by Brian Lumley
By then the Necroscope’s dream had been a feverish thing, full of thoughts, conversations, and associations out of his past, even past dreams, all tangled in a kaleidoscope of the real and surreal, where his life from its onset was observed to have been metamorphic as his flesh in the way it had burst open to sprout weird discoveries and concepts. The dream contained—even as a dying man’s last breath is said to contain—crucial elements of that entire life, but concertinaed into a single vision of mere moments.
When the cold sweat started out on his grey brow, Karen might have gentled him awake; except his words fascinated her; and anyway, he needed to sleep, in order to be strong for the coming battle. Perhaps he would settle down again when the nightmare was past. And so she sat by him while he sweated and raved of things quite beyond her conception:
About time’s relativity and all history, that of the future as well as the past, being contemporary but occurring in some strange “elsewhere”; and about the dead—the real dead, not the undead—waiting patiently in their graves for a new beginning, their second coming; and about a great light, the Primal Light, “which is the ongoing, unending Bigger Bang as all the universes expand forever out of darkness!” He mumbled about numbers with the power to separate space and time, and of a metaphysical equation, “whose only justification is to extend Mind beyond the span of the merely physical.”
On one level, it was the subconscious whirlpool of Harry’s instinctive mathematical genius enhanced by his now ascendant vampire; while on a higher plane it was a violent confrontation between two entirely elemental powers: Darkness and Light, Good and Evil, Knowledge for its own sake (which is sin), and the total absence of knowledge, which is innocence. It was the Necroscope’s subconscious battle with himself, within himself, which must be fought and won lest the final darkness fall; for Harry himself would be the bright guardian of worlds still to come, or their utter destruction before they were even born.
But Karen didn’t know any of that, only that she mustn’t wake him just yet. And Harry fevered on:
“I could give you formulae you haven’t even dreamed of …” he sneered out of some all but forgotten past time, while the lights of his eyes burned scarlet through lowered, frantically fluttering lids. “An eye for an eye, Dragosani, and a tooth for a tooth! I was Harry Keogh … became my own son’s sixth sense, before Alec Kyle’s emptied head sucked me in and made his body mine … The great liar Faethor would have lived in there with me, but where’s Faethor now, eh? And where’s Thibor? And what of the Bodescu brat? And Janos?” Suddenly, he sobbed and great tears squeezed themselves out from under his luminous eyelids.
“And Brenda? Sandra? Penny? Am I cursed or blessed … ?
“I had a million friends, which would be fine except they were all dead! They ‘lived’ in a dimension beyond life, where I could still talk to them and they could still remember what it was to have been alive.
“There are many dimensions, planes of existence without number, worlds without end. The myriad cone-shaped universes of light. And I know how they came about. And Möbius knew it before me. Pythagoras might have guessed something of it, but Möbius and I know!
“Let there be …” (He screwed up his tightly closed eyes.) “Let there be …” (Great slugs of sweat oozed out of his shuddering lead-grey body.) “Let there be …”
Until Karen could stand his pain—for this could only be pain—no longer. And clutching him where he writhed upon her bed, she begged him: “Let there be what, Harry?”
“Light!” he growled, and his furious eyes shot open, aglow with their own heat.
“Light?” she repeated him, her voice full of wonder.
He struggled to sit up, gave in, and let himself sink down into her arms. And he looked at her, nodded, and said, “Yes, the Primal Light, which shone out of His mind.”
Harry’s eyes had always been weird, even before his vampire stained them with blood, but now they were changing from moment to moment. Karen saw the fury go out of them, then the fear, and watched fascinated as all alien vitality—even the very passion of the Wamphyri—died in them. For with only one exception the Necroscope was the first of his sort to know and believe.
“His mind?” Karen repeated him at last, wondering at the softness of his face, which was that of a child.
“The mind of … God?” Even now Harry couldn’t be absolutely certain. But near enough. “Of a God, anyway,” he finally told her, smiling. “A creator!”
And inside him, instinctively aware of looming defeat, his vampire shrank down and was small, and perhaps bemoaned its fate: to be one with a man who only desired to be … a man.
