Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (74 page)

And when he returned, what then? And what of Daham Drakesh, Wamphyri, in this remote but not inaccessible place? How long before Radu found him? Or - if the Ferenczys should find and destroy Radu first - how long before
they
found him?

… Or (and this was surely the worst possible of any and all scenarios), what if they had
already
found him … ?

Well, he had no proof of that, nor even a shred of evidence as yet. But there was always tomorrow, and Daham Drakesh was a sincere believer in another old edict: that a stitch in time saves nine.

Egon had told him now, upon a time in the vampire world, the great Lord Shaitan the Unborn had stood off and let lesser Lords fight a great bloodwar, until all of them were depleted, made weak by their efforts. Then how he’d picked them off one by one, until he was the undisputed Lord of Lords. It had been a story worth listening to, and a lesson worth learning.

But how much better, how much more ironic, if Shaitan the Unborn had
set
those lesser Lords to fighting, if he had deliberately planned it so

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that they performed the bulk of his work for him? And who could say, perhaps he had! And perhaps Daham would do the same. The ultimate
agent provocateur,
yes.

History repeats …

Al of which were thoughts that passed fleetingly through the vampire Lord’s mind as his visitor, Major Chang Lun of the People’s Army of Red China, tried in vain to make himself comfortable in the austere cavern that served the last Drakul for living space.

There was an alcove cut back into one wall. Within it a long, lidded box like a linen chest fitted snugly into the seven by two foot recess. A bench, its polished top was scattered with cushions of a coarse local weave. This was where Drakesh had seated the Major, upon his own bed in fact - which was
inside
the box. Normally at this hour, Drakesh would be inside, too. Alas that on certain rare occasions, such as this one, he was obliged to make allowances.

And while Chang Lun’s ‘host’ brought tea and foul Tibetan biscuits from a secondary cave, the Major sat and narrowed his oval eyes, staring all about the dim, somehow smoky interior of this place. It
wasn’t
smoky, he knew, yet seemed full of drifting shadows and the shimmery mobility of a scene viewed through smoke. Perhaps it was an effect of the indirect daylight filtering in through narrow slits hewn right through the great thickness of the far wall, the only indication that Daham Drakesh’s apartments were on the outer extremes of the monastery.

Chang Lun had inquired about those narrow windows before. In other keeps in other lands they might easily be mistaken for ancient arrow slits, but in fact they were Drakesh’s clock. The light crossed the room in dim, barely perceptible bars, forming patterns on the wall above the alcove where Chang Lun sat. According to the shape and brightness of the patterns and the time of year, Drakesh could immediately determine the hour to within two or three minutes.

‘And at night?’ (the Major had asked him one time).

‘I have a certain affinity with the night,’ Drakesh had at once answered. ‘It is an art of mine
instinctively
to know what is the hour. I take pride in it - a vanity, I know. But as the setting of the sun is a marvel, and its rising even more so, we should likewise pay attention to the darkness that lies between the two.’ Pseudo-mystical garbage …

… The Major felt himself slumping and sat up straighter. It was always the same: this place seemed to drain him of life. Huh! The blood
is
the life,’ indeed!

Tea,’ said Daham, entering as if from nowhere, and causing the dingy air to shift and shimmer into new patterns.

‘And there are Somangha biscuits, should you require refreshment.’

The tea is welcome,’ the Major offered his curt nod. ‘As for

Himalayan grass seeds in milk paste—’

‘—Each to his own,’ Daham nodded his understanding and placed a brass tray on a circular wooden table. Then he pulled up a three-legged stool and seated himself facing his visitor. ‘Soup, cheese, biscuits, bread: you would probably starve on a diet such as that. But to the Tibetan, more than sufficient.’

The Major smiled thinly. ‘But you are not Tibetan.’

‘Polish, originally,’ Drakesh was frank. ‘When my mother died and my father returned to his native Romania, I went with him.

There I - what, heard the call? - I knew I had a mission in life. And so I came here and built
this
mission, this monastery. Think what you will of it, and of me; I have my devotees. You saw some of them at a phase of their devotions.’

‘Indeed I did!’ Chang Lun grimaced, and quickly diverted the conversation. ‘So, you built your monastery. Then we came, and one by one the temples began to topple.’

