bolt snapped… and Shaitan cried out! Blood flowed freely, its smell inflaming him. Now he felt behind his shoulder with his left hand. The barb of the iron arrowhead protruded an inch, but he had no leverage to pull it out. He tore down a length of tough vine, looped it over the arrowhead, tied its ends to a creeper growing from a crevice.
The wolf had heard Shaitan's cry, smelled his blood. It came snarling, leaping to attain the ledge, scrabbled there a moment to regain its balance. Then it saw Shaitan and leaped again, locking its jaws on his arm. Its weight overbalanced him; locked together they fell from the ledge; the bolt was torn from Shaitan's back.
In the near-distance, Shaitan's closest human pursuer called out to his wolf: 'Seek him!' But the wolf had already discovered Shaitan, who was himself on the point of discovering a new and terrible weapon. Within him, his vampire was at last mature. Metamorphic, its flesh was Shaitan's flesh.
The wolf had jaws like a bear-trap, clamped fast now to the bones of Shaitan's forearm. Their eyes met, feral yellow against evil scarlet, and the man felt something of the beast's ferocity. So did his vampire, which must make him ferocious to match. Something was summoned to his flesh, summoned from his flesh! He felt a burning in his fingers as if they were on fire, an agony in his face and jaws far greater than the mere pain in his back. And yet these additional pains were not without… pleasure?
It was not unlike those occasions when he had summoned his vampire mist; but he had not summoned this, not knowingly. For this was the instinctive response of his metamorphism, the tenacity of his vampire, its lust for life; and suddenly the great wolf was no more than a puppy!
Shaitan's fingers, grown to claws, rammed into the animal's sides and tore them; his jaws, yawning impossibly wide, elongated into a nightmare cavern of serrated tusks which sprouted from red-gushing gums; his eyes were blobs of sulphur shot with scarlet fire. Gutting the wolf, he let its entrails spill. And when its agonized jaws flew open, then Shaitan's closed — upon its throat. Which he tore out in a welter of pipes and gristle and gore!
In just a moment, the wolf was wolf no more but a mangled carcass; it hadn't even cried out but died silently, in vast astonishment…
A second passed… another… and a third.
'Lupe?' A voice called from close at hand. 'Where in all that's…?' A man stepped out of the trees into starlight — in time to see something move in the undergrowth at the foot of the cliffs. 'Lupe?' the man repeated, but in a whisper now, wonderingly, as he lifted his crossbow.
Crouching down a little, he ran to the place beneath the cliffs. As he got there, so the darkness came flowing to its feet! Starlight gleamed on the horror that was Shaitan, which reached out a bloody hand and caught the other by his throat.
The watchman would have discharged his weapon — but he'd left the safety on! Shaitan knocked it from his trembling hand and drew him closer. And:
'Lupe?' he quietly, almost conversationally growled, his monstrous head cocked on one side. 'Ah, no — for my name is Shaitan!' And as he lowered his face to the other's throbbing neck, 'But from this time forward you must call me master…'
With his new disciple or lieutenant, who was the first entirely human underling of the Wamphyri, Shaitan headed east as before. There were no more pursuers; the night was long; they covered a good many miles — before the sun found them out.
For Shaitan's symbiont or parasite was a two-edged sword: one could not accept its advantages without its disadvantages. Sunlight, which had irritated Shaitan from the outset — almost from the moment of his breathing the red, corpse-spawned spores — now became a seething agony in his eyes and against his hide. It burned him, visibly steamed the moisture from his flesh, ate into him like acid and sapped his strength. He could stand to go out from the shade for seconds, but minutes would deplete him horribly, and an hour would kill him. His thrall was less susceptible for the moment; given time, however, and he, too, must surely succumb to direct sunlight. Such was the measure of Shaitan's corruption, and his contagion.
