Necroscope V: Deadspawn

vampire flesh could not replenish itself and the flesh of my human body, and the vampire must come first. That which was human in me gradually sloughed away, eaten out as by leprosy or some monstrous cancer. Even my mind was erased and in large part replaced, and what was instinct in my vampire gradually became instinct, inherent, in me. For the vampire must have a host, active and strong, to house its egg until it could be passed on, and it 'remembered' the shape and nature of its first host. As you know, Father, my 'other' father — the source of my egg — was a wolf!

'I knew that my body was going, my mind too, and saw that I was reverting. But still there was someone who knew my story — all of it, from the day I was conceived — and to whom I could talk in my hour of need. My mother, of course. And in practising my deadspeak so I kept at least that one last talent alive. But as for the rest: they are gone, forgotten. Ironic: I destroyed your talents and lost my own! And now, when I… forget things, I talk to the Gentle One Under the Stones, who reminds me of what has been; who even reminded me of you, when I might so easily have forgotten.'

Harry's emotions — the gigantic emotions of the Wamphyri — had filled him to overflowing. He couldn't find words to speak, could scarcely think. In a few short hours, a small fraction of his life, his entire life had been changed for ever. But that meant nothing. His pain was nothing. For others had really suffered and were suffering even now. And he could trace all of it back to himself.

'Son…!'

'I'll come here no more,' The Dweller said. 'Now that I've seen you. And now that you've… forgiven me?… I can forget what I was and be what I am. Which is something you might try for yourself, Father.' He reached out a hand to touch Harry's trembling hand, and his forearm was grey-furred where it slid from the sleeve of his robe.

Harry turned his face away. Tears are unseemly in scarlet, Wamphyri eyes. But a moment later, when he looked again…

… The Dweller's robe was still fluttering to the floor, while a shape, grey-blurred, launched itself from the window. Harry leaped to see. There in the vampire mist his son sprang away, then paused, turned and looked back. He blinked triangular eyes, lifted his muzzle, sniffed at the cold air. His ears were pointed, alert; he tilted his head this way and that; he was… listening? But to what?

'Someone comes!' he barked, warningly. And before the Necroscope could question his meaning: 'Ah, yes! That one. Forgotten until now, like so many other things I've forgotten. It seems I'm not the only one who marked your return, Father. No, for she too knows you're back.'

'She?' The Necroscope repeated his werewolf son, as that one turned and loped for the higher peaks; and all the grey brotherhood with him, vanishing into the mist.

Then:

A shadow fell on The Dweller's house and Harry turned his startled eyes skyward, where even now a weird diamond shape fell towards the garden. And: 'She?' he said again, his query a whisper.

He means me, hell-lander, her telepathic voice — hardly severe, nevertheless exploding in Harry's mind like a bomb — reached down to him. Telepathy, yes, and not deadspeak. But how could this be? It whirled him like a top.

You! he finally answered in her own medium, as her flyer swooped to earth.

The long dead — the no longer dead — the undead Lady Karen!

3 Harry and Karen — The Threat of the Icelands

Karen glided her flyer to earth at the north-facing front of the garden, just beyond the low wall there, where the ground sloped steeply away towards Starside. It was a good relaunch site and well known to her, for this was where she'd blinded the crazed Lesk the Glut, cut out his heart, and given his grotesque body to the garden's defenders for burning.

Leaving The Dweller's old house and making his way towards her through the dispersing mist, the Necroscope sent a dazed thought ahead of him: Is it really you, Karen, or am I seeing and hearing things? I mean, how can this be real? I saw you dead and broken on the scree where you'd thrown yourself down from the roof of your aerie.

Hah! she answered. And without malice: But that was when you were seeing things, Harry Keogh! She had stepped through a break in the wall and stood poised there, waiting for him, silhouetted against wall and flyer both. The latter, a nightmare dragon thing but harmless for all its prehistoric design, nodded, salivated, and blinked huge, owlish eyes. It swayed its flat, spatulate head this way and that; its damp, gleaming manta wings were of fine, flexible alveolate bone thinly sheathed in metamorphic flesh; worm legs or thrusters bunched beneath the doughy bulge of its body.

Harry looked at it and wondered why he felt no horror and very little pity. For he knew that the thing had been fashioned from the flesh of trogs or Travellers. Perhaps there was no more horror left in him. Or perhaps there was no more human. Except, drawing closer to Karen, he knew that some of his emotions at least were still human.

She was breathtaking. In the world beyond the sphere Gate — the world of men, now an entire universe away — her like had been quite unknown. Even her crimson eyes seemed beautiful… now. Harry was awed by her beauty, struck by it no less than when he'd first seen her, that time when she came here to join the garden's defenders in defiance of the Wamphyri. She had enthralled him then and did so again now. He couldn't take his eyes off her.

He drank her in:

From the burnished copper of her hair, down through every gorgeous curve of her body (which, whether half-hidden or half-exposed, was always given emphasis by her sheath of soft white leather), to the pale leather sandals on her feet, open at the toes to show her toenails painted gold, she was ravishing. Over her shoulders she wore a cloak of black fur, and about her waist a wide black belt whose grey-metal buckle was shaped into a snarling wolf's head. The sigil's significance was lost in the past; Dramal Doombody's ancestors had passed it down to him, and he in his turn had passed it to Karen. And not only his crest, but Dramal had given Karen his egg, too.

Riveted for long moments by her weirdness, her unearthly beauty and contrasting colours, Harry had paused; now he moved closer. Face to face, Karen was even more beautiful, more desirable. Countering his approach — shifting her body to mirror his every move — she displayed the sinuous motion of a Gypsy dancer which he remembered so well. But of course, for upon a time she'd been a Traveller. Why, only listen and he might hear the chime and jingle of her movements… yes, even when there was none to hear!

He heard these things now, and then her telepathic voice, chiming in his mind: You very nearly killed me once, Harry. And I should warn you: my first reason for coming here was to return the favour! She brought forward her right hand, until now hidden behind her back. Her battle gauntlet was in position; when she flexed her hand, a torturer's delight of blades, hooks and small scythes gleamed silver in the starlight.

Harry conjured a Mobius door on his immediate right and fixed it there. Invisible, it was the perfect bolthole if such were needed. Let Karen take a swing at him, he'd merely feint right and disappear. But these were thoughts he must keep to himself, while out loud: 'Are you saying you're here to kill me?'

To which, in a voice that trembled at the very edge of her control, she answered in kind: 'And are you saying you don't deserve it?'

Still keeping his own mind guarded, Harry looked into hers and saw the furious passions brewing there, saw anger bordering on rage, but nothing of hatred. Also, and very importantly, he saw the Lady Karen's loneliness. They were two of a kind now. 'I didn't understand what it was like to be…'he began, and paused; and tried again: 'I mean, I thought I was helping you, curing you, as of some vile disease. But I admit it, I did it for my son as much as for you. For if I could cure you…'

'Cure!' She spat the word out. 'Why don't you try curing yourself! There is no cure, Necroscope! Surely you