6
SKY FIGHT!
From then on the Necroscope had been different; his parasite’s ascendancy had been reversed; once again his humanity had the upper hand. Karen to the contrary: she tried to insist that he accompany her on raids into Sunside to “blood” himself. Naturally, he would hear nothing of it, and she would be furious.
“But you’re not blooded!” she’d growl at him as they made love. “There’s a frenzy in the Wamphyri which only blood will release, for the blood is the life! Unless you take, you may not partake in your fullness. You must fuel yourself for the fight, can’t you see that? How may I explain?”
But in fact there was no need for explanations; Harry knew well enough what she meant. He’d seen it in his own world. In boxers, the moment they draw blood: how the first sight and smell of it inspires them to greater effort, so that they go at their opponents with even more determination, and always hammering away at the same wet, red-gleaming spot. He’d seen it in cats large and small: the first splash of mouse blood which turns a kitten to a hunter, or drives the hunter to a frenzy. And as for sharks: nothing else in all the unexplored span of their lives has half so much meaning for them!
But: “I’ve eaten well,” he would answer.
And: Hah! he would hear her mental snort of derision. “Of what? The flesh of pigs, and roasted? What’s that for fuel?”
“It fuels me well enough.”
“And your vampire not at all!”
“Then let the bastard starve!” But he would never allow himself the luxury of greater anger than that.
Sometimes, he would try to explain:
“What’s coming is coming,” he told her. “Didn’t we see it in the Möbius Continuum, in future time? Of all the lessons of my life, Karen, this is the one I’ve learned the best: never to try to change or avoid what’s written in the future, for it is written. All we can hope for is a better understanding of the writing, that’s all.”
Again her snort: Hah! And bitterly, “And now who is beaten, even before the fight?”
“Do you think I don’t feel tempted?” he said then. “Oh, I do, believe me! But I’ve fought this thing inside me for such a long time now that I can’t just let it win, no matter the cost. If I succumbed to rage and lust—went out and took the life of a man, and drained his blood—what then? Would it give me the strength I need to destroy Shaithis and Shaitan? Perhaps, but who would be next after them? How long before I started the Wamphyri cycle all over again, but strong this time as never before, with all the powers of a Necroscope to play with? And with my vampire’s bloodlust raging, what then? Do you think I wouldn’t begin to look for a way back into my own world, to return there as the greatest plague-bearer of all time?”
“Perhaps you’d be a king, there,” she answered. “With me to share your bone-throne.”
He nodded, but wryly. “The Red King, aye, and eventually Emperor of a scarlet dynasty. And all of our undead lieutenants—our bloodsons, and those who got our vampire eggs, and their sons and daughters—all of them pouring their pus on a crumbling Mankind, building their aeries and carving kingdoms of their own; as Janos would have done from his Mediterranean island, and Thibor the warlord after he’d turned Wallachia red, or Faethor on his blood-crazed crusades. And all of our progeny Necroscopes in their own right, with neither the living nor the
dead safe from them. Hell-lands? Now you’re talking, Karen!”
Following which he wouldn’t even listen to her. But even if he had it would have been too late.
For that was when Karen’s other watchers, great Desmodus bats from the aerie’s colony, brought news of the arrival on Starside’s far northern borders of Shaitan and his small but deadly aerial forces. Inaudible except to Karen and to others of their own genus, the cries of the great vampires relayed the message back across seven hundred miles of barren boulder plains: the fact that after four years of peace, the Old Wamphyri were finally returning to Starside.
She was bringing mewling warriors out of their vats when the warning arrived, and went straight to Harry where he stood wrapped in his thoughts on a balcony facing north. “Stand there long enough, Necroscope,” she told him, “and you’ll be able to wave them a welcome! Nor will you have to wait too long.”
He barely glanced at her, acknowledged her presence with a nod. “I know they’re here,” he said. “I’ve felt them coming like maggots chewing on the ends of my nerves. They’re not so many, but they shake the ether like an army shakes the earth. It’s time we went to the garden.”
