A Coven of Vampires

by Brian Lumley

  Now instinct told the Hrossak he should count his blessings, forget whatever had happened here, return at once to his camel and so back to Chlangi by circuitous route as previously planned; but his personal demon, named Curiosity, deemed it otherwise. On foot, moving like a shadow among shadows, his bronze skin aiding him considerably in the dark, he loped easily back along his own route until—

  It was the smell stopped him, a smell he knew at once from its too familiar reek. Fresh blood!

  More cautiously now, nerves taut as a bowstring, almost in a crouch, Tarra moved forward again: and his grip on the haft of his knife never so tight, and his eyes never so large where they strained to penetrate night’s canopy of dark. Then he was almost stumbling over them, and just as smartly drawing back, his breath hissing out through clenched teeth.

  Dead, and not merely dead but gutted! Chlangi riff-raff by their looks, unpretty as the end they’d met. Aye, and a butcher couldn’t have done a better job. Their entrails still steamed in the cool night air.

  The biters bit: Tarra’s trackers snared in advance of his own planned ambush; and what of the unseen, unheard killers themselves? Once more the Hrossak melted into shadow, froze, listened, stared. Perhaps they had gone in pursuit of the ponies. Well, Tarra wouldn’t wait to find out. But as he turned to speed back to his camel—

  Another smell in the night air? A sulphur reek, strangely laced with cloying musk? And where had he smelled that dubious perfume before? A nerve jumped in his neck, and twin scabs throbbed dully as if in mute answer.

  To hell with it! They were all questions that could wait….

  • • •

  Half a mile from Chlangi Tarra dismounted and tethered his camel out of sight in a shallow gulley, then proceeded on foot and as fast as he could go to where the east wall was cracked as by some mighty tremor of the earth. Here boulders and stones had been tumbled uncemented into the gap, so that where the rest of the wall was smooth, offering little of handholds and making for a difficult climb, here it was rough and easily scaleable. Fregg knew this too, of course, for which reason there was normally a guard positioned atop the wall somewhere in this area. Since Chlangi was hardly a place people would want to break into, however, chances were the guard would have his belly wrapped around the contents of a wineskin by now, snoring in some secret niche.

  The wall was high at this point, maybe ten man-lengths, but Old Gleeth was kind enough to cast his rays from a different angle, leaving the east wall in shadow. All should be well. Nevertheless—

  Before commencing his climb Tarra peered right and left, stared long and hard back into the night toward the east, listened carefully to see if he could detect the slightest sound. But…nothing. There were bats about tonight, though—and big ones, whole roosts of them—judging from the frequent flappings he’d heard overhead.

  Satisfied at last that there were no prying eyes, finally the Hrossak set fingers and toes to wall and scaled it like a lizard, speeding his ascent where the crack widened and the boulders were less tightly packed. Two-thirds of the way up he rested briefly, where a boulder had long since settled and left a man-sized gap, taking time to get his breath and peer out and down all along the wall and over the scraggy plain, and generally checking that all was well.

  And again the stirring of unseen wings and a whipping of the air as something passed briefly across the starry vault. Bats, yes, but a veritable cloud of them! Tarra shivered his disgust: he had little time for night creatures of any sort. He levered himself out of his hole, began to climb again—and paused.

  A sound from on high, atop the wall? The scrape of heel against stone? The shuffle of bored or disconsolate feet? It came again, this time accompanied by wheezy grunt!

  Tarra flattened himself to wall, clung tight, was suddenly aware of his vulnerability. At which precise moment he felt the coil of rope over his shoulder slip a little and heard his hook clang against the wall down by his waist. Quickly he trapped the thing, froze once more. Had it been heard?

  “Huh?” came gruff inquiry from above. And: “Huh?” Then, in the next moment, a cough, a whirring sound diminishing, a gurgle—and at last silence once more.

  For five long minutes Tarra waited, his nerves jumping and the feeling going out of his fingers and toes, before he dared continue his upward creep. By then he believed he had it figured out—or hoped so, anyway. The guard was, as he had suspected might be the case, asleep. The grapple’s clang had merely caused him to start and snort into the night, before settling himself down again more comfortably. And perhaps the incident had been for the best at that; at least Tarra knew now that he was there.

