Wamphyri! Brian Lumley

‘Tomorrow will do,’ said Kyle. ‘We can spend tonight making plans. As for what’s in Slatina,

‘Records,’ Quint cut in. ‘There’ll be a local registrar, won’t there?’

‘Pardon?’ Krakovitch didn’t know the word.

‘A person who registers marriages and births,’ Kyle explained.

‘And deaths,’ Quint added.

‘Ah! I begin to see,’ said Krakovitch. ‘But you are mistaken if you think a small town’s records will go back five hundred years to Thibor Ferenczy.’

Kyle shook his head. ‘That’s not it. We have our own vampire, remember? We know he, er, got started out here. And we more or less know how. We want to find out where Ilya Bodescu died. The Bodescus were staying in Slatina when he had some sort of skiing accident in the hills. If we can trace someone who was involved in the recovery of his body, we’ll be within an ace of finding Thibor’s tomb. Where Ilya Bodescu died, that’s where the old vampire was buried.’

‘Good!’ said Krakovitch. ‘There should be a police report, statements — perhaps even a coroner’s report.’

‘Doubting,’ said Irma Dobresti, shaking her head. ‘How long ago this man die?’

‘Eighteen, nineteen years,’ Kyle answered.

‘Simple death — accident.’ Dobresti shrugged. ‘Not suspicious — no coroner’s report. But police report, yes. Also, ambulance recovery. They make report, too.’

Kyle began to warm towards her. ‘That’s good reasoning,’ he said. ‘As for getting hold of those reports through the local authorities, that’s your job, Mrs er

‘Not Mrs. Never had time. Just call me Irma, please.’ She smiled her yellow-toothed smile.

Her attitude in all of this puzzled Quint a little. ‘You don’t think it’s a bit odd that we’re here hunting for a vampire, er, Irma?’

She looked at him, raised an eyebrow. ‘My parents come from the mountains,’ she said. ‘When I am little they sometimes talk about wampir. Up there in Carpatii Meridionali, old people still believe. Once there were great bears up there. And sabretooth tigers. Before that, big lizards — er, dinosaurs? Yes. They are no more — but they were. Later, there was plague that swept the world. All of these things, gone. Now you tell me that my parents were right, there were vampires, too. Odd? No, I not think so. If you want hunt vampires, where better than Romania, eh?’

Krakovitch smiled. ‘Romania,’ he said, ‘has always been something of an island.’

‘True,’ Dobresti agreed. ‘But that not always good. World is big. No strength in being small. Also, being cut off means stagnation. Nothing new ever comes in.’

Kyle nodded, thinking to himself, and some of the old things are things you can well do without.

It had been a rough night for Brenda Keogh.

When Harry Jnr had finished his small hours feed, he hadn’t wanted to go back to sleep again. He wasn’t bad about it, just wouldn’t sleep.

After an hour or two of rocking him, then cradling and crooning to him, she’d finally put the baby down and gone back to bed herself.

But at 6.00 A.M. he’d been right on time again, crying for his change and another feed. And she’d known from the way he twisted his little face and clenched his fists that he was tired: he’d been awake right through the night, from no cause that Brenda could discover. But good? What a good little chap he was! He hadn’t cried at all until he was hungry and uncomfortable, just lay there in his cot through the night doing his own thing — whatever that might be.

Even now his will to stay awake and be a part of the world was strong, but his yawning told his mother that he couldn’t. With dawn an hour away, Harry was going to have to go to sleep. The world would have to wait. No matter how fast your mind grows up, your body goes more slowly.

As his baby son went to sleep, Harry Snr found himself free and was struck with a thought as strange as any he’d ever had, even in his thoroughly strange existence.

He’s leeching on me! he thought. The little rascal’s into my mind, into my experiences. He can explore my stuff because there’s lots of it, but I can’t touch him because there’s nothing in there — yet!

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