Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (46 page)

Ah, but there are beasts and there are beasts, and the rest of it wouldn’t be an accident, be sure! Giorga was dead, Lexandru, too, but Ion and the Ferenczys still lived. For
now
they lived, anyway. Again Radu howled - howled his bloodlust and a vow to the goddess of the moon where she floated on high: that Magda would be avenged in a manner befitting her ordeal! In answer, it seemed the moon lit his way through the woods by silvering the madly trampled, blundering trail of

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Ion Zirescu … to where the last of that loathsome family was hiding. Later, Radu would scarcely remember tracking him, loping through the dark woods and faling to al fours to sniff the trail of freshly crushed grass and rootlets, the vile-smeling spoor of sweat and fear. But in a little while there’d been a clearing, with a stand of trees to one side, and breaking from the woods into the clearing Radu had sensed … stillness! Al was still; neither a sound nor any movement; not even the hoot of an owl or the furtive creep of smal creatures in the grass. Why? Because they had been
startled
to stillness by the sudden crashing of a fugitive? Possibly …

Radu’s mist had subsided by then, but the moon was still ful and high and his powers were still with him. Except they were new powers and he didn’t know them; he wasn’t experienced in their use. But listening to the stillness - keeping absolutely still himself and straining to detect even the slightest sound - he

‘heard’ something that wasn’t a sound! Instead, it was … a thought!
They
were thoughts! The terrified thoughts of Ion Zirescu!

At first Radu shook his head; he knew he was imagining it, this
listening
to another’s mind. But as he concentrated even harder, so the thoughts came that much clearer, so that now he must heed them. And this was what he heard:

…
Followed me! But how? Is he a man or a dog, to track me so unerringly? Radu Lykan, alive! Or perhaps his vengeful
spirit? But a ghost that kills? And his strength! His great speed! No, this is no ghost but Radu himself. We thought him a coward like his
father, but the youth who killed Kherl andArlek that night was no coward. And now he’s back. But my father, Giorga, dead? Wel, so what…

Lexandru and I would have seen to
him
before too long! Ahhh …!
(That last was a gasp of horror, and it signaled that Radu had been seen).

He closed his eyes and concentrated more yet, and saw … through another’s eyes! Through Ion’s, of course! Saw himself, or his shadow, poised at the edge of the clearing, head cocked forward, ears alert as they angled this way and that. And saw - and indeed
felt -
himself go down on al fours again, and aim himself at the stand of trees. For Ion’s line of sight had given him away, and the shock of his thoughts

confirmed it: …
He’s pointing at me, coming straight for me! But I have my

machete …!

Oh, yes, Radu was coming. Half-upright and leaning forward, he loped towards the stand of trees. But… Ion had a machete? Oh, really? And deep in a clump of gorse, Radu paused to ready his crossbow - four seconds at most - before continuing in a new direction, apparently
away
from Ion. And in his head:

…
He’ll go right by me! He hasn’t seen me!
(It was a sigh of relief, almost a sob - a pitiful ‘sound’! But there was no pity in Radu Lykan).

And in the corner of his eye Radu saw Ion there, crouching in the shrubbery under the trees, behind a dense patch of brambles. But not dense enough. Radu whirled, aimed, and fired; Ion utered a cry of shock, pain, as the bolt zipped through fringing undergrowth to take him in the right forearm, spinning him until his feet tangled and he went down. His machete had flown from useless fingers. And suddenly he was a man alone, unarmed, against a monster …

A shadow grew out of the night’s darker shadows, and as the moon slipped behind a cloud Radu Lykan was there, his eyes like yelow lamps in the darkness.

And: ‘Up,’ he panted, his voice a cough, a bark, a hideous threat. ‘On your feet, Ion Zirescu, or die where you lie.’ He nocked the last of his bolts.

Sobbing, Ion got up, and stumbled backwards away from Radu until he backed up against a tree. And: ‘Perfect!’ the werewolf Radu growled, as he pointed his weapon point-blank and squeezed the trigger. The ironwood bolt shatered Ion’s left colarbone and nailed him to the tree; his cry of agony cut the night like a knife, and he would have blacked out but daren’t. His weight would rip the muscle of his shoulder open, or stretch and tear the ligaments there, and cripple him for life. Radu heard his thoughts and inquired, ‘What life?’

