A Coven of Vampires (5 page)

“They’ve sucked, all right. They’ve sucked the world to death. New habits, new protections—new immunities and near-invulnerability—to go with their new size and strength. The meek inheriting the Earth? Stamp on them and they scurry away. Spray them with lethal chemicals and they bathe in them. Feed them DDT and they develop a taste for it. ‘An’ Christ—they suck like crazy!’

“And the whole world down with the creeping, sleeping sickness. We didn’t even
want
to fight them! Vampires, and they’ve learned new tricks. Camouflage…. Clinging to walls above doors, they look like bricks or tiles. And when you go through the door…. And their bite acts like a sort of LSD. Brings on mild hallucinations, a feeling of well-being, a kind of euphoria. In the cities, amongst the young, there were huge gangs of ‘bug-people!’ My God!

“They use animals, too; dogs and cats—as mounts, to get them about when they’re bloated. Oh, they kill them eventually, but they know how to use them first. Dogs can dig under walls and fences; cats can climb and squeeze through tiny openings; crows and other large birds can fly down on top of things and into places….

“Me, I was lucky—if you can call it that. A bachelor, two dogs, a parakeet and an outdoor aviary. My bungalow entirely netted in; fine wire netting, with trees, trellises and vines. And best of all situated on a wild stretch of the coast, away from mankind’s great masses. But even so, it was only a matter of time.

“They came, found me, sat outside my house, outside the wire and the walls, and they waited. They found ways in. Dogs dug holes for them, seagulls tore at the mesh overhead. Frantically, I would trap, pour petrol, burn, listen to them pop! But I couldn’t stay awake for ever. One by one they got the birds, leaving little empty bodies and bunches of feathers. And my dogs, Bill and Ben, which I had to shoot and burn. And this morning when I woke up, Peter parakeet.

“So there’s at least one of them, probably two or three, here in the room with me right now. Hiding, waiting for night. Waiting for me to go to sleep. I’ve looked for them, of course, but—

“Chameleons, they fit perfectly into any background. When I move, they move. And they imitate perfectly. But they do make mistakes. A moment ago I had two hairbrushes, identical, and I only ever had one. Can you imagine brushing your hair with something like
that
?
And what the hell would I want with
three
fluffy slippers? A left, a right—and a centre?

“…I can see the beach from my window. And half a mile away, on the point, there’s Carter’s grocery. Not a crust in the kitchen. Dare I chance it? Do I want to? Let’s see, now. Biscuits, coffee, powdered milk, canned beans, potatoes—no, strike the potatoes. A sack of carrots….” 

• • •

The man on the beach grinned mirthlessly, white lips drawing back from his teeth and freezing there. A year ago he would have expected to read such in a book of horror fiction. But not now. Not when it was written in his own hand.

The breeze changed direction, blew on him, and the sand began to drift against his side. It blew in his eyes, glazed now and lifeless. The shadows lengthened as the sun started to dip down behind the dunes. His body grew cold.

Three hairy sacks with pincer feet, big as footballs and heavy with his blood, crawled slowly away from him along the beach….

KISS OF THE LAMIA

Bully boys out of Chlangi they were, desperadoes riding forth from that shunned city of yeggs and sharpers, on the lookout for quick profits in the narrow strip twixt Lohmi’s peaks and the Desert of Sheb. And the lone Hrossak with his team of camels easy meat where they caught him in ambush, by the light of blind old Gleeth, god of the moon. Or at least, he should have been easy meat.

But the master and sole member of that tiniest of caravans was Tarra Khash, and meat was rarely so tough. For all his prowess, however (which one day would be legendary in all of Theem’hdra), the brawny bronze steppe-man was, on this occasion, caught short. With only the stump of a jewelled, ceremonial scimitar to defend himself, and nodding in the saddle as he let his mount pick out the way through badland rockpiles and gullies, Tarra was hardly prepared for the three where they saw him coming and set their snare for him.

Indeed the first he knew of it was when a sighing arrow plunked through the polished leather of the scabbard across his back, sank an inch into his shoulder and near knocked him out of his saddle. Then, as a second feathered shaft whistled by his ear, he was off the camel and tumbling in dust and grit, his hand automatically grasping the jewelled hilt of his useless sword. In the darkness all was a chaos of shock and spurting blood and adrenalin, where wide awake now Tarra heard the terrified snorting and coughing of his beasts and huddled to avoid their kicking hooves as they ran off; where the moonlight silvered the stony bones of some ruined, long-deserted pile, and where the dust of Hrossak’s fall was still settling as stealthy shadows crept in upon him.

Out of the leering dark they came, eyes greenly ablaze in greed and blood-lust, darting in the shadows, and fleet as the moonbeams themselves where the way was lit by Gleeth’s cold light and by the blue sheen of far stars. Men of the night they were, as all such are, as one with the darkness and silhouetted dunes.

Tarra lay still, his head down, eyes slitted and peering; and in a little while a booted foot appeared silently before his face, and he heard a hoarse voice calling: “Ho! He’s finished—feathered, too! ’Twas my arrow nailed him! Come on, you two!”

Your arrow, hey, dog?
Tarra silently snarled, coming from huddle to crouch, straightening and striking all in the same movement. The stump of his not-so-useless sword was a silver blur where it arced under a bearded jackal’s chin, tearing out his taut throat even as he screamed: “He’s al—
ach-ach-ach!”

Close behind the Hrossak, someone cursed and gripped the arrow in his back, twisting it sharply. He cried out his agony—cut off as a mountain crashed down on the back of his skull—and without further protest crumpled to the earth.

