Deadspeak Read online

  “But surely that’s my big advantage?” Darcy argued. “I already know how to kill him!”

  “Oh?” said Harry. “And how will you find him? And if and when you do, do you think he’ll lie still for you to stake him out? Man, he won’t wait for you to find him—he’ll come looking for you! For us! Look, I’ll say it again: compared to this, Yulian Bodescu was a bumbling amateur!”

  “Then I’ll call in all the help I can get, from E-Branch. I can have ten of our best out here by tomorrow noon.”

  “Call them in to be slaughtered?” Harry’s frustration was growing, turning to anger. With people as special and intelligent as these two, still he had to explain these things as if they were children. For compared to the Wamphyri they were children, and just as innocent. “But can’t you see, Darcy,” he tried again, “they don’t know him. They don’t know who or where he is.”

  Sandra spoke up, displaying all of her innocence and lack of experience for anyone to see. “Then it’s a game of hide-and-seek,” she said. “We’ll keep our heads down and let him make his play. Or close him in through a system of elimination. Or—”

  “We can use our locators,” Darcy cut in, “like we did with Bodescu, and—” He paused abruptly and his scalp tingled. And: “Jesus!” he said, giving a nervous start as something of the enormity of the problem—and something of its true horror—suddenly hit him. And: “Our locators!” he said again. So that now Sandra, too, caught on.

  “Oh, my God!” she said.

  Harry nodded and allowed himself to flop slowly back in his chair. “I see we’re starting to think,” he said, almost without sarcasm. “Locators? A terrific idea, Darcy—except our enemy has fixed it so he may soon have a locator of his own. Yes, and Ken Layard’s one of the best there is!”

  The food arrived; gloomy and thoughtful, Darcy and Sandra only toyed with theirs; Harry tucked his away in short order, lit one of his very rare cigarettes, started on the coffee.

  Darcy, silent for some time, said, “If it comes to it, we may have to burn Ken ourselves.”

  Harry nodded. “You can see why I was in a hurry.”

  “I’m a fool!” Sandra said suddenly. “I feel such a fool! Some of the utterly stupid things I’ve said!”

  “No, you’re not a fool.” Harry shook his head. “Don’t put yourself down. You’re just loyal, brave, and human. You could no more think like a vampire than you could think like a cockroach! That’s what it boils down to: being as devious as they are. But don’t think that’s a bonus. Believe me, it isn’t. You can make yourself sick, trying to think like they do.”

  “Anyway,” said Darcy, “I agree with you; Sandra has to get out of this.”

  “Yes”—Harry nodded—“and never should have been in, except there was no way we could know until we got here.” He turned to her. “You must be able to see, love, how hampered we’d be? Oh, Darcy will get by okay—he always has—but I wouldn’t even be able to think straight with you around. I’d be forever worrying about what you might bump into.”

  Sandra thought, It’s the first time he’s called me “love” in … a day or two? It felt like a long time anyway. But the wait had been worth it. “And what would I do?” she said. “Sit around back home and hope for the best?”

  Darcy shook his head. “No, you’d coordinate E-Branch’s efforts in my absence. With Wellesley out of the picture and me over here, things are bound to be tight. But you have firsthand knowledge of our situation, so you’ll be invaluable as our liaison man—or woman. Also, you’ll be kept fully in the picture, day to day, on what’s happening. In fact you’ll probably have so much on your plate that there won’t be time to worry about Harry!”

  And Harry said, “He’s right, you know.”

  She looked at them, then looked away. “Well, I’ll say one thing for it: at least I won’t have to worry about things like … like burning poor Ken!”

  Darcy looked at Harry. “How about it? How long do we have before … ?”

  “It will only come to that—dealing with it ourselves—if the local authorities don’t get a move on,” Harry answered. “But out here, because of the heat and such, I should think they’re normally pretty smart off the mark.”

  Darcy frowned. “But is there no official deadline—God, what a pun! I mean, before things start to get … problematic?”

  “You mean: when does he get up and walk, right?” Harry shook his head. “No, there’s no official deadline. How long did it take George Lake, Yulian Bodescu’s uncle?”

