'The Castle Ferenczy!' Laverne snorted now to himself. 's.h.i.t!' And how many leu had Vulpe coughed up, he wondered, to get old Gogosu to play his p art in this farce?

Very angry now he stepped down onto a second floor where he paused to c all out more loudly yet: 'George! What the f.u.c.k are you up to, eh!?' His cry disturbed the air, brought down rills of dust from unseen height s and ceilings. As its echoes boomed out and came back distorted and discord ant, Laverne nervously explored the place with the smoky, jittery beam of hi s torch.

He was in the vaults, the place of frescoed walls, many archways, centur ies-blackened oaken racks, urns and amphorae, festoons of cobwebs and layers of drifted dust. And there were footprints in the dust, quite a few of them . The most recent of these could only be Vulpe's. Laverne followed the direc tion they took - and ahead caught a glimpse of flaring torchlight where it l it the curve of an archway before disappearing.

You b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Laverne thought. You'd have to be deaf not to know I'm back here! You've got a h.e.l.l of a lot of explaining to do, good buddy! And if I don't like what you have to - From above and behind, on the stone stairs where they wound up into dark ness, there came the soft pad of feet and a softer whining. A pebble, distur bed, came clattering down the steps. Then all was silence again.

Shaking like a leaf, suddenly cold and clammy, Laverne aimed his torch u p the stairwell. 'Jesus!' he gasped. 'Jesus!' But there was nothing and no o ne there. Or perhaps a shadow, drawing back out of sight?

Laverne stumbled across the stone-flagged floor of the great room, thro ugh an archway and into other rooms beyond it. His ragged breathing and muf fled footfalls seemed to echo thunderously but he made no effort to be sile nt. He must shorten the distance between Vulpe and himself right now and fi nd out exactly what the b.a.s.t.a.r.d was doing down here. The glow of Vulpe's to rch came again, and the resinous stench of its burning; Laverne plunged in that direction, through drifts of dust, salts and chemicals where they lay spilled on the floor, until . . .

. . . This room was different from the others. He paused under the archw ay prior to entering, cast about with his weakening beam.

Mouldy tapestries on the walls; a tiled floor inlaid with a pictorial mo saic which ill.u.s.trated some strange, ancient motif; a desk thick with dust, laid out with books, papers and other writing implements. A ma.s.sive fireplac e and chimney-breast - and the flickering glow of a naked flame coming down out of that fireplace! George Vulpe had stepped . . . inside there?

Finding not a little difficulty in breathing, Laverne gasped: 'George?' He quickly crossed the room and stooped a little to aim his feeble beam of light up under the low arch of the fireplace. In there, fixed in a bracket in the r ear wall, he saw Vulpe's smoky, flaring torch . . . but no Vulpe.

A hand fell on Laverne's shoulder! 'Jesus G.o.d!' he cried out, as adrenal in pumped and he snapped erect. The back of his head crunched into collision with the keystone of the arch over the fireplace; he reeled away across the room, and for a moment Vulpe was trapped in his torch's beam; the other stood there silent as a ghost, his hand still reaching out towards him.

Laverne went to his knees on the floor, clutched at the back of his hea d. His hand came away wet with blood. Sick and dizzy he kneeled there. He w as lucky he hadn't brained himself. But anger quickly replaced his pain. He found his orientation, again aimed his torch where last he'd seen Vulpe. B ut Vulpe - sleepwalker, clown, a.s.shole or whatever he was - wasn't there. O nly a fading flicker of yellow fire from within the chimney-breast.

Laverne staggered to his feet. He found his knife lying where he'd dropp ed it close to the chimney. He closed it and put it away. He wouldn't need a knife for the beating he was going to give 'Gheorghe' Vulpe. And when he wa s done with him the b.a.s.t.a.r.d could find his own way back out of here - if he had the strength for it!

Steadier now, gritting his teeth, Laverne went again to the fireplace.

He ducked inside and at once saw,the rungs in the back wall of the flue.

From up above he heard sounds: the echoing sc.r.a.pe of shoes, a low cough. A nd: What goes up, he thought, must come down! Maybe he should wait right h ere for the idiot. Except that was when Vulpe screamed!

Laverne had never heard a scream like it. It followed close on a nerve-ren ding grating sound - like ma.s.sive surfaces of rock sliding together - and rose to a vibrating falsetto crescendo before shutting off at highest pitch. And a s its echoes died away, they were followed by a glottal gurgling and gasping.

