The blue and yellow fire paid him no heed, ignored his cry of terror. It washed over him, lit him like a torch. He wrenched his hands from the wall and reached for me, but I fell back out of harm’s way. Then he screamed again, and launched himself from the wall into space.
I watched the fireball curving down into darkness and turning it day bright, and all the while the Ferenczy’s scream echoed back up to me. His myriad minion bats flocked to him mid-flight, dashing their soft bodies against him to quell the flames, but the rush of air thwarted them. A torch, he fell, and his scream was a rusty blade on the ends of my nerves. Even blazing, he tried to form a wing shape, and I heard again that rending and crackling sound. Ah, what sweet agony that must have caused him, with his crisp skin splitting instead of stretching, and the burning oil getting into the cracks!
Even so, he half-succeeded, began to glide as before, and as before struck a tree and so went spinning and crashing through the pines and out of sight.
He left a few sparks and scraps of fire drifting on the air, and a host of scorched bats skittering crippled against the moon, and a lingering odour of roasted flesh. And that was all.
Still I wasn’t satisfied that he was dead, but I was satisfied that he wouldn’t be back that night. It was now time to celebrate my triumph.
I doused the fire where it had taken hold of dry timbers, shut down the burning braziers, and went wearily to Faethor’s living quarters. There was good wine there which I sipped warily, then gulped heartily. I spitted pheasants, sliced an onion, nibbled on dry bread and swilled wine until the birds were done. And then I dined royally. It was a good meal, aye, and my first in a long time, and yet . . . it lacked something. I couldn’t say just what. Fool, I still thought of myself as a man. In other ways, however, I still was a man!
I took a stone jar of proven wine with me and went unsteadily to the lady in the locked room. She did desire to receive me, but I was in no mood for arguments. I took her again and again; in as many ways as entered my head, so I entered her. Only when she was exhausted and slept did I, too, sleep.
And so the castle of Faethor Ferenczy became mine. .
Chapter Ten
Harry Keogh’s nimbus of blue fire burned bright in the stirless glade over Thibor’s tumbled mausoleum, and Keogh’s incorporeal mind was aware of the passage of time. In the Möbius continuum time was a very nearly meaningless concept, but here in the first low foothills of the Carpatii Meridionali it was very real, and still the dead vampire’s tale was not completely told. The important part — for Harry, and for Alec Kyle and INTESP —was still to come, but Harry knew better than to ask directly for the information he desired. He could only press Thibor to the bitter end.
‘Go on,’ he urged, when the vampire’s pause threatened to stretch indefinitely.
What? Go on? Thibor seemed mildly surprised. But what more is there? My tale is told.
‘Still, I’d like to hear the rest of it. Did you stay in the castle as Faethor had commanded, or did you return to Kiev? You ended your days in Wallachia, right here, in these cruciform hills. How did that come about?’
Thibor sighed. Surely it is now time for you to tell me certain things. We made a bargain, Harry.
I warned you, Harry Keogh! the spirit of Boris Dragosani joined in, sharper than that of Thibor. Never bargain with a vampire. For there’s always the devil to pay. .
Dragosani was right, Harry knew. He’d heard of Thibor’s cunning from the very horse’s mouth: it had taken no small amount of guile to defeat Faethor Ferenczy. ‘A deal is a deal,’ he said. ‘When Thibor has delivered, so shall I. Now come on, Thibor, let’s have the rest of the story.’