won't have the pain. But I have to be honest with you, you won't be waking up."
'"No, no drugs!" he gasped at once. "I'm... immune to chloroform. Anyway I have to stay conscious, stay in control. Get help, more men. Go - go quickly!"
'"There's no one!" I protested. "Who would there be out here? If there are any people around they'll be busy saving their own lives, their families, their property. This whole district has been bombed to hell!" And even as I spoke there came the loud droning of bombers and, in the distance, the thunder of renewed bombing.
"No!" he insisted. "You can do it, I know you can. You'll find help and come back. You'll be well paid for it. believe me. And I won't die, I'll hang on. I'll wait. You ... you're my one chance. You can't refuse me!" He was desperate, understandably.
'But now it was my turn to know agony: the agony of frustration, of complete and utter impotence. This brave, strong man, doomed to die here, now, in this place. And looking about me, I knew that I wouldn't have time to find anyone, knew that it was all over.
'His eyes followed my gaze, saw the flames where they were licking up outside the demolished bay windows. The smoke was getting thicker by the second as books burned freely, setting fire to tumbled shelves and furniture. Smoke was starting to curl down from the sagging ceiling, which even now settled a little more and sent down a shower of dust and plaster fragments.
'"I ... I'll burn!" he gasped then. For a moment his eyes were wide and bright with fear, but then a strange look of peaceful resignation came into them. "It ... is finished."
'I tried to take his hand but he shook me off; and once more he muttered, "Finished. After all these long centuries ..."
'"It was finished anyway," I told him. "Your injuries... surely you must have known?" I was anxious to make it as easy as possible for him. "Your pain was so great that you've crossed the pain threshold. You no longer feel it. At least there's that to be thankful for."
'At that he looked at me, and I saw scorn staring out of his eyes. "My injuries? My pain?" he repeated. "Hah!" And his short bark of a laugh was bitter as a green lemon, full of acid and contempt. "When I wore the dragon-helm and got a lance through my visor, which broke the bridge of my nose, shot through and smashed out the back of my skull, that was pain!" he growled. "Pain, aye, for part of me - the real ME - had been hurt. That was Silistria, where we crushed the Ottoman. Oh, I know pain, my friend. We are old, old acquaintances, pain and I. In 1204 at Constantinople it was Greek fire. I had joined the Fourth Crusade in Zara, as a mercenary, and was burned for my trouble at the height of our triumph! Ah, but didn't we make them pay for it? For three whole days we pillaged, raped, slew. And I - in my agony, half eaten away, burned through almost to the very heart of ME - I was the greatest slayer of all! The human flesh had shrivelled but the Wamphyri lived on! And now this, pinned here and crippled, where the flames will find me and put an end to it. The Greek fire expired at last, but this one will not. Human pain and agony, I know nothing of them and care less. But Wamphyri pain? Impaled, burning, shrieking in the fire and melting away layer by layer? No, that must not be..."
These were his words as best I remember them. I thought he raved. Perhaps he was a historian? A learned man, certainly. But already the flames were leaping, the heat intolerable. I couldn't stay with him - but I couldn't leave him, not while he was conscious, anyway. I took out a cotton pad and a small bottle of chloroform, and -
'He saw my intention, knocked the unstoppered bottle from my hand. Its contents spilled, were consumed in blue flames in an instant. "Fool!" he hissed. "You'd only deaden the human part!"
'My clothes were beginning to feel unbearably hot and small tongues of fire were tracing their way round the skirting-board. I could barely breathe. "Why don't you die?" I cried then, unable to tear myself away from him. "For God's sake, die!"