Brian Lumley - Necroscope V - Deadspawn

Some short time later, the albino swooped down inside the all but extinct central cone to Shaitan's sulphur-yellow apartments, and there hovered, waiting on his command.

From his dark corner he commanded it: Come, little one. I won't crush you.

The tiny creature flew to him, folded its wings and fastened to Shaitan's… hand? It coughed up spittle and mucus into what passed for a palm, and one small bright splash of ruby blood. And: Good! said Shaitan. Now go. Only too pleased to obey, the bat hastened from its master and left him to his own devices.

Fascinated, for a long while Shaitan gazed at the ruby droplet. It was blood, and the blood is the life. He waited impatiently for the vampire flesh of his hand to open into a tiny mouth and sip the droplet in — an automatic thing, born of hideous instinct — from which he would know that this was just the blood of a common man. But he waited in vain, for like himself Shaithis was uncommon. Very much like himself.

And: 'Mine!' said Shaitan at last, in a croaking, shuddering, delighted whisper. 'Flesh of my flesh!'

At which the droplet quivered and soaked through the leprous skin of his hand, and into him as if he were a sponge…

Shaithis slept long and long.

The bats kept him warm (at least kept him from freezing solid in his ice-niche); his wounds healed; his thoughts, like Shaithis himself, remained hidden. Until it was time to rouse himself and be up and about. Which was when his hiding place was discovered.

What!? Who!? The astonished, involuntary mental exclamations brought Shaithis starting awake, echoing in his mind. While still the echoes rang he was on his feet, his blanket of albino bats breaking up in chittering disarray, whirring away from him like a shock of sentient snow. Another moment and his hand filled his gauntlet; he let his Wamphyri senses reach out — but cautiously, tentatively — to discover who was there. Whoever, he must be near, else he wouldn't have sensed Shaithis's emergence.

While sleeping, Shaithis's thoughts had flowed inwards, an art in which he was adept; his dreams could not be 'heard' by any other. But during the transition from deep, healing sleep to waking they had escaped like a yawn, and someone had been close enough to hear it. Too close by far.

Shaithis allowed his mental probe to touch that of the other, and immediately snatched it back. Contact had been brief but recognition mutual: insufficient to detail specific identities, but enough that each creature was certain of the other's presence. Shaithis glanced this way and that. There was only one way out of his niche; if he was trapped then he was trapped; so be it.

Who is it? he sniffed the cold air with his bat's snout. Is it you, Fess, come for your supper? Or must I soil my good gauntlet in pus to tear out the loathsome heart of the odious Volse Pinescu?

And back came the answer, like an astonished gasp in the vampire's mind: Hah! Shaithis! You survived The Dweller's death-beams, then?

Arkis Leperson! Shaithis knew him at once. He breathed his relief, watched curiously for a moment while his breath fell as snow, then made for the exit. Along the way he flexed his muscles, swung his limbs, inhaled deeply and tested his ribs. All seemed in order. Pah! What had those minor dents and scratches been for wounds anyway? Repairs had been minimal; his vampire flesh had scarcely been overtaxed; he was left with an ache here, a bruise there.

Arkis stood close to the foot of the ice-staircase. He was squat for a Lord of the Wamphyri: scarcely more than six feet tall — ah, but a good three feet broad, too! A massive barrel of a man, his strength had been prodigious. Now: it seemed he'd lost a little weight. Shaithis moved towards him, closing the distance between with the easy, flowing glide of the vampire; sinister to ordinary men, but normal by Wamphyri standards. In another moment they were face to face.

'Well,' said Shaithis, 'and is it peace? Or are you too hungry to think straight? I'll be frank: I could use a friend. And by the look of you… huh! Our circumstances are much the same. The choice is yours, but I know where there's food!'

The other's entirely instinctive reaction was a single belched word: 'Food?' His eyes opened wide and his flaring, convoluted snout plumed ice-crystal breath.

Plainly Arkis was starving. Shaithis offered him a grim smile, took from his pouch the last piece of cold bear-heart and devoured half in a single bite, then tossed the rest to the leper's son — who snatched it from the air with a cry almost of pain. And without pause he crammed his mouth full.

Arkis had been sired by Morgis Griefcry out of a Traveller waif. She'd been a leper and her infection had taken Morgis in his member which (along with his lips, eyes and ears) had been among the first of his parts to slough. The disease had been like a fire in him, burning him faster than his vampire could replenish. Finally, with cries of grief echoing his name to the full, Morgis had taken a firebrand and hurled himself and his Traveller odalisque into a refuse pit whose accumulation of methane gas had done the rest. His suicide had left Arkis the youthful Lord and heir to a fine aerie. Even better, Arkis had not contracted his forebears' disease! Not yet, anyway. Perhaps he never would. It had all been many sundowns agone.

While Arkis ate, Shaithis studied him.

Squat in the body, Arkis's skull was likewise squat, as if it had been crushed down a little. His face seemed pushed out in front, and his bottom jaw farther yet, with boar's teeth curving upward over his fleshy upper lip. And yet the overall effect wasn't so much swinish as wolfish, especially with the inordinate length of his furred, tapering ears. Aye, somewhere in his lineage there'd been a grey one for sure. Moreover, he was lean as a wolf; well, by the standards of former times, at least. Now, eyes ablaze with the lust of feeding, upon however small a morsel, he nevertheless narrowed them to gaze on Shaithis. And when he was done: Til grant you it was a bite,' he grunted, 'but was that the food you promised?'

'I made no promises,' Shaithis answered. 'I stated a fact: I know where there's food — by the ton!'

'Ah!' the other grunted, and cocked his head on one side. 'Volse's flyer, d'you mean? Ah, but they guard it well, Volse and the Ferenc. It's a mousetrap, Shaithis; only approach their private pantry too closely and you'll end up in it! No chivalry here, my friend. Cold, crystallized meat can never taste as good as red juice of meat spurting from a severed artery! But… beggars can't be choosers. I have tried and failed; they're never too far away; I know they lust after my blood.'

'Are you reduced to this?' Shaithis raised a black, spiky eyebrow. 'Scavenging after each other?' He knew of course that they were; knew that he would be, too, soon enough. The 'chivalry' of the Wamphyri was at best a myth. But in any case, his insult — the word 'scavenging' — was lost on Arkis Leperson.

'Shaithis,' said the other, 'I've been here four, going on five sundowns; five auroral displays, anyway, which I reckon amounts to much the same thing. Reduced to hunting each other? Let me tell you that if it moves I'll hunt it! I had bats by the handful at first: squeezed 'em to pulp so they'd drip into my mouth — then ate the pulp, too! — but now they won't come anywhere near me. They have minds of their own, these tiny albinos. Right now, I'm on my way to see the shrivelled old granddad frozen in the ice up top. I'd have tried to get at him before, if I was desperate enough — which now I am! So don't talk to me about being reduced to this or that. We're all reduced, Shaithis, and you no less than anyone else!'