‘And it somehow concerns Dragosani?’ Kyle frowned. ‘But Dragosani’s dead. You told me that yourself.’
Keogh’s face – the face of his apparition – was grave now. Do you remember what he was, this Dragosani?
‘He was a necromancer,’ said Kyle at once, no shadow of doubt in his mind. ‘Much like you.’ He saw his mistake immediately and could have bitten his tongue.
Unlike me! Keogh corrected him. / was, I am, a necroscope, not a necromancer. Dragosani stole the secrets of the dead like . . . like an insane dentist yanking healthy teeth – without an anaesthetic. Me: I talk to the dead and respect them. And they respect me. But very well, I know that was a slip of the tongue. I know you didn’t mean that. So yes, he was a necromancer. But because of what the old Thing in the ground did to him, he was more than that. He was worse than that.
Of course. Now Kyle remembered. ‘You mean he was also a vampire.’
Keogh’s shimmering image nodded. That’s exactly what I mean. And that’s why I’m here now. You see, you’re the only one in the world who can do anything about it. You and your branch, and maybe your Russian counterparts. And when you know what I’m talking about, then you’ll have to do something about it.
Such was Keogh’s intensity, such the warning in his mental voice, that gooseflesh crept on Kyle’s spine. ‘Do something about what, Harry?’
About the rest of them, the apparition answered. You see, Alec, Dragosani and Thibor Ferenczy weren’t the only ones. And God only knows how many more there are!
‘Vampires?’ Kyle thrilled with horror. He remembered only too well that story Keogh had told him some eight months ago. ‘You’re sure?’
Oh yes. In the Mobius continuum — looking out through the doors of time past and time to come – I’ve seen their scarlet threads. I wouldn’t have known them, might never have come across them, but they cross young Harry’s blue life thread. Yes, and they cross yours, too!
Hearing that, it was as if the cold blade of a psychic knife lanced into Kyle’s heart. ‘Harry,’ he said stumblingly, ‘you’d . . . you’d better tell me all you know, and then what I must do.’
/’// tell you as much as I can, and then we’ll try to decide what’s to be done. As to how I know what I’m about to tell you . . . The apparition shrugged. I’m a necroscope, remember? I’ve talked to Thibor Ferenczy himself, as I once promised him I would, and I’ve talked to one other. A recent victim. More of him later. But mainly the story is Thibor’s . . .
Chapter Two
The old Thing in the ground trembled however minutely, shuddered slightly, strove to return to his immemorial dreaming. Something was intruding, threatening to rouse him up from his dark slumbers, but sleep had become a habit which satisfied his every need . . . almost. He clung to his loathsome dreams – of madness and mayhem, the hell of living and the horror of dying, and the pleasures of blood, blood, blood – and felt the cold embrace of the clotted earth closing him in, weighing him down, holding him here in his darkling grave. And yet the earth was familiar and no longer held any terrors for him; the darkness was like that of a shuttered room or deep vault, an impenetrable gloom entirely in keeping; the forbidding nature and location of his mausoleum not only set him apart but kept him protected. He was safe here. Damned forever, certainly – doomed for all time, yes, barring some major miracle of intervention – but safe, too, and there was much to be said for safety.
Safe from the men – mere men, most of them – who had put him here. For in his dreaming the wizened Thing had forgotten that those men were long dead. And their sons, dead. And theirs, and theirs . . .
The old Thing in the ground had lived for five hundred years, and as long again had lain undead in his unhallowed grave. Above him, in the gloom of a glade beneath stirless, snow-laden trees, the tumbled stones and slabs of his tomb told something of his story, but only the Thing himself knew all of it. His name had been . . . but no, the Wamphyri have no names as such. His host’s name, then, had been Thibor Ferenczy, and in the beginning Thibor had been a man. But that had been almost a thousand years ago.