Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (57 page)

But: ‘No,’ B.J. shook her head, and knew he would sense it. ‘She didn’t know this place; she’d never been here. Nor did she know
you,
my Master.’

But she knew
of
me. And certainly she knew of you.

‘She was sworn to silence,’ B.J. countered. ‘She was beguiled, hypnotized … she could
not
speak! None of us can, and myself least of aU; you vowrself have seen to that, my Master. An enemy might contrive to steal me away -though not without a fight - but he could never make me talk … ”

Huh!
(A wry, dry, barking chuckle).
But you do not know the Wamphyri, Bonnie Jean. With them, you must always assume the
worst. However, let us put that aside for now and go on to this other thing. You have told me about the watcher. We will talk about him - what
to do about him - again. But you also made mention of a mysterious stranger. What, and have you let a man into your life, Bonnie Jean? Into
our lives? Ah, and you seem to consider him important! I can even feel your … what, excitement? Very well, and now perhaps you will tell me
about him.

Yesss, tell me all about your mysterious stranger.

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Or better still, show meeee.

And she did. For long minutes the story flowed from her mind to his, just as she remembered it. And while it answered certain questions he hadn’t yet asked - such as the result of her quest for a bogus werewolf in London, which she had undertaken on his behalf-it prompted others which he’d scarcely conceived
ever
to ask her.

And now Radu’s excitement was as great as hers …

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II

BONNIEJEAN: HER DUTIES THE DOG-LORD: HIS SOLUTION

This man,
(Radu’s ‘voice’ was eager, almost panting, in Bonnie Jean’s mind),
this Harry Keogh. I have seen him with your eyes and know how he
strikes me. But how did he strike you?

BJ. didn’t quite know how to answer. ‘As … mysterious,’ she finally said, and tried to suppress her involuntary shrug. ‘As if he hid secrets where there couldn’t possibly
be
secrets, because he was beguiled. He struck me as a man who has seen and experienced things no other man ever saw or experienced. He was warm, gentle, human … and yet he was cold, hard, and—’

—
Inhuman?
(The Great Wolf sniffed in her mind, literaly a
bloodhound
on the trail).
Yet still you tell me that he’s not one of them!

‘He
is
human, my Master,’ she told him. ‘I would stake my life on it.’

Oh, but you already have,
he answered with a low, rumbling growl. But as B.J. recognized the threat, he quickly added,
All of our
lives!
Which served to relieve something of the onus he had seemed to place on her.

‘Master,’ she set out to convince him, ‘this man had me in his power, however briefly - but long enough to kil me, certainly! Instead he kept me from trouble, from harm. He admits to skils that would be of great benefit to you. He has worked for … a covert agency,’ (she was finding difficulty in describing Harry’s duties; and no wonder, for she scarcely understood them herself). ‘He was …
above
the laws of the land. Now, as
your
agent, he could prove invaluable. As a fighter, he’s quick and strong. And as a thinker, deep, I think. If there’s more to him than I have found, I know you can find it where I have failed.’ There was nothing more she could tel him.

After a while:

As to how he struck me: forcefully, Bonnie Jean. He struck me powerfully, and with more than any normal power. Why, I felt it
in your mind!
He
was beguiled, aye, but he likewise beguiled you! You were

attracted to him as a man, not so? Don’t deny it, for even though you won’t admit it to yourself, you cannot lie to me. I have felt it: your
fascination for this … this
mysterious
one, aye.

‘But… but…!’ B.J. sputtered, because her Master had seen what she had not, or what she had refused to accept.

Oh? Ha-ha-ha-ha!
Radu’s laughter was a staccato barking that stabbed briefly, harshly in her mind … before coming to an abrupt halt.
And is that why he’s still alive, Bonnie Jean? Because you desired to feel him in your body, his root burrowing in
your soil, seeking to seed itself in the garden of your sex? Is it so? Did you desire to fuck him, Bonnie Jean? Or for him to fuck you?

