Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (43 page)

—Which came as he slept.

It was a sound that woke him: a whine, a snarl, a cough or grunt. One or all of these things, but a sound anyway …

made by Singer. And sitting up in his bed of heather, backing away from her, Radu was

astonished and horrified by this picture of a dog of the wild so patently torn between loyalty and strange, alien emotions. She crept towards him, shied away, whined as in some inexpressible agony … and was at once drawn back to him, slavering and showing her scythe teeth, where the soft leather of her muzzle was drawn quiveringly back. And Radu understood that she now saw him as prey of sorts - yet
remembered
him as her friend and master! He sensed that she was driven by something, and fought it with whatever remained of her former loyalty. He knew something of her torment, which must in a way be similar to his own. For while
he
lusted after the blood of certain men, still he remembered a handful of times when men had been good to him; and while
she
came upon him to kill him, she yet loved him with at least a spark of her old love.

And even as he drew back the string of his crossbow until it nocked, and even as he slid a bolt into the tiller’s groove, Radu Lykan grieved over what he must do, for the companionship they had known together. But plainly Singer was mad and al of that was over now, and like the fox in the swamp she’d be better off dead and out of her misery.

He aimed direct at her forehead - her brain, to make a quick end of it - and knew he couldn’t miss. For even though Singer had witnessed the power of his weapon, still she crept closer, and closer yet, almost as if begging him to kill her! And all the while she stared fixedly at Radu, pleadingly with eyes he knew yet didn’t know, not any longer. She was almost upon him; her eyes were yellow lamps shining on him; powerful jaws yawned open! And:

‘Goodbye, old friend,’ Radu told her, squeezing the trigger.

In the last moment Singer had lunged forward … only to be stopped dead by the ironwood bolt that chopped through her sloping skull into her brain; so that she fell twitching upon Radu’s chest where he had jerked back away from her. Her jaws still gaped open, however; his, too, as he saw something writhing in the dark cavern of her mouth!

Then, but too late, he once again remembered the diseased fox in the swamp: the thing he had seen passing from the one to the other, which he’d mistakenly thought was the fox’s tongue, torn out at the roots by Singer.

It was the same now, but as the shiny-black, corrugated body of the leech-thing ejected from the wolfs mouth, and in the instant that it transferred to Radu’s, he saw that it was no tongue! It lived - it thought, reasoned, or instinctively
knew -
and it moved like lightning as it sought…

… A new, better, stronger, more intelligent host!

Impossible to close his mouth! Such was the girth of the horror that his jaws were made powerless, like taking too big a bite of an apple and stalling on it - except
this
loathsome thing was no apple. Headfirst, it
fed
itself to him, putting out hooks into his throat to draw itself down

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inch by choking, vile-tasting, stomach-heaving inch. Then … it was
in
him and he could breathe again. He did -gasping, coughing, and massaging his throat - and came lurching to his feet as he tried desperately to vomit, to rid himself of the nightmarish parasite within. And
it
knew that, too!

Radu would never know just exactly what the horror did to his insides then, but even as he blacked out he guessed it was the same thing that it had done to Singer’s. And as incredible pain hounded him into a merciful oblivion, he could more fully appreciate how she had felt when she’d collapsed at the rim of the swamp …

…
And
something of how she must have felt when she came awake. His throat burned; it was dry, cracked, bruised inside from the thing’s passage into his body. And so it had been no nightmare, no subconscious association of ideas lingering from his recent visit to the swamps, but the real thing. A real
Thing
had vacated Singer’s body in favour of his! It was in there even now, hiding in his body, lodged there where he could neither see nor feel it, nor affect it in any way. Like the fox, and then Singer, he was now the host of this parasitic creature, this leech that he imagined to be similar to the tapeworms that occasionally got into the systems of the Szgany.

