His incredible, bloody, throbbing forefinger touched Arvos’ flesh . . . and leprous white rootlets sprang forth, slid like worms in earth into the gypsy’s chest! Small flaps of fretted skin were laid back; the pseudopod developed tiny glistening teeth of its own; it began to gnaw its way inside. Thibor would have looked away but he could not. Faethor’s ‘finger’ broke off with a soft tearing sound and quickly burrowed its way out of sight within the corpse.
Faethor held up his hand. The severed member was shrinking back into him, pseudoflesh melting into his flesh. The cancerous colours went out of it; it assumed a more normal shape; the old fingernail fell to the floor, and right in front of Thibor’s eyes a new, pink shell began to form.
‘Well then, my hero son who came here to kill me,’ Faethor slowly stood up and held out his hand toward Thibor’s bloodless face. ‘And could you have killed this?’
Thibor drew back his face, head and body, tried to cringe into the very stone to avoid that pointing finger. But Faethor only laughed. ‘What? You think that I would . . . ? But no, no, not you, my son. Oh, I could, be sure! And forever you’d be in thrall to me. But that is the second state of the Wamphyri and unworthy of you.
No, for I hold you in the highest esteem. Why, you shall have my very egg!’
Thibor tried to find words but his throat lacked moisture, was dry as a desert. Faethor laughed again and drew back that threatening hand of his. He turned away and stepped to where the squat Wallach lay humped on the stone flags, gurglingly breathing, face down in a dusty corner. ‘He is in that second state,’ Thibor’s tormentor explained. ‘I took from him and gave him something back. Flesh of my flesh is in him now, healing him, changing him. His tears and broken bones will mend and he will live — for as long as I will it. But he will always be slave to me, to do my bidding, obey my every command. You see, he is vampire, but without vampire mind. The mind comes only from the egg and he is not grown from seed but is merely . . . a cutting. When he wakes, which will be soon, then you will understand.’
‘Understand?’ Thibor found his voice, however cracked. ‘But how can I understand? Why should I want to understand? You are a monster, I understand that! Arvos is dead, and yet you. . . you did that to him! Why? Nothing can live in him now but maggots.’
Faethor shook his head. ‘No, his flesh is like fertile soil — or the fertile sea. Think of the starfish.’
‘You will grow another . . . another you? Inside him?’ Thibor was very nearly gibbering now.
‘It will consume him,’ Faethor answered. ‘But another me — no. I have mind. It will not have mind. Arvos cannot be a host for his mind is dead, do you see? He is food, nothing more. When it grows it will not be like me. Only like . . . what you saw.’ He held up his pale, newly formed index finger.
‘And the other?’ Thibor managed to nod in the direction of the man — that which had been a man — snoring and gasping in the corner. –
‘When I took him he was alive,’ said Faethor. ‘His mind was alive. What I gave him is now growing in his body, and in his mind. Oh, he died, but only to make way for the life of the Wamphyri. Which is not life but undeath. He will not return to true life but to undeath.’
‘Madness!’ Thibor moaned.
‘As for this one —, The Ferenczy stepped into shadows on the far side of the cell, where the light did not quite reach. The legs and one arm of Thibor’s second Wallach comrade protruded from the darkness, until Faethor dragged all of him into view. ‘This one will be food for both of them. Until the mindless one hides himself away, and the other takes up his duties as your servant here.’