Necroscope II Wamphyri(Vampyri) - By Brian Lumley Page 0,44

remember when we had him that year?'

It was late in the summer of '77 and they were driving down to stay with Georgina and Yulian for a week. The last time they'd seen them was two years ago. George had thought the boy was strange then, and he'd said so on several occasions - not to Georgina and certainly not to Yulian himself, of course not, but to Anne, in private. Now he said so again:

'Funny little thing?' He cocked an eyebrow. 'That's one way of putting it, I suppose. Weird would be a better way! And from what I remember of him last time we came down he hasn't changed - what was a weird baby is now a weird young man!'

'Oh, George, that's ridiculous. All babies are different from each other. Yulian was, well, more different, that's all.'

'Listen,' said George. That child wasn't two months old when he came to us - and he had teeth! Teeth like little needles - sharp as hell! And I remember Georgina saying he was born with them. That's why she couldn't breast-feed him.'

'George,' said Anne warningly, a little sharply, reminding him that Helen sat in the back of the car. She was their daughter: a beautiful, occasionally precocious girl of sixteen.

Helen sighed, very deliberately and audibly, and said,

'Oh, mother! I know what breasts are for - apart from being natural attractions for the opposite sex, that is. Why must you put them on your taboo list?'

'Ta-boob list!' George grinned.

'George!' said Anne again, more forcefully.

'Nineteen seventy-seven,' Helen scoffed, 'but you'd never know it. Not in this family. I mean, feeding your baby's natural, isn't it? More natural than letting your breasts be groped in the back row of some grubby flea-pit cinema!'

'Helen!' Anne half-turned in her seat, her lips com-pressing to a thin line.

'It's been a long time,' George glanced at his wife, semi-ruefully.

'What has?' she snapped.

'Since I was groped in a flea-pit cinema,' he said.

Anne snorted her exasperation. 'She gets it from you!' she accused. 'You've always treated her like an adult.'

'Because she is an adult, very nearly,' he answered. 'You can only guide them so far, Anne my love, and after that they're on their own. Helen's healthy, intelligent, happy, good-looking, and she doesn't smoke pot. She's worn a bra for nearly four years, and every month she -' 'George! 'Taboo!' said Helen, giggling.

'Anyway,' George's irritation was showing now, 'we weren't talking about Helen but Yulian. Helen, I submit, is normal. Her cousin - or cousin once removed, or whatever-is not.'

'Give me a for-instance,' Anne argued. 'An example. Not normal, you say. Well then, is he abnormal? Subnormal? Where's his defect?'

'Whenever Yulian crops up,' Helen joined in from the back, 'you two always end up arguing. Is he really worth it?'

'Your mother's a very loyal person,' George told her over one shoulder. 'Georgina is her cousin and Yulian is Georgina's son. Which means they're untouchable. Your mother won't face simple facts, that's all. She's the same with all her friends: she won't hear a word against them. Very laudable. But I call a spade a spade. I find - and have always found - Yulian a bit much. As I said before, weird.'

'You mean,' Helen pressed, 'a bit nine-bob notish?'

'Helen!' her mother protested yet again.

'I get that one from you!' Helen stopped her dead in her tracks. 'You always talk about gays as nine-bobbers.'

'I never talk about... about homosexuals!' Anne was furious. 'And certainly not to you about them!'

'I've heard Daddy - in conversation with you, about one or two of his man-friends - say that so-and-so is gay as a defrocked vicar,' said Helen matter-of-factly. 'And you've replied: "What, so-and-so, nine-bobbish? Really?"'

Anne rounded on her and might well have lashed out physically if she could have reached her. Red-faced, she cried, 'Then in future we'll have to lock you in your bloody room before we dare have an adult conversation! You horrid girl!'

'Perhaps you better had.' Helen was equally quick to rise. 'Before I also start to swear!'

'All right, all right.r George quietened them. 'Points taken all round. But we're on holiday, remember? I mean, it's probably my fault, but Yulian's a sore point with me, that's all. And I can't even explain why. But he usually keeps out of the way most of the time we're there, and I can't help it but I hope it's the same this time. For my peace of mind, anyway. He's simply not my type of lad. As for him being how's-your-father