Necroscope

his eyes held me until the job was done. And around his neck on a chain of gold, there I found a heavy golden medallion. I unclasped it, took it, placed it in my pocket.

''There,' he sighed. 'Payment in full. Now finish it.'

'I lifted the cleaver in a trembling hand, but -

''Wait!' he said. 'Listen: the temptation is on me to kill you. It is what you would call self-preservation, which runs strong in the Wamphyri. But I know it for false hope. The death you offer will be clean and merciful, the flames slow and intolerable. But for all that, still I might strike at you before you strike me, or even in the moment of the striking. And then both of us would die most horribly. Therefore… stay your blow until I close my eyes — then strike hard and true — then flee! Strike, and put distance between. Do you understand?'

'I nodded.

'He closed his eyes.

'I struck!

'In the moment the straight, shiny blade bit into his neck — even before it passed through and the head was severed — his eyes shot open. But he had warned me, and I had taken note. As his head shot free and blood spurted from his body I leaped backward. The head bounced, rolled, fell among blazing books. But God help me, I swear that however it flew, at whichever angle, those awful eyes turned to follow me, full of accusation! And oh! — the mouth — his mouth and what it contained, that forked tongue, like a snake's, slithering and flickering over lips that drained in an instant from scarlet to deathly white!

'And as bad or worse than all of this, the head itself had changed. The skin had seemed to tighten on the skull, which in turn had elongated to that of a great hound or wolf. The glaring eyes, previously dark, had turned to the colour of blood. The upper teeth had clamped down on to the lower lip, trapping the scarlet forked tongue there, and the great incisors were curved and sharp as needles!

'It is true! I saw it. I saw it — but only in that moment before the whole head began a swift decomposition. It was the heat; it could only be that the flesh was blistering and melting; but the sheer horror of it sent me stumbling away from it. Stumbling, yes, and then leaping — away from that staring, alien rotting head, but likewise from his decapitated body — in which there had now commenced the most awful commotion! A commotion… and a collapse. My God, yes! Oh, yes…

'You'll recall I had lain my jacket across his exposed guts? Now the jacket was gripped by some invisible force from beneath, torn apart and tossed violently, in two pieces, to the ceiling. Following it, lashing wildly, a single tapering tentacle of leprous flesh burst upward from his stomach, twisting and writhing in a grim paroxysm. Like a devilish whip it thrashed the air of the room, snaking through the smoke and the flames as if searching!

'As the tentacle fell to the floor and began a systematic if spastic examination of the blazing room, only recoiling from the flames themselves, I stepped up on to a chair and crouched there transfixed with terror. And from that slightly elevated vantage point I saw what was left of the corpse falling in upon itself and becoming first putrefaction, then bones with the flesh sloughed off, finally dust before my eyes. As this happened the tentacle grew leaden, retracted, drew itself back to where the host body had lain, to the dust and the last crumbling relics of centuried bones…

'And all of this, you understand, taking place in mere moments, swifter far than I can possibly tell it. So that to this day I could not swear my soul on what I saw. Only that I believe I saw it.

'Anyway, that was when the ceiling caved in and hurled me from my chair, and the entire area of the room where the horror had been burst into flames and hid whatever remained of it. But as I staggered from the place — and don't ask me how I got out again into the reeking night air, for that's gone now from my memory — there rose up from the inferno such a protracted cry of intense agony, so piteous and terrible and savagely angry a wailing, as ever I had heard and hope never to hear again.

'Then -

'The skies rained bombs once more and I knew nothing else until I regained consciousness in a field hospital. I had lost a leg, and, or so they later told me, something of my mind. Shell shock, of course; and when I saw how futile it was to try to tell them otherwise, then I decided simply to let it stand at that. Mind and body, both were merely victims of the bombing…

'Ah! But amongst my belongings when they released me was that which told the true story, and I have it still.'

Chapter Nine

Across Giresci's waistcoat he wore a chain of gold. Now he took from the left-hand waistcoat pocket a silver fob watch completely out of keeping with the antique chain, and from the right the medallion of which he had spoken, holding the jewellery up for Dragosani's inspection. Dragosani caught his breath and held it, ignored the watch and chain but took hold of the medallion and stared at it. On one face of the disc he saw a highly stylised heraldic cross which could only be that of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, but which had been scored through again and again with some sharp instrument and thoroughly defaced; and on the other side -

Somehow Dragosani had expected it. In harsh, almost crude bas-relief, a triple device: that of the devil, the bat, and the dragon. He knew the motif only too well, and the question it prompted came out in a rush of breath which surprised him more than Giresci:

'Have you tracked this down?'

'The device, its heraldic significance? I have tried. It has a significance, obviously, but I've so far failed to discover the origin of this specific coat or chapter. I can tell you something of the symbolism, in local history, of the dragon and the bat; but as for the devil motif, that is rather… obscure. Oh, I know what make of it, all right, but that's a personal thing and purely conjectural, with little or nothing to sub-'p>

'No,' Dragosani impatiently cut him off. 'That wasn't my meaning. I know the motif well enough. But what of the man — or creature — who gave you the medallion?

Were you able to trace his history?' He stared at the other, eager for the answer without quite knowing what had prompted the question. Asking it had been an almost involuntary action, the words simply springing from his tongue — as if they'd been waiting there for some trigger.

Giresci nodded, took back the medallion, watch and chain. 'It's curious, I know,' he said, 'but after an experience like mine you'd think I'd steer clear of all such stuff, wouldn't you? You certainly wouldn't think it would start me off on all those long years of private search and research. But that's what it did; and where better to start, as you seem to have worked out for yourself, than with the name and family and history of the creature I had destroyed that night? First his name: it was Faethor Ferenczy.'

'Ferenczy?' Dragosani repeated, almost tasting the word. He leaned forward, his fingertips white where they pressed down on the table between them. The name meant something to him, he felt sure. But what? 'And his family?'

'What?' Giresci seemed surprised at something. 'You don't find the name peculiar? Oh, the surname is common enough, I'll grant you — it's chiefly Hungarian. But Faethor?'

'What of it?'

Giresci shrugged. 'I only ever came across it on one other occasion: a ninth-century White Khorvaty prince ling. His surname was pretty close, too: Ferrenzig.'

Ferenczy, Ferrenzig, thought Dragosani. One and the same. And then he checked himself. Why on earth should he jump to a conclusion like that? And yet at the same time he knew that he had not merely 'jumped to a conclusion' but that he had known the duality of the Wamphyri identity for a fact. Dual identity? But surely that too was a conclusion drawn in haste. He had meant that the names were the same, not the men, or man, who had borne the names. Or had he in fact meant more than that? If so it was an insane conclusion — that those two Faethors, one a ninth-century Khorvatian prince and the other a modern Romanian landowner, should be one and the same man — or should be insane, except that Dragosani knew from the old Thing in the ground that the concept of vampiric and undead longevity was far from insane.