‘My Master, I… ”

Then you
should
have! For there are more ways to enslave a man than by sharing your blood, your essence; better ways to enthrall him
than by a bite;
other
ways to seduce than by addiction to poisoned wines.
His voice fell to a whisper, a whine, a fetid panting. And it seemed that he stripped her to the soul as he informed,
Why, your woman’s body would more than suffice to enslave a man -
any
man, or
creature - I am sure. Your soft breasts and thighs would enthrall, enfold him. And the suction of your sex would be a greater addiction, a
sweeter poison by far than any wine, however strange and rare …

Bonnie Jean got down from the rim of his sarcophagus, stood with her head bowed, and stared at the buckled flags supporting his great coffin. She felt shame, for plainly her devotion had been to other than her Master. But it had taken Him to identify emotions that she had rejected. Radu felt B.J. ‘s confusion, her dejection, and said:

No, Bonnie Jean, you are not at fault. You’re a woman, destined to be more than a woman. And you have suppressed emotions that are
instinct in you as they are in me. In so doing, you’ve also proved a point: that you are
not yet
Wamphyri! For the Wamphyri may
not
suppress their emotions. If they could, then were they unstoppable, unbeatable! Aye, and that is important to me, Bonnie Jean: that you
are
not yet
of that high station. For the …
condition
of the Great Vampire is such as to make it, well, let us say
undesirable,
at this time.

He fel silent (musing, she thought). But his meaning had not escaped her …

After a while - if only to change the subject and divert his thoughts -BJ. felt it prudent to prompt him: ‘Master, I am here early, that’s true. But in any case it is close to the time of your renewal. While you give thought to the things I’ve told you, we should see to your replenishing. Also to the needs of your creature … ”

My warrior?
He was at once interested.
Is the beast well? Does the great vat support him? Does he wax and quicken? Surely it is so. For
since he is of me, he too must feel the time narrowing down.

‘He waxes, my Master. He …
quickens
in his vat, yes.’

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300

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See to it, then,
he told her.
Tend the beast first, while I lie here and think, and consider… oh, a great many things.

But hurry, Bonnie Jean, for you have awakened me and my time is nigh. And I hunger like a helpless child stirring in his crib, but the
faithful little mother is at hand to bare her breast…

B.J. went out onto the bald, domed roof of Radu’s redoubt and followed a south-westerly route that she’d known for the better part of two centuries. Indeed to her keen eyes and senses there was now a clearly discernible track between scattered boulders, across gaping fissures, and through the treacherous scree jumbles of the high, narrow passes.

Her camouflaged denim suit was crag-grey and lichen-green, matching her surroundings. Over her left shoulder, tied across her back, she carried a rope; also on the left, two small grappling irons dangled from her wide leather belt. A crossbow hung on her right thigh, and was strapped-just above the knee so as not to swing with her movements.

These things, plus a knife in a leather sheath, were all that Bonnie Jean carried.

To her relief, the sun was hidden behind bank upon bank of clouds sweeping in from the west, across the Monadhliath Mountains and the Spey. It was mid-afternoon, creeping towards evening; the shadows of the crags beginning to creep, too, but that meant nothing to B.J. Her eyes were feral as the wilds she traversed; they saw the wildcats sporting in the heather before the cats saw her. Only the eagles, circling on high, had any great advantage.

But she wasn’t interested in cats and eagles. Both were difficult, and both dangerous until stone dead.

But on the penultimate, false-plateau of a series of mighty terraces east of Loch Insh, B.J. knew there were near-inaccessible woodlands and copses in the lee of the upper heights. Knew, too, that she’d find deer there - indeed, a small herd of deer. Her kill would not be missed; these were creatures of the wild; she was the only one who had ever culled them. And she required just one, a faun; not for sweetness but size. It must be easily portable, back to the lair.

She came to the rim. The forest-belt sprawled a dark, misted green all of seven hundred feet below, and the chimney of a teetering stack was her route down.