Vulpe was going, 'Ak . . . ak . . . ak . . . ak,' as if choking: a sort of slo w death-rattle. Laverne, his hair standing on end, didn't actually know what a death-rattle sounded like, but he felt that if the sound were suddenly to spe ed up to ak-ak-ak-ak, then that would be his friend's last gasp.

'Oh, Jeeesus!' he whined, and drove himself clattering up the rungs and t hrough the flue to the place where it curved through ninety degrees to become a pa.s.sage. Twenty or twenty-five paces ahead, there lay Vulpe's torch still flickering fitfully and giving off black smoke where it teetered on the rim o f a trench cut in the stone floor to the right of the pa.s.sageway.

But of Vulpe himself ... no sign. Only the choking, agonized 'Ak . . . ak . . . ak' sounds, which seemed to be coming from the trench.

'George?' Laverne hurried forward - and came to an abrupt halt. Beyond t he guttering brand, where neither its light nor his own torch beam could rea ch, triangular eyes floated in the darkness, unblinking, unyielding, unnervi ng.

Laverne wasn't an especially brave man, but he wasn't a coward either.

Whatever the creature was up ahead -fox, wolf or feral dog - it wouldn't much care for fire. He lumbered forward and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the smouldering to rch, and waved it overhead to get it going again. A whoosh of flame at onc e rewarded his efforts and the gathering shadows were driven back. Likewis e the creature along the pa.s.sageway; Laverne caught a glimpse of something grey, slinking, canine, before it was swallowed up in gloom. He also caug ht a glimpse of something in the trench - - Something which drove him back against the wall like a blow from a hug e fist!

Gasping his shock, his horror - feeling his blood running cold in his v eins - Laverne tremblingly held out the torch over the trench. His disbelie ving eyes took in the bed of spikes and the figure of his friend, crucified and worse, upon them. George Vulpe squirmed there, impaled through his che ek, neck, shoulders and arms; nailed through his back, b.u.t.tocks, and thighs ; issuing blood from each dark gash and puncture, which coloured the rusty spikes and flowed in thickly converging streams around and between his twit ching feet, into the channel and down towards the stone spout.

'Mother of G.o.d!' Laverne croaked.

'Ak! . . . ak! . . . ak!' said Vulpe, the words bursting in b.l.o.o.d.y bubbles fro m his pallid lips.

And along the pa.s.sageway the great old Grey One growled low in his throa t and paced slowly, stiff-legged, into full view.

Vulpe was finished, that much was plain. An army of nurses with a ton o f bandages between them couldn't have stopped him bleeding his last, not no w. Laverne couldn't save him, neither from the bed of spikes nor from the w olf. On nerveless legs he backed off, shuffling crablike, sideways back alo ng the pa.s.sage, back towards the shallow steps leading to the false flue. I t was all over for George - everything was over for him - and now Laverne m ust think only of himself. And as Vulpe's blood commenced to gurgle from th e carved stone spout into the mouth of the urn, so the overweight American backed away faster yet . . .

. . . And paused abruptly, wobbling like a jelly there in the narrow mould of the pa.s.sageway.

In front, the wolf, its face a snarling mask in the torchlight; between, t he dying man on his torture-bed of spikes; and now . . . now there was somethi ng else. Behind!

No longer breathing, Laverne cranked his head round like a nut on a rust y bolt. At first he made little of what he was seeing. All the edges were in distinct, weirdly mobile. The ceiling seemed to have lowered itself, the pas sage to have narrowed, the floor to have become heaped with . . . something.

Something furry. Something that rustled and flopped!

Laverne's eyes bugged as he thrust out his torch in that direction, bugg ed more yet as several small parts of that anomalous furriness detached them selves from the moving walls and darted by him in fluttering swoops and dive s. Bats! A colony of bats! And more of them cl.u.s.tering to the walls, floor a nd ceiling even as he grimaced his disgust.

He looked back the other way. The wolf had come to a standstill; its ears were pointed into the trench, its attention centred on the urn. Cold as deat h, reeling and panting for air, Laverne looked where it looked. He looked, sa w, and knew that he was on the verge of fainting. His blood was pooling, his senses whirling - but he also knew that he dared not faint! Not in this night mare place, and certainly not now.

