Brian Lumley - Necroscope IV - Deadspeak

Somehow, summoning up his last ounce of strength from the very roots of his will, Vulpe managed to lift his face up off the spike which pierced his right cheek and lower jaw; and conscious to the last, he saw what reared on his chest and even now formed a flat, swaying, blind cobra head!

His bloody jaws flew open — perhaps in a scream, though none came — and the leech-thing at once drove itself into his yawning mouth and down his straining gullet! He convulsed on the spikes; his lips split at their corners as his jaws were forced apart and the now corrugated, pulsating bulk of the thing thrust into him.

The urn was empty now, steaming and slimed where the 'tail' of the leech-creature had snaked free. But still Vulpe gagged and frothed and bled from his nostrils as the horror filled him. His neck was fat from its passage into him; his eyes stood out as if to burst from their sockets; his three-fingered hands tore free of the spikes and grasped at the monster raping his throat, trying to tear it out of him. To no avail.

In another moment the entire creature had entered him — and still he tossed on the spikes, flopped his head this way and that, slopped blood and mucus all around.

'Oh, Jesus! Oh, great God in heaven!' Laverne wailed. 'Die, for Christ's sake!' he instructed Vulpe. 'Let it go! Be still!' And it was as if George Vulpe heard him. He did let it go, he was… suddenly… still.

The entire scene stood frozen, timeless. The great wolf, a statue blocking the way forward; the bats, almost completely choking Laverne's single route of exit; the drained and hideously refilled body of his friend, motionless on its bed of spikes. Only the flickering torch in Laverne's hand had any life of its own, and that too was dying.

In one badly shaking hand the firebrand, and in the other his pocket-torch; Randy Laverne could never have said how he'd hung on to either one of them. But now, snarling his outrage and terror, he turned to the wall of bats and thrust at it with his smoking, guttering torch. They didn't retreat but clustered to the firebrand, smothered it with their scorching, crackling bodies, put it out! A dozen dead or dying bats fell to the floor of the passage, were ploughed under by the creeping furry tide of their cousins where they wriggled and flopped forward.

Laverne went a little mad then. He screamed hoarsely, brokenly; he panted, gasped and screamed again; he lashed out with his arms in the near-darkness and aimed the ailing beam of his electric torch this way and that all around, never giving himself a moment's time to see anything.

He did not see George Vulpe wrench himself upright, free of the spikes in the trench, or the way his gashes had stopped bleeding and were mending themselves even now. Nor did he see him climb up from the trench, fondling the old wolf's ears and smiling. Especially, he did not see that smile. No, his act of dropping the electric torch and sliding semiconscious down the wall to crumple on the floor of the passage was occasioned by none of these things but by Vulpe's sudden appearance, his rising up there, directly before him. By that and by his redly glaring eyes, and his entirely alien, phlegm-clotted voice, saying:

'My friend, you came to this place of your own free will. And I believe you are… bleeding?' Vulpe's nostrils opened wide, sniffed, and his eyes became fiery slits in that preternaturally pale face. 'Indeed, I'm sure you are. Now really, someone should see to that wound — before something gets into it.'

Emil Gogosu woke up to find someone kneeling close by. It was young Gheorghe, one hand shaking the hunter awake, the other holding a warning finger to his lips. 'Shhhr he hushed.

'Eh? What is it?' Gogosu whispered, at once wide awake and peering about in the night. The fire was burning low, its heart redly reflecting from Vulpe's eyes. 'Dawn already? I don't believe it!'

'Not dawn,' the other replied, also in a whisper, however hoarse and urgent. 'Something else.' He stood up. 'Come, bring your gun.'

Gogosu unrolled himself from his blanket, reached for his rifle and came lithely to his feet. He prided himself that his bones didn't ache.

'Come,' Vulpe said again, stepping carefully so as not to wake Armstrong.

As they left the campfire and the ruins behind and the darkness began to close in, the hunter caught at Vulpe's arm. 'Your face,' he said. 'Is that blood? What's been going on, Gheorghe? I didn't hear anything.'

'Blood, yes,' the other answered. 'I was keeping watch. I heard something out here, in the trees there, and went to see. It might have been a dog or fox — even a wolf — but it attacked me. I fought it off. I think it may have bitten my face. And it's still out here. It was following me as I came back for you.'

'Still out here?' Gogosu turned his head this way and that. The moon was down a little, its grey light coming through hazy clouds. The hunter saw nothing, but still the young American led the way.

'I thought maybe you could shoot it,' said Vulpe. 'You said you'd tried to shoot a wolf up here before.'

'I have, that's right,' Gogosu answered, hurrying to keep up. 'I hit him, too, for I heard him yelp and saw the trail of blood!'

'Well,' said the other, 'and now another chance.'

'Eh?' the hunter was puzzled. Something wasn't quite right here. He tried to get a good look at his companion in the pale moonlight. 'What's wrong with your voice, Gheorghe? Frog in your throat? Still shaken up, are you?'

'That's right,' said Vulpe, his voice deeper yet. 'It was something of a shock…'

Gogosu came to a halt. Something was definitely wrong. 'I see no wolf!' he said, the tone of his voice an accusation in itself. 'Neither wolf nor fox nor… anything!'

'Oh?' said the other, also pausing. 'Then what's that?' He pointed and something moved silently, low to the ground, grey-dappled where moonlight formed pools under the trees. It was there, then gone. But the hunter had seen it. As if in confirmation, a low growl came back to them out of the night.

'Damn me!' Gogosu breathed. 'A Grey One!' He brushed past Vulpe, crouched low, ran forward under the trees.

Vulpe came after, caught up with him, pointed off at a tangent. 'There he goes!' he rasped.

'Where? Where? God, you've the eyes of a wolf yourself!'

'This way,' said Vulpe. 'Come on!'

They came out of the trees, reached the piled scree at the foot of rearing crags. The younger figure breathed easy, but Gogosu was already panting for air. 'Lord,' he gulped, and finally admitted it: 'but my legs aren't as young as yours.'

'What?' said Vulpe, half-turning towards him. 'Oh, but I assure you they are, Emil Gogosu. Centuries younger, in fact.'

'Eh? What?'

'There? said the other, pointing yet again. 'Under that tree there!'

The hunter looked — brought his rifle up to his shoulder — saw nothing. 'Under the tree?' he said. 'But there's nothing there. I — '

'Give me that,' said Vulpe. And before the other could argue, he'd taken the gun. Aiming at nothing in particular, he said: 'Emil, are you sure you shot a wolf up here that time?'

'What?' the old hunter was outraged. 'How many times do you need telling? Aye, and I damn near got him, too! You can wager he bears the scar to prove it.'

'Calm down, calm down,' said the other, his voice dark as the night now. 'No need for wagering, Emil, for I've seen that gouge in his flank, where your bullet burned his hide! Oh, yes, and just as you remember him, so he remembers you!'

And as suddenly as that the hunter knew that this wasn't Gheorghe Vulpe. He looked deep into his shadowed face, hissed his terror and shrank down — and saw the Grey One crouched to spring, silhouetted on top of a mound of sliding scree. It snarled, sprang… Gogosu snatched at his rifle where the other seemed to hold it oh so lightly… try snatching an iron bar from the window of a cell.