his left hand. The barb of the iron arrowhead protruded an inch, but he had no leverage to pull it out. He tore down a length of tough vine, looped it over the arrowhead, tied its ends to a creeper growing from a crevice.
The wolf had heard Shaitan's cry, smelled his blood. It came snarling, leaping to attain the ledge, scrabbled there a moment to regain its balance. Then it saw Shaitan and leaped again, locking its jaws on his arm. Its weight overbalanced him; locked together they fell from the ledge; the bolt was torn from Shaitan's back.
In the near-distance, Shaitan's closest human pursuer called out to his wolf: 'Seek him!' But the wolf had already discovered Shaitan, who was himself on the point of discovering a new and terrible weapon. Within him, his vampire was at last mature. Metamorphic, its flesh was Shaitan's flesh.
The wolf had jaws like a bear-trap, clamped fast now to the bones of Shaitan's forearm. Their eyes met, feral yellow against evil scarlet, and the man felt something of the beast's ferocity. So did his vampire, which must make him ferocious to match. Something was summoned to his flesh, summoned from his flesh! He felt a burning in his fingers as if they were on fire, an agony in his face and jaws far greater than the mere pain in his back. And yet these additional pains were not without ... pleasure?
It was not unlike those occasions when he had summoned his vampire mist; but he had not summoned this, not knowingly. For this was the instinctive response of his metamorphism, the tenacity of his vampire, its lust for life; and suddenly the great wolf was no more than a puppy!
Shaitan's fingers, grown to claws, rammed into the animal's sides and tore them; his jaws, yawning impossibly wide, elongated into a nightmare cavern of serrated tusks which sprouted from red-gushing gums; his eyes were blobs of sulphur shot with scarlet fire. Gutting the wolf, he let its entrails spill. And when its agonized jaws flew open, then Shaitan's closed - upon its throat. Which he tore out in a welter of pipes and gristle and gore!
In just a moment, the wolf was wolf no more but a mangled carcass; it hadn't even cried out but died silently, in vast astonishment...
A second passed ... another ... and a third.
'Lupe?' A voice called from close at hand. 'Where in all that's ...?' A man stepped out of the trees into starlight - in time to see something move in the undergrowth at the foot of the cliffs. 'Lupe?' the man repeated, but in a whisper now, wonderingly, as he lifted his crossbow.
Crouching down a little, he ran to the place beneath the cliffs. As he got there, so the darkness came flowing to its feet! Starlight gleamed on the horror that was Shaitan, which reached out a bloody hand and caught the other by his throat.
The watchman would have discharged his weapon -but he'd left the safety on! Shaitan knocked it from his trembling hand and drew him closer. And:
'Lupe?' he quietly, almost conversationally growled, his monstrous head cocked on one side. 'Ah, no - for my name is Shaitan!' And as he lowered his face to the other's throbbing neck, 'But from this time forward you must call me master ...'
With his new disciple or lieutenant, who was the first entirely human underling of the Wamphyri, Shaitan headed east as before. There were no more pursuers; the night was long; they covered a good many miles - before the sun found them out.
For Shaitan's symbiont or parasite was a two-edged sword: one could not accept its advantages without its disadvantages. Sunlight, which had irritated Shaitan from the outset - almost from the moment of his breathing the red, corpse-spawned spores - now became a seething agony in his eyes and against his hide. It burned him, visibly steamed the moisture from his flesh, ate into him like acid and sapped his strength. He could stand to go out from the shade for seconds, but minutes would deplete him horribly, and an hour would kill him. His thrall was less susceptible for the moment; given time, however, and he, too, must surely succumb to direct sunlight. Such was the measure of Shaitan's corruption, and his contagion.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
They were climbing diagonally eastward, above the foothills and towards the tree-line, when sunup came with its fogs in Sunside's valleys and forests, and its probing