And what will you do about it? (Did Dragosani detect a tremor of fear in the mental voice? Was the Thing in the ground worried?)
‘Nothing,’ he answered.
Nothing? (Relief.)
‘Nothing at all. Perhaps I made a mistake, seeking to be as you were, desiring to be one of the Wamphyri. Perhaps I’ll now go away from here – and this time stay away – and let the years complete their work on you. I may have temporarily given your stinking bones something of flesh, something of life, but the centuries will take it all back again, I’m sure.’
Dragosani, no! (Real fear now, panic.) Listen: I wasn’t testing my power. I wasn’t testing anything. Do you remember how I told you I was not unique, that others of the Wamphyri were extant even now? I said that for centuries I had waited for them to come and release or avenge me, and they came not. Do you remember that?
‘Yes, what of it?’
Why, can’t you see? If our roles were reversed, would you have been able to resist? You gave me the opportunity to find out about those others, to learn what had become of them. Old Faethor, who was my father, dead at last! And Janos, a brother of mine who always hated me, exploded in the gasses of what he kept in his dungeons. Aye, dead and gone, both of them – and I for one glad of it! What? Didn’t they leave me rotting in the earth for half a millennium? Oh, they heard me calling down all those
bitter nights, be sure of it – but did they come to set me free? Not them! So Ladislau Giresci fancies himself a tracker of vampires, does he? But I would have shown him how to track them, who left me to the dirt and the worms and the seep of centuries, when I rise up from this place! Ah, well, they are gone now, and my vengeance with them . . .
Dragosani smiled grimly. ‘I can’t help asking myself, Thibor, why they deserted you and left you to your fate? Your own father, for instance, Faethor Ferenczy: who would know you better than him? And why did your brother, Janos, hate you so? There’s more to you than meets the eye, eh, Thibor? A black sheep among vampires! Who ever heard of such a thing? But why not? -you yourself have mentioned your excesses more than once. And I have personal recollections of them. Do the things you’ve done bother even your conscience? Or are the Wamphyri, and you in particular, without conscience?’
You make much of very little, Dragosani.
‘Oh? I don’t think so. I’m only just beginning to learn about you, Thibor. When you aren’t lying outright, then you’re obscuring the truth. It’s the way you are; you don’t know any other way.’
The vampire was furious. You find it easy to insult me because you know I may not strike you! How have I obscured the truth?
‘How? Haven’t you said that I “gave” you the opportunity to discover what had become of these kin of yours? But in fact you made your own opportunity. It wasn’t my intention when I started out from Moscow to go to the library in Pitesti, Thibor, so who put that thought in my head again, eh? And when you learned of Ladislau Giresci, why, I just had to go and see him, didn’t I?’
Listen, Dragosani –
‘No, you listen. You used me. Used me just as the vampire of popular fiction uses his human vassals, just as you used your Szekely serfs five hundred years ago. But I’m no serf, Thibor Ferenczy, and that’s your big mistake. It’s one you’ll come to regret, too.’
Dragosani, I –
‘I’ll hear no more talk, old dragon, not from your forked tongue. There’s only one thing you can do for me now: get yourself out of my mind!’
Dragosani’s mind was fully developed now, trained, sharp as one of his own scalpels. Case-hardened by the necromancy which this very vampire had inspired in him, its cutting edge was swift and deadly. In its action it was keener than an ordinary man’s is over that of a mongol -but how strong was it? Now Dragosani put it to the test. He squeezed with his mind, thrusting the monster out, driving him away.