‘Whores?’ she had cut him off with such a hiss that he’d thought she would fly at him.
‘ – but who could never be as totally rotten as you!’ he’d finished.
Then she had broken down, bursting into tears and letting him shove her from the room without further protest. And for the rest of the night he’d slept soundly and completely undisturbed.
That had been the end of it. At midday the next day, while Boris was enjoying his lunch in silence and on his own, his step-father had arrived to take him home. The trouble with the animals was over; it had not been so serious after all, thank God! Never had Boris been so glad to see anyone in his whole life, and he’d had to fight hard not to show it too much. While he got his things together Aunt Hildegard spent an apparently cordial if careful half-hour with her brother, who made a point of asking after his nieces, neither of them being present. Then, with brief farewells, Boris and his step-father had left to begin their trip back into the country.
At the gate as they got into the car, Aunt Hildegard had managed to catch Boris’s eye. Her look, just for a second, before she began to wave them goodbye, was pleading. Her eyes begged his silence. In answer he had once more shown her that sneer, that look far worse than any snarl or threat, which said more of what he thought of her than any thousand words ever could.
In any event, he had never spoken of that awful visit to anyone. Nor would he ever, not even to the thing in the ground.
The thing in the ground . . . the old devil . . . the Wamphyr.
He was waiting (what else could he do but wait?) when Dragosani arrived in the gloomy glade of the tomb just before dusk with another piglet in a sack. He was awake, angry, lying there in the ground and fuming. And as the sun’s rim touched the rim of the world and the far horizon turned to blood, he was the first to speak:
Dragosani? I smell you, Dragosani! And have you come to torment me? With more questions, more demands? Would you steal my secrets, Dragosani? Little by little, piece by piece, until there’s nothing left of me? And then what? When I lie here in the cold earth, how will you reward me? With the blood of a pig? Ahaaa! I see it’s so. Another piglet – for one who has bathed in the blood of men and virgins and armies! Often!
‘Blood is blood, old dragon,’ Dragosani answered. ‘And I note you’re more agile tonight for what you drank last night!’
For what I drank? (Scorn, but feigned or genuine?) No, the earth is the richer, Dragosani, not these old bones.
‘I don’t believe you.’
And I don’t care! Go, leave me be, you dishonour me. I have nothing for you and will have nothing from you. I do not wish to talk. Begone!
Dragosani grinned. ‘I’ve brought another pig, yes – for you or for the earth, whichever – but there’s something more, something rare. Except. . .’
The old one was interested, intrigued. Except?
Dragosani shrugged. ‘Perhaps it has been too long. Perhaps you’re not up to it. Perhaps it’s impossible -even for you. For after all, what are you but a dead thing?’ And before the other could object: ‘Or an undead thing, if you insist.’
I do insist. . . Are you taunting me, Dragosani? What is it you bring me this night? What would you give me? What do you . . . propose?
‘Maybe it’s more what we can give each other.’
Say on.
Dragosani told him what was in his mind, exactly what it was he was willing to share.
And you would trade? What would you have from me in return for this . . . sharing? (Dragosani could almost sense the Wamphyr licking its lips.)
‘Knowledge,’ Dragosani answered at once. ‘I’m just a man, with a man’s knowledge of women,’ he lied, ‘and – ‘
He paused in confusion, for the old one was chuckling! It had been a mistake to lie to him.