Necroscope II Wamphyri(Vampyri) - By Brian Lumley Page 0,65

his mouth. 'Now listen: I have willed my egg. I have brought it on and it is forming even now. Each of the Wamphyri has but one egg, one seed, in a lifetime; one chance to recreate the true fruit; one opportunity to carve his changeling "nature" into the living being of another. You are the host I have chosen for my egg.'

'Your egg?' Thibor wrinkled his nose, scowled, drew back as far as his chains would allow. 'Your seed? You are beyond help, Faethor.'

'Alas,' said the other, lip curling and great nostrils flaring, 'but you are the one who is beyond help!' His cloak billowed as he flowed towards the broken body of old Arvos. He hoisted the gypsy's corpse upright in one hand, like a bundle. of rags, perched it, head stiffly lolling, in a niche in the stone wall. 'We have no sex as such,' he said, glaring across the cell at Thibor. 'Only the sex of our hosts. Ah! But we multiply their zest an hundred times! We have no lust except theirs, which we double and redouble. We may, and do, drive them to excesses - in all of their passions - but we heal their wounds, too, when the excess is too great for human flesh and blood to endure. And with long, long years, even centuries, so man and vampire grow into one creature. They become inseparable, except under extreme duress. I, who was a man, have now reached just such a maturity. So shall you, in perhaps a thousand years.'

Once more, futilely, Thibor tugged at his chains. Impossible to break or even strain them. He could put a thumb through each link!

'About the Wamphyri,' Faethor continued. 'Just as there are in the common world widely differing sorts of the same basic creature - owl and gull and sparrow, fox and hound and wolf - so are there varying Wamphyri states and conditions: For example: we talked about taking cuttings from an apple tree. Yes, it might be easier if you think of it that way.'

He stooped, dragged the unconscious, twitching body of the squat Wallach away from the area of torn up flags, tossed old Arvos' corpse down upon the black soil. Then he tore open the old man's ragged shirt, and glanced up from where he knelt into Thibor's mystified eyes. 'Is there sufficient light, my son? Can you see?'

'I see a madman clearly enough,' Thibor gave a brusque nod.

The Ferenczy returned his nod, and again he smiled his hideous smile, the ivory of his teeth gleaming in lantern light. 'Then see this!' he hissed.

Kneeling beside old Arvos' crumpled form, he extended a forefinger towards the gypsy's naked chest. Thibor watched. Faethor's forearm stuck out free of his robe. Whatever the Ferenczy was up to, there could be no trickery, no sleight of hand here.

Faethor's nails were long and sharply pointed at the end of his even, slender fingers. Thibor saw the quick of the pointing finger turn red and start to drip blood. The pink nail cracked open like the brittle shell of a nut, flapped loosely like a trapdoor on a finger bloating and pulsating. Blue and grey-green veins stood out in that member, writhing under the skin; the raw tip visibly lengthened, extending itself towards the dead gypsy's cold grey flesh.

The pulsating digit was no longer a finger as such: it was a pseudopod of unflesh, a throbbing rod of living matter, a stiff snake shorn of its skin. Now twice, now three times its former length, it vibrated down at an angle to within inches of its target, which appeared to be the dead man's heart. And all of this Thibor watched with bulging eyes, bated breath and gaping mouth.

And until this moment Thibor had not really known fear, but now he did. Thibor the Wallach - warlord of however small and ragged an army, humourless, merciless killer of the Pechenegi - utterly fearless Thibor, until now. Until now he'd not met a creature he feared. In the hunt, wild boar in the forests, which had wounded men so badly as to kill them, were 'piglets' to him. In the challenge: let any man only dare hurl down the gauntlet, Thibor would fight him any way he chose. All knew it, and none chose! And in battle: he led from the front, stood at the head of the charge, could only ever be found in the thick of the fighting. Fear? It was a word without meaning.