‘But not this one,’ Drakesh’s eyes had narrowed. Those troops who preceded you - warriors, and not merely an occupying force - they saw that I was different, and that the mysteries of the Drakesh Sect were real. They made report, and an officer - ah, a full
Colonel,
Chang Lun! -came from his headquarters on Kwijiang Avenue, Chungking, to see me. Do you know the significance of that? Perhaps you will understand me better if I speak of the British E-Branch, or their Russian equivalent at the Chateau Bronnitsy near Moscow? Oh, yes, Major! There are forces in the world greater than all the armaments of war. Some men understand such things, and I, Daham Drakesh, am one of them. But that is my pride speaking, and pride is a sin. Indeed, it is one of the original sins. But… perhaps I’m boring you?’

Chang Lun shook himself. This man was hypnotic; his voice lulled; his eyes drilled into your soul. And as if he knew the Major’s innermost thoughts, Drakesh was even now smiling that ghastly smile of his. ‘No,’ the Major protested. ‘What, bored?

Not in the least! So tell me: what did the Colonel from Chungking want?’

Drakesh nodded. ‘I know that you already know,’ he said, ‘and that you think me a fraud,
a fakir,
and Colonel Tsi-Hong a gullible fool. But I’ll tell you anyway. He wanted to see me melt a block of ice - from within! He wanted to know how I can see in the dark, without the aid of nitelite binoculars. He was fascinated that I could fast for thirty days and nights without even water or a crust of bread to sustain me, then walk naked, ten miles out into the snows, to meditate. And having heard certain truths and untruths about me in Lhasa, he was especially interested in my longevity, the fact that I’ve been here for a hundred years!’

Chang Lun nodded. ‘Metaphysics,’ he sniffed. ‘Longevity. ESP. On Kwijiang Avenue, in Chungking, they study such things. Also genetic mutations and such. I say it’s a fad. What weight can a thought carry? And what use to breed freaks? But we
know
the weight of a tank, and

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how deadly a gun is in the hands of a wel-trained soldier! So … for the moment Colonel Tsi-Hong is in favour. Indeed, he has been in favour a good many years.

But he has superiors, too, and men want results. As for genetics: the Russians have bred a super-pig. The beast can’t walk, its flesh
is
vile, and its shit stinks!’

‘But on Kwijiang Avenue in Chungking,’ Drakesh’s voice had falen to a whisper, ‘they are not breeding pigs …’

And now, finaly, it was the Major’s turn to smile. He just couldn’t resist it. ‘On Kwijiang Avenue,’ he said, letting each word sink in, ‘they are no longer breeding anything!’ Reaching inside his uniform, he produced a heavy, ‘sealed’ manila envelope, which he handed to Drakesh.

Without a word or change of expression, Drakesh opened the envelope with a hooked fingernail. The ‘seal’ sprang open at a touch, which scarcely surprised him.

Where Major Chang Lun was concerned, the word privacy wasn’t in his vocabulary. What was writen was lengthy and very complicated; Drakesh’s eyes swept the crackling pages at incredible speed. He nodded his acceptance of the contents. And:

‘I told him as much nine years ago,’ he said. ‘So now we’l do it my way.’ As he placed the envelope in his robe, his face was entirely emotionless.

Chang Lun made no atempt to disguise his knowledge of his host’s subject. ‘They wanted tissue samples … you refused to co-operate. They wanted blood …

you said it was your “life,” and you could not part with it. They wanted
you!
As a sample of something alien, extraordinary, they would dissect you like a frog, disassemble you like a watch to see what made you tick. Oh, no physical damage, neither scar nor puncture hole to tell the tale, but smal bits of you removed al the same. You bluffed them; you said you would rather die first, told them you’d wil yourself to death. Tsi-Hong believed you - why, he might even learn something from watching you do it! - but then you offered him an alternative.’

‘My seed,’ Daham Drakesh nodded. ‘It seemed abhorrent to me that pieces of me, however smal, should die on their telescopic slides and in the chemicals of their experiments. I did not want myself… examined. But I could find no logical argument against the
promotion
of life, from the ugly, wriggling, otherwise useless hordes of my loins.’

