wanted you back anyway. With Borowitz gone they have a new boss, Felix Krakovitch. He 
said we could have you, if we'd tell them how. How you did what you did to them. What, 
exactly, you'd done to them. I'm sorry, Harry, but we had to deny you, tell them we 
didn't know you. Actually, we didn't know you! Only I knew you, and Sir Keenan before me. 
But if we'd admitted you were one of ours, what you'd done might be construed as warfare."
  Actually, it was mayhem! said Keogh. Listen, Alec, this can't be like the last time we 
talked. I may not have the time. On the metaphysical plane I have comparative free-dom. 
In the Mobius continuum I'm a free agent. But here in the physical now I'm a virtual 
prisoner in little Harry. Right now he's asleep and I can use his subconscious mind as my 
own. But when he's awake his mind's his own, and like a magnet I'm drawn back to it. The 
stronger he gets-the more his mind learns-the less freedom for me. Eventually I'll be 
forced to leave him entirely for an existence along the Mobius way. If I get the chance 
I'll explain all of that later, but for now we don't know how long he'll sleep and so we 
have to use our time wisely. And what I have to say can't wait.
  "And it somehow concerns Dragosani?" Kyle frowned. "But Dragosani's dead. You told me 
that yourself."
  Keogh's face-the face of his apparition-was grave now. Do you remember what he was, 
this Dragosani?
  "He was a necromancer," said Kyle at once, no shadow of doubt in his mind. "Much like 
you." He saw his mistake immediately and could have bitten his tongue.
  Unlike me! Keogh corrected him. I was, I am, a necroscope, not a necromancer. Dragosani 
stole the secrets of the dead like... like an insane dentist yanking healthy 
teeth-without an anaesthetic. Me: I talk to the dead and respect them. And they respect 
me. But very well, I know that was a slip of the tongue. I know you didn't mean that. So 
yes, he was a necromancer. But because of what the old Thing in the ground did to him, he 
was more than that. He was worse than that.
  Of course. Now Kyle remembered. "You mean he was also a vampire."
  Keogh's shimmering image nodded. That's exactly what I mean. And that's why I'm here 
now. You see, you're the only one in the world who can do anything about it. You and your 
branch, and maybe your Russian counterparts. And when you know what I'm talking about, 
then you'll have to do something about it.
  Such was Keogh's intensity, such the warning in his mental voice, that gooseflesh crept 
on Kyle's spine. "Do something about what, Harry?"
  About the rest of them, the apparition answered. You see, Alec, Dragosani and Thibor 
Ferenczy weren't the only ones. And God only knows how many more there are!
  "Vampires?" Kyle thrilled with horror. He remembered only too well that story Keogh had 
told him some eight months ago. "You're sure?"
  Oh yes. In the Mobius continuum-looking out through the doors of time past and time to 
come-I've seen their scarlet threads. I wouldn't have known them, might never have come 
across them, but they cross young Harry's blue life thread. Yes, and they cross yours, 
too!
  Hearing that, it was as if the cold blade of a psychic knife lanced into Kyle's heart. 
"Harry," he said stumblingly, "you'd... you'd better tell me all you know, and then what 
I must do."
  I'll tell you as much as I can, and then we'll try to decide what's to be done. As to 
how I know what I'm about to tell you... The apparition shrugged. I'm a necroscope, 
remember? I've talked to Thibor Ferenczy himself, as I once promised him I would, and 
I've talked to one other. A recent victim. More of him later. But mainly the story is 
Thibor's...
  
  
  Chapter Two
  The old Thing in the ground trembled however minutely, shuddered slightly, strove to 
return to his immemorial dreaming. Something was intruding, threatening to rouse him up 
from his dark slumbers, but sleep had become a habit which satisfied his every need... 
almost. He clung to his loathsome dreams-of madness and mayhem, the hell of living and 
the horror of dying, and the pleasures of blood, blood, blood-and felt the cold embrace 
of the clotted earth closing him in, weighing him down, holding him here in his darkling 
grave. And yet the earth was familiar and no longer held any terrors for him; the 
darkness was like that of a shuttered room or deep vault, an impenetrable gloom entirely 
in keeping; the forbidding nature and location of his mausoleum not only set him apart 
but kept him protected. He was safe here. Damned forever, certainly-doomed for all time, 
yes, barring some major miracle of intervention-but safe, too, and there was much to be 
said for safety.
  Safe from the men-mere men, most of them-who had put him here. For in his dreaming the 
wizened Thing had forgotten that those men were long dead. And their sons, dead. And 
theirs, and theirs...
  The old Thing in the ground had lived for five hundred years, and as long again had 
lain undead in his unhallowed grave.Above him, in the gloom of a glade beneath stirless, 
snow-laden trees, the tumbled stones and slabs of his tomb told something of his story, 
but only the Thing himself knew all of it. His name had been... but no, the Wamphyri have 
no names as such. His host's name, then, had been Thibor Ferenczy, and in the beginning 
Thibor had been a man. But that had been almost a thousand years ago.
  The Thibor part of the Thing in the ground existed still, but changed, mutated, mingled 
and metamorphosed along with its vampire "guest". The two were one now, inseparably 
fused; but in dreams that spanned a millennium, still Thibor could return to his roots, 
go back to the immensely cruel past...
  In the very beginning he had not been a Ferenczy but an Ungar, though that was of no 
account now. His forefathers were farmers who came from a Hungarian princedom across the 
Carpathians to settle on the banks of the Dniester where it flowed down to the Black Sea. 
But "settling" was hardly the word for it. They had had to fight Vikings (the dreadful 
Varyagi) on the river, where they came exploring from the Black Sea, the Khazars and 
vassal Magyars from the steppes, finally the fierce Pechenegi tribes in their constant 
expansion west and north-wards. Thibor had been a young man then, when at last the 
Pechenegi wiped out the rude settlement he called home and he alone survived. After that 
he'd fled north to Kiev.
  Never much of a farmer, indeed, far more suited for war with his massive size-which in 
those days, when most men were small, made Thibor the Wallach some-thing of a giant-in 
Kiev he sold himself into the service of Vladimir I. The Vlad made him a small Voevod or 
warrior chief and gave him a hundred men. "Go join my Boyars in the south," he commanded. 
"Fend off and kill the Pechenegi, keep "em from crossing the Ros, and by our new 
Christian God I'll give you title and banner both, Thibor of Wallachia!" Thibor had gone 
to him when he was desperate, that much was clear.
  In his dream, the Thing in the ground remembered how he'd answered: Title and banner, 
keep them, my Lord-but only give me one hundred men more and I shall kill you a thousand 
Pechenegi before returning to Kiev. Aye, and I'll bring you their thumbs to prove it!"
  He got his hundred men; also, like it or not, his banner: a golden dragon, one forepaw 
raised in warning. "The dragon of the true Christ, brought to us by the Greeks," Vlad 
told him. "Now the dragon watches over Christian Kiev-Russia itself-and it roars from 
your banner with the voice of the Lord! What mark of your own will you put on it?" On