The urn was belching. Puffs of vapour, like small smoke rings, were is suing from its obscene mouth. Black slime, bubbling up from within, was bl istering on the cold rim like congealing tar. As Vulpe's blood was consume d, so something was forming and expanding within the urn. A catalyst, his blood transformed what was within!

Hypnotized by horror, Laverne could only watch. A mottled blue-grey tenta cle of slime, crimson-veined, slopped upwards out of the mouth of the urn and into the stone spout. Elongating, it slid like a snake along the trail of bl ood to where Vulpe lay transfixed. Sentient, it curled round his right leg wh ere it was bent at the knee, surged along the impaled thigh and across his be lly, crept over his palpitating chest. He continued to gasp, 'Ak! . . . ak! .

. . argh!' - but agony had very nearly inured him, numbed him into a mental limbo, and loss of his life's blood was quickly finishing the job.

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 hi s 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 str aining gullet! He convulsed on the spikes; his lips split at their corners a s his jaws were forced apart and the now corrugated, pulsating bulk of the t hing 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 hi s nostrils as the horror filled him. His neck was fat from its pa.s.sage into h im; 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, t rying to tear it out of him. To no avail.

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

'Oh, Jesus! Oh, great G.o.d in heaven!' Laverne wailed. 'Die, for Christ's sak e!' he instructed Vulpe. 'Let it go! Be still!' And it was as if George Vulpe he ard him. He did let it go, he was . . . suddenly . . . still.

The entire scene stood frozen, timeless. The great wolf, a statue blockin g 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-torc h; 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 clus tered 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 pa.s.sage, were ploughed under by the creeping furry tide of their cousins where they wriggl ed and flopped forward.

Laverne went a little mad then. He screamed hoa.r.s.ely, brokenly; he pant ed, gasped and screamed again; he lashed out with his arms in the near-dark ness 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 i n the trench, or the way his gashes had stopped bleeding and were mending th emselves 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 pa.s.sage was occasioned by none of these thing s 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-clot ted voice, saying: 'My friend, you came to this place of your own free will. And I believe yo u are . . . bleeding?' Vulpe's nostrils opened wide, sniffed, and his eyes bec ame 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 Gh eorghe, one hand shaking the hunter awake, the other holding a warning fin ger 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 hoa.r.s.e and urge nt. 'Something else.' He stood up. 'Come, bring your gun.'

Gogosu unrolled himself from his blanket, reached for his rifle and came l ithely 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 bitte n 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 no thing, 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, to o, 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 trie d to get a good look at his companion in the pale moonlight. 'What's wrong w ith 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 s omething moved silently, low to the ground, grey-dappled where moonlight for med 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.

'd.a.m.n me!' Gogosu breathed. 'A Grey One!' He brushed past Vulpe, crouc hed 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? G.o.d, 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 a ir. 'Lord,' he gulped, and finally admitted it: 'but my legs aren't as young a s yours.'

'What?' said Vulpe, half-turning towards him. 'Oh, but I a.s.sure 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. 'Und er 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 tellin g? Aye, and I d.a.m.n near got him, too! You can wager he bears the scar to pr ove 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 sl iding scree. It snarled, sprang . . . Gogosu s.n.a.t.c.hed at his rifle where the other seemed to hold it oh so lightly ... try s.n.a.t.c.hing an iron bar from th e window of a cell.

The wolf struck and knocked him down, away from this awful stranger he'd thought a friend. Its fangs were at his throat, slavering there. He went to c ry out, but already those terrible teeth had met through his windpipe, turnin g his scream to a scarlet froth that flew like a brand across a wrinkled grey brow over vengeful yellow eyes . . .

'You let me sleep late!' was Seth Armstrong's first reaction when he f ound himself prodded awake. The moon was down, the ground mist gone, the f ire almost dead.

'Are you complaining?' said the man seated close by, who at first glance was George Vulpe.

'No,' Armstrong shook his head, as much to free it from sleep as in answer , 'I guess I was tuckered. Must be the alt.i.tude.'

'Good,' said the other. 'I'm glad you enjoyed your sleep. Sleep is a necess ity, however wasteful. Why should we sleep when there's a life to be lived, eh?

I shall not sleep again in . . . oh, a long time.'

Armstrong was almost awake now. 'What?' he said, and sat up. He might ha ve jumped up, but the barrel of Gogosu's rifle was prodding him in the chest . And a lean grey wolf, lying p.r.o.ne on its belly like a dog, with paws stret ched forward towards him, was gazing directly into his eyes! One of its ears stood stiffly erect; the other, twitching, lay close to its elongated skull . The wolf might be half-grinning, or half-snarling; whichever, its quiverin g muzzle was splashed with scarlet.

