The Last Aerie (67 page)

Wratha, then?

Nestor sent a probe skyward, and saw that it wasn’t Wratha. Indeed the riders on high were the last people he had wanted to see, and certainly they were the last he’d want to discover him here: the Killglance brothers, Wran and Spiro! They and a small party of hunters were circling overhead, gradually descending. But even as he watched, the descent became a swoop: like the plummet of hawks stooping to their prey.

Nestor’s vampire senses had been sharpened by the presence of danger on high; now from the north-west, he heard the crashing of underbrush; even at this distance the hoarse panting of fleeing Szgany was plainly audible. The brothers had found a party of Travellers, and very shortly the night would turn to rack and ruin, fire and blood. Nestor’s heartbeat picked up and his own blood surged at the thought of it.

He had been lucky. If the marauders weren’t so intent upon the hunt, they must surely have sensed his probe. And he could be fairly sure how the Lords of Madmanse would have dealt with him: not necessarily a quick death, but one from which there’d be no returning. The sword, the stake, the cleansing fire.

Of course, for who would there be to witness it, and who later to accuse? None but the brothers themselves, and their thralls. And Nestor was without a doubt their enemy, who sided with Wratha and the dog-Lord to make Wrathstack’s upper half a fortress in its own right, and leave the others to their fate. Get rid of him and Wratha would be that much weaker, and the brothers that much stronger.

Yes, he’d been lucky. And his luck was holding. Someone—a Traveller, obviously, from his crashing, stumbling, blundering flight—was heading his way. Flushed out by the Madmanse twins, sweet salty sustenance was on its way, rushing straight into Nestor’s waiting arms.

He melted into the cover of tree-cast shadows, breathed a vampire mist, let his dark Wamphyri senses drift out from him to meet and explore whoever it was that fled in his direction. And there were two of them: a man and a woman. Sufficient for
all
of his needs.

Nestor let them come, and now their approach was that much more cautious. Not because of him, no, for they had no knowledge of him. Because of the sounds from the deep forest at their backs: the hoarse, desperate shouting of fearful men; shrill, feminine cries of terror; and the coarse pitiless laughter of their pursuers and tormentors. But all from some distance away, and this pair thought that they’d escaped it. So that now they crept in the night like mice, and tried as best they might to still the thudding of their hearts, to quiet the panting of their ragged breath.

But Nestor heard everything, and waited …

And eventually they came.

Then—

He stepped out of his own mist and confronted them! The shock was so great that the woman—no, she was only a girl—simply fainted away. As for the youth: his jaw fell open and he lifted an arm and hand, perhaps defensively … except his hand contained a crossbow!

Nestor leaned to one side as a bolt whirred too close to his ear, and he struck at the other’s extended wrist with the flat of a hand as hard and as heavy as wood. The youth’s wrist broke but he made no sound, for Nestor’s free fist had already crashed into his face. His jaw disintegrated and his teeth collapsed inwards, driven into the back of his throat by Nestor’s thorny knuckles. Gagging, he flew backwards and slumped against the bole of a tree. Nestor followed up and drove his right fist into the other’s chest, crushing his fluttering heart, nipping its pipes, tearing it from his body while still it palpitated in his hand.

Thus it was done, and all so silently.

And holding the still-shuddering corpse of his victim upright against the tree, Nestor slaked his thirst and satisfied his hunger there and then.

Or one of his hungers, at least…

In a little while the girl stirred and uttered
a
low moan. And when her eyes flickered open Nestor was there kneeling beside her, looking into her face. Her mouth flew open in what started as a scream but quickly gurgled into silence. For his hand was at her throat, tightening, and the look on his deeply scarred, savagely lustful vampire face was a warning in itself:
don’t!

Then she looked beyond him, up through the canopy of the trees, to see clouds scudding against a backdrop of cold blue-glittering stars. She was seated with her back to the leaning bole of a tree, and she was naked to the waist where her upper clothing had been torn from her in strips, like rind dangling from a ripe fruit.

In that same moment she knew that this wasn’t just a bad dream; she remembered where she was, who she’d been with, and what had happened. Her eyes opened wide, glancing this way and that in the starlight, until they found her lover … slumped close beside her at the bole of the same tree! Slumped, almost crumpled there, and bloody as a freshly slaughtered beast.