  With infinite care the Hrossak proceeded, and at last his fingertips went up over the sill of an embrasure. Now, more slow and silent yet, he drew up his body until—

  Seated in the deep embrasure with his back to one wall and his knees against the other, a bearded guardsman grinned down on Tarra’s upturned face and aimed a crossbow direct into the astonished “O” of his gaping mouth!

  Tarra might simply have recoiled, released his grip upon the rim and fallen. He might have (as some men doubtless would) fainted. He might have closed his eyes tight shut and pleaded loud and desperate, promising anything. He did none of these but gulped, grinned and said:

  “Ho! No fool you, friend! Fregg chooses his guards well. He sent me here to catch you asleep—to test the city’s security, d’you see?—but here you are wide awake and watchful, obviously a man who knows his duty. So be it; help me up from here and I’ll go straight to our good king and make report how all’s…well?”

  For now the Hrossak saw that all was indeed well—for him if not for the guard. That smell was back, of fresh blood, and a dark pool of it was forming and sliming the stone where Tarra’s fingers clung. It dripped from beneath the guard’s chin—where his throat was slit from ear to ear!

  Aye, for the gleam in his eyes was merely glaze, and his fixed grin was a rictus of horror! Also, the crossbow’s groove was empty, its bolt shot; and now Tarra remem bered the whirring sound, the cough, the gurgle….

  Adrenaline flooded the Hrossak’s veins as a flash flood fills dry river beds. He was up and into the embrasure and across the sprawling corpse in a trice, his flesh ice as he stared all about, panting in the darkness. He had a friend here for sure, but who or what he dared not think. And now, coming to him across the reek of spilled blood…again that sulphurous musk, that fascinating yet strangely fearful perfume.

  Then, from the deeper shadows of a shattered turret:

  “Have you forgotten me then, Tarra Khash, whose life you saved in the badlands? And is not the debt I owed you repaid?”

  And oh the Hrossak knew that sibilant, whispering voice, knew only too well whose hand—or claw—had kept him safe this night. Aye, and he further knew now that Chlangi’s bats were no bigger than the bats of any other city; knew exactly why those ponies had fled like the wind across the plain; knew, shockingly, how close he must have come last night to death’s sharp edge! The wonder was that he was still alive to know these things, and now he must ensure no rapid deterioration of that happy circumstance.

  “I’ve not forgotten,” he forced the words from throat dry as the desert itself. “Your perfume gives you away, Orbiquita—and your kiss shall burn on my neck and in my memory forever!” He took a step toward the turret.

  “Hold!” she hissed from the shadows, where now a greater darkness moved uncertainly, its agitation accompanied by scraping as of many knives on stone. “Come no closer, Hrossak. It’s no clean-limbed, soft-breasted girl stands here now.”

  “I know that well enow,” Tarra croaked. “What do you want with me?”

  “With you—nothing. But with that pair who put me to such trial in the desert—”

  “They are dead,” Tarra stopped her.

  “What?” (Again the clashing of knives.) “Dead? That were a pleasure I had promised myself!”

  “Then blame your disappointment on some other, Orbiqui
ta,” Tarra spoke into darkness. “Though certainly I would have killed them, if Fregg hadn’t beaten me to it.”

  “Fregg, is it?” she hissed. “Scum murders scum. Well, King Fregg has robbed me, it seems.”

  “Both of us,” Tarra told her. “You of your revenge, me of more worldly pleasures—a good many of them. Right now I’m on my way to take a few back.”

  The blackness in the turret stirred, moved closer to the door. Her voice was harsher now, the words coming more quickly, causing Tarra to draw back from brimstone breath. “What of my rune-book?”

  “Arenith Han, Fregg’s sorcerer, will have that,” the Hrossak answered.

  “And where is he?”

  “He lives in Fregg’s palace, beneath his master’s tower.”

  “Good! Show me this place.” She inched forward again and for a moment the moonlight gleamed on something unbearable. Gasping, Tarra averted his eyes, pointed a trembling hand out over the city.

  “There,” he said, his voice breaking a little. “That high tower there with the light. That’s where Fregg and his mage dwell, well guarded and central within the palace walls.”