'Jesus H. Christ!' Armstrong s.n.a.t.c.hed back his feet, which got tangled in the lower half of his sleeping-bag.

'Be still,' commanded the one he still believed was Vulpe. 'Do as you're t old and he won't attack you, and I won't squeeze this trigger.'

'Geor - Geor - George!' Armstrong finally found his voice. 'That's a b.l.o.o.d.y wolf, there!'

'b.l.o.o.d.y, yes,' said the other.

'So sh - sh - shoot the b.a.s.t.a.r.d!' Armstrong's face was deathly white in pal e blue starshine.

'Eh?' said the seated man, c.o.c.king his head curiously on one side, for al l the world as if he hadn't heard right. 'I should shoot him? I should reward an old and trusted friend by shooting him? No, I think not.' He picked up a dry branch and tossed it onto the bed of hot ashes, where small flames linger ed still. Sparks showered up and the flames leaped higher, and Armstrong saw the bloodied holes in the other's clothing, his torn, rapidly mending face, t he pits of h.e.l.l which were his eyes.

'Christ - Christ Christ!' the big, gangling man gasped. 'George, what the h.e.l.l's happening here?'

'Be still,' the other said again, his head still tilted at an angle. For long moments he stared into Armstrong's terrified face, studying it, perhaps thinking something over. And eventually: 'You're a big man and strong, and I cannot be alone in the world. Not now, and not for some time. I have things t o learn, places to go, things to do. I will need instruction. I must be taugh t before I may . . . teach? I got something from Gheorghe's mind, you see, be fore he honoured the covenant. But not enough. Perhaps I was too eager. It is understandable.'

'George,' Armstrong licked his lips, which were parched. 'George, listen.'

He reached out a trembling hand to the other - but the old wolf's muzzle at o nce cracked open to display jaws like a bone vice. He lifted his belly off the earth, crept closer.

'I said be still!' said the one with the rifle, lifting it until its fore sight pressed against Armstrong's bobbing Adam's apple. 'If the Grey One unde rstands my wishes, why can't you? Or perhaps you're a fool, in which case I'm wasting my time. Is that it? Am I wasting my time? Should I be done with it, simply squeeze this trigger and make a fresh start?'

'I'll . . . I'll be still!' Armstrong gasped, his voice a hoa.r.s.e whisper, col d sweat starting out on his brow. 'I'll be still! And . . . and don't worry, Geor ge. I'll help you. G.o.d, yes, whatever bug you've picked up, I'll help you!'

'Oh, I know you will,' said this - this stranger? - still staring from his cri mson eyes.

'I'll do anything you say,' said Armstrong. 'Anything at all.'

'Yes, that too,' said the other, nodding. And having made up his mind: 'Very well, and shall we start with something simple? Look into my eyes, Se th Armstrong.' He moved the barrel of the rifle aside to lean closer, until his terrible mesmeric face was only a foot away. 'Look deep, Seth. Look un der the skin of my eyes, into the blood and the brains and the very landsca pe of my mind. The eyes are the windows of the soul, my friend, did you know that? Portals on one's dreams and pa.s.sions and aspirations. Which is why my eyes are red. Aye, for the soul behind them has been torn asunder arid e aten by a scarlet leech!'

His words conjured seething horror, but more than that they inspired aw e, a creeping paralysis, a la.s.situde of terror. Armstrong knew what it was: hypnotism! He could feel his mind going under. But Vulpe - or whoever this was in Vulpe's body - had been right: Seth Armstrong was strong. And befor e his will could be subverted utterly - - He batted the rifle aside, so that it was directed at the wolf, and reache d for the throat of his tormentor. Tm going to have me ... a piece of ... you, G eorge!' he panted.

As the Texan's fingers closed on Vulpe's windpipe, so that facsimile gave a grunting cry and clawed at his face. The three fingers of his left hand ho oked in the corner of Armstrong's lower lip, tearing it. Armstrong howled his pain, bit down hard on the smallest of Vulpe's fingers, severed it at the ce ntral knuckle in the moment before the other dragged his hand free.

The rifle went off, its flash startling and the crack of its discharge re verberating from the peaks. The great wolf knew something about guns; unharme d, fur bristling, still he whined and backed away.