  “Three days and nights,” Darcy answered at once. “They had just enough time to bury him before he was digging his way out again!”

  “Oh, don’t!” said Sandra, her eyes bright with horror.

  Harry looked at her, felt sorry for her, but had to continue anyway. “Lake was textbook,” he said. “But I don’t think there are any strict rules. None I’d trust, anyway.” He sat up straighter and looked around. “But you know, I was just thinking: for tourists we must look pretty miserable! Anyway, this place is filling up now. I suggest we get back to the villa. Let’s face it, I could be wrong about the value of crowds; we could be just as safe there as we are here. And whichever, we still have to make our plans—and make the villa secure.”

  On their way back they were mainly silent. This far out from Rhodes central, and this early in the season, things weren’t so busy. There was plenty of traffic on the roads, heading for the bright lights, but the sidewalks were almost empty. With the sea flat and shining on their right, beyond the promenade, and the Milky Way strewn like the dust of diamonds across the sky, it might have been very romantic. In other circumstances. But as they walked the pebble path to their door, even the plaintive, repetitive, molten silver calling of small Greek owls couldn’t lift their mood.

  As soon as they were inside Darcy went upstairs to check the windows while Harry tended to the downstairs windows and back door. Both doors were solid, with strong locks and good bolts. All the windows were fitted with shutters externally and thief locks internally.

  “Couldn’t be better,” said Darcy as they got together again around a table in the sitting room.

  “Oh, it could be,” Harry contradicted him. “Remind me tomorrow to buy some garlic.”

  “Of course.” Darcy nodded. “You know, I’d forgotten that entirely? It’s so much a part of the fiction that it slipped my mind it’s also part of the fact!”

  “Garlic,” Harry repeated, “yes. On Sunside the Travellers call it knebdasch. That’s the root of its name in Earth’s languages, too. It’s the German Knoblauch and the Gypsy gnarblez.” He grinned tiredly and without humour. “Another piece of useless information.”

  “Useless?” said Sandra. “I think it’s as well if you give us all the useless information you can!”

  Harry shrugged. “You can get a lot of it out of Darcy’s ‘fiction.’ But if that’s what you want …” And he shrugged again, but warned, “Except you must always remember, nothing is certain, not with a vampire. And no one—myself included—knows everything there is to know about them. What, everything? I don’t know a tenth of it! But I do know that the closer you get to the source, to the original Wamphyri stock, the more effective the various poisons become. Garlic sickens them. Its stink offends as ordure offends us, even makes them ill. On Starside, Lardis Lidesci smears his weapons with oil of garlic. A vampire, struck with a weapon treated that way—arrow, knife or sword, whatever—will suffer hideously! Often the infected member must be shed, and another grown in its place.”

  Darcy and Sandra looked at each other aghast, but they said nothing.

  “Then there’s silver,” Harry continued, “poison to them, like mercury or lead is to us. Which reminds me: we should be on the lookout for a couple of these fancy Greek paper knives—in silver or silver plate. Darcy, you saw those bolts I packed with my crossbow? They’re of hardwood, rubbed with garlic oil, tipped with silver. And please don’t ask me if I’m serious. On Starside the Travellers swear b
y these things, and stay alive by them!”

  Starside! Darcy thought, staring at Harry. The alien, parallel world of the vampires. He’s seen it, been there and returned. He’s had all that. And now he sits here, entirely human and vulnerable, and tries to explain these things to us. And somehow he doesn’t get angry with us, and somehow he doesn’t crack up and rant and rave. And he never quits.

  “Vampires,” said Sandra, and felt herself thrilling to the word, even knowing she loathed it. “Tell us about them, Harry. Oh, I know it’s all in the files back at E-Branch HQ in London. But it’s different coming from you. You know so much about them, and yet you say you know so little.”

  “I’ll tell you the several sure things I know about them,” said Harry. “They’re devious beyond the imagination of human beings. They’re liars each and every one, who on almost every occasion would rather lie than tell the truth—unless there’s something of substantial value in it for them. They’re expert in confusing any argument, adept at ambiguous and frustrating riddles, word games, puzzles and paradoxes, false similes and parallels. They’re insanely jealous, secretive, proud, possessive. And as for their grip on life—or undeath—they are the most tenacious creatures in or out of Creation!