  “What are guards and walls to me?” she said, and he heard the scrape of her clawed feet and felt the heat of her breath on the back of his neck. “What say you we visit this pair together?”

  Rooted to the spot, not daring to look back, Tarra answered: “I’m all for companionship, Orbiquita, but—”

  “So be it!” She was closer still. “And since you can’t bear to look at me, close your eyes. Also, put away that knife—It would not scratch my scales.”

  Gritting his teeth, Tarra did both things—and at once felt himself grasped, lifted up, crushed to a hot, stinking, scaly body. Wings of leather creaked open in the night; wind rushed all about; all was dizzy, soaring, whirling motion. Then—

  Tarra felt his feet touch down and was released. He staggered, sprawled, opened his eyes and sprang erect. Again he stood upon a parapet; on one hand a low balcony wall, overlooking the city, and on the other an arabesqued archway issuing warm, yellow light. Behind him, stone steps winding down, where even now something dark descended on scythe feet! Orbiquita, going in search of her rune-book.

  “Who’s there?” came sharp voice of inquiry from beyond the arched entrance. “Is that you, Arenith? And didn’t I say not to disturb me at my sorting and counting?”

  It was Fregg—Fregg all alone, with no bully boys to protect him now—which would make for a meeting much more to Tarra’s liking. And after all, he’d been invited, hadn’t he?

  Invited or not, the shock on Fregg’s face as Tarra entered showed all too clearly how the robber-king had thought never to see him again. Indeed, it was as if Fregg gazed upon a ghost, which might say something about the errand of the two who’d followed Tarra across the plain; an errand unfulfilled, as Fregg now saw. He half came to his feet, then slumped down again with hands atop the huge oak table that stood between.

  “Good evening, Majesty,” said Tarra Khash, no hint of malice in his voice. “I’ve come for my broken sword, remember?” He looked all about the circular, dome-ceilinged room, where lamps on shelves gave plenty of light. And now the Hrossak saw what a magpie this jowly bandit really was. Why, ’twere a wonder the many shelves had room for Fregg’s lamps at all—for they were each and every one stacked high with stolen valuables of every sort and description! Here were jade idols and goblets, and more jade in chunks unworked. Here were silver statuettes, plates, chains and trinkets galore. Here were sacklets of very precious gems, and larger sacks of semi-precious stones. Here was gold and scrolls of gold-leaf, bangles of the stuff hanging from nails like so many hoops on pegs, and brooches, and medallions on golden chains, and trays of rings all burning yellow. But inches deep on the great table, and as yet unsorted, there lay Fregg’s greatest treasure—which, oh so recently, had belonged to Tarra Khash.

  “Your sword?” Fregg forced a smile more a grimace onto his face, fingered his beard, continued to stare at his visitor as if hypnotized. But at last animation: he stood up, slapped his thigh, roared with laughter and said, “Why of course, your broken sword!” Then he sobered. “It’s here somewhere, I’m sure. But alas, I’ve not yet had time to remove the gems.” His eyes rapidly swept the table, narrowing as they more slowly returned to the Hrossak’s face.

  Tarra came closer, watching the other as a cat watches a mouse, attuned to every breath, to each slightest movement. “Nor will there be time, I fancy,” he said.

  “Eh?” said Fregg; and then, in imitation of Tarra’s doomful tone: “Is that to be the way of it? Well, before we decide upon all that—first tell me, Hrossak, how it is you’ve managed to come here, to this one place in all Chlangi which I had thought impregnable?”

  Before Tarra could answer there came from below a shrill, wavering cry borne first of shock, then disbelief, finally terror—cut off most definitely at zenith. Skin prickling, knowing that indeed Orbiquita had found Arenith Han, Tarra com menced an involuntary turn—and knew his mistake on the instant. Already he had noted, upon a shelf close to where Fregg sat, a small silver crossbow, with silver bolt loaded in groove and string ready-nocked. Turning back to robber-king he fell to one knee, his right hand and arm a blur of motion. Tarra’s knife thrummed like a harp where its blade was fixed inches deep in shelf’s soft wood, pinning Fregg’s fat hand there even as it reached for weapon. And upon that pinned hand, glinting on the smallest finger, a ring of gold inset with jade cut in a skull and serpent crest.

