‘Very well,’ said Harry, finally, ‘we trade.’
Fool! Dragosani cut in at once. I had given you some credit, Harry Keogh — I thought you were cleverer than that. And yet here you are attempting to bargain with the devil himself! I see now that I was unlucky in our little contest. You are as big a fool as I was!
Harry ignored him. ‘The rest of your story then, Thibor, and quickly. For I don’t know how much time I have…’
* * *
The first time the old Ferenczy came, I was not ready for him. I was asleep; but exhausted, half-starved, it’s unlikely I could have done anything anyway. The first I knew of his visit was when I heard the heavy oaken door slam, and a bar was dropped into place outside. Four trussed chickens, alive, full-feathered, squawked and fluttered in a basket just inside the door. As I roused myself and went to the door, Ehrig was a pace ahead of me.
I caught him by the shoulder, threw him aside, got to the basket first. ‘What’s this, Faethor?’ I cried. ‘Chickens? I thought we vampires supped on richer meat!’
‘We sup on blood!’ he called back, chuckling a little beyond the door. ‘On coarse meat if and when we must, but the blood is the true life. The fowl are for you, Thibor. Tear out their throats and drink well. Squeeze them dry. Give the carcasses to Ehrig, if it please you, and what’s left goes to your “cousin” under the flags.’
I heard him starting up stone steps, called out: ‘Faethor, when do I take up my duties? Or perhaps you’ve changed your mind and deem it too dangerous to let me out?’
His footsteps paused. ‘I’ll let you out when I’m ready,’ his muffled voice came back. ‘And when you are ready. .
He chuckled again, but more deeply in his throat this time.
‘Ready? I’m ready for better treatment than this!’ I told him. ‘You should have brought me a girl. You can do more with a girl than just eat her!’
For a moment there was silence, then he said, ‘When you are your own master you may take what you like.’ His voice was colder. ‘But I am not some mother cat to fetch fat mice for her kittens. A girl, a boy, a goat — blood is blood, Thibor. As for lust: you’ll have time for that later, when you understand the real meaning of the word. For now. . . save your strength.’ And then he moved on.
Ehrig had meanwhile taken hold of the basket, was sidling off with it. I gave him a cl6ut which knocked him protesting to the floor. Then I looked at the terrified birds and scowled. But . . . I was hungry and meat is meat. I had never been a squeamish one, and these birds were plump. And anyway, the vampire in me was taking the edge off all points of mannered custom and nicety and civilised behaviour. As for civilisation: what was that to me? A Wallach warrior, I had always been two-thirds barbarian!
I ate, and so did the dog Ehrig. Aye, and later, when next we slept, so did my ‘cousin’ .
The next time I came awake — more strongly, surging awake, refreshed from my meal — I saw the Thing, that mindless being of vampire flesh which hid in the dark earth under the floor. I do not know what I had expected. Faethor had mentioned vines, creepers in the earth. That is what it was like. Partly, anyway.
If you have seen a squashy octopus from the sea, then you have seen something like the creature spawned of the finger which Faethor shed, fattened on the flesh of Arvos the gypsy. The one thing I cannot comment upon was its size; however, if a man’s body were flattened to a doughy mass . . . it would spread a long way. The matter of Arvos had been reshaped.
Certainly the groping ‘hands’ which the being put up were stretchy things. There were also many of them, and they were not lacking in strength. Its eyes were very strange: they formed and unformed, came and went; they ogled and blinked; but in all truth I cannot say that they saw. Indeed, I had the feeling they were blind. Or perhaps they saw in the way a newborn infant sees, without understanding.