Something monstrous! Right now I can give you only the barest outline — I simply don't know enough about it, not yet. But do you remember what I told you about the Russian E-Branch? And about Dragosani? I know there was no way you could check it all out, but have you looked into it at all? Do you believe what I told you about Dragosani?
While Keogh spoke to him, so Kyle had stared fascinated at that facet of him which was different, that: addition to him since the last time he'd seen or sensed him. For now, superimposed over the apparition's abdomen — suspended in midair and slowly spinning on its own axis, turning in the space that Keogh's body occupied — there floated a naked male baby, or the ghost of one, just as insubstantial as Keogh himself. The child was curled like a foetus floating in some invisible, churning fluid, like some strange biological exhibit, like a hologram. But it was a real baby, and alive; and Kyle knew that it, too, was Harry Keogh.
'About Dragosani?' Kyle came back to earth. 'Yes, I believe you. I have to believe you. I checked out as much as I could and it was all exactly as you said. And as for Borowitz's branch — whatever you did there, it was devastating! They contacted us a week later, the Russians, and asked us if we wanted you… I mean — '
'My body?'
' — if we wanted it back, yes. They contacted us, you understand. Direct. It didn't come through diplomatic channels. They weren't ready to admit that they existed, and didn't expect us to admit that we existed. Therefore you didn't exist, but they asked us if we wanted you back anyway. With Borowitz gone they have a new boss, Felix Krakovitch. He said we could have you, if we'd tell them how. How you did what you did to them. What, exactly, you'd done to them. I'm sorry, Harry, but we had to deny you, tell them we didn't know you. Actually, we didn't know you! Only I knew you, and Sir Keenan before me. But if we'd admitted you were one of ours, what you'd done might be construed as warfare.'
Actually, it was mayhem! said Keogh. Listen, Alec, this can't be like the last time we talked. I may not have the time. On the metaphysical plane I have comparative freedom. In the Mobius continuum I'm a free agent. But here in the physical now I'm a virtual prisoner in little Harry. Right now he's asleep and I can use his subconscious mind as my own. But when he's awake his mind's his own, and like a magnet I'm drawn back to it. The stronger he gets — the more his mind learns — the less freedom for me. Eventually I'll be forced to leave him entirely for an existence along the Mobius way. If I get the chance I'll explain all of that later, but for now we don't know how long he'll sleep and so we have to use our time wisely. And what I have to say can't wait.
'And it somehow concerns Dragosani?' Kyle frowned. 'But Dragosani's dead. You told me that yourself.'
Keogh's face — the face of his apparition — was grave now. Do you remember what he was, this Dragosani?
'He was a necromancer,' said Kyle at once, no shadow of doubt in his mind. 'Much like you.' He saw his mistake immediately and could have bitten his tongue.
Unlike me! Keogh corrected him.
Of course. Now Kyle remembered. 'You mean he was also a vampire.'
Keogh's shimmering image nodded. That's exactly what I mean. And that's why I'm here now. You see, you're the only one in the world who can do anything about it. You and your branch, and maybe your Russian counterparts. And when you know what I'm talking about, then you'll have to do something about it.
Such was Keogh's intensity, such the warning in his mental voice, that gooseflesh crept on Kyle's spine. 'Do something about what, Harry?'
About the rest of them, the apparition answered. You see, Alec, Dragosani and Thibor Ferenczy weren't the only ones. And God only knows how many more there are!
'Vampires?' Kyle thrilled with horror. He remembered only too well that story Keogh had told him some eight months ago. 'You're sure?'
Oh yes. In the Mobius continuum — looking out through the doors of time past and time to come — I've seen their scarlet threads. I wouldn't have known them, might never have come across them, but they cross young Harry's blue life thread. Yes, and they cross yours, too!
Hearing that, it was as if the cold blade of a psychic knife lanced into Kyle's heart. 'Harry,' he said stumblingly, 'you'd… you'd better tell me all you know, and then what I must do.'
Chapter Two
The old Thing in the ground trembled however minutely, shuddered slightly, strove to return to his immemorial dreaming. Something was intruding, threatening to rouse him up from his dark slumbers, but sleep had become a habit which satisfied his every need… almost. He clung to his loathsome dreams — of madness and mayhem, the hell of living and the horror of dying, and the pleasures of blood, blood, blood — and felt the cold embrace of the clotted earth closing him in, weighing him down, holding him here in his darkling grave. And yet the earth was familiar and no longer held any terrors for him; the darkness was like that of a shuttered room or deep vault, an impenetrable gloom entirely in keeping; the forbidding nature and location of his mausoleum not only set him apart but kept him protected. He was safe here. Damned forever, certainly — doomed for all time, yes, barring some major miracle of intervention — but safe, too, and there was much to be said for safety.
Safe from the men — mere men, most of them — who had put him here. For in his dreaming the wizened Thing had forgotten that those men were long dead. And their sons, dead. And theirs, and theirs…
The old Thing in the ground had lived for five hundred years, and as long again had lain undead in his unhallowed grave. Above him, in the gloom of a glade beneath stirless, snow-laden trees, the tumbled stones and slabs of his tomb told something of his story, but only the Thing himself knew all of it. His name had been… but no, the Wamphyri have no names as such. His host's name, then, had been Thibor Ferenczy, and in the beginning Thibor had been a man. But that had been almost a thousand years ago.
The Thibor part of the Thing in the ground existed still, but changed, mutated, mingled and metamorphosed along with its vampire 'guest'. The two were one now, inseparably fused; but in dreams that spanned a millennium, still Thibor could return to his roots, go back to the immensely cruel past…
In the very beginning he had not been a Ferenczy but an Ungar, though that was of no account now. His forefathers were farmers who came from a Hungarian princedom across the Carpathians to settle on the banks of the Dniester where it flowed down to the Black Sea. But 'settling' was hardly the word for it. They had had to fight Vikings (the dreadful Varyagi) on the river, where they came exploring from the Black Sea, the Khazars and vassal Magyars from the steppes, finally the fierce Pechenegi tribes in their constant expansion west and north-wards. Thibor had been a young man then, when at last the Pechenegi wiped out the rude settlement he called home and he alone survived. After that he'd fled north to Kiev.
Never much of a farmer, indeed, far more suited for war with his massive size — which in those days, when most men were small, made Thibor the Wallach something of a giant — in Kiev he sold himself into the service of Vladimir I. The Vlad made him a small Voevod or warrior chief and gave him a hundred men. 'Go join my Boyars in the south,' he commanded. 'Fend off and kill the Pechenegi, keep 'em from crossing the Ros, and by our new Christian God I'll give you title and banner both, Thibor of Wallachia!' Thibor had gone to him when he was desperate, that much was clear.
In his dream, the Thing in the ground remembered how he'd answered: Title and banner, keep them, my Lord — but only give me one hundred men more and I shall kill you a thousand Pechenegi before returning to Kiev. Aye, and I'll bring you their thumbs to prove it!'
He got his hundred men; also, like it or not, his banner: a golden dragon, one forepaw raised in warning. 'The