At the top of the last stage of her descent, B.J. used her rope to form a hoist and lowered the grapples, and without further pause went hand over hand to the bottom. Her prey had long since sensed her and fled, of course; in this place, there were no sounds extraneous to nature. Any sound that was strange was also dangerous.

So she tracked them through the woods. And from then on, never a snapped twig or the swishing recoil of a brushed-aside branch to give her away … until the last moment, when the gut of her crossbow thrummed and the lethal bolt hissed unerringly to its target…

Paralysed, with its spine almost severed at a point one inch forward of the flanges of its shoulders, the buck merely trembled as B.J. used the rope and grapples to hoist it by stages up the cliff. The animal had voided itself in the woods and so didn’t foul her. Then the four-mile trek back to the lair, with the shuddering buck on her shoulders, and B.J. hoping against hope that it wouldn’t die along the way. No, for at the vat of Radu’s beast she would require the engine of its pounding heart to beat to the very last.

At the lair, she lowered the animal into the vent closest to the great vat, folowed it into darkness. Shortly, she ascended the ramp to the rim of the vat and tossed the buck down onto the yelow, semi-solid surface. Then back down and around to the rear of the vat, where a copper implement was stored in oiled wrappings. It was a holow tube three feet long, three-quarters of an inch in diameter, with a trumpetlike funnel at one end. The pointed end had been cut through diagonaly, like the tip of a hypodermic needle.

Back up the ramp to the buck, where B.J. moved the paralysed animal aside in order to drive the sharp end of the funnel down into the resin … at which the obscure outline or silhouete of Radu’s creature
stirred visibly,
however sluggishly, in the gelatinous soup of its vat womb! For the fluids in the saclike core were not alone of resin and therefore less resistant. She saw the sudden movement, which caused her to start. It was the first time in
al
B.J.’s time that this had happened. And it meant that her Master was right: his beast was indeed quickening!

Then, without further pause (or, if anything, more urgently, while yet her mood was right for it) she worked the copper tubing down into the gummy resin, a good two-thirds of its length, until the funnel stuck up like a pouting mouth. And grimacing a little, but with no other sign of reticence, she cut the buck’s throat and held its body steady on the rim, watching its life’s blood spurting into the obscene bel-mouth of the funnel, from there to gurgle its way to the thing in the vat.

Down there, there might be a rudimentary mouth or mouths. B.J. didn’t know, couldn’t say. She only knew that the living blood of the buck would be absorbed into her Master’s creature. A quart of blood, maybe. So little for so much, but enough. And only a little less for Radu, despite that he had only one-tenth of the vat-thing’s bulk. But then, Radu needed - or demanded - so much more. And
not
deer’s blood …

In a while (surprisingly long minutes later, when the flow was less than a cloting trickle), B.J. dragged the buck’s body to one side and drew out the long funnel. Taking it to a place where water fel verticaly from above, and cascaded into conjectural depths below, she washed the funnel out, replaced it in its wrappings, returned it to its niche behind the vat.

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Then she cut out the raw, fresh heart of the buck to take with her, and toppled the stiffening carcass down the dark and unknown course of the waterfal. And now it was time to attend Radu.

The day had seemed very short; it was the season, and B.J. had had much to do. Outside, the sun was setting, the light fading.

Her eyes readily adjusted to the gloom of the cavern complex, as she returned to the sarcophagus, kindled a fire of bone-dry faggots from a pile of prepared wood, boiled water on a tripod and brewed tea. Hungry herself now, and succumbing at last to her own needs, she ate the buck’s heart raw with teeth that formed razor cusps even as they worked at the wild flesh. Jaws like a steel trap finished the job in short order: not much by way of sustenance, but the heart’s dark muscle had been strong and B.J.’s system would make best use of what litle there had been. She could have saved more of the buck, but hadn’t wanted to glut herself. No, for now she must stay alert, and not give in to the inevitable drowsiness of her imminent… depletion.