“You go,” she told him, touching his arm as some of the sting went out of her voice. “See if you can call down your son out of the hills. Maybe he’ll bring the grey brotherhood with him, though what good they’ll be is hard to say. But me, I’ve a trio of warriors to wean and instruct. They’re built of fine, fierce stuff, right enough—good stuff, left behind by Menor Maimbite and Lesk the Glut, which I found intact under the ruins of their stacks—but when it comes to the fashioning … well, it’s true I’m a novice compared to them.”
“Just make sure they’ll own me as their master as well as yourself,” was Harry’s reply. “That way, even if they haven’t the measure of Shaitan’s creatures, still I might be able to come up with a trick or two.”
Then he turned and caught her up so swiftly in his arms that she gasped aloud. And:
“Karen,” he said, “we’ve seen our futures: the red threads of our lives melting into golden fire, then fading to nothing. It didn’t look too good for us, but at the same time it could mean anything. We simply don’t understand it. And in any case, whatever it means, it has to be better than what we saw of our enemies’ futures; for they didn’t have any! No scarlet threads in Starside’s tomorrows, Karen.”
“I remember,” she said, without freeing herself, pressing more firmly to him. “And so I stay and fight. Whatever becomes of us, it’s worth it to know that they die, too.”
Harry held her very close, very tightly, and his looks were even more those of a small boy. He found himself wishing it were all a fantastic dream, and that he’d wake up a schoolboy with all of his future ahead of him, but retaining enough of the dream that he’d make no false moves. Ah, if only things worked that way! “I wish I’d known you as some ordinary girl in my own world, when I was just a man,” he told her on impulse.
Karen wasn’t so romantic. She had been an innocent in her time, until she was stolen. Now and then a blushing Traveller youth had wanted her, but in those days she’d kept herself (as she’d thought) for something better. Hah! Her answer was harsh. “We would be fumbling, giggling lovers for an hour. To hell with it … I prefer what we’ve had! Anyway, you are the Necroscope. What do you know of ordinary men?”
The fire in her was a catalyst; it burned outwards through her shell to illuminate her as she really was: Wamphyri! Harry could be like her, yes, but did he need to be? He’d gone up against Dragosani, Thibor, Yulian Bodescu, and all the others as a man, albeit a man with powers. No, never an ordinary man, but neither had he been a monster. And now there were others to set himself against. But again, as a man, or as nearly as possible.
He released her. “Is there a flyer ready?”
“In the launching bay, yes. But won’t you use the Möbius route?”
He shook his head. “My son and his grey brothers wouldn’t see me. He might know, in his way, and he might not. Riding a flyer I’ll be visible, a curiosity. Not many flyers in Starside’s skies these days.”
At the launching bay, watching him take off in the saddle of the pulsing manta-shape which was his flyer, she saw that he was right: other than himself, the skies were empty. For now.
Feeling empty herself, Karen went back to her warriors …
Harry and Karen were together in the garden’s desolation when Shaithis and Shaitan the Fallen came back into the old Wamphyri heartland. But contrary to expectations the invaders did not launch an immediate attack; instead they came gliding and squirting out of dark, aurora-flickering northern skies, and oh so warily circled the debris-littered plains where the tumbled stacks of extinct vampire Lords lay in shattered ruin. Eventually, ever cautious, they landed in the bays of Karen’s aerie and explored its empty levels, finding nothing inimical, no hidden pitfalls, no hostile creatures waiting in the shadows. But neither did they find gas-beasts, siphoneers, servitors in any shape or form. No comforts whatsoever, except perhaps in the strength of the aerie’s ancient walls. And even these weren’t secure enough for Shaithis.
“I was witness to the destruction of greater stacks than this one,” he told Shaitan. “My own included!”
“Two of them.” The other chuckled, nodding his great black cowl. “It took both Harry Keogh and The Dweller to control the power of the sun that time. Can’t you see that? But there is no more Dweller—he’s gone, shriveled to a wolf. And as for his father: why, on his own this pale unblooded alien is less than a puling child!”
“Then why don’t we attack, and without delay?”
