Necroscope

then slowly came forward. He got down on one knee beside Dragosani and gripped his shoulder. 'Comrade Dragosani,' Batu's voice was hushed, little more than a dry, croaking whisper. 'Is it over?'

Dragosani stopped sobbing. He let his head continue to hang down while he considered Batu's question: was it all over? It was all over for Thibor Ferenczy, yes, but only just beginning for the new vampire, the as yet immature creature which even now shared Dragosani's body with him. They would supply each other's needs, (however grudgingly,) learn from each other, become as one being. The question still remained as to whose will would eventually achieve dominance.

Against any ordinary man the vampire must, of course, be the winner. Every time. But Dragosani was not ordinary. He had the power in him to accumulate his own lore, his own talents. And why not? Perhaps somewhere in his learning, in his gathering of secrets and strange new powers, he might yet find a way to be rid of the parasite. But until then…

'No, Max Batu,' he said, 'it's not over yet. Not for a while yet.'

'Then what must I do now?' the squat little Mongol was anxious to be of assistance. 'How can I help? What are your needs?'

Dragosani continued to stare at the dark earth. How could Batu help? What were the necromancer's needs? Interesting questions.

Pain and frustration died in Dragosani. There was much to do and time was wasting. He had come here to gather new powers to himself in the face of whatever threat was posed by Harry Keogh and the British E-Branch, and that was a job he still must do. Thibor's secrets were beyond him now, dead and gone forever like the vampire himself, but that must not be the end of the matter. However weak and battered he felt right now, still he knew that he had not been permanently dam aged. The pain may well have scarred his mind and soul (if he still had a soul), but those were scars which would heal. No, he had suffered no real or lasting injury. He had merely been — depleted.

Depleted, yes. The thing inside him needed, and Dragosani knew what it needed. He felt Batu's hand on his shoulder and could almost hear the blood surging in the other's veins. Then Dragosani saw the sharp, curved surgical tool with which he would have slit the ewe's throat. It lay there close to his hand, silver against the black earth. Ah, well, he had intended this eventually. It would be so much sooner, that was all.

Two things I need from you, Max,' Dragosani said, and looked up.

Max Batu gasped aloud and his jaw fell open. The necromancer's eyes were scarlet as those of the fiend he had just killed! The Mongol saw them — saw something else that glittered silver in the night — and saw… nothing else. Ever…

INTERVAL TWO:

'I have to stop,' Alec Kyle told his weird visitor. He put down his pencil, massaged his cramped wrist. The desk was littered with the curled shavings of five pencils, all of them whittled away to nothing. This was Kyle's sixth and his arm felt mangled from frantic scribbling.

A thin sheaf of papers was stacked in front of Kyle, with pencilled notes and jottings covering each sheet top to bottom and margin to margin. When he had started to write all of this down (how long ago? Four and a half, five hours?) the notes had been fairly detailed. Within an hour they'd become jottings, barely legible scrawl. Now even Kyle himself could scarcely read them, and they were reduced to a listing of dates alongside brief headlines.

Now, for a moment resting his wrist and mind both, Kyle glanced at the dates again and shook his head. He still believed — instinctively knew — that all of this was the absolute truth, but there was one massively glaring anomaly here. An ambiguity he couldn't ignore. Kyle frowned, looked up at the apparition where it floated upright on the other side of the desk, blinked his eyes at this shimmering spectre of a man and said: 'There's something I don't quite understand.' Then he laughed, and not a little hysterically. 'I mean, there are a good many things here which I don't understand — but until now I've at least believed them. This is harder to believe.'

'Oh?' said the apparition.

Kyle nodded. Today's Monday,' he said. 'Sir Keenan is to be cremated tomorrow. The police have discovered nothing as yet and it seems almost blasphemous to keep his body, well, lying about in that condition.'

'Yes,' the other nodded his agreement.

'Well,' Kyle continued, 'the point is I know a lot of what you've told me to be the truth, and I suspect that the rest of it is too. You've told me things no one else outside myself and Sir Keenan should ever have known. But — '

'But?'

'But your story,' Kyle suddenly blurted, 'has already outstripped us! I've been keeping a record of your time- scale and you've just been telling me about the coming Wednesday, two days from now. According to you, Thibor Ferenczy isn't yet dead, won't be until Wednesday night!'

After a moment the other said, 'I can see how that must appear strange to you, yes. Time is relative, Alec, the same as space. Indeed the two go hand in hand. I'll go further than that: everything is relative. There is a Grand Scheme to things

Some of that escaped Kyle. For the moment he saw only what he wanted to see. 'You can read the future? That well?' His face was a mask of awe. 'And I thought I had a talent! But to be able to see the future so clearly is almost unbe-' and he stopped short and gasped. As if

things weren't incredible enough, a new, even more incredible thought had crossed his mind.

Perhaps his visitor saw it written in his face. At any rate he smiled a smile transparent as smoke from a cigarette, a smile that reflected not at all the light from the window but allowed it to pass right through. 'Is there something, Alec?' he asked.

'Where… where are you?' Kyle asked. 'I mean, where are you — the real, physical you — right now? Where are you speaking from? Or rather, when are you speaking from?'

Time is relative,' the spectre said again, still smiling.

'You're speaking to me from the future, aren't you?' Kyle breathed. It was the only answer. It was the only way the spectre could know all of this, the only way he could do all of this.

'You'll be very useful to me,' said the other, slowly nodding. 'It seems you have a sharp intuitive ability to match your precognition, Alec Kyle. Or maybe it's all part of the same talent. But now, shall we continue?'

Still gaping, Kyle again took up the pencil. 'I think you better had continue,' he whispered. 'You'd better tell me all of it, right to the end…'

Chapter Fifteen

Moscow, Friday evening, Dragosani's flat on the Pushkin Road.

It was growing dark by the time Dragosani gratefully let himself into his flat and poured himself a drink. The trains had been maddeningly slow on the journey from Romania, and Max Batu's absence had made the return trip seem that much longer. Batu's absence, yes, and Dragosani's growing feeling of urgency, this sensation of being rushed towards some colossal confrontation. Time was quickly passing and still there remained so much for him to do. Achingly tired, still he couldn't rest. Some instinct urged him onward, warned him against pausing in his set course.

With a second drink inside him and beginning to feel a little better, he telephoned the Chateau Bronnitsy and checked that Borowitz was still in mourning at his dacha at Zhukovka. Then he asked to speak to Igor Vlady but Vlady had already left for home. Dragosani phoned him there, asked if he could come round. The other agreed at once.

Vlady lived in his own state flatlet not too far away but Dragosani took his car anyway; in less than ten minutes he was seated in Vlady's tiny living-room, toying with a welcoming glass of vodka.

'Well, Comrade?' Vlady finally asked when they'd done with the usual formalities and preliminaries. 'What can I do for you?' He peered curiously, almost speculatively at Dragosani's dark glasses and gaunt grey