have been,' I told him. ‘Ah, you could have been! Now you are nothing.'

‘Old bastard! How I hate you!' he raved, blood in his eyes, his nostrils, the writhing gape of his mouth.

‘Mutual, my son.'

‘You are afraid. You fear me. That is the reason!'

‘Reason? You desire to know the reason? How fares my castle in the Khorvaty? What of my mountains, my dark forests, my lands? I will tell you: the Khans have held them for more than a century. And where were you, Thibor?'

‘It's true!' he screamed, through the earth I threw in his face. ‘You do fear me!'

‘If that were true, then I should most certainly behead you,' I smiled. ‘No, I merely hate you above all others. Do you remember how you burned me? I cursed you for a hundred years, Thibor. Now it is your turn to curse me for the rest of time. Or until you stiffen into a stone in

the dark earth.'

And without further ado I filled in his grave.

When he could no longer scream with his mouth he screamed with his mind. I relished each and every yelp. Then I built a small fire to fool the soldiers and the priests, and warmed myself before it for an hour, for the night was chill. And eventually I went down to the plain.

‘Farewell, my son,' I told Thibor. And then I shut him out of my mind, as I had shut him out of the world, forever.

‘And so you took your revenge on Thibor,' said Harry when Faethor paused. ‘You buried him alive — or undead — forever. Well, that might have suited your cruel purpose, Faethor Ferenczy, but you certainly weren't doing the world at large any favours by letting him keep his head. He corrupted Dragosani and planted his vampire seed in him, and between times infected the unborn Yulian Bodescu, who is now a vampire in his own right. Did you know these things?

Harry, said Faethor, in my life I was a master of telepathy, and in death...? Oh, the dead won't talk to me, and I can't blame them — but there is nothing to keep me from listening in on their conversations. In a way, it could even be argued that I'm a Necroscope, like you. Oh, I've read the thoughts of many. And there have been certain thoughts which interested me greatly — especially those of that dog Thibor. Yes, since my death, I have renewed my interest in his affairs. I know about Boris Dragosani and Yulian Bodescu.

‘Dragosani is dead,' Harry told him, albeit u

Something of him remains even now.

‘Vampire matter, you mean? Mindless protoplasm hiding in the earth, shu

An interesting question, Faethor answered. Thibor's root.— his creeper of flesh, a stray pseudopod detached and left behind — would seem to be the exact opposite of you and me. We are incorporeal: living minds without material bodies. And it is... what? A living body without a mind?

‘I've no time for riddles and word games, Faethor,' Harry reminded him.

I was not playing games but answering your question, said Faethor. In part, anyway. You are an intelligent man. Can ‘(you work it out for yourself?

That got Harry thinking. About opposite poles. Was that what Faethor meant: that Thibor would make a new home for himself in a composite being? A thing formed of Yulian's physical shape and Thibor's vampire spirit? While he worried at the problem, Faethor was not excluded from Harry's thoughts.

Bravo! said the vampire.

‘Your confidence is misplaced,' Harry told him. ‘I still don't have the answer. Or if I do then I don't understand

it. I can't see how Thibor's mentality can govern Yulian's body. Not while it's controlled by Yulian's own mind, anyway.'

Bravo! said Faethor again; but Harry remained in the dark.

‘Explain,' said the Necroscope, admitting defeat.

If Thibor can lure Yulian Bodescu to the cruciform hills, said Faethor, and there cause his surviving creeper — the protoflesh he shed, perhaps for this very purpose — to join with Bodescu.

‘He can form a hybrid?'

Why not? Bodescu already has something of Thibor in him. He already is influenced by him. The only obstacle, as you point out, will be the youth's mind. Answer:

Thibor's vampire tissue, once it is in him, will simply eat Yulian's mind away, to make room for Thibor's!

‘Eat it away?' Harry felt a dizzy nausea. Literally!

‘But... a body without a mind must quickly die.' A human body, yes, if it is not kept alive artificially. But Bodescu's body is no longer human. Surely that is the essence of your problem? He is a vampire. And in any case, Thibor's transition would take the merest moment of time. Yulian Bodescu would go up into the cruciform hills, and he would appear to come down again from them. But in fact —‘It would be Thibor!'

Bravo! said Faethor a third time, however caustically.

‘Thank you,' said Harry, ignoring the other's sarcasm, ‘for now I know that I'm on the right track, and that the course of action chosen by certain friends of mine is the right one. Which leaves only one last question unanswered.'

Oh? Black humour had returned to Faethor's voice, a certain sly note of i

‘You know you are,' said Harry. ‘For all I know it's a precaution all the Wamphyri take — against the chance that death will find them out.'

Harry, you have been straightforward with me, and I like you for it. Now I too shall be forthright. No, this thing is of Thibor's invention. However, I would add that I wish I had thought of it first! As for my ‘vampire remains': yes, I believe there is such a revenant. if not several. Except ‘revenant' is perhaps the wrong word, for we both know there will be no return.

‘And it — they, whatever — is in your castle in the Khorvaty, which Thibor razed?'

A simple enough deduction.

‘But have you no desire to use such remains, like Thibor, to raise yourself up again?'

You are naïve, Harry. If! could, I probably would. But how? I died here and may not depart this spot. And anyway. I know that you will destroy whatever Thibor left buried in that castle a thousand years ago — if it has survived. But a thousand years, Harry — think of it! Even I do not know if vampire protoplasm can live that long, in those circumstances.

‘But it might have survived. Doesn't that... interest you?'