‘It’s time,’ he said, his voice a phlegmy cough, ‘and the Gate awaits. I say have done with all this. Put the woman on her pyre and burn them.’
Shaithis paused. He was reminded, however briefly, of his old dream. But dreams are for dreamers, and he was weary now of all dark omens – especially his ancestor’s warnings. ‘This man was the cause of my exile in the Icelands,’ he answered. ‘I vowed revenge, and now I take it.’
They glared at each other, Shaitan and Shaithis. There in the Gate’s white dazzle, their eyes blazed where they measured one another. But finally the Fallen One turned away. ‘As you will,’ he said, but quietly. ‘So be it.’
The clouds were flown and the rain had stopped. Shaithis called his thralls to light torches. He took a torch and held it up to Harry on his cross. ‘Well, Necroscope, and why don’t you call up the dead? My ancestor has told me that in your own world you were their champion, and I saw you call up crumbling trogs in the battle for The Dweller’s garden. So why not now?’
Harry hadn’t the strength for it (which his tormentor knew well enough), but even if he were strong he knew that the dead wouldn’t answer him. No, for he was a vampire and they had forsaken him. But in the foothills behind the Gate, a grey shape fretted and whined, prowling to and fro, to and fro; and the pack watching him intently through feral eyes, where they lay with their tongues lolling and ears erect. The great wolf’s memory was imperfect and his nature devolving, but for now he understood the Necroscope’s every thought. In a bygone time, as a human infant, Harry Wolfson’s mind had been one with his father’s.
The Necroscope sensed his son there, felt his concern, and at once closed his mind to external scrying. It was an effort, but he did it. Shaitan knew it at once, flowed forward and said to Shaithis, ‘Get on with it. This one’s not finished, I tell you! Now he has closed his mind, so that we don’t know what’s brewing in there.’
‘In just a little while,’ the other snarled, ‘his brains will be brewing in there! But for now, leave . . . me . . . be.r
And again Shaitan backed off.
‘Well, Harry Keogh?’ Shaithis called up to the crucified man. He waved his torch and tugged aside the skins from the dry branches of the balefires. ‘And did you think to shut me out from your delicious agonies? And can you ignore the pain itself? Ah, we Wamphyri have our arts, it’s true: we steel ourselves to the throb of torn flesh and the ache of broken bones; aye, even as they’re healing. But the vampire never lived who was insensitive to fire. And you’ll feel it, too, Necroscope, when your flesh begins to melt!’ He reached down with his torch to the base of the pile. ‘So what do you say? Should I light it now? Are you ready to burn?’
And at last Harry answered him. ‘You burn, you . . . ordure of trogs and stench of gas-beasts! Burn in hell!’
Shaithis slapped his thigh and laughed like a madman. ‘Oh? Hah, ha, ha! A taunt for a taunt, eh? What, and do you think to insult you executioner?’ He touched his torch to tufts of kindling and a wisp of smoke at once curled up, then a small tongue of flame.
And in the shadowy foothills Harry Wolfson issued an ululating howl, then turned and at a fast lope headed downhill for the tableau set in the light of the Gate. The grey brotherhood made to accompany him, but he stopped them: No! Return to your mountains. What befalls me befalls.
Flames licked up from Harry’s pyre, small bright tongues but gaining rapidly. Shaithis went to Karen where his thralls held her down. She was conscious now, would throw them off but had no strength for it. ‘Necroscope,’ the vampire Lord continued to taunt, ‘wanderer in strange worlds and stranger spaces between the worlds. Now say, why don’t you conjure one of your mysterious boltholes and come down from your cross? Step down and challenge me face to face, and champion this bitch whose flesh we’ve both known. Come, Necroscope, save her from my embrace.’