Tarra was not dead, not even unconscious, though very nearly so. Stunned he lay there, aware only of motion about him in the night, and of voices gruff as grit, coming it seemed from far, far away:

“Gumbat Chud was ever a great fool. ‘My arrow!’ he yells, ‘my arrow!’ And this fellow meanwhile slitting his throat nice as that!”

And a different voice: “Is he dead?”

“Gumbat? Aye. See, he now has two mouths—and one of ’em scarlet!”

“Not him, no—the stranger.”

“Him too, I fancy, I gave him such a clout. I think it almost a shame, since he’s done us such a favour. Why, with Gumbat gone there’s just the two of us now to share the spoils! So waste no time on this one. If arrow and clout both haven’t done for him, the badlands surely will. Come on, let’s get after his beasts and see what goods he hauled.”

The other voice was harder, colder: “Best finish him, Hylar. Why spoil a good night’s work by leaving this one, perchance to tell the tale?”

“To whom? But…I suppose you’re right, Thull. We have had a good night, haven’t we? First that girl, alone in the desert, wandering under the stars. Can you believe it?”

A coarse chuckle. “Oh, I believe it, all right. I was first with her, remember?”

“You were last with her, too—pig!” spat the first voice. “Well, get on with it, then. If you want this fellow dead, get it done. We’ve beasts to chase and miles to cover back to Chlangi. Pull out the arrow, that’ll do for him. His life—if any’s left—will leak out red as wine!”

Thull did as Hylar suggested, and shuddering as fresh waves of agony dragged him under, the Hrossak’s mind shrank down into pits of the very blackest jet….

• • •

Tarra Khash, the Hrossak, inveterate wanderer and adventurer, had a lust for life which drove him ever on where other men would fail. And it was that bright spark, that tenacious insistence upon life, which now roused him up before he could bleed to death. That and the wet, frothy ministrations of his camel, kneeling beside him in starlit ruins, where it washed his face and grunted its camel queries. This was the animal Tarra had used as mount, which, over the two hundred miles now lying in their wake, had grown inordinately fond of him. Eluding its pursuers, it had returned to its master much as a dog might do, and for the past half-hour had licked his face, kneed him in the ribs, and generally done whatever a camel might for a man.

Finally coming awake, Tarra gave its nose an admonitory slap and propped himself up into a seated position. He was cold but his back felt warm, stiff and sticky; aye, and he could feel a trickle of fresh blood where his movements had cracked open a half-formed scab. In the dirt close at hand lay the man he’d killed, Gumbat Chud, and between them a bloody arrow where it had been wrenched from his back and thrown down. Tarra’s scab bard lay within reach, empty of its broken sword. They’d taken it for its jewels, of course.

Staring at the arrow, his blood dry on its point, Tarra remembered the conversation he’d heard before he blacked out. He especially remembered the names of the two who had stood over him: Hylar and Thull, Gumbat Chud’s bandit brothers. Rogues out of Chlangi, aye—and dead ones when he caught up with them!

But for now…the Hrossak was fortunate and he knew it. Only a most unlikely set of circumstances had spared him. The ambushers might easily have slit his throat, but they hadn’t wanted to waste time. Indeed, Chud’s arrow might have missed the scabbard and hit his heart, which would have ended things at once! Also, the reavers could have caught instead his camel—this one, which carried food, water, blankets, all those things necessary for the maintenance of life—and probably had caught the three pack animals, which were far more heavily laden.

Heavily laden indeed!

Tarra thought about all the gold and jewels those animals carried: twelve full saddle bags! And wouldn’t those badland marauders lose their eyeballs when they turned them on that lot! What a haul! Tarra almost wished he was one of his ambushers—except that wasn’t his line of work. Ah, well: easy come, easy go—for now. Until he caught up with those two. Anyway, it was his own fault. Only a damn fool would have tried to take a king’s ransom through a den of thieves and out the other side. And he’d known well enough Chlangi’s reputation.

Tomb-loot—
hah!
Ill-gotten gains. And hadn’t his father always warned him that anything you didn’t work hard for wasn’t worth having? Trouble was, he’d never heeded his father anyway. Also, he
had
worked hard for it. Damned hard! He thought of the subterranean sarcophagi of ancient, alien kings whose tombs were a source of loot—and of his narrow escape from that place—and shuddered. And again: tomb-loot,
hah
!

Tarra’s head argued with his back as to which of them hurt worst. Climbing groggily to his feet, he gently shrugged his blanket robe from his shoulders, wincing a little where it had adhered to drying scab of blood, then washed the wound as best he could with clean water from a skin in the camel’s packs. The arrow had not gone deep; his broken sword’s leather scabbard had saved him. Now he wrapped that scabbard in a soft cloth and re-strapped it tight in former position across his back, thus staunching the flow of blood. Then…a kerchief soaked in water round his head, and a bite of dried meat and gulp of sour wine, and Tarra was ready to take up the chase. It wasn’t a wise pursuit, he knew—indeed it might well be the last thing he ever did—but that’s the way it was with Tarra Khash. Hylar and Thull, whoever they were, had hurt him deliberately and for no good reason, and now he would hurt them. Or die trying….

The night was still young, not long past the midnight hour, when he struggled up into his mount’s ridgy saddle and goaded the beast once more in the direction of Chlangi, cursing low under his breath as each smallest jolt set his head to ringing and his back to dull, angry throbbing. And so, at a pace only a little faster than walking, Tarra Khash, the Hrossak journeyed again under moon and stars.

He went wary now, his eyes tuned to the night, but for a mile or two there was nothing. Then—