The Last Aerie

by Brian Lumley

  We were blinded, if only for a moment, or seconds at most. We staggered and stumbled as the earth trembled, and some of us even fell to the ground to hug it. Ah, but they were the lucky ones! They were shielded from what came next. For even as the clouds burned red and began their panic flight, so a hot wind from hell blew through the pass from Starside. And there was sulphur and stench and burning in it, and most likely poison, too. No, I am certain—there was poison!

  I smelled it, breathed it in, felt it burning on my face. A wind out of Starside … but warm? I didn’t know what to make of it. It was the breath of hell, or the exhaust of the weapons of hell, at least; or possibly, but I doubt it, the awful stench of a vampire wizard’s experiment, which had rebounded and destroyed them all at a stroke … And as if he were out of breath (this man who had not breathed in all of thirteen years), Agon Mitrea at last fell silent …

  Until in a little while Nestor told him, “Not all of the Wamphyri were destroyed. The Old Wamphyri, aye, but not those who inhabit the last aerie now. For far in the east, beyond a great red desert wasteland, the lands have been ruled by vampire Lords from time immemorial until the present day. Their place is called Turgosheim, which is the source of—”

  —Of this most recent … infestation! Agon finished it for him, his deadspeak voice filled with loathing.

  Now it was Nestor’s turn to fall silent a moment, and to tilt his head slowly on one side. And how his eyes burned red in the darkness of the cave as he gazed down on the corpse of the old chief and repeated his final word out loud: “Infestation? What, like lice, do you mean? You are very … frank, Agon Mitrea, son of Lexandru.”

  I could not hide my feelings about you and your like even if I tried, the other answered, bitterly now. No, not even if you make me pay for it!

  “No need for payment,” Nestor told him. “Not yet …”

  Then what else do you want from me?

  “Tell me about this poison,” Nestor said. “For obviously you believe that is what you died of just three years later.”

  There were rumours, theories, wild guesses about it. Agon Mitrea gave a careless deadspeak shrug. He was sure the Great Majority would want nothing more to do with him now, not after he had spoken to a necromancer. And exiled to eternal darkness, denied the comradeship of the teeming dead, what good would this monotonous nonexistence of his be to him then? The Szgany are not without their so-called wise men, seers and thinkers, he finally continued. Some had it that the Old Wamphyri, led by Shaitan the Unborn himself, had been wizards who called up one too many demons out of the earth. They said that the poisonous mushroom cloud must have been one such demon. But as I’ve told you already, I doubt it. Be that as it may, its poison spread like wildfire on Starside. The stony ground there was said to shine at night, and whatever was in that shine, it killed off the cavern trogs in their hundreds and produced as many grotesque mutations among them!

  “A fox fire?” Nestor was curious now, for he’d seen just such a plume of shining earth on Starside, like a finger five miles long, pointing north from the glaring hell-lands Gate. Also, there were traces of that same luminescence in the foothills and along the base of the mountains to the west, where the trogs dwelled in their dank caverns.

  Like a fox fire, yes. But fox fire is the glow of rottenness, and this was the glow of death!

  “Explain.”

  There’s nothing much to explain. Again the old chief’s shrug. Those men with me in the mouth of the pass: by sundown their hair was falling out; their gums and fingernails bled; their faces turned white where they’d gazed into the hot wind through the pass. And none of them fathered children from that day to this. Several died, of which … I was one. As for the ones who stumbled and fell down in the heather or behind boulders when the earth shook-yes, and mercifully my sons were among them—they suffered very little. Only a sickness, a malaise, which wore off in time.

  “Enough!” Canker barked from behind Nestor. “I can’t make head or tail of it. Oh, I believe that you speak to him and he answers you, but it makes no sense to me for I hear only you. Therefore I waste my time here. And I fancy you waste yours, too. Now, are you coming—or do I go on alone, and see you later back in Wrathstack?”

  Nestor looked at Canker, then at the lich of Agon Mitrea. He had no more questions for the old chief, and like the dog-Lord he had had enough of corpses for one night. He turned to follow Canker where already he was loping toward the exit … then paused and slowly turned back. And: But I have not said my farewells. He used his deadspeak.

