Necroscope V: Deadspawn

I smell success! I'm for going in.' He looked from Fess to Arkis.

Arkis shrugged. 'If this so-called 'cone's master' has comforts in there, then I'm with you, Shaithis. I've had it to the tusks with hardship! I could use some rich red blood in my belly, and a woman in my bed. D'you suppose it's a harem he guards so jealously?'

Shaithis's turn to shrug. 'I've never been a one for the histories,' he said, 'but I've heard it said that some of the banished Lords took their concubines with them. We can't say what we'll find until we find it.'

'Comforts, aye,' said the Ferenc, licking his lips. 'I could use some of those myself. Very well, we go on.'

Shaithis put on a scowl and said, 'And how's this for a turn of events? Are you suddenly our leader? It seems you like having the last word, Fess Ferenc. 'Arkis, you lead the way.' And, 'Very well, we go on.''

'Bah? was Fess's retort. 'If no one ever made a decision, then we'd be here for ever. Here, let me lead the way…'

Which was exactly what Shaithis had wanted.

The darkness of the interior was like daylight to the vampire Lords, indeed it was preferable to the auroral light and the blue sheen cast by the stars. The Ferenc strode where the way was obvious and unobstructed, inched along where it was made obscure by jumbles, or where the uneven ceiling came down low, or where blisters of lava had burst to form jagged-rimmed, circular cusps of rock like small craters in the almost corrugated texture of the floor. And where other natural fissures or blowholes radiated from the main run, he steadfastly followed the ancient lava flow.

Arkis stayed a pace or so to the Ferenc's rear, followed immediately by Shaithis. As they progressed so the oppressive sensation of ominous expectancy or foreboding lifted a little, which (to Diredeath and the Ferenc, at least) lent credence to Shaithis's 'theory' that the volcano's dweller had deliberately set a fearful aura over the mouth of the run to dissuade any would-be explorers.

Shaithis stayed very much on the alert, kept his thoughts fully guarded, would have liked to contact Shaitan but dared not, not with Fess and Arkis probing in all directions with their minds, their Wamphyri awareness sharp for the smallest hint of mental activity. And always they moved deeper into the heart of the rock.

Eventually the Ferenc called a halt, whispering, 'We must be halfway in at least. Time to take stock.'

'Of what?' Arkis grunted. His blunt query sounded like an avalanche, echoing out and back in slowly decreasing waves of sound.

'Dolt!' Fess whispered again when he could be heard. 'What use to have the senses of bats, to be able to smell out the way ahead like wolves and keep our minds tuned for the thoughts of others, when at every opportunity all you can do is make great noise! Would you alert our enemy to our presence?'

Abashed, Arkis kept his answer low: 'Hell, if he's at home, surely by now he knows we're coming!'

'Perhaps,' Shaithis intervened, 'but in any case, let's keep it quiet.'

'Taking stock, yes,' said the Ferenc. 'Going first all this way has taken the edge of my awareness. Arkis, you can spell me.'

'No problem.' The other took the lead, glad for the chance to make amends. But after moving on only a dozen or so paces: 'Now hold!' Arkis said. 'Something's weird!'

They had all felt it at the same time: a sensory void, a region vacant of all vibrancies, whether for good or evil, a place stagnant as some stirless, sunless subterranean lake. And they likewise knew what that meant: that the place had been made sterile, for even darkness and cold stone have a feel to them. Someone wanted them to believe that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, here… because there was something here.

Shaithis's flesh tingled and he knew the others must be feeling the same sensation. Arkis, in the lead, stood rooted to the spot, gurgling inarticulately; but it was much too late for gurgling anything. Shaithis felt the heavy mental curtain deliberately ripped open — felt fear and horror springing into being behind it and rushing to burst through its tattered drapes — then saw the blur of leprous grey which was to be the end of Arkis Leperson, called Diredeath. And indeed his death was dire!

Where the Thing came from would be hard to say — a niche in the wall of the place, a side-tunnel, a hiding place in the lee of some bulge of lava — but it came at great speed and with fell intent. And it was exactly as the Ferenc had described it. Patched white and grey, mottled like veined marble, it seemed to uncoil or erupt into being, as if some massive boulder half-buried in the floor had come to life and reshaped itself. Its legs were a blur, claws scrabbling as it reared before Arkis; its fishlike head bore a bone lance tapered to a sharp point and equipped with thorns or hooks all along its length; its eyes were like saucers, fixing its victim with their emotionless glare.

Arkis's gauntlet was on his hand, ready; but as he raised his arm the Thing struck at him in a move too fast to follow. Its lance gashed his short, squat neck as it sawed past, and its needle-toothed jaws closed on his gauntlet arm. The arm was severed, swallowed at a gulp. In drawing back, the Thing sawed at Arkis's neck again and sliced into his whistling air-pipe; in the next moment its lance was rammed forward a second time, directly into him, piercing his squat body to the heart. He jerked and throbbed where he was held upright on the bone blade, and his tusks chomped on thin air, turning red as he coughed up a spray of blood.

Fess whirled away from the scene (Shaithis thought to run) and his eyes were huge and scarlet. But a lot more than simple fear lit them: there was fury, too! The giant grabbed Shaithis with one taloned hand and drew back the other like a bunch of black-gleaming scythes. 'Treacherous bastard!' he snarled. 'Your father's egg was rotten, and the pus is still in you!'

'What?' Shaithis forced the metamorphic flesh of his hand to expand within his gauntlet. 'Are you mad?'

'In trusting you? I must be!' The Ferenc readied himself to thrust at Shaithis: to punch in through his ribs with his taloned hand, grasp his living heart and wrench it out. But something stopped him. Something he had seen behind Shaithis.

Shaitan was the colour and texture of black lava. Only his movement against the rock-splash wall had given him away, and only then because he wanted to be seen. Fess saw him, and his jaw fell open. He took a great gulp of air and forgot to strike at Shaithis, who rewarded him by crashing his clenched gauntlet into the side of his head. Then-

— Shaithis's immemorial ancestor brushed him aside, out of the Ferenc's suddenly loose grasp, and wrapped the stunned giant in a nest of lashing tentacles. With his arm locked to his sides, Fess was helpless, but in any case Shaitan allowed no time for any sort of recovery. With a sound like tearing leather, his elastic mouth flowed over and closed upon the Ferenc's entire face and head!

Shaithis, stumbling blindly away, struck stony debris and tripped. And suddenly nerveless — even Shaithis, nerveless — he crashed down on to the lava floor. To one side Shaitan's nightmarish ingurgitor hissed and bubbled as it drained off the last of Arkis's fluids, and to the other Fess Ferenc's 'invincible' body pulsed and vibrated in the primal vampire's coils where Shaitan crushed and devoured his head. And Shaithis thought: If there's a hell, then I stand at its gate!

Shaitan's eyes glowed red out of the darkness which was his crushing, grinding, metamorphic head. And his reply, in Shaithis's staggered mind, was this: Aye, a hell of sorts, where we are the Lords. For it is our hell, son of my sons, which one day we'll take with us to Starside, and then to all the worlds beyond!

Part Three

1 The Hunters and the Hunted

Harry Keogh, Necroscope and would-be avenger, had thought at first that it would not be especially difficult