Necroscope V Deadspawn - By Brian Lumley Page 0,165
be - the most powerful creature of all time: The Master Vampire! The Great Plague Bearer! Because I, Fa茅thor Ferenczy, willed it, you are Wamphyri! You have admitted as much yourself. And yet now you would throw it all away. Does it mean nothing to you, to be Wamphyri? What of the passion, the power, the glory?
What of me? Harry answered. The real me, before my adulteration?
The new you is greater!
I don't resent the greatness. Harry shook his head. Only that it was not on my terms. But now I'm offering you terms, and no more time to waste. Can you help me ... or can't you?
Cards on the table, then, said Fa茅thor. You will take me into your mind, transfer or transport me to Starside - which after all is or should have been my natural place - and there pass me on to some other to guide him as I would have guided you. In return for which, you desire to know if there's a way you may rid yourself of the thing growing within you. Now, do I have it right?
And if there is a way - Harry qualified the deal - you'll describe it in detail, a fool's guide, so that I may be my own man again.
Following which, you'll return to your own world, leaving me, embodied once more, in Starside?
That's the plan.
And if there is no way to free you?
Harry shrugged. A deal is a deal. You'll be a power on Starside anyway, as stated.
Eventually to become your rival? And your son's rival?
Yet again the Necroscope's shrug. Like I said, with the old Wamphyri dead or fled, Starside is a big place.
Fa茅thor was cautious. It seems to me that whichever way it goes, still I get the best of this bargain. Now why should you be so good to me?
Maybe it's like you said, Harry told him, a meeting of two old friends.
Fiends, Fa茅thor corrected him.
As you will, except I'm an unwilling fiend. And despite the fact that you're the engineer of my current fix, still I can't forget that in the past you've put yourself out to do me one or two favours; even though all of them (a little sourly), as I've since come to realize, were to your ultimate benefit. Still, it seems I've grown accustomed to you; I understand you now; you played the game according to your own rules, that's all. Wamphyri rules. Also, I'm full of human compassion - I can't help it - and I have to admit my conscience has been bothering me. About you, stuck here in Möbius time. About my leaving you here. And finally... well, you said it yourself: if there is a cure for my complaint, who'd know it better than you? Which is the Number One reason I'm here and doesn't leave me with much choice. He was very convincing.
Very well, said Fa茅thor (as Harry had supposed he would), you have a deal. Now take me into your mind.
When you have told me what I want to know.
Whether or not you may rid yourself of your vampire?
A little more than that.
Oh?
Where it came from. How it got into me in the first place.
You haven't thought it out for yourself?
It was the toadstools, right?
Fa茅thor's deadspeak nod. Yes.
And the toadstools were you?
Yes. They were spawned of my fats festering in the earth where I'd burned and melted down. An ichor, an essence, simmering there, waiting. Then, when the brew was ripe, I willed the fungi up into the light - but not until I knew you'd be there to receive them.
And you were in them?
As you well know, for through them I came to you. But you cast me out.
And these fungi: are they a natural part of the Wamphyri chain? Part of the overall life cycle?
I don't know. Fa茅thor seemed at a genuine loss. There was no one to instruct me in such mysteries. Old Belos Pheropzis might have known - might even have passed such knowledge down to my father - but if so, then Waldemar Ferrenzig never told me. I only knew that the spores were in me, in the fats of my body, and that I could will them into growth; but don't ask me how I knew. How does a dog know how to bark?
And the spores were your very last vestiges?
Yes.
Could it be that such toadstools grow in the vampire swamps on Starside? It seems logical to me, since those swamps are the source of Wamphyri infestation.