Brian Lumley - Necroscope

At any rate that was where he left the piglet, returning to his lodgings in mid-afternoon, booking an early evening meal, and sleeping through the rest of the day. There was still more than an hour's light when Use Kinkovsi woke him with a substantial meal on a tray, leaving him on his own to enjoy it and wash it down with a quart of local beer. She hardly spoke to him at all, seemed surly, glanced at him with a sort of sneer. That was all right; indeed it was very much to his liking — or so he tried to tell himself.

But as she left his room his eyes were drawn to the jiggle of her hips and he was given to reconsider his attitude. For a peasant she was a very attractive woman. And again he wondered why she hadn't married. Surely she was too young to be a widow? And even then she'd still wear her ring, wouldn't she? It was curious…

Twenty minutes before sundown Dragosani was back in the secret place. The piglet had regained consciousness but did not yet have the strength to stand up. Wasting no time and wanting no distractions, Dragosani knocked the struggling animal out again with a single blow of a KGB-issue cosh. Then he settled down and waited, smoked a cigarette, watched the light fading as the sun sank lower and lower. Here where the pines grew straight as spears in a ring about the ancient tomb, the only real light came from directly overhead, and that was filtered down through an interlacing mesh of branches; but as night drew on so the first stars began to come out, visible in advance to Dragosani, much as they would be to a man in a deep well.

And at last, as he ground out his cigarette and the gloom closed that much more tightly around him:

Ahhh! Dragosaaniiii!

The unseen presences were there as always, springing up from nowhere, invisible wraiths whose fingers brushed Dragosani's face as if seeking to know him, to be sure of his identity. He shivered and said: 'Yes, it's me. And I've brought something for you. A gift.'

Oh? And what is this gift? And what would you have from me in return?

Now Dragosani was eager and made no effort to hide it. 'The gift is… a small tribute. You shall have it later, before I go. As for now:

'I've talked to you in this place, old dragon, many times — and yet you've never really told me anything. Oh,

I'm not saying that you've deceived or misled me, just that I've learned very little from you. Now that may well have been my own fault, I may not have asked the right questions, but in any case it's something I want to put right. There are things you know which I desire to know. There once was a time when you had… powers! I suspect you've retained many of them, which I don't know about.'

Powers? Oh, yes — many powers. Great powers…

'I want the secret of those powers. I want the powers themselves. All that you knew and know now, I want to know.'

In short, you desire to be… Wamphyr!

The word and the way it was uttered in his mind were such that Dragosani could not suppress a shudder. Even he, Dragosani himself — necromancer, examiner of the dead — felt its alien awe, as if the word in itself conveyed something of the awful nature of the being or beings it named. 'Wamphyr…' he repeated it, and then:

'Here in Romania,' he quickly went on, 'there have always been legends, and in the last hundred years they've spread abroad. Personally, I've known what you are for many years now, old devil. Here they call you vampir, and in the Western world you are a vampire. There you're a creature in tales to be told at night by the fireside, stories to frighten the children to bed and stir the morbid imagination. But now I want to know what you really are. I want to separate fact from fiction. I want to take the lies out of the legend.'

He sensed a mental shrug. Then, I say it again, you would be Wamphyr. There is no other way to know it all.

'But you have a history,' Dragosani insisted. 'Five hundred years you've lain here — yes, I know that — but what of the five hundred before you died?'

Died? But I did not die. They might have murdered me, yes, for it was in their power to do so. But they chose to. The punishment they chose was greater far. They merely buried me here, undead! But that aside… you want to know my history?

'Yes!'

It's a long one, and bloody. It will take time.

'We have time, plenty of it,' said Dragosani — but he sensed a restlessness, frustration in the unseen presences. It was as if something warned him not to try his luck too far. It was not in the undead thing's nature to be pressured.

But finally: can tell you something of my history, yes. I can tell you what I did, but not how it was done. Not in so many words. Knowing my origins, my roots, will not help you to be of the Wamphyri, nor even to understand them. I can no more explain how to be Wamphyr than a fish could explain how to be a fish — or a bird how to be a bird. If you tried to be a fish you would drown. Launch yourself from the face of a cliff, like a bird, and you would fall and be crushed. And if the ways of simple creatures such as these are unknowable, how then the ways of the Wamphyri?p>

'May I learn nothing of your ways, then?' Dragosani was growing angry. He shook his head. 'Nothing of your powers? I don't think I believe you. You showed me how to speak to the dead, so why can't you show me the rest of it?'

Ah! No, you are mistaken, Dragosani. I showed you how to be a necromancer, which is a human talent. It is in the main a forgotten art among men, to be sure, but nevertheless necromancy is an art old as the race itself. As for speaking to the dead: that is something else entirely. Very few men ever mastered that for a skill!

'But I talk to you!'

No, my son, I talk to you. Because you are one of mine. And remember, I am not dead. I am undead. Even I could not talk to the dead. Examine them, yes, but never talk to them. The difference lies in one's approach, in their acceptance of one, and in their willingness to converse. As for necromancy: there the corpse is unwilling, the necromancer extracts the information like a torturer, like a dentist drawing good teeth!

Suddenly Dragosani felt that the conversation was going in circles. 'Stop!' he cried. 'You are deliberately obscuring the issue!'

am answering your questions as best I might.p>

'Very well. Then don't tell me how to be a Wamphyr, but tell me what a Wamphyr is. Tell me your history. Tell me what you did in your life, if not how you did it. Tell me of your origins…'

After a moment:

As you will. But first… first you tell me what you know — or think you know — of the Wamphyri. Tell me about these 'myths', these 'old wives' tales' which you've heard, on which you appear to be something of an authority. Then, as you say, we shall separate the lies from the legend.

Dragosani sighed, leaned his back against a slab, lit another cigarette. He still felt he was getting the run-around, but there seemed little he could do about it. It was dark now but his eyes were accustomed to the gloom; anyway, he knew every twisted root and broken slab. At his feet the piglet snorted fitfully, then lay still again. 'We'll take it step by step,' he growled.

A mental shrug.

'Very well, let's start with this: A vampire is a thing of darkness, loyal subject of Satan.'

Ha, ha, ha! Shaitan was first of all the Wamphyri — in our legends, you understand. Things of darkness: yes, in that night is our element. We are.. different. But there is a saying: that at night all cats are grey! Thus, at night, our differences are not so great — or are not seen to be so great. And before you ask it, let me tell you this: that because of our proclivity for darkness, the sun is harmful to us.

'Harmful? It would destroy you, turn you to dust!'