  Say nothing, but simply go! Agon shuddered his relief.

  Except—

  At the start of their question-and-answer session, the old chief had not been very forthcoming. That had been a mistake on his part, from which the teeming dead might learn something. And later, Agon had been … frank. Indeed he had been too frank. Despite Nestor’s recognition of the fact that the louse and the vampire are two of a kind, which is to say bloodsuckers, still he’d not cared for the old man’s comparison. So that now Nestor thought to himself, This Agon really should be taught a lesson.

  And drawing back his lips from his teeth in a snarl, and grasping the corpse’s elbow and upper arm, suddenly and without warning he gave a twist and a wrench, and tore the limb free of its rotting shoulder! Shreds of tattered black flesh hung down from the gaping socket and fat white grave worms wriggled where the dismembered arm flopped to the dusty floor. Then, as Agon’s mind yawned open like an incorporeal mouth to issue a scream of denial, so Nestor coughed up phlegm and spat it into his empty eye sockets, and bayed with laughter as the old chief recoiled from it without moving the merest fraction of an inch.

  Following which, smiling in his morbid fashion, Nestor set out after Canker. And as behind him the violated corpse issued peal after peal of silent, resounding shrieks—and the teeming dead in their urns and on their ledges cried out for pity—finally Nestor Lichloathe knew that he had earned his name in full.

  And he was glad …

  3

  After the Hunt: Nestor and Glina

  A little over three hours later, after resting their flyers a while in the foothills of the barrier mountains, and having then launched skywards to fly with the clouds once more, Nestor’s and Canker’s vampire senses simultaneously picked up strong Szgany vibrations. Landing at the edge of dense woodlands six miles west of the great pass, they found warm embers in a dead fire.

  Then, going on all fours and sniffing in a wide circle all about, like a great hound or the dog-thing that he was, Canker soon picked up the scent; and with Nestor following on close behind, he began tracking his prey along the overgrown forest paths. In less than half an hour they had found the Traveller group: two young men, two young women, a twelve-year-old girl, and an infant.

  They had split into two family groups and slept beneath oiled leather awnings roped to the lower branches of trees in a natural clearing. And they were bundled up in cured furs on beds of bracken when Canker and Nestor came upon them.

  Now this is more to my liking! the dog-Lord coughed in Nestor’s mind where they stood like wraiths wrapped in a mist of their own making, looking down on the sleeping faces of the group. Aye, this is the stuff: it’s exactly what I had in mind! A man each, a woman each—this sweet girl child with her sex unexplored, tight as a mouse’s ear hole, to open up and fill on the one hand, bite into and drain to the dregs on the other—and an infant for roasting in the mountains when we’re feeling peckish, before we fly back to Starside! And come sunup, four brand new thralls in our manses in Wrathstack! This will have been a night and a half, and time for a lot more business yet. Hah! But we make a good team, you and I.

  The infant lives, Nestor answered.

  Of course he does, Canker agreed. For now.

  No, he is to remain alive, untouched, untainted.

  What? But he’ll be succulent! And without these adults—with them as thralls in Wrathstack—what chance does he have anyway?

  Ple
nty of chances, in Suckscar.

  You’ll give him to that dumpling Glina? In place of the one she lost? Canker’s mind was shrewd when he desired it to be.

  Aye. It sometimes works with wolves. Without the infant we deprived her of she might hate me, and I want her to love me.

  You put a lot of store by that girl. Is she that good?

  She was good to me, upon a time. I … have my reasons. Let it be …

  So be it. Canker shrugged. The child lives. In which case, the young girl is mine.

  Will you keep her?

  No, but I’ll be into her! And I’ll drink what’s left when I’m done!

  Nestor scowled and said, Fox, dog, wolf? Maybe there’s something of the pig in you, too! She’s a mere child, Canker! But in fact he knew that she was only meat, or would be soon. And anyway, he didn’t really care one way or the other. Yet in the back of his mind, in the ever shrinking human part of him, perhaps something shrieked its abhorrence even now; but if so, its cries were weak and went unheard.