Well, Radu knew the cure for
that
well enough! He’d seen how the sufferers of such infestation submitted to starvation, and when they were almost dead of hunger allowed themselves to be tied down with their mouths propped open, so that the parasite could be lured out of them by the stench of rotting fish or meat! But that was something a man couldn’t do on his own; the temptation to bite such a thing in half and spit it out as it disgorged must be overwhelming - not to mention a complete waste of time and effort! For only leave a segment of the creature inside the host body, an entire new worm would grow from it! Then again, the tapeworms Radu had seen were slender, many-sectioned creatures; they
could
be bitten in half!

But … he knew that
his
parasite was different. He knew it without knowing how he knew. He felt it: a malign intelligence of sorts, a sentience other than the basic, natural, instinctive hunting and breeding knowledge of beasts of the wild, or the higher spiritual or morality-guided intelligence of men. This thing would use the guile of the fox, the ferocity of the hunting wolf, and
his
superior knowledge and intelligence for its own! Except … there would be nothing spiritual or moral about it. And nothing remotely human.

These were thoughts that entered Radu’s mind in his first waking moments, but he could hardly suspect that they were not his thoughts entirely, or that their source was not entirely his mind. But such was the case: by virtue of its metamorphic make-up, the leech’s mutant DNA was already bringing about the most drastic changes in his own, and doing it in such a way as to link itself with his mind, his blood and bones, his very being. The thing would
be
him, and even though he would continue to believe himself master of his own destiny,
he
would be it.

Cold, it would kill off whatjwas human in him while intensifying what was cold and inhuman. Devious, it would so dilute what little was left of human love and compassion as to remove these things entirely, while accentuating those baser emotions it could use to its own advantage … such as lust, greed, and hatred. Tenacious, it would cling to life - to Radu’s life - even as it moulded itself to his internal organs and spine. And there’d be no getting rid of it, neither by primitive medicine nor any method of man’s devising. For Radu was the higher lifeform it had searched for since its development from a spore to a leech in the body of the fox, and it was with him now for as long as he lived.

Ever ravenous, it would lust after the very source of life, the red-pulsing river of life, which flows through the arteries of men and beasts. Except a man has only so much life, only so much blood; so that in order to survive, Radu too must consume or be consumed. It was the burgeoning curse of the vampire, new to Sunside/Starside even as Shaitan the Unborn was new, so that as yet Radu knew neither of them. But he would, he would …

Day finally dawned, and Radu was ill. He carried Singer out of the cave, dropped her into a crack in the rocks, filled it with stones.

Under normal circumstances the effort would be scarcely worth mentioning; now … it felt like a day’s work. He knew he should hunt, for good red meat to fuel him through whatever was to come, but the sun had a furnace heat he’d never felt before, which raised angry red weals on his skin and crisped the hair of his forearms to small coiled cinders. Even with his back to the sun he could scarcely see to find a target! Plainly he was ill. But he knew he had a Thing in him, so it was hardly surprising. And the very thought of that Thing made him feel more ill yet.

He found water, a small waterfall with a pool, laved his scorched and rapidly roughening body and filled a skin, took up his clothes in a bundle and headed back to his cave. On the way he saw a rabbit nibbling the grass in the shade of a tree, and even in his condition couldn’t miss such an easy target. Back in the cave he found himself ravenously hungry and ate raw red flesh.

This wasn’t the first time Radu had had it red; now and then when it rained and the grass he used for tinder was damp, he might find it impossible to get a fire going. Then he would simply skin his catch, cut himself a good hindquarter joint and fill his belly. And of course Singer had been there to dispose of the rest of their kill, which she naturally preferred that way. But on this occasion there was no such excuse. The day was hot and dry; Radu had flintstones; he could easily have cooked

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his food - but he ate it raw anyway. Perhaps it was simply a question of expedience.

