Max could. He crouched, his face contorting where he directed his gaze through the bars of the fence. Dragosani averted his face as the sheep, a fine ewe, gave a shrill cry of terror. He looked back in time to see the animal bound as if shot, and collapse in a shuddering heap of dense wool.
Together they bundled the animal into the boot and went on their way. After a little while Batu said: ‘Your friend must have the strangest appetite, Comrade.’
‘He does, Max, he does.’ And then Dragosani told the other something of what he could expect.
Batu thought about it for some minutes before he spoke again. ‘Comrade Dragosani, I know you are a strange man – indeed we are both strange men – but now I am tempted to believe you must be mad!’
Dragosani bayed like a hound, finally brought his booming laughter under control. ‘You mean you don’t believe in vampires, Max?’
‘Oh, indeed I do!’ said the other. ‘If you say so. I don’t mean that you’re mad to believe – but you are certainly mad to want to dig the thing up!’
‘We shall see what we shall see,’ Dragosani growled, more soberly now. ‘There’s just one thing, Max. What ever you hear or see – no matter what may happen – you are not to interfere. I don’t want him to know you’re even here. Not yet, anyway. Do you understand what I’m saying? You’re to stay out of it. You’re to be so still and quiet that even I forget you’re there!’
‘As you will,’ the other shrugged. ‘But you say he reads your mind. Perhaps he already knows I’m with you.’
‘No,’ said Dragosani, ‘for I can sense when he’s trying to get at me and I know how to shut him out. Anyway, he’ll be very weak by now and not up to fighting with me, not even mentally. No, Thibor Ferenczy has no idea that I’m here, Max, and he’ll be so delighted when I speak to him that he won’t think to look for treachery.’
‘If you say so,’ and Batu shrugged again.
‘Now,’ said Dragosani, ‘you have said I must be mad. Far from it, Max. But you see this vampire has secrets that only the undead know. They are secrets I want. And one way or the other I intend to get them. Especially now that there’s this Harry Keogh to deal with. So far Thibor has frustrated me, but not this time. And if I have to raise him up to get at these secrets . . . then so be it!’
‘And do you know how? – to raise him up, I mean?’
‘Not yet, no. But he’ll tell me, Max. Be sure of that . . .’
They were there. Dragosani parked the car off the road under the cover of overhanging trees, and in the cold bright light of the stars they trudged slowly up the overgrown fire break together, snaring the burden of the twitching sheep between them.
Approaching the secret glade, Dragosani took the animal on his shoulder and whispered: ‘Now, Max, you’re to stay here. You may follow a little closer if you wish, and watch by all means – but remember, keep out of it!’
The other nodded, came a few paces closer, huddled down and wrapped his overcoat tightly about himself. And alone Dragosani went on under the trees and up to the tomb of the Thing in the ground.
He paused at the rim of the circle, but farther out than when last he’d visited. ‘How now, old dragon?’ he softly said, letting the trembling, half-dead ewe thump to the hard ground at his feet. ‘How now, Thibor Ferenczy, you who have made a vampire of me!’ He spoke softly so that Max Batu could not hear, for as always he found it easier to speak out loud than merely think his conversation at the vampire.
Ahhhh! came the mental hiss, drawn out and sighing, like the waking breath of one roused from deepest dreams. And is it you, Dragosani? Ho! – and so you’ve guessed, have you?
‘It didn’t take much guesswork, Thibor. It has been only a matter of months, but I’m a changed man. Indeed, not entirely a man.’