he was a fit vessel for his resurgence, and also to discover whether in fact he could be sent out into the world as an agent and put to good use prior to ... to his primary use. And even though B.J. was worried about the possible loss of her lover in various ways, the dog-Lord wasn't. For if indeed this Harry Keogh was the key to Radu's future ... why, then it was already decided.
he was the one foreseen, then surely he must be there at Radu's rising. Between times, no harm could possibly befal him ... Not between times. Oh, the dog-Lord knew only too wel that the future was a devious thing, but what was foreseen was foreseen; as fixed as the moon in its orbit. And nothing could change that...
These were 'facts' which Radu impressed upon B.J.'s mind, just as she had impressed her own 'facts' upon Harry's. It had become necessary, for the dog-Lord had seen the way things were going with his long-lived - perhaps too long-lived - lady lieutenant. As the seasons passed and the hour of Radu's true awakening drew ever closer, so with each successive quarterly visit she paid him, the dog-Lord had felt B.J.'s reluctance, her resistance to his beguilment ... the way she seemed to be turning away from him.
He had known for many years, of course, that she was Wamphyri. But while he was fixed in the resin - helpless, vulnerable - it was something he'd been obliged to keep from her. Not that he doubted his own powers, but that he was unable to assess the growing potential of hers. For B.J. was that rarity among Great Vampires: she had achieved
her ascension neither by transfusion of an egg, migration of a leech or the breathing of spores; nor by a 'bite of conversion' (near-total loss of blood and its replacement by copious amounts of metamorphic vampire essence, the 'natural' result of which would be undeath and true vampirism); nor even as her birthright.
(For al that Bonnie Jean's parents had been 'of the blood,' moon-children, they'd also been common thrals and for the greater part human. Much like Auld John.) No, none of these things had brought about Bonnie Jean's ascension. For she had simply wiled it. Oh, there'd been more to it than that - the fact that her blood was 'tainted' by more than four centuries of ancestral thraldom; her regular contact over two more centuries with a source of 'purest' vampirism and lycanthropy, in the shape and form of Radu; the indefinite extension of her own existence at the expense of others' - but in essence it was the truth. Bonnie Jean had wiled it.
Which was perhaps a measure of the vampire Lady she could become, if her Master were to alow it. Which of course he would not...
In the past -for the past two hundred years - B.J. had been Radu's lifeline, without which he could not exist. By now, but for her ministrations, he would be a shriveled, truly dead thing. In some milions of years when his mountain den had colapsed and his remains were excavated, men would wonder at this bony relic out of time, of which there was no other fossil record; this dog- or wolf-like man - Homo lupus? - preserved in amber. But that time would never come, for which he should be grateful to her.
On the other hand, she had outlived her span by a hundred years at least, and was still young; so she should be grateful to him! Wel, and she had been, and loyal to a fault... until recently. For at last she had started to feel the influence of her own creature.
Radu had sensed it in her, he had tasted it in her blood: how she was torn two ways, between obedience to him and obedience to her 'instincts,' her burgeoning parasite. But more than this, he had sensed her uncertainty, her fear. Her uncertainty with regard to the future: B.J. knew that the Ferenczys and at least one Drakul were out there waiting; would she be capable of handling them without Radu? ... And her fear of him. Oh, he had promised her the moon, but that was when she was a thral. Now she was a Lady! And what about her Harry? How would he fare when Radu was up again? Was he to be Radu? And if so, in whose design?
Would he have his man's body and aspect... or