  “Their source lies in the vampire swamps east and west of the central mountain range that divides Starside from Sunside. The legend is that at times they emerge as monstrous slugs or leeches to fasten on men and beasts. As to what degree of intelligence they possess at that stage: who can say? But their tenacity is there from square one. They live on the blood of the host and form a horrific symbiosis with him. The host is changed, materially and mentally. Sexless, the vampire ‘adopts’ the sex of its host, and it fosters in him—or in her—that lust for blood which eventually will sustain both of them.

  “I said that the host is altered materially. That’s true: a vampire’s flesh is different from ours. It has within itself the power of regeneration. Lose a finger, an arm or leg, and given time, the vampire will replace them. That’s not as weird as it sounds. A starfish does it even better. Cut a starfish up and throw it back in the sea, each part will grow a whole new animal! Likewise a gecko losing its tail, or the segmented cestode or tapeworm of men. But a vampire is no cestode worm. Lesk the Glut, an insane Wamphyri Lord, lost an eye in battle—and caused another to grow on his shoulder!

  “As the vampire matures within its host, so that host’s strength and endurance increase enormously. Likewise his emotions. Except for love, whose concept is alien to the Wamphyri, all other passions become a rage! Hate, lust, the urge to war, to rape, to torture and destroy all peers or opponents. But such evils as these are tempered by the vampire’s desire for secrecy, anonymity. For he knows that if he is discovered, men won’t rest until he’s destroyed. That last applies specifically in this world, of course, for in their own they are, or were, the Lords. They were, until The Dweller and I brought their reign to ruin. But even before that there were certain Traveller tribes who would kill them if and when they could. My son and I … we didn’t destroy them all. Sometimes I wish we had …

  “So … when did they first come here, how, and where did they arrive? The first of them, in this world? Who knows? There have been vampires in all man’s legends. Where is far easier: in ancient Dacia, in Romani and Moldova, in Wallachia. Which is all one and the same: Romania to you, on or close to the Danube. There’s a gate there, a tunnel between dimensions, but mercifully inaccessible. Or very nearly so. I used it when I went to Starside, but that was before Harry Jr. stripped me of my talents.”

  Harry sat back and sighed. Time and its events were catching up with him. He looked very tired now, but nevertheless asked, “What else?”

  However morbid, Sandra couldn’t resist the fascination of Harry’s subject. “What of their life cycles, their longevity? When I read the E-Branch files, it all seemed so fantastic! And you say their origin is the swamps; but what about before that? How did they get there in the first place?”

  “That’s like asking what came first, the chicken or the egg,” said Harry. “The swamps are their place, that’s all. Why are there aborigines in Australia? How come we only find Komodo lizards in Komodo?

  “As for their life cycles: they start in the swamps, as great leeches. That’s how I understand it, anyway. They transfer to men or beasts, usually wolves. And incidentally, it’s a theory of mine that the werewolf of myth is in fact a vampire. Why not? It lives on raw, red flesh and its bite can create another werewolf, can’t it? Of course, for the bite is the passing of the egg, which carries the codes of both wolf and vampire!”

  Suddenly Harry’s haunted look became more haunted yet. “My God!” he whispered, shaking his head in wonderment.

  “And every time I think of that, I can’t help thinking of my son. Where is he now, I wonder? Still on Starside, a vampire Lord? What is he now, that child of Brenda and me? For Harry’s vampire came from a wolf!”