  Blood spurted and Fregg slumped against the shelves—but not so heavily that his weight put stress on the knife. “M-mercy!” he croaked, but saw little of mercy in the hulking steppe-man’s eyes. Gasping his pain, he reached trembling free hand toward the knife transfixing the other.

  In a scattering of gems and baubles Tarra vaulted the table, his heels slamming into Fregg’s face. The bandit was hurled aside, his hand split neatly between second and third fingers by the keen blade! Screaming Fregg fell, all thought of fighting back relinquished now to agony most intense from riven paw. Gibbering he sprawled upon the floor amidst scattering gems and nuggets, while Tarra stood spread-legged and filled the scabbard at his back, then topped his loot with hilt of shattered sword.

  Until, “Enough!” he said. “I’ve got what I came for.”

  “But I have not!” came Orbiquita’s monstrous hiss from the archway.

  Tarra turned, saw her, went weak at the knees. Now he looked full upon a lamia, and knew all the horror of countless others gone before him. And yet he found the strength to answer her as were she his sister: “You did not find your rune-book?”

  “The book, aye,” her breath was sulphur. “Mylakhrion’s ring, no. Have you seen it, Tarra Khash? A ring of gold with skull and serpent crest?”

  Edging past her, Tarra gulped and nodded in Fregg’s direction where he sat, eyes bugging, his quivering back to laden shelves. “Of that matter, best speak to miserable monarch there,” he told her.

  Orbiquita’s claws flexed and sank deep into the stone floor as she hunched toward the now drooling, keening robber-king.

  “Farewell,” said Tarra, leaping out under the archway and to the parapet wall, and fixing his grapnel there.

  From below came hoarse shouts, cries of outrage, the clatter of many feet ascending the tower’s corkscrew stairs. “Farewell,” came Orbiquita’s hiss as Tarra swung himself out and down into the night. “Go swiftly, Hrossak, and fear no hand at your back. I shall attend to that.”

  After that—

  All was a chaos of flight, of hideous screams fading into distance behind, of climbing, falling, of running and riding, until Chlangi was a blot, then less than a blot, then vanished altogether into distance behind him. Somewhere along the way Stumpy Adz dragged him to a gasping, breathless halt, however brief, gawped at a handful of gems, disappeared dancing into shadows; and somewhere else Tarra cracked a head when unknown assailant leaped on him from hiding; other than which he reme
mbered very little.

  And through all of that wild panic flight, only once did Tarra Khash look back—of which he wished he likewise had no recall.

  For then…he had thought to see against the face of the moon a dark shape flying, whose outlines he knew well. And dangling beneath, a fat flopping shape whose silhouette seemed likewise familiar. And he thought the dangling thing screamed faintly in the thin, chill air of higher space, and he thought he saw its fitful kicking. Which made him pray it was only his imagination, or a dark cloud fleeing west.

  And after that he put it firmly out of his mind.

  As for Orbiquita:

  She hated being in anyone’s debt. This should square the matter. Fregg would make hearty breakfast for a hungry sister waking up from five long years of stony vigil….

  RECOGNITION

  1.

  As to why I asked you all to join me here, and why I’m making it worth your while by paying each of you five hundred pounds for your time and trouble, the answer is simple: the place appears to be haunted, and I want rid of the ghost.”

  The speaker was young, his voice cultured, his features fine and aristocratic. He was Lord David Marriot, and the place of which he spoke was a Marriot property: a large, ungainly, mongrel architecture of dim and doubtful origins, standing gaunt and gloomily atmospheric in an acre of brooding oaks. The wood itself stood central in nine acres of otherwise barren moors borderland.

  Lord Marriot’s audience numbered four: the sprightly octogenarian Lawrence Danford, a retired man of the cloth; by contrast the so-called “mediums” Jonathan Turnbull and Jason Lavery, each a “specialist” in his own right; and myself, an old friend of the family whose name does not really matter since I had no special part to play. I was simply there as an observer—an advisor, if you like—in a matter for which, from the beginning, I had no great liking.