Necroscope

another week. After that… it will be a while before I'm up to much. I loved this argumentative, tough old bitch. She had a tumour, they say, in her head. Suddenly it grew too big. Very peaceful at the end. I miss her a lot. She never knew what a secret was! That was nice.'

'I'm sorry,' Dragosani said again.

At that Borowitz seemed to snap out of it. 'So take a break,' he said. 'Get it all down on paper. Report to me in a week, ten days. And well done!'

Dragosani's hand tightened on the telephone. 'A break would be very welcome,' he said. 'I may use it to look up an old friend of mine. Gregor, can I take Max Batu with me? He, too, has done his work well.'

'Yes, yes — only don't bother me any more now. Goodbye, Dragosani.'

And that was that.

Dragosani didn't like Batu, but he did have plans for him. Anyway, the man made a decent travelling companion: he said very little, kept himself more or less to himself, and his needs were few. He did have a passion for slivovitz, but that didn't present a problem. The little Mongol could drink the stuff until it came out of his ears, and still he would appear sober. Appearance was all that mattered.

It was the middle of the Russian winter and so they went by train, a much interrupted journey which didn't see them into Galatz until a day and a half later. There Dragosani hired a car with snow chains, which gave him back something of the independence he so relished. Eventually, on the evening of that second day, in the rooms which Dragosani found for them in a tiny village near Valeni, finally the necromancer grew bored with Batu's silence and asked him: 'Max, don't you wonder what we're doing here? Aren't you interested to find out why I brought you along?'

'No, not really,' answered the moon-faced Mongol. 'I'll find out when you're ready, I suppose. Actually, it makes no difference. I think I quite like travelling. Perhaps the Comrade General will find more work for me in strange parts.'

Dragosani thought: No, Max, there'll be no more work for you — except through me. But out loud he said only, 'Perhaps.'

Night had fallen by the time they had eaten, and that was when Dragosani gave Batu the first hint of what was to come. 'It's a fine night tonight, Max,' he said. 'Bright starlight and not a cloud in sight. That's good, for we're going for a drive. There's someone I want to talk to.' On their way to the cruciform hills they passed a field

where sheep huddled together in a corner where straw had been put out for them. There was a thin layer of snow but the temperature was at a reasonable level. Dragosani stopped the car. 'My friend will be thirsty,' he explained, 'but he's not much on slivovitz. Still, I think it's only fair we should take him something to drink.'

They got out of the car and Dragosani went into the field, scattering the sheep. 'That one, Max,' he said, as one of the animals strayed close to the Mongol where he leaned on the fence. 'Don't kill it. Merely stun it, if you can.'

Max could. He crouched, his face contorting where he directed his gaze through the bars of the fence. Dragosani averted his face as the sheep, a fine ewe, gave a shrill cry of terror. He looked back in time to see the animal bound as if shot, and collapse in a shuddering heap of dense wool.

Together they bundled the animal into the boot and went on their way. After a little while Batu said: 'Your friend must have the strangest appetite, Comrade.'

'He does, Max, he does.' And then Dragosani told the other something of what he could expect.

Batu thought about it for some minutes before he spoke again. 'Comrade Dragosani, I know you are a strange man — indeed we are both strange men — but now I am tempted to believe you must be mad!'

Dragosani bayed like a hound, finally brought his booming laughter under control. 'You mean you don't believe in vampires, Max?'

'Oh, indeed I do!' said the other. 'If you say so. I don't mean that you're mad to believe — but you are certainly mad to want to dig the thing up!'

'We shall see what we shall see,' Dragosani growled, more soberly now. 'There's just one thing, Max. What ever you hear or see — no matter what may happen — you are not to interfere. I don't want him to know you're even here. Not yet, anyway. Do you understand what I'm saying? You're to stay out of it. You're to be so still and quiet that even I forget you're there!'

'As you will,' the other shrugged. 'But you say he reads your mind. Perhaps he already knows I'm with you.'

'No,' said Dragosani, 'for I can sense when he's trying to get at me and I know how to shut him out. Anyway, he'll be very weak by now and not up to fighting with me, not even mentally. No, Thibor Ferenczy has no idea that I'm here, Max, and he'll be so delighted when I speak to him that he won't think to look for treachery.'

'If you say so,' and Batu shrugged again.

'Now,' said Dragosani, 'you have said I must be mad. Far from it, Max. But you see this vampire has secrets that only the undead know. They are secrets I want. And one way or the other I intend to get them. Especially now that there's this Harry Keogh to deal with. So far Thibor has frustrated me, but not this time. And if I have to raise him up to get at these secrets… then so be it!'

'And do you know how? — to raise him up, I mean?'

'Not yet, no. But he'll tell me, Max. Be sure of that…'

They were there. Dragosani parked the car off the road under the cover of overhanging trees, and in the cold bright light of the stars they trudged slowly up the overgrown fire break together, snaring the burden of the twitching sheep between them.

Approaching the secret glade, Dragosani took the animal on his shoulder and whispered: 'Now, Max, you're to stay here. You may follow a little closer if you wish, and watch by all means — but remember, keep out of it!'

The other nodded, came a few paces closer, huddled down and wrapped his overcoat tightly about himself. And alone Dragosani went on under the trees and up to the tomb of the Thing in the ground.

He paused at the rim of the circle, but farther out than when last he'd visited. 'How now, old dragon?' he softly said, letting the trembling, half-dead ewe thump to the hard ground at his feet. 'How now, Thibor Ferenczy, you who have made a vampire of me!' He spoke softly so that Max Batu could not hear, for as always he found it easier to speak out loud than merely think his conversation at the vampire.

Ahhhh! came the mental hiss, drawn out and sighing, like the waking breath of one roused from deepest dreams. And is it you, Dragosani? Ho! — and so you've guessed, have you?

'It didn't take much guesswork, Thibor. It has been only a matter of months, but I'm a changed man. Indeed, not entirely a man.'

But no rage, Dragosani? No fury? Why, it seems to me that this time you come almost humbly! Why is that? I wonder.

'Oh, you know why, old dragon. I want rid of this thing.'

Ah, no (a mental shake of some monstrous head) unfortunately not. That is quite impossible. You and he are one now, Dragosani. And did I not call you my son, right from the very beginning? It is only fitting, I think, that my real son now grows within you. And he laughed in Dragosani's mind.

Dragosani couldn't afford the luxury of anger. Not yet. 'Son?' he pressed. 'This thing you put in me? Son? Another lie, old devil? Who was it told me that your sort have no sex?'

/ think you never listen, Dragosani, the vampire sighed. You, his host, have determined his sex! As he grows and becomes more properly part of you, so you become more like him. In the end it is one creature, one being.

'But with his mind?'

With your mind — but subtly altered. Your mind and

your body too, but both changed a little. Your appetites will be… sharper? Your needs… different. Listen: as a man your lusts, passions and rages were limited by a man's strength, a man's capabilities. But as one of the Wamphyri… What end would it serve to have that great engine in you with nothing to drive but a bundle of soft flesh and brittle bones? What — a tiger with the heart of a mouse?

Which was more or less what Dragosani had expected from the monster. But before coming to a final,