Across Giresci's waistcoat he wore a chain of gold. Now he took from the left-hand waistcoat pocket a silver fob watch completely out of keeping with the antique chain, and from the right the medallion of which he had spoken, holding the jewellery up for Dragosani's inspection. Dragosani caught his breath and held it, ignored the watch and chain but took hold of the medallion and stared at it. On one face of the disc he saw a highly stylised heraldic cross which could only be that of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, but which had been scored through again and again with some sharp instrument and thoroughly defaced; and on the other side -
Somehow Dragosani had expected it. In harsh, almost crude bas-relief, a triple device: that of the devil, the bat, and the dragon. He knew the motif only too well, and the question it prompted came out in a rush of breath which surprised him more than Giresci:
'Have you tracked this down?'
'The device, its heraldic significance? I have tried. It has a significance, obviously, but I've so far failed to discover the origin of this specific coat or chapter. I can tell you something of the symbolism, in local history, of the dragon and the bat; but as for the devil motif, that is rather... obscure. Oh, I know what / make of it, all right, but that's a personal thing and purely conjectural, with little or nothing to sub-'
'No,' Dragosani impatiently cut him off. 'That wasn't my meaning. I know the motif well enough. But what of the man - or creature - who gave you the medallion?
Were you able to trace his history?' He stared at the other, eager for the answer without quite knowing what had prompted the question. Asking it had been an almost involuntary action, the words simply springing from his tongue - as if they'd been waiting there for some trigger.
Giresci nodded, took back the medallion, watch and chain. 'It's curious, I know,' he said, 'but after an experience like mine you'd think I'd steer clear of all such stuff, wouldn't you? You certainly wouldn't think it would start me off on all those long years of private search and research. But that's what it did; and where better to start, as you seem to have worked out for yourself, than with the name and family and history of the creature I had destroyed that night? First his name: it was Faethor Ferenczy.'
'Ferenczy?' Dragosani repeated, almost tasting the word. He leaned forward, his fingertips white where they pressed down on the table between them. The name meant something to him, he felt sure. But what? 'And his family?'
'What?' Giresci seemed surprised at something. 'You don't find the name peculiar? Oh, the surname is common enough, I'll grant you - it's chiefly Hungarian. But Faethor?'
'What of it?'
Giresci shrugged. 'I only ever came across it on one other occasion: a ninth-century White Khorvaty prince ling. His surname was pretty close, too: Ferrenzig.'
Ferenczy, Ferrenzig, thought Dragosani. One and the same. And then he checked himself. Why on earth should he jump to a conclusion like that? And yet at the same time he knew that he had not merely 'jumped to a conclusion' but that he had known the duality of the Wamphyri identity for a fact. Dual identity? But surely that too was a conclusion drawn in haste. He had meant that the names were the same, not the men, or man, who had borne the names. Or had he in fact meant more than that? If so it was an insane conclusion - that those two Faethors, one a ninth-century Khorvatian prince and the other a modern Romanian landowner, should be one and the same man - or should be insane, except that Dragosani knew from the old Thing in the ground that the concept of vampiric and undead longevity was far from insane.
'What else did you learn of him?1 he finally broke the silence. 'What about his family? Surviving members, I mean. And his history, other than this tenuous Khorvaty link?'
Giresci frowned and scratched his head. 'Talking to you' he growled, 'is an unrewarding, even frustrating game. I keep getting this feeling that you already know most of the answers. That perhaps you know even more than I do. It's as if you merely use me to confirm your own well-established beliefs...' He paused for a moment, and when Dragosani offered no reply, continued: 'Anyway, as far as I'm aware Faethor Ferenczy was the last of his line. None survive him.'
Then you're mistaken!' Dragosani snapped. He at once bit his lip and lowered his voice. 'I mean... you can't be sure of that.'