Then she turned her searing, accusing gaze on Nestor again, saw the look on his face and knew what it meant. That he wanted her and would have her. Similarly, he knew what her look meant: that she would kill him if she could or cause him to be killed, and never mind the consequences. He knew she’d scream her lungs out if he gave her the chance, and also how easy it would be to squeeze a little harder and finish it. Except … he wanted her conscious. Or conscious at first, at least.

From the darkness of the near-distant forest, the sounds of Wran and Spiro’s raiding party about their business had settled down to a chorus of sobbing, pleading female voices, the occasional shriek of agony or infrequent burst of guttural laughter. Knowing what these sounds signified, that by now the Killglance brothers and their lieutenants were enjoying the women they had captured, Nestor’s vampire passions were inflamed and his blood sang in his veins as he felt his own need growing by leaps and bounds. He would do the same, right here and now, immediately, but knew that if the girl cried out she would surely be heard.

If
she cried out…

Coming slowly to his feet, but never for a moment relaxing his grip on her throat, he looked down on her gazing up at him. Despite that her face was grimy, streaked with tears, and bore the bruises and scratches of her panic flight through the night forest, still she was beautiful, or would be in the right circumstances.

As he continued to straighten his legs and stand up, Nestor released his rigid rod from his trousers and let it stroke upwards through the central indentation of her rib cage, then between her firm, quivering breasts.

Her beautiful breasts … her shivering shoulders, gleaming like marble in the night … her pulsing throat. The
depth
of her throat. But her face was turning blue from the pressure of his iron fingers. And gradually, as she began to choke, so he released his grip on her windpipe.

Instantly her mouth gaped open and she drew massively on the night air. Nestor knew that when she expelled that breath it would be in the form of a piercing shriek, which was something he simply couldn’t allow.

Ramming himself forward into her mouth, he reached down to trap her hands where they flew to his vulnerable parts. And concentrating on his metamorphic flesh as it surged into her throat, he filled her as so often he’d filled the Lady Wratha; except Wratha was Wamphyri and had wanted it, and could take it.

In his awful ecstasy, Nestor’s metamorphism was that of a Lord full-fledged. He extended into his unknown victim like lava in a volcanic, subterranean sump, filling every available space. Sex was his purpose, but his leech’s need was sustenance—a direct flow into Nestor’s own stream—to supplement the nutrition he’d had from the young man. Within the girl’s writhing body, Nestor’s flesh put out small hooks to hold itself in position, and needle-like siphons to pierce her innermost veins and arteries, drawing off her life-force while yet it remained.

But it didn’t remain for long.

As her hands went limp in his, Nestor released them and reached for her breasts, and squeezed them as if to force her juices—and his own—to flow that much faster. Except the flow was already ebbing as she gave up the unequal struggle.

The knowledge that she was dying, that he had devoured her life, incensed Nestor even further. Moaning the sweet agony of his relief—shuddering head to toe, crushing the girl’s upper body to the tree—he reached climax and ejaculated in a series of long bursts. Then it was over, and in a little while he began to shrink back into himself and withdraw …

After that, Nestor would have skirted the hunting party out of Madmanse and continued his trek without delay, but there was a matter of great importance which he must see to first. His male victim was most certainly dead, and the true death at that: Nestor had ruined his face and ripped out his heart! But the girl was whole. She’d been depleted, but her body was intact and quite incorruptible. For as well as taking, Nestor had given far too much of himself. In short she was undead, a vampire, and with copious amounts of Nestor’s seed in her she could very well become Wamphyri.

Or she
might
have become Wamphyri…

Nestor took up the youth’s crossbow, found a second bolt beneath the tiller, and discovered
a
third in a narrow sheath sewn into the dead man’s jacket along the seam of the forearm; both of which he sent plunging into the girl’s heart at point-blank range, pinning her to the tree. Now she would not wake up from her undead sleep but simply rot here, unless Travellers found her first and burned her. Long before then, however, the sun would be up, when anything of the vampire left alive in her would likewise die.