‘Kill me, then!’ Ion sobbed. ‘Get it done with, if that’s what you want.’ And with a bolt in his right arm, and another through his shoulder, holding him in place, he braced himself shuddering against the tree.

Radu’s voice was a low rumble as he answered, ‘But that’s not
al
I want!’

‘Wh-what?’

‘You murdered my father, then raped and kiled my sister. Wel, Freji’s paid for: Giorga paid that debt. But Magda can’t ever be paid for, for she was priceless.

But you and your brother, the Ferenczys and those other two pigs, you held my sister down and took her again and again. Maybe two of you at a time … or maybe three? I saw her body, the signs you left, your stinking froth on Magda’s skin. As wel she died, for I don’t think she could have lived with it. Wel, neither can I. And neither can you.’

His last words were a snarl; he hooked a hand like a claw in the front of Ion’s trousers and ripped them open. Ion was caused to jerk a little, and the bolt in his shoulder dragged against raw nerves. He almost passed out, which wouldn’t do at al. Radu pushed his wolfs face close, sniffed at Ion’s parts and growled, That worthless thing was the instrument of your torture, your … your pleasure?’ As he closed his talon-like hand on his captive, Ion could do nothing but writhe and shudder against the tree. ‘And you and the others, al six of you, you took turns to rape her of her innocence. Now it’s my turn. Except you’re not innocent.’

He crushed Ion to the tree, clenched his hand like a vice, used his

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vast Wamphyri strength to castrate and more than castrate the other. In a split second Ion lost everything, even the lower pipes of his body, dislocated, wrenched out of place, and left dangling. He lost consciousness, too, and would go on losing blood enough that he’d never again wake up. Well, and Radu wouldn’t let it go to waste, not all of it.

While there was yet a pulse in his victim’s neck, he sank a wolfs fangs into it to draw off the remainder of Ion’s life.

And drank long and deep, giving nothing of himself but taking all from the other, even the very last dregs.

Blood … it was what he’d needed, what his vampire leech had needed. It was the nectar of life … it
was
the life!

And it was the drug that very nearly killed him, because he almost - but not quite - let himself drown in it. Because the sheer unbridled pleasure of it almost -but not quite - numbed him to everything else. Until, as if in a dream, he heard a startled gasp as someone cried:

There! But look - only
look,
will you!’

Radu knew the voice: Rakhi Ferenczy, the younger of that degenerate pair. Knew the next voice, too, as that of Rakhi’s brother, when Lagula answered: ‘I see him - and
I’ve got
the moon-crazed bastard!’

He surfaced from his delirium of bloodlust, straightened up from slaking his monstrous thirst, and shook his head -to clear his swimming senses and red-drenched vision both …

… And moved - but not fast enough!

Lagula’s bolt burned his neck, cut a shallow groove in it before burying itself inches deep in the tree. Radu laughed, a great bark of a laugh … until Rakhi’s bolt bit deep into his left thigh, scraped bone and jammed there, midway between knee and buttock.

Radu had fired his last bolt. He had nothing to fight back with except his fierce Wamphyri strength. He
would
have fought, certainly, if his leech had let him. But survival was uppermost in the symbiont’s ‘mind’; its host’s survival, and its own, of course.

The werewolf let himself fall to the forest’s floor, went three-legged, limping through the undergrowth, but still with the sinuous, flowing motion of the Wamphyri. And this time he breathed his mist in earnest, knowing what he did, to obscure him as he fled. Not far from Ion Zirescu’s dangling, ravaged body, he found the machete where it had fallen, and for a moment considered standing and fighting. But a greater wisdom (or a more sinister, insidious instinct?) forbade it. For the time being, survival was everything.

Once, near the edge of the clearing, Radu paused to look back, and saw the Ferenczys still blundering about in his mist, searching for him (but searching oh so carefully!) in the undergrowth on the fringe of the stand of trees. The fools, to have let him slip through their fingers like this! Didn’t they know, didn’t they realize, that he’d be back for them? Obviously not. Radu thought to remind them, and as the moon tumbled

from view behind the treetops, he threw back his head and howled.

