Brian Lumley - Necroscope - Invaders

'"You, lieutenant — take me to Malinari."

'His voice was a gasp, a pant, a flurry of wind through a narrow crevice. And there he was, Szwart himself, all cloaked in black — a blot of a figure that showed neither features nor anything else of its once-humanity — standing before me in the flickering torchlight of the landing bay!

'But while Szwart himself was featureless, carved from jet, and his voice a flutter of bat-wings, his presence was awesome; as solid as the great rocks on Starside's barren boulder plains. And his aura in the night: that was such as to make even my vampire flesh creep — and I was a lieutenant! So that I could well understand how Narkslump's lowly thralls had felt when confronted by Lord Szwart.

'He gloomed at me through eyes like slits of fire, his only parts that weren't black. "Well? And am I to be left to find my own way?" For I was so startled, I had made no effort to attend him!

'"No, Lord," I answered. "I am your guide. But here in Malstack, protocol demanded that I stood silent until commanded by you."

' "Fool!" he said. "I did so command you! And now take me to Malinari! Or perhaps I strike you as… odd in some weird way? Is it so?" With which he flowed closer, and his outline became less manlike, even more a blot or a shadow, like a lump drifted from the darkness in the unlit deeps of Malstack's basement.

'"Not at all, Lord!" I backed off. "I was simply in awe of my master's honoured guest — so much so that my tongue clove to… to the roof of my… of my mouth." It was scarcely a lie!

' "You must consider yourself fortunate that you still have a tongue," Szwart whispered, withdrawing something that was not quite a hand from where it had been reaching for me. "Also fortunate that my protocol forbids the killing of an ally's lieutenant on his home ground."

' "Yes, Lord!" I bowed, and before things could go even more awry turned and forced my numb legs to bear me in the direction of my master's chambers. Lord Szwart followed on behind me, and I could feel him there, silent, intense, and seething; though I fancied it wasn't his thoughts that seethed so much as his person! Perhaps it was so. I can't rightly say, for I never looked back…

'When Szwart left I was there to see him go, though on this occasion there was no contact. When the keeper of Malinari's pens handed him the reins of his flyer, I was situated in a window a little higher in the sheer wall of the aerie. From there I watched him mount, launch, and fly away.

'Aye, and I also saw his manlike outline melt to a liquid blot of a shape that hunched down and became one with the silhouette of his black flyer. And I saw the burning eyes — but far too many eyes — that gazed back on Malstack from that hideously humped shape, as if their owner suspected that someone watched!

'Then he was off, and flyer and rider both, black on black, disappeared into the yawning gulf like a scrap of burned cloth, or a tattered pennant slipped from its staff, fluttering on the winds that whine around the aeries of the Wamphyri…'

'That same time:

'Having seen Szwart off from Malstack's lofty premises, I returned to my master and the luminous Vavara — the very opposite of Szwart — where they continued to talk in Malinari's private chambers. In his absence, Szwart had become the subject

of their conversation. Hearing his name mentioned, and because my interest had been piqued, however morbidly, I slipped back into the shadows and listened.

' "It was in his blood," Malinari was saying (so that I knew what next he would say), "and what is in the blood always comes out in the flesh — or in Szwart's case, what passes for flesh!" And he went on to explain:

'"Seventy years ago — a little before your time, Vavara — Szwart was born to a Lord and Lady of the Wamphyri. That alone would make him an exception to the general rule. For as you are well aware, when the time is right the Wamphyri transfuse their eggs to make egg-sons or — daughters; or we take Szgany women — er, forgive me, or men — and so beget blood-children. But it's rare that a Lord will take a Lady to wife, or vice versa. Rarer still where Lord Szwart is concerned, whose father was also his mother's brother!

' "Incest? — not so strange among the Wamphyri. But incestuous marriage, between twins?

' "To find a reason you must look back in time, but not too far. Szwart's grandsire, his blood-grandsire, was cursed with a certain disorder which our kind don't care to mention. Oh, as a skill — a fearsome talent — we mention it with pride! But when it runs amok, then it becomes wnmentionable. Metamorphism, aye. But note, my voice is hushed. Such matters are not to be spoken of lightly.

' "Before he knew that this weirdest and most loathsome of diseases was upon him, Lord Szwart's grandsire got twins out of a Szgany girl. Brother and sister, they grew up in their sire's aerie — Mittelmanse as it was then, named for its proximity to the centre — and ascended. They were Wamphyri!

' "By then their father's curse was known to all and sundry: he had practised his metamorphic flux beyond reasonable bounds, putting too great a strain on a leech which finally rebelled or went insane. Whichever, his flesh was out of control. Once in a thousand years this will happen: that instead of remaining symbiont and host — two mutually dependent creatures in one body — the flesh of both mingles, and a resultant Thing emerges as a mindless, loathsome hybrid.

' "But the process was a slow one; the Lord of Mittelmanse was not immediately a madman, and knew as well as his children what was happening to him. The horror of it played on his mind; as his flesh gradually succumbed, he would come shrieking awake from nightmares, to find his limbs like ropes draped all about his room.' Or he would wander abroad in his sleep, to trap and convert his own loyal thralls by means of absorption and assimilation. Instead of the blood, whole bodies were the life.' And he grew gross, when at times his flesh was soft as mud, and at others horny and corrugated. And even his colour was changed — no longer that of undead flesh but the mottled and leprous hue of the leech.

' "And when he was lucid he made his children promise that they would not spread this thing abroad. Great Vampire that he was and malicious, still he would not wish this on another man or creature. For he knew what was in his blood, and in theirs, and that given the opportunity it would out. Wherefore it must not be given the opportunity…

'"The twins, grown up now, planned to put their father in a pit; for according to the lore or history of Starside — what little has ever been recorded — that was usually the best way. Or they could kill him out of hand, by trapping him in an inescapable place and setting fire to him, before he became totally ungovernable.

' "But it didn't come to that. Fond of flying, he formed an airfoil and flew out upon the gulf one night. This involved, of course, a great effort of will — which he relaxed, perhaps deliberately, high over the boulder plains. And Thing that he was, his immediate devolution into something less than airworthy was instantly fatal. He fell like a stone, and even protoplasm will only stretch so far.

' "So much for him.

' "His sibling children made a pact: they would not go with others to spread the curse abroad but cleave to each other, and so keep the thing to house. And all the while, year after year, they lived in fear that it might be in them, too — which indeed it was. But because they kept their flux under strict rein, and used it sparingly, the curse skipped their generation — only to emerge in the next!

'"It came out in the young Szwart, aye. Having been suppressed in his parents, the vampire essence they passed down to Szwart was of an entirely different order. How best to explain? When a man is born blind, his remaining senses may develop more fully in order to compensate for the loss. In Szwart's parents, the normal functions of their vampire leeches had been suppressed — which served only to magnify the essence that they passed down to Szwart!