“We do, but not until we’ve fueled our beasts and filled our own bellies. Then, after we’ve rested our bones a little—and perhaps seen to other needs too long denied—that will be soon enough. For we’ve come a long, cold, weary way, Shaithis; and not merely to dispose of this hated enemy of yours, or to let you sate yourself on the flesh of a female who spurned and betrayed you. So calm yourself and be patient, and everything you most desire shall be.”
But for all Shaitan’s apparent confidence, deep in his black heart he too was concerned about their opponent, the so-called Hell-lander Harry Keogh, a vampire who had not yet tasted the blood of other men. Unknown to Shaithis, the great leech which was his ancestor had already employed his own superior, infinitely furtive vampire powers in a remote, partial examination of the Necroscope. Shaitan’s telepathy was more advanced even than Karen’s and Harry’s (indeed, his was the maggot which had gnawed on Harry’s nerve endings); even so, what probes he’d attempted had been perfunctory. The reason was simple: only penetrate the outermost shell of the Necroscope’s psychic aura—come within miles of the core of light, the unplumbed, emerging Center of Power which he must never be allowed to become—and any sensitive being would feel it for himself. (As Shaithis might if he weren’t such a dullard; but such a beautiful dullard, and all wasted … for now, anyway.) That pent energy which was so much greater than that of a mere man, possibly greater even than that of certain vampires.
But energy of what, from where? These were the questions which caused Shaitan’s concern; for until he knew what Harry Keogh was, or what he might become, he couldn’t really be sure how to deal with him.
Far easier, when the time was right, to deal with Shaithis the self-considered Devious—Shaithis the very beautiful, very dull, would-be Great Traitor—who would soon prove himself to be Shaithis the Great Fool. That same Shaithis who kept such a tight guard on his mind, lest its vile and treacherous thoughts fly free. Except Shaitan had long ago made himself privy to all of his descendant’s thoughts, which were secret no longer!
But imprudent to fuss over all of that now; time enough when Starside’s weird, alien defender was dead or otherwise disposed of. Or perhaps earlier, but only if Shaithis himself should bring it to a head.
These were Shaitan’s thoughts, but all kept hidden from Shaithis, of course …
They l
eft a lone warrior guarding the aerie and took the rest with them into Sunside, where soon they spied the fires of a Traveller settlement. Then for a little while the night air was filled with the screams of men, the bellowing of warriors and the sounds of their gluttony; also with the hot reek of the freshly dead, and with the shrieks of those taken alive. Of the latter: there were six, and they were all women.
Later … the higher windows of Karen’s aerie came flickering alive with the ruddy light of fires; smoke went up from the chimneys; it was as if a great and merry party took place there. For vampires so long denied it was merry, anyway.
What battered, broken tidbits were left when Shaithis and Shaitan were done went to the warriors for sweetmeats. A small mercy that nothing of that ravaged flesh still lived …
In the garden, Harry and Karen slept.
The Necroscope still reckoned time in days and nights. As yet, when his mind told his body it was night, his body’s response was to sleep. But in any case his weariness would be as much mental as physical, for he knew that in any battle to come he would be fighting himself no less than the enemy. The problem, which always chased itself in circles until he grew tired, never changed: How to win without calling on his vampire for its assistance, without giving it full rein over the range of its powers? For to allow his leech total ascendancy would be to signal his own submission, following which he’d no longer be his own man but Wamphyri in every sense of the word.
Karen had no such problem: she already was Wamphyri! But before that she’d been woman, and the Necroscope was her man. When he slept, so did she, curled in his arms. They were not totally unprepared, however: they were clothed, and Karen’s gauntlet lay close to hand. And not unmindful of their position, they’d set a watch. A warrior grunted a little, shifting its hugely armored bulk for comfort where it had been positioned in the shadows beyond the crest of the saddle; likewise Karen’s second beast, forward in the lee of the wall where the ground fell steeply away to Starside’s foothills and the plain beyond. As for the third creature: it was situated at a higher elevation, on a ledge under an overhang in the western crags, where its many night-oriented eyes peered far out across the boulder plains, searching the skies and starlit wastes for any unwarranted movement.