And from now on, whenever the Ferenczy brothers heard the howling of a wolf, they would automatically tremble and reach for the nearest weapons …

In the western foothills, well away from the camp of the Zirescus, Radu cut the flights from the bolt that transfixed his thigh and drew it out headfirst. At first there was pain, but as he gritted his teeth the pain faded to a dull throb, and in another moment all that remained was an insensitive numbness, as if his thigh were asleep.

There were medicinal leaves Radu knew of that would help in the healing, but he didn’t bother with them. Something told him they weren’t necessary. It was his leech, already at work on him with its vastly superior metamorphic processes.

Radu was a changeling creature now, but in the main his mind remained the mind of a man, and in his sleep he was visited by nightmares. He dreamed of the Thing that he’d become, and woke up cold and shivering, unwilling to accept the fact that he was no longer entirely human. His vampire, of course, worked on him to subdue all such fears and regrets. Dimly, he was aware of its influence: the small urging voice of some subconscious ‘conscience’ that nagged or advised him; no voice at al, but in fact chemical agents and catalysts in his blood and his brain, changing the way he thought. Eventually he succumbed to suggestion, stopped fearing and lost interest in it; finally he accepted that he was what he was - without considering that he was what his leech wanted him to be.

When the moon was down or on the wane, he was a man - a wolfish-looking man, by all means - but a man. When the moon was up and full, then it was hard to remain a man. But at all times he was Wamphyri, even though he still didn’t understand or recognize his condition …

He dwelled for some years between the foothills and the barrier mountains, sleeping in deep caves or crevices by day, and wandering gradually eastwards by night. And despite that his work wasn’t finished in the camps of the Szgany Zirescu - by now the Szgany Ferenczy - and that it never would be while Rakhi and Lagula lived, still he put distance between. He knew that to return now would mean certain death; the entire tribe would be watching out for him, doubtless with orders to shoot on sight. And in any case he needed time to explore his amazing powers: his mentalism, metamorphism, and the source of his boundless, surging energy. As for the wound in his thigh: that had healed in a night and a day; there was scarcely a scar to show for it.

Adept at avoiding the encampments or settlements of men, he continued to do so; alas that they couldn’t avoid him.

But the farther east Radu journeyed, the more surely he was aware of a change. Not in

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himself
this time, but in the Szgany, in Sunside’s people
themselves.

Thus far, avoiding men, he had also avoided their challenge, or rather the challenge of his bloodlust; he had slaked his thirst (and that of his parasite) on the raw red flesh of creatures of the wild. In this respect, and without even knowing it, Radu had pitted himself
against
his leech! But as wel as tenacity, the vampire has al the patience of centuries of life as yet unlived. With a vampire’s longevity, it’s not too hard to be patient.

And meanwhile: Radu was alowed to believe that the pleasure he’d derived from slaughtering Ion Zirescu and drinking his blood had lain in the kiling, while in fact it had lain in the drinking! Revenge? That had been
his
motive, but necessity had been his leech’s. Wel, Radu would learn in time. And meanwhile his vampire must be satisfied with the blood of beasts. Except, and as has been noted, there are beasts and there are beasts.

And indeed
great
beasts had come among the Szgany of Sunside, which was the reason for the changes that Radu had noted in them. For now during the long hours of daylight, there were grim-faced, determined men on the flanks of the barrier mountains, hunters who pursued and butchered … men! Aye, and it
was
butchery. For with his own eyes, Radu was witness to it.

It happened at a time perhaps two years and nine months (one hundred and thirty-five or thirty-six sunups) after he’d taken his revenge on the Zirescus in the westernmost woods …

It was the twilight before the true dawn, and the tumbling moon was already reduced to a pale stain of a disc high in the amethyst sky over Sunside. Soon the furnace sun would be up, but it wouldn’t find Radu wanting. For by now his photophobia was full-fledged; he knew that direct undiluted sunlight would kil him, even if he stil didn’t understand the reason.