‘A wolf?’ Astonished, Shaithis had remembered his dream.
‘A beast, aye, going on all fours. A grey one, the leader of the pack, with nothing of powers except those of the wild. The Travellers hold him in awe, whose forepaws are human hands. A little of his mind must be human, too, at least in its memories. And of course his vampire has survived, in however small part, for that was what saved him. But the rest is wolf.’
‘A wolf!’ Shaithis had breathed it again. Well, it wasn’t the first time he’d experienced oneiromantic dreams. It was an art of the Wamphyri, that’s all. ‘And his father, the hell-lander Harry Keogh?’
‘He is back in Starside, aye.’
‘Back?’
‘Indeed, for following the battle at The Dweller’s garden he returned to his own place. Something which you could hardly be expected to know, for by then you were in exile.’
‘His own place? The hell-lands?’
‘Hell-lands! Hell-lands! They are not hell-lands! How often must I tell you: this place is hell, with its sulphur stenches, vampire swamps and sun-blasted furnace lands beyond the mountains! Ah, but Harry Keogh’s world . . . to the likes of us it would be a paradise!’
‘How can you know that?’
‘I can’t – but I can suspect it.’
‘This Harry Keogh,’ Shaithis had mused, ‘he had powers, to be sure, but he was not Wamphyri.’
‘Well, now he is.’ Shaitan at once contradicted him. ‘But as yet untried. For who is there to test him, in devious argument or in battle? What’s more, the Travellers don’t much fear him, for he will not take the blood of men.’
‘What?!’
‘According to the boy – ‘ Shaitan had nodded ‘ – The Dweller’s father eats only beast flesh. Compared to your vampire, my son, it seems his is a puling, unsophisticated infant of a thing.’
‘And the so-called “Lady” Karen?’
‘Ah, yes.’ Shaitan had nodded. ‘The Lady Karen: last of Starside’s Wamphyri. You have designs on that one, don’t you? I remember you remarked on her treachery, and even now her name falls like acid from your forked tongue. Well, Karen and Harry Keogh are together. So at least he’s that much of a man. They share her aerie. If she’s the beauty you say she is, doubtless he’s in her to the hilt and beyond even as we speak.’
It was a deliberate jibe and Shaithis knew it, but still he could not resist rising to the other’s bait. ‘Then they should enjoy each other while they can,’ he had answered, darkly. And finally he had looked around for the Traveller child.
‘Gone,’ Shaitan told him. ‘Man-flesh, pure and simple. I’ve had my share of metamorphic mush these thousands of years. The boy was a tidbit, but welcome for all that.’
‘The entire child?’
‘In Sunside there are entire tribes,’ Shaitan had answered, his voice a clotted gurgle. ‘And beyond that entire worlds!’
With which they’d commenced to ready themselves for their resurgence . . .
Now Shaithis waited on the emergence of his latest warrior-creature, and his ancestor Shaitan the Fallen waited with him. When the beast’s scales, grapples and various fighting appendages had stiffened into chitin hard as iron, a matter of hours now, finally it would be time to venture forth against Starside.
As for any future ‘battle’: would it even last long enough to qualify as such? Shaithis doubted it. For he firmly believed that on his own – single-handedly controlling a mere fistful of warriors from the back of a flyer, and without his ancestor’s help – still he would have the measure of Karen and her lover, and whatever allies they might muster. And therefore the measure of Starside, too.
What, a mere female? A pack of wolves? And a vampire ‘Lord’ who shied from man-blood? No army that – but a rabble! Let Keogh call up the dead if he would; fine for scaring trogs and Travellers, but Shaithis had no fear of the crumbling dead. And as for that other facet of Keogh’s magic – that clever trick of his, of coming and going at will, invisibly – that wouldn’t help him. Not this time. If he went, good riddance! And if he came let it be to his death!