And perhaps not…

And he slept … and slept. Never such a long sleep in al his life. Never before, and never again. For this was the Sleep of Change. This was his leech’s chance to complete the melding, and make itself one with him. Something of the fox’s wiles went into him, but not a lot, for that poor creature had been out of its own environment; it had never been afforded the opportunity to display its skills. On the other hand, a great deal more of the great white she-wolf found its way into Radu; for the leech had liked her strength and ferocity, her sense of the wild, her sinuous shape and speed. Singer had been a child of the night, a hunter of lesser creatures, an eater of raw meat, who slaked her thirst on blood. Good!

But the man …
knew
things! He had something that neither fox nor wolf of the wild could ever match: a creative mind with the power to override instinct, to say ‘No!’ or ‘Later!’ to the normaly irresistible hereditary urges and demands which alone command the actions of lesser creatures. And because he could guide and control his own actions, he could himself
be
guided and controled.

Thus, even as Radu had trained Singer, now his leech would train him. And with filament extensions of itself rooted in his brain, the vampire leech lay with Radu where he tossed and turned in his cave through the long Sunside day, ignoring al the nightmares which its presence inspired, while ‘listening’ with rapt intent to his dreams. And learning from them.

And determining how it would be …

Radu woke in the evening twilight and was himself again … so he thought. He stretched upon his heather bed, and there was a new suppleness in al his joints.

His throat no longer gave him pain, and there was no aching in his bones. Whatever smal symptoms of his solitary ways had been, they were no more. He knew a physical comfort - a sensation of real wel-being - such as he had never experienced before. He was ‘a new man.’ And he was more than a man. And less.

During his recovery, Radu had defecated in a secondary cave that branched off from the main one close to its entrance; the smel of his shit would keep creatures at bay. Strange for it was something he had never done before. Singer had done it from time to time, but she was a child of the wild. Rather, she
had been
a child of the wild. Then, remembering that Singer was no more, Radu grieved a little while he dressed.

His short trousers of stitched skins seemed baggy on him; obviously he’d lost weight, but he didn’t feel too hungry, not for his usual fare, anyway. Radu’s sandals seemed too short for his feet, and his jacket

failed to connect with his trousers or tie properly across his deep chest. And there were short, dark manes of hair on the backs of his hands, and trailing down his wrists. Astonished, he found twin pads of hair in the palms of his hands, too! Moreover his fingernails were longer, thicker, darker, and pointed at their tips like claws.

But… how long had he lain there? Why, he must have been delirious! These changes in him had surely taken longer than a single night. But they were natural changes, obviously: loss of weight, and some slight wrinkling and shrinkage of his clothes, and his hair and nails growing al unhindered by normal wear and tear. But a healing sleep, for sure. For there was such a
zest
in him that—

—Except here Radu’s thoughts were arrested by an echoing, ululant, faint but concerted howling from the high plateaux and passes, as his grey brothers in the heights began to serenade a full and glorious moon where she tumbled through the darkening skies. But…

…
His
grey brothers?

Radu wasted no time puzzling over it, for now his zest had turned to something other than a human passion. Now he longed for the thrills of the wild: the hunt, the chase, and the kill. But again, his bloodlust was not for the blood of the wild but for that… of his own kind? Or those who had been his kind, at least. And down there in the western forests, that was Zirescu territory.

He paused for a moment in the mouth of the cave to sniff at his excrement. His, yes, but it was black. The black of the digested blood of the rabbit. And perhaps the digested essence of something else? What of the leech-thing? Was this it, liquefied and turned to black shit by his juices? Radu thought not. But then why couldn’t he feel it inside him, a Thing as big as that? He frowned and gave a shrug. What had been had been. What was become was become. And what would be … would be.

But up in the mountains his grey brothers were aprowl and howling, and Radu threw back his head and howled with them. It felt good, as good as the night against his flanks! And pausing beside the pool to go down on all fours and sip, and seeing his face reflected in moonlight, Radu scarcely wondered at the fact that his eyes were triangular and gleamed feral yellow, or that his long-toothed smile was the smile of a wolf. For in the silver light of the moon al was made clear to him, and he remembered his dreams of vengeance and knew that it was time. Except he would go among men as a man, so that they would know who he was and why he had returned …