  For long moments his soulful eyes were fogged, distant, lost. But then he blinked, stirred himself, came back to the present point in space and time. And:

  “Their life cycles.” He cleared his throat and continued. “Very well. So far we’ve traced the cycle from a swamp leech to a parasite in a human or animal host. But I called the partnership a symbiosis, and as you’ll appreciate, that calls for give and take on both sides. Well, the parasite gets his keep, and learns from the mind of his host. And the host gets the vampire’s healing powers, his proto-flesh, his skills for survival, and, of course, his longevity! Eventually the vampire will weld itself to its host’s interior; it will become part of him, utterly inseparable. The two parts—even the brains—will slowly merge and become one. But in the early days the parasite retains a certain individuality. If an immature vampire senses extreme, inescapable danger to its host, it may even attempt to flee him. Dragosani’s vampire did just that when I destroyed him. But to no avail; I destroyed it, too …”

  A tremor had entered Harry’s soft-spoken voice, and the gauntness was back in his face. It was a hagridden expression and hard to define, at least until he continued.

  “Or again, an immature vampire may be driven out from its host, if you know the way. But always with … with disastrous results to the host.” And now they knew he was talking about the Lady Karen and understood his mood.

  He saw the looks on their faces and moved quickly on.

  “Where was I? Oh yes: the life cycle. Well, you might be tempted to think that the rest of it is the weirdest of all, but is it really? Have a look at the amphibia, the frogs and newts. Or moths and butterflies. Or if you’re happy to stick with parasites, how about the liver fluke? There’s a horror if ever there was! But what makes the vampire worse is his evil intelligence, and the fact that in the end his will is ascendant, dominant, stronger than that of his host. So you see it isn’t really give and take at all but total submission. And then there’s the egg. Faethor Ferenczy passed on his egg to Thibor the Wallach by way of a kiss. He hooked the thing up out of his throat onto his forked tongue and thrust it down Thibor’s throat! And from that moment forward, Thibor, warrior that he was, was doomed.

  “Staked and chained and buried, undead for five hundred years, Thibor put forth a proto-flesh tendril and dropped his egg on the back of Dragosani’s neck. The thing entered like quicksilver, passed through Dragosani’s flesh, and fastened to his spine without even leaving a mark. And so Dragosani, too, was doomed. Now, Faethor was Wamphyri. He gave Thibor his egg, and so he became Wamphyri! Yes, and so would Dragosani be Wamphyri if I hadn’t put an end to him.

  “The egg, then, carries the true Wamphyri strain. Only the egg. And it may be passed on through a kiss, through intercourse, or simply hurled at its target host. So Dragosani was informed by Thibor Ferenczy himself, the old thing in the ground. Except Thibor, like all vampires, was a liar! Why, the old devil barely touched the undeveloped foetus of Yulian Bodescu, and the child was corrupted and vampirized before he was even born! And he had all the
—stigmata?—of the Wamphyri. Every sign and symptom, yes, including the ultimate vampire skill of shape changing. Yulian was Wamphyri! But—

  “Would he have developed an egg of his own? I don’t know. It’s entirely paradoxical, which is only what you’d expect of them.” And Harry fell silent.

  Sandra and Darcy had sat and listened in a sort of stupefaction to all of this. But now, when it seemed Harry was done, Darcy took it up. “Their varieties are equally baffling,” he said. “It seems Bodescu infected his mother with a small piece of himself. We don’t know what sort of piece or how, but hell, I can’t say I’m sorry about that. He grew something monstrous in the cellars of Harkley House, an unbelievable thing that murdered one of our espers. And he grew it from one of his own wisdom teeth! This mindless, proto-flesh thing: he used it to infect his uncle, his aunt and cousin. It seems he vampirized all of them, in as many different ways. Even his damned dog!”

  Harry nodded slowly and said, “Yes, all of that, and it’s still not the half of it. Darcy, the Wamphyri of Starside had skills which the vampires of Earth, our Earth, seem to have forgotten, thank God! They could take flesh—Traveller flesh, trog flesh—and given time, shape it to their will. I’ve talked about or mentioned gas-beasts, which they breed for the methane they produce; but they make warriors, too, which you wouldn’t believe even if you saw one!”

  “I’ve seen one,” Darcy reminded him.

  “On film,” said Harry, “yes—but you haven’t seen one falling towards you out of the sky, every inch of it armoured and lethally equipped! And you haven’t seen the bony, cartilage creatures they design specifically for the skins, ligaments, and skeletons with which they extend and provision their aeries! And God, you’ve neither seen nor could imagine their siphoneers!”