They were climbing diagonally eastward, above the foothills and towards the tree-line, when sunup came with its fogs in Sunside's valleys and forests, and its probing golden beams on the peaks; beams which gradually joined up to become a wall of yellow fire, creeping down towards them where they went all unsuspecting, like ants on the flank of the mountain.
And yet perhaps Shaitan (or his leech) did suspect something; for there was an anxiety in him, not yet fathomed, to be out of this place and once more into the cool of Starside. But when he felt the effect of the first of those as yet hazy beams on his nakedness, and when he observed in astonishment the rapid evaporation of his body's fluids and the scorching of his flesh, then he understood well enough his instinct — or that of his vampire — to take cover. And so, forced into the shade of a deep cave, Shaitan and his thrall, Ilya Sul, waited out the long day.
The cave had been the lair of some creature but now was empty; lesser caves and branching fissures within were cool, damp, dark; Shaitan felt reasonably secure. But he also felt hungry. The sun's rays, in however brief a time, had depleted him sorely. He fuelled himself on Ilya Sul, which weakened the man more yet but bound him even closer to his master. Also, it fed the vampire fire in Sul's blood, and hastened his change. So that when he went out on to the slopes with his crossbow, to find food for himself, he returned within the hour, feeble and blistered by the sun. But at least he'd shot a kid, which Shaitan gorged upon before tossing the less appealing parts to Sul.
So they fed themselves.
And then they slept, because by now they could feel the weight of the risen sun, like an immovable boulder, blocking the door of the cave; which meant there was no going on for a while. And Shaitan could hear the land outside sizzling with a deadly heat; he could even smell the scorching of the rocks, so that his skin crept with the knowledge of what that golden furnace could do to him…
Shaitan came starting awake!
He shook Sul, cautioned him to silence. The sun is high,' he whispered. 'I can feel it. Also, I feel Sunsiders! So come, find a dark hole for yourself.' They retreated into the cave deeper still, found shadowed niches in which to crawl.
And the weary trackers, with a wolf, came after; but not into the cave. For lying there, Shaitan fought down the urge to create a mist and flee into it (what, into the sunlight?) and instead willed it that the men would turn back. The grey one was their guide: he fastened upon its mind with his vampire awareness, spelling out the doom which would befall if it should enter.
The wolf pawed the remains of their meal at the entrance where they'd tossed the scraps, but came no farther. The men, Szgany Hagi, saw the skin, hair and bones, and knew that this had been a goat. And one of them said, 'A bear, probably a big one. This must be his lair. See, these remains are fresh. Why, he might even be at home!' And so they passed on by.
Shaitan waited a moment, then crept to the entrance. And keeping well back from the dazzle, he taxed his eyes to watch the men move away, marvelling greatly that they went in brilliant sunlight, with no apparent harm! Then… he was filled with bitter resentment. They lived here, where he could not; they hunted here, living on the earth's simple things, which he could not. It was their place, their haven (their heaven?) and could never be his except… in the dark of night.
Well, and so they lived and hunted here: indeed, they even hunted Shaitan himself! But tomorrow and tomorrow there would be other days, and long dark nights, when he would hunt in his own right — for men! Aye, and then he would turn their heaven into a hell.
It was a solemn promise, which Shaitan made unto himself…
Sunside's day was long and long, seeming interminable to Shaitan; but at last the shadows lengthened, the sun became a hot, smoky red blister on the south-eastern horizon, and the first pale stars blinked into being high over the spine of the barrier mountains. Twilight came down, and it was time to move on.
At which point there came a diversion.
Emerging from the cave into the gloom of evening, Shaitan was startled to hear a wailing and moaning, and to observe the approach of two figures — whom he recognized at once. The one who cried out and tore at his hair came, after all, as no great surprise: for this was the treacherous thrall, Vidra Gogosita, who seemed in a bad way indeed. But the other figure, advancing upon Shaitan quietly, hollow-cheeked and flame-eyed, was a shocking sight indeed. For he -
— was a dead man! He — was in fact Dezmir Babeni!
