of time, destroyer of his olden enemies, burning bright as a star in the final hour of his triumph!
With these things in mind it had been easier to submit to the sarcophagus of soft, suffocating resin. The wine of desert-bred wizards had helped; the coma it induced had been like unto death itself, but in fact was the dawn of a radically extended undeath. And immobile in his state of suspended animation in a gluey grave in the Cairngorms lair, he had commenced to dream.
And now that Radu was no longer active, consuming energy and making demands on his leech, his vampire could concentrate on its real battle, directing all of its efforts to combat the virus raging in the dog-Lord's heart. Just how that battle had gone ... who could say? Radu slept; and even when his mind was awake, still in a way it was detached from his body. He would not know he was a whole man again until the two came together, which would be on the day when B.J. melted away the resin and set him free.
And if he was not the whole man? If his parasite had lost its light and the fever rose up in him again, resurgent after all these years? That was where Harry Keogh came into the picture; it was the role that Radu saw him playing in that final scene. Metempsychosis, aye.
Because in the year preceding the dog-Lord's awakening, he would use his superior powers of beguilement - that hypnotism which was his art above all others - to transfer his detailed memories into Harry's mind. And if when he arose he discovered his body riddled with disease, about to succumb and suffer the true death, then he would cause his leech to flee his body into Harry's. Indeed, he would scarcely need to 'cause' it, for the natural tenacity of the parasite - its lust for life - would see to that. And if by chance the leech itself could not transfuse, if it should be obstructed, then it would issue its egg, swiftest and surest of al carriers of vampirism!
But in the moment of transfusion, by, whichever method, the dog-Lord would atempt his greatest wonder. Radu was an incredibly powerful mentalist, a telepath without peer. And with his own uniformly scarlet gaze, he would burn out Harry's mind and project himself through Harry's own honey-brown eyes into his mentality. He would be Harry Keogh.
Or more properly, Harry would become him. With Radu's egg, or leech, al of his memories and his mind entire ... he would be Radu. Why, eventualy, through metamorphism, he would even come to look like him, would wear the dog-Lord's face. The Man With two Faces, aye.
That was Lord Radu Lykan's plan.
But on the other hand - if he should rise up again a whole man or creature, free of the plague - then there would be other uses for the Mysterious One. And they were far less of a mystery. For one thing, there'd be a hungry warrior to see to ...
It was 2:30. Harry stirred and mumbled something in his sleep, and it was as good a time as any.
B.J. shushed him, checked that he was still deeply asleep, reached across him and toppled a smouldering block of firewood, oak, she thought, from the back of the deep old-fashioned fireplace into the glowing embers. Then she slid out from under the blanket that she'd drawn over them, crossed the room and turned on a reading-lamp at Harry's desk. And aiming it directly into Harry's face, his shut eyes, she at once blocked the beam with her naked body and quickly returned to him.
Then she lay beside him and propped herself on one elbow, turned and looked at the lamp. And narrowing her eyes to close out the rest of the room, she nodded and congratulated herself that the glowing sphere of light looked not unlike a ful moon, the principal image, the trigger, that was already implanted in his mind.
The rest of it was down to power of wil, the intensity of her own eyes and voice and mind, to which he'd already succumbed on previous occasions.
And she breathed, 'Harry, mah wee man. Are ye listening?' It was a deep, purring, penetrating Scotish brogue, which she breathed into his nostrils as wel as his ears. Her scent, her musk, infiltrated Harry's system, his dreams and subconscious, and for a moment his eyelids flutered, then were still, as he mumbled:
'Y-yes.'
'Good,' she purred.