  As for what Nestor had said to the dog-Lord, which must surely be seen as an insult: Nestor could say anything to him, even things which would get other men killed. Usually Canker would grunt and turn away, to show his disapproval if Nestor’s words had cut him; but this time he was satisfied to laugh in his fashion. A child, you say? Well, say she’s a she! And she’ll be good and tight!

  His laughter died away in Nestor’s mind, to be replaced by cold cunning, insatiable lust, and purest evil. Then, with his eyes blazing like fires as his fangs commenced to lengthen and salivate, Canker went into a crouch over his intended victims and growled in Nestor’s mind, When you are ready, just say the word.

  Nestor was ready. “Now!” he said out loud.

  They had hung their gauntlets from branches, to be picked up later when all was done. There had seemed little or no requirement for serious weaponry on this occasion. Now they reached down together, gripped the men by their throats, and drew them swiftly from their beds. Canker’s was very young; the dog-Lord nipped him in the neck, delivered a stunning blow to the side of his head, tossed him aside, and reached greedily for his suddenly screaming woman.

  Nestor slammed his man against the bole of the tree and, as the wind was knocked out of him and he opened his mouth to cry his shock and terror, pinned him there by driving the six-inch blade of his knife through his gasping mouth and right cheek, deep into the bark and tough timber core. Conscious for now, the man stood there naked and shivering, slopping blood and saliva, gurgling where he clung to the tree to keep from falling and ripping his face wide open. He tried once to free the knife, despite the incredible pain it caused him, but only half-awake and weak from shock and horror—and Nestor having driven the knife home with a vampire’s enormous strength—it was a wasted effort.

  Meanwhile, Nestor reached down again into the bundle of furs, but his attack on the man had taken time and given the woman a breathing space. She was already on her feet and running.

  “After her, lad!” Canker cried, from where he’d tossed his victim facedown across a fallen tree trunk, mounted her from the rear, and was hammering into her while she howled the agony of her violated flesh. “Ah, the thrill of the chase is—ah, ahh!—good,” he panted, “but the rewards are so much better! Except you mustn’t forget—ah, ahh, ahhh!—leave the girl child to me. For I’ll not be—ahhh!—I’ll not be too long here.”

  The girl, who had been sleeping a little apart from Canker’s targeted group, was also running; her long, slim white legs flashed in blue starlight as she sped barefoot into the forest. Nestor noted which direction the youngster took, passed the information to the dog-Lord in a single instantaneous thought, then hurried after the woman and quickly caught up with her.

  Panting, whining deep in her throat like a trapped animal, she found her way blocked by thorn bushes, spun on her heel, and saw Nestor coming … and rushed straight at him! Taken by surprise, indeed astonished, for a moment he stood stock-stitt—until he saw the starlight glinting on the knife in her hand! And that hand even now arcing towards him. Ducking to one side, he felt the keen blade slicing into his arm: cold metal wetted on blood, cutting skin, muscle, metamorphic vampire sinew.

  Furious, snarling—controlling his pain as only a Lord of the Wamphyri can—Nestor struck at the woman’s knife arm and felt it break like a twig. And as she cried her agony he clouted her on the head in the manner prescribed by the dog-Lord. Felled, she at once slumped to the forest floor.

  While from some little distance away:

  “A-ha!” came Canker’s bark of triumph, and a moment later the wail of the waif. For the dog-thing had pursued and caught the small girl. And of course Nestor knew what he would do with her. But that was the way of it; the Wamphyri have their needs, and Canker’s needs were … often prodigious. And after all, the blood is the life, and young blood is the sweetest.

  Briefly, curiously, Nestor found himself wondering whether Canker would drink before or after he’d used her … or during? But in any case the girl was as good as ruined; she would be a vampire in Mangemanse, if the dog-Lord left her enough strength to make it through the pass before the dawn …

  The infant’s extra weight was negligible. Bundled up at the rear of Nestor’s saddle behind Glina’s slumped form, it cried out once or twice during the blustery ascent on the night thermals, but that was all. Yet its cries were sufficient to cause Glina to stir and moan in her vampire sleep.

