Necroscope II Wamphyri(Vampyri) - By Brian Lumley Page 0,96

it to you. If that unborn child as was is now a man, he'll be in thrall to Thibor! Aye, even though his master's dead! Can't you see? This devil would see himself alive again - in the body and mind of this new disciple!

You... dog! Thibor howled. You are Wamphyri! Does that mean nothing to you? We may fight among ourselves, but we do not divulge our secrets to others! You are damned for all time, Dragosani!

Old fool, I'm that already! Dragosani snarled.

'Very well then,' Harry sighed. 'I can see I'm wasting precious time. That being the case, I'll bid you - '

Wait! Thibor's voice was all burning anguish. You can't tell me just so much and leave it at that. That's . .

inhuman!

'Hah!' Harry snorted.

A trade, then. I shall finish my story, and you shall tell me if the child was born and lives. And... how he lives. Agreed?

Harry guessed he'd said too much already, which in itself might be as good a reason as any for going on. There were now four principal things he must try to discover. One: the full range of a vampire's powers. Two: how, exactly, Thibor might try to use Yulian Bodescu. For Dragosani seemed to think it was possible for Thibor to resurrect himself, in Bodescu. Three: the rest of Thibor's story concerning the occurrences a thousand years ago at the castle of Faethor Ferenczy, so that he might know if anything of evil yet remained in that place. And four:

how to kill a vampire, but definitely!

As to the last: Harry had thought he knew that much eight months ago, when he'd waged war on the Château Bronnitsy. But looking back now he saw that Dragosani's death had only come about through a fortunate combination of events. For one thing Dragosani had been blinded: his eyes had been ruined by a reflected mind-bolt when Max Batu's stolen talent had rebounded on him from one of Harry's zombies; for of course Harry had had his zombie Tartars, his shock troops, for back-up in that affray. It had been one of them, called up from the preserving peat, who'd hacked Dragosani's head from his shoulders; and another who'd pinned his parasite vampire to his chest with a wooden stake when it deserted his shattered body. Harry couldn't have done all of these things, maybe not any of them, on his own. In fact, Harry's only real ace had been his mastery of the Möbius continuum: when he'd been very nearly cut in half by machinegun fire, he'd fled his dying body and dragged Dragosani's mind in there with him. In the Möbius continuum he'd hurled Dragosani through a past-time door, which had led the necromancer back to Thibor in his grave. And there an 'earlier' Dragosani had lured up and killed Thibor, never dreaming that with the same stroke he had also determined his own fate. As for Harry's incorporeal mind: he'd gone forward, found his son's life-thread and joined with it, lay with it in the womb of Brenda waiting to be born. She had been his lover, his wife, and now, in a way, might even be considered his mother. His second mother.

But what if he had left Dragosani's mind in his corpse back at the Château? How long would that broken body have stayed a corpse? That was conjectural .

And Harry wondered: how had the surviving Russian E-Branch members dealt with what remained when all the fighting stopped? What had they made of his zombies? It must have seemed utter madness, an absolute nightmare! Harry supposed that after he left the Château along the Mobius way, the Tartars had fallen once more into quiescence .

Perhaps by now Alec Kyle had the answers to these questions, learned from Felix Krakovitch. Harry would find out eventually, but for now there were fresh problems. Foremost among them: how much dare he tell Thibor about Yulian Bodescu? Very little, he supposed. But, on the other hand, by now the extinct vampire had probably guessed all of it for himself. Which made any continued secrecy pointless.

'Very well,' said Harry, finally, 'we trade.'

Fool! Dragosani cut in at once. I had given you some credit, Harry Keogh - I thought you were cleverer than that. And yet here you are attempting to bargain with the devil himself! I see now that I was unlucky in our little contest. You are as big a fool as I was!

Harry ignored him. 'The rest of your story then, Thibor, and