Brian Lumley - Necroscope IV - Deadspeak

'Of course,' Darcy nodded. 'You know, I'd forgotten that entirely? It's so much a part of the fiction that it slipped my mind it's also part of the fact!'

'Garlic,' Harry repeated, 'yes. On Sunside the Travellers call it "kneblasch". That's the root of its name in Earth's languages, too. It's the German "Knoblauch" and the Gypsy "gnarblez".' He grinned tiredly and without humour. 'Another piece of useless information.'

'Useless?' said Sandra. 'I think it's as well if you give us all the useless information you can!'

Harry shrugged. 'You can get a lot of it out of Darcy's "fiction". But if that's what you want…' And he shrugged again, but warned: 'Except you must always remember, nothing is certain, not with a vampire. And no one — myself included — knows everything there is to know about them. What, everything? I don't know a tenth of it! But I do know that the closer you get to the source, to the original Wamphyri stock, the more effective the various poisons become. Garlic sickens them. Its stink offends as ordure offends us, even makes them ill. On Starside, Lardis Lidesci smears his weapons with oil of garlic. A vampire, struck with a weapon treated that way — arrow, knife or sword, whatever — will suffer hideously! Often the infected member must be shed, and another grown in its place.'

Darcy and Sandra looked at each other aghast, but they said nothing.

'Then there's silver,' Harry continued, 'poison to them, like mercury or lead is to us. Which reminds me: we should be on the lookout for a couple of these fancy Greek paperknives — in silver or silver-plate. Darcy, you saw those bolts I packed with my crossbow? They're of hardwood, rubbed with garlic oil, tipped with silver. And please don't ask me if I'm serious. On Starside the Travellers swear by these things, and stay alive by them!'

Starside! Darcy thought, staring at Harry. The alien, parallel world of the vampires. He's seen it, been there and returned. He's had all that. And now he sits here, entirely human and vulnerable, and tries to explain these things to us. And somehow he doesn't get angry with us, and somehow he doesn't crack up and rant and rave. And he never quits.

'Vampires,' said Sandra, and felt herself thrilling to the word, even knowing she loathed it. 'Tell us about them, Harry. Oh, I know it's all in the files back at E-Branch HQ in London. But it's different coming from you. You know so much about them, and yet you say you know so little.'

'I'll tell you the several sure things I know about them,' said Harry. 'They're devious beyond the imagination of human beings. They're liars each and every one, who on almost every occasion would rather lie than tell the truth — unless there's something of substantial value in it for them. They're expert in confusing any argument, adept at ambiguous and frustrating riddles, word-games, puzzles and paradoxes, false similes and parallels. They're insanely jealous, secretive, proud, possessive. And as for their grip on life — or undeath — they are the most tenacious creatures in or out of Creation!

'Their source lies in the vampire swamps east and west of the central mountain range that divides Starside from Sunside. The legend is that at times they emerge as monstrous slugs or leeches to fasten on men and beasts. As to what degree of intelligence they possess at that stage: who can say? But their tenacity is there from square one. They live on the blood of the host and form a horrific symbiosis with him. The host is changed, materially and mentally. Sexless, the vampire "adopts" the sex of its host, and it fosters in him — or in her — that lust for blood which eventually will sustain both of them.

'I said that the host is altered materially. That's true: a vampire's flesh is different from ours. It has within itself the power of regeneration. Lose a finger, an arm or leg, and given time the vampire will replace them. That's not as weird as it sounds. A starfish does it even better. Cut a starfish up and throw it back in the sea, each part will grow a whole new animal. Likewise a gecko losing its tail, or the segmented cestode or tapeworm of men. But a vampire is no cestode worm. Lesk the Glut, an insane Wamphyri Lord, lost an eye in battle — and caused another to grow on his shoulder!

'As the vampire matures within its host, so that host's strength and endurance increase enormously. Likewise his emotions. Except for love, whose concept is alien to the Wamphyri, all other passions become a rage. Hate, lust, the urge to war, to rape, to torture and destroy all peers or opponents. But such evils as these are tempered by the vampire's desire for secrecy, anonymity. For he knows that if he is discovered, men won't rest until he's destroyed. That last applies specifically in this world, of course, for in their own they are, or were, the Lords. They were, until The Dweller and I brought their reign to ruin. But even before that there were certain Traveller tribes who would kill them if and when they could. My son and I… we didn't destroy them all. Sometimes I wish we had.

'So… when did they first come here, how, and where did they arrive? The first of them, in this world? Who knows? There have been vampires in all Man's legends. Where is far easier: in ancient Dacia, in Romani and Moldova, in Wallachia. Which is all one and the same: Romania to you, on or close to the Danube. There's a Gate there, a tunnel between dimensions, but mercifully inaccessible. Or very nearly so. I used it when I went to Starside, but that was before Harry Jnr stripped me of my talents.'

Harry sat back and sighed. Time and its events were catching up with him. He looked very tired now, but nevertheless asked, 'What else?'

However morbid, Sandra couldn't resist the fascination of Harry's subject. 'What of their life-cycles, their longevity? When I read the E-Branch files, it all seemed so fantastic! And you say their origin is the swamps; but what about before that? How did they get there in the first place?'

'That's like asking what came first, the chicken or the egg,' said Harry. 'The swamps are their place, that's all. Why are there aborigines in Australia? How come we only find Komodo lizards in Komodo? As for their life-cycles:

'They start in the swamps, as great leeches. That's how I understand it, anyway. They transfer to men or beasts, usually wolves. And incidentally, it's a theory of mine that the werewolf of myth is in fact a vampire. Why not? It lives on raw, red flesh and its bite can create another werewolf, can't it? Of course, for the bite is the passing of the egg, which carries the codes of both wolf and vampire.'

Suddenly Harry's haunted look became more haunted yet. 'My God!' he whispered, shaking his head in wonderment. 'And every time I think of that, I can't help thinking of my son. Where is he now? I wonder. Still on Starside, a vampire Lord? What is he now, that child of Brenda and me? For Harry's vampire came from a wolf!'

For long moments his soulful eyes were fogged, distant, lost. But then he blinked, stirred himself, came back to the present point in space and time. And:

"Their life-cycles,' he cleared his throat and continued. 'Very well. So far we've traced the cycle from a swamp-leech to a parasite in a human or animal host. But I called the partnership a symbiosis, and as you'll appreciate that calls for give and take on both sides. Well, the parasite gets his keep, and learns from the mind of his host. And the host gets the vampire's healing powers, his protoflesh, his skills for survival and, of course, his longevity. Eventually the vampire will weld itself to its host's interior; it will become part of him, utterly inseparable. The two parts — even the brains — will slowly merge and become one. But in the early days the parasite retains a certain individuality. If an immature vampire senses extreme, inescapable danger to its host, it may even attempt to flee him. Dragosani's vampire did just that when I destroyed him. But to no avail; I destroyed it, too…'