  Sensing that she would soon wake up, and again before her time, Nestor decided to test his theory. If Glina took to the child—and if the merest spark of her old love for him could yet be rekindled—then he would carry her to Suckscar, to be his thrall and warm his bed. If not … perhaps he would still take her to Suckscar. There was always the provisioning.

  “What now?” Canker called across to him, breaking his train of thought. “What say we settle in the heights and rest awhile, and scan for Szgany fires and such?”

  “Not me,” Nestor called back. “I’ll stop while I’m ahead. You carry on if you wish, and I’ll see you back in Wrathstack. Me, I’ve had more than enough for one night. My flyer’s weary. I’ll take a break in the heights, aye, but then I’m on my way back.”

  Canker looked across at him and grinned lewdly, shrewdly. “Your mind’s an open door, Nestor. You never even sniffed that girl back there, or touched Glina, for that matter. But now at last your juices are working. You want her, but you’re being coy about it. Well, that’s fair enough. Have it your own way. Canker’s not the one to stay where he’s not wanted. And anyway, you’re right: enough’s enough for one night. I have work aplenty in Mangemanse. I want to get back early and see what my lads are up to … and my lasses! And then there’s my moon music …”

  “Farewell, then,” Nestor told him.

  And Canker threw back his head and yipped, then sped for a gap between the peaks and was soon lost from sight …

  Nestor landed his flyer in the thin soil of a saddle between jutting granite outcrops. Situated at a slightly higher altitude than the Sunside tree line, the hollow was thickly clad in purple night-blooming heather, which gave the place a cloying, sickly-sweet smell.

  He lifted Glina down from his saddle and saw how cold and trembly she was. Well, and she would soon become accustomed to that; only the most extreme subzero temperatures will seriously incapacitate a vampire. But for the moment, they might as well be comfortable, at least.

  And so he took down the infant child, wrapped him in his own soft leather jacket and laid him to one side, then spread the cured fur in which the child had been bundled and placed Glina upon it. Which was when she woke up.

  “What? Who?” She struggled to sit up a little way, then fell back, to lie there wrapped in dark fur, pale and disheveled in the starlight. She looked, and was, a captive thing, a thrall, not only physically but mentally, too; or she would be soon. Which excited him and made him want to use her. But he would not take her by force, for he wanted her to come to
him as she had used to. If she wouldn’t, then he would find another use for her. She was only flesh and blood.

  She had been watching him for some time, until finally: “You …” she said. But her voice was dead, empty.

  He took the child to her, showed her his face.

  “My baby?” Suddenly Glina’s voice was a whisper of hope; she couldn’t believe it; she reached for the child … and saw that he was not hers.

  “No,” said Nestor, shaking his head. “He’s not yours. But he can be, if you want him.” He covered the baby again and put him to one side, in the heather.

  “You burned my baby,” she said, her voice cold again. “And now you would give me this one? Some other poor mother’s loss?”

  “I didn’t burn your child.” Nestor lied easily, for lying is the natural province of vampires. “It was the dog-Lord, Canker Canison. He burned your cabin. In any case, we didn’t know there was an infant in there.”

  “But my baby burned nevertheless. And you, Nestor? What do you care? You are a vampire!”

  He shrugged. “It was my destiny. To be Wamphyri. Didn’t I always tell you I was the Lord Nestor? Well, and now I am.”

  Suddenly Glina was sobbing: deep, wracking, painful sobs.

  He sat down with her and put an arm round her shuddering shoulders. “Tears change nothing.”

  Amazingly, she snuggled up to him … or perhaps not amazingly. She was after all his thrall, and Nestor was her master. Also, he now felt a power in himself, a talent which he had not used before, because he’d not been aware of it; had not needed to know it. And his eyes were hypnotic and his voice languorous when he said, “Aye, we sat together many a time, you and I, in your father’s cabin when they were abed. And sometimes we’d go down to the river, too …”

  Conscious of her flesh, he opened the furs a little until his hand could steal inside to weigh her breasts. Just as in that other time.