‘You came in a botle for them,’ Chang Lun, too, could be cold, emotionless. They froze your sperm and took it away …’

To Chungking,’ Drakesh whispered.

‘Indeed. And that was nine years ago.’

‘And fifty came forth!’ Drakesh’s eyes seemed afire in the cave’s weird light.

‘Out of the flower of China’s womanhood, yes. You, father to a horde,

when loyal, weeping Chinese parents were strangling their babies in the name of the People’s Republic!’ (Chang Lun was merciless, by his lights at least). To what end, Drakesh? What of Colonel Tsi-Hong’s genetic experiments now?’

‘I told him how it would be,’ said the other. That one may not grow exotic orchids in a paddy field; that they will come up twisted and strange. But if they are tended by caring gardeners, watered by familiar rains, and reared in their natural, their
native
soil…’

‘In other words, you’ll “grow” them yourself. What, here? And how will the brothers react to that, Daham Drakesh?

A monastery, or a harem? A holy place, or a place of holes?’

‘If it’s your intention to offend me, your time is wasted here,’ Drakesh answered. ‘What will be will be … not necessarily because
want it, but because your leaders want it. And if in order to exist I must obey, then I will obey. I will not be forced out of being, driven from my place.’p>

‘You don’t fool me,’ Chang Lun shook his head. ‘Your so-called “emissaries” are out in the world even now, to what end if not to find a new place for you? I fancy you’ll flee before your deceptions are discovered. Let’s be clear on this: I consider you a fraud, yes. But I also consider you evil. This … this
spawn
that they bred by artificial insemination in Chungking is proof of it. Sooner or later even Tsi-Hong will recognize the truth, and what of you and yours then? I don’t know what you are, Drakesh, but you’re no holy man. And you’re not up to any good, I’m sure. As for this monastery: do you think I can’t see why you chose this place, so close to so many borders? Even now your boltholes are ready to receive you, when you are found out!’

Drakesh touched his robe, the place of the letter. Major Lun’s raving didn’t concern him; his mind was on other things. Fifteen of his ‘children’ deformed, destroyed at birth. He had known about that long ago, of course. But fifteen out of fifty? It was hardly surprising: freak births and nightmarish malformations had been all too common among the Wamphyri of Starside; so Egon had informed him. As for grotesque autisms - bone and brain disorders - tendencies to extreme violence and madness - ‘unnatural’ lusts: what else would one expect? These children, these creatures, had been vampires! Daham’s blood-brood,
his
creatures, aye …

The last six escaped,’ Chang Lun broke into his thoughts, made no excuse for knowing every smallest detail of the letter. ‘Only eight years old, and apparently perfect apart from their accelerated growth rate. They killed their keepers and instructors; they not only bit the hands that fed them … but fed
on
them! Drinkers of blood, cannibals, homicidal maniacs! In only eight years they’d grown to men, and sexually voracious women! Finally they were hunted down to the last one, and eradicated. But it wasn’t easy …’

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And again Drakesh said, ‘I told them how it would be. But this time we’ll do it my way.’ His whisper was a hoarse rustle in his pipestem throat. ‘My way, yes … ”

All of his ‘children’ gone now - the nucleus of an indefatigable army, which Tsi-Hong had tried to create as a unique breed, protectors of China - all gone now. But Drakesh knew no pain. He
had
known what the outcome would be.

Tsi-Hong had tried to teach them to be human; Daham would teach them to be what they were, and to
hide
what they were until he was ready!

It was what he had wanted from the beginning. It had been the way of the Drakuls since a time beyond memory - to infiltrate and eat out an enemy’s heart from within. But China, the enemy? Not at all; the enemy was Mankind! China was merely the greenhouse for the next and last generation of Great Vampires, and Daham Drakesh would be their unholy priest - their bloodsire, aye - in the vampire world of tomorrow! But for now:

‘You asked me certain questions,’ he reminded the Major. ‘Unless they were frivolous, I would answer them. Indeed, I am obliged to answer them, so that you may take my answer back to Tsi-Hong. “Would I make this place a harem?”

you asked.’ Drakesh shook his head. ‘No. The brothers will make ready the city in the lee of the mountain. And the lascivious among them will repopulate it. But I shall be the true father of the brood!’