Giresci was taken aback. 'Again you know better than me, eh?' He had been drinking Dragosani's whisky steadily but seemed little affected. Again he poured shots before suggesting: 'Let me tell you just exactly what I found out about this Ferenczy, yes?
The war was over by the time I got started. As for making a living: I couldn't complain. I had my own place, right here, and was "compensated" for my lost leg. This plus a small disability pension rounded things off; I would get by. Nothing luxurious, but I wouldn't starve or go in need of a roof over my head. My wife - well, she had been another victim of the war. We had no family and I never remarried.
'As to how I became engrossed with the vampire legend: I suppose it was mainly that I had nothing else to do. Or nothing else that I wanted to do. But this drew me like some monstrous magnet...
'All right, I won't bore you; I explain all of this simply to put you in the picture. And as you know, my investigations started with Faethor Ferenczy. I went back to where it had happened, talked to people who might have known him. Most of that neighbourhood had been reduced to rubble but a few houses still stood. The actual Ferenczy house was just a shell, blackened inside and out, with nothing at all to show who or what had lived there.
'Anyway, I had his name from various sources: postal services, Lands and Property Registry, missing-believed-dead list, war casualty register, etc. But other than this handful of responsible authorities, no one seemed to know him personally. Then I found an old woman still living in the district, a Widow Luorni. Some fifteen years before the war she'd worked for Ferenczy, had been his cleaner lady. She went in twice weekly and kept his place in good order. She'd done that for ten years or more, until she'd grown disenchanted with the work. She wouldn't say why specifically, but it was obvious to me that the trouble was Ferenczy himself, something about him. Something that had gradually grown on her until she couldn't take any more of it. At any rate, she never once mentioned his name without crossing herself. Yes, but still she managed to tell me some interesting things about him... I'll try to cut it short for you:
'There were no mirrors in his house. I know I don't have to explain the significance of that...
'The Widow Luorni never saw her employer outside the place in daylight; she never saw him outdoors at all except on two occasions, both times at evening, in his own garden.
'She never once prepared a meal for him and never saw him eat anything. Not ever. He had a kitchen, yes, but to the old lady's knowledge never used it; or if he did, then he cleared up after himself.
'He had no wife, no family, no friends. He received very little mail, was often away from home for weeks on end. He did not have a job and did not appear to do any work in the privacy of his home, but he always had money. Plenty of it. When I checked, I was unable to discover anything by way of a bank account in his name. In short, Ferenczy was a very strange, very secretive, very reclusive man ...
'But that's not all, far from it. And the rest is even stranger. One morning when she went to clean, the old girl found the local police there. Three brothers, a well-known gang of burglars working out of Moreni - a brutish lot that the police had been after for years - had been apprehended at the house. Apparently they'd broken into the place in the wee small hours of the morning. They had thought the house was empty: a bad mistake indeed!
'According to statements they later made to the police, Ferenczy had been dragging one of them and herding the other two to the cellar when his attention was arrested by the arrival of horsemen outside the house. Remember, in those days the local police still used horses in the more isolated regions. It was them, all right; they had been alerted by reports of prowlers in the area, the brothers, of course. And never were three criminals more glad to be given over into the hands of the law!
Thugs they were, by all means, but they'd been no match for Faethor Ferenczy. Each of them had a broken right arm and a broken left leg, and their intended victim was responsible! Think of his strength Dragosani! The police were too grateful to him to go into the matter too deeply, Widow Luorni said - and after all, he had only been protecting his life and property - but she was there when the brothers were carted away a few hours later, and it was plain to her that her employer had scared the daylights out of them.
'Anyway, I've said that Ferenczy was in the act of taking his captives to the cellar. For what purpose? A place to detain them until help arrived? Possibly
'Or a place to keep them, like a cool pantry, until they were... required, eh?' said Dragosani.
Giresci nodded. 'Exactly! Anyway, shortly after that the Widow stopped working there.'