And without another moment’s thought for her, or a word said over her, Nestor set out north again and skirted the continuing sounds of savage celebration where they echoed in the depths of the violated forest. Once, through the trees, he saw the flickering yellow flames of a campfire dancing in a clearing, and several nodding grey ghost shapes which could only be the silhouettes of flyers; but striding out and stronger now, he soon left all of that far behind …

Without further incident, Nestor came at last to the foothills and commenced climbing, and one-third of the way through Sunside’s three-day “night” found himself almost up into the hard rock outcrops, scree-covered saddles, and sheer cliff faces of the barrier mountains themselves.

Now the going was harder but Nestor was undeterred. With something over forty hours to go before sunup, he would be up into the peaks, safely through the high passes, and down into the shadows of Starside before the searing sunlight could discover and devour him. He slept once, briefly, in a cleft in the base of a cliff—and woke up thinking that he’d overslept and the sun was already up!

But it wasn’t. Though the evilly glittering Northstar was hidden now by the wall of the mountains, the rest of the stars shone cold and bright as ever overhead, and the long night was only half-way through.

Twice as he climbed he saw signs of Wamphyri activity. On the first occasion, a handful of heavily burdened manta shapes pulsed wearily overhead on a course for Starside. This would be the Killglance brothers; having slept off their orgy of blood-letting and red rape, they’d be on their way back to Madmanse.

The second time it was a mist that drew Nestor’s attention: a vampire mist, rolling like a soft, shallow white lake through the once thronging thoroughfares in the deserted ruins of Twin Fords far below. It could be Gorvi the Guile down there (for he was a crafty mist-maker), or the dog-Lord, even the Lady Wratha herself, but Nestor made no inquiry. Up here in the heights he was vulnerable and wanted no enemy coming to investigate his presence. But if it was Gorvi down there, hunting on his own for once, and separate from the Killglance brothers—

Perhaps there’d been a falling out between them. Nestor hoped so.

Even as he looked down, a fire sprang into being in the old town’s center where a house went up in flames. Doubtless a celebration was in progress. So Twin Fords hadn’t been deserted after all. Not tonight, at least. But tomorrow it would be, most certainly …

With the first flush of a false dawn staining the southern horizon, Nestor made his way wearily through a high pass to cross the dividing line between Sunside and Starside. An invisible demarcation, it was the halfway point where Sunside disappeared from view, even the horizon. And in the Stygian shadows of the Starside peaks, at last he felt safe.

So he returned into Starside, and emerged from the pass to gaze down on the barren boulder plains. In the north-east, way beyond the hell-lands Gate, the last aerie of the Wamphyri was alive (or undead) even now; from here it was invisible, except perhaps as a series of faintly twinkling lights in the dusky-blue distance. As for the glaring hemisphere Gate: that lay in the foothills around the curve of the mountains, which kept it hidden from view.

Nestor found a flat-topped boulder and sat himself down. He was tired and would rest a while, perhaps even sleep. But first he must at least attempt to make contact. In Wrathstack, the Lords, Lady, and all their lieutenants and thralls would be making ready for the long day. Wratha would be drawing her bat-fur curtains in the higher towers and turrets and south-facing windows of Wrathspire; Canker would be out on a Mangemanse balcony somewhere, singing a last sad song to the blind, uncaring moon; down in Suckscar, Zahar would be wondering what was become of his master. Those without duties would be taking to their beds, while the shift-workers and watchmen would be up and about, seeing to the maintenance and security of the five great manses.

Despite that Nestor’s eyelids weighed as heavy as lead, he stared into the north-east at that perhaps imaginary twinkle of lights, projected his Wamphyri thoughts at a mental picture of Zahar in Suckscar—and was immediately rewarded as his probe found not one but three receptive targets! Zahar, Wratha, and Canker: all of them at various windows in their various levels, all gazing into the south-west and thinking of Nestor.

Zahar’s emotions were mixed, his thoughts confused, as his mind met that of his master. He couldn’t send without Nestor’s aid but was his master’s true thrall and received his thoughts well enough. And when Nestor’s probe touched him, it was as if Nestor himself stood there, saying:
You, Zahar, come to me!