'Hmm!' Dragosani mused. 'It surprises me he let her go. I mean, she must have suspected something. You said yourself that she was "disenchanted", that a feeling of unease had grown in her until she could take no more. Wouldn't he worry that she'd talk about him?'
'Ah!' Giresci answered. 'But you've forgotten something, Dragosani. What about the way he controlled me -with his eyes and his mind - on the night of the bombing, the night he died?'
'Hypnotism,' said the other at once.
Giresci smiled grimly, nodded. 'It is an art of the vampire, one of many. He simply commanded her that so long as he lived she would remain silent. While he lived, she would simply forget all about him, forget that she had ever seen anything sinister in him.'
'I see,' said Dragosani.
'And so strong was his power,' the other continued, 'that she actually did forget - until I questioned her about him all those years later. For, of course, by then Ferenczy was dead.'
Giresci's manner was beginning to irritate Dragosani. The man's air of self-satisfaction - his smugness - his obviously high opinion of his own detective skills. 'But of course this is all conjecture,' the necromancer finally said. 'You don't know any of it for a certainty.'
'Oh, but I do,' answered the other at once. 'I know it from the Widow herself. Now don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that she simply volunteered all of this. It wasn't that we had a good gossip session or anything like that. Far from it. No, for I had to really sit down with her and ask her about him, repeatedly, until I'd dug it all out. He was dead and his power gone, certainly, but still something of it lingered over, do you see?'
Dragosani grew thoughtful. His eyes narrowed a little. Suddenly, surprisingly, he felt threatened by this man. He was too clever by far, this Ladislau Giresci. Dragosani resented him - and at once wondered why. He found it hard to understand his own feelings, the sudden surge of emotion within. It was too enclosed in here, claustrophobic. That must be it. He shook his head, sat up straighter, tried to concentrate. 'Of course, the Widow is long dead now.'
'Oh, yes-years ago.'
'So you and I, we're the only ones who know anything at all about Faethor Ferenczy?'
Giresci peered at the younger man. Dragosani's voice had sunk so low that it was little more than a growl, almost sinister. There seemed something wrong with him. Even under Giresci's questioning gaze he gave himself another shake, rapidly blinking his eyes.
That's right,' Giresci answered, frowning. 'I've told no one else in - oh, longer than I can remember. No point telling anyone else, for who'd believe? But are you all right, my friend? Are you well? Is something bothering you?'
'Me?' Dragosani found himself leaning forward, as if drawn towards Giresci. He deliberately forced himself upright in his chair. 'No, of course not. I'm a little drowsy, that's all. My meal, I suppose. The good food you've served me. Also, I've driven a long way in the last few days. Yes, that's it: I'm tired.'
'You're sure?'
'Yes, quite sure. But go on, Giresci, don't stop now. Please tell me more. About Ferenczy and his forebears. About the Ferrenzigs. The Wamphyri in general. Tell me anything else you know or suspect. Tell me everything.'
'Everything? It could take a week, longer!'
'I have a week,' Dragosani answered.
'Damn, I believe you're serious!'
'I am.'
'Well now, Dragosani, doubtless you're a nice enough young fellow, and it's good to talk to someone who's genuinely interested and knows something about one's subject - but what makes you think I'd care to spend a whole week like that? At my age time's important. Or maybe you think I have the same kind of longevity Ferenczy had, eh?'
Dragosani smiled, but thinly. On the point of saying, you can talk to me here or in Moscow, he checked himself. That wasn't necessary. Not yet, anyway. And it might let Borowitz in on his big secret: how he came to be a necromancer in the first place. 'Then how about the next hour or two?' he compromised. 'And, since you've suggested it, we can start with Ferenczy's longevity.'
Giresci chuckled. 'Fair enough. Anyway, there's whisky left yet!' He poured himself another shot, made himself comfortable. And after a moment's thought:
'Ferenczy's longevity. The near-immortality of the vampire. Let me tell you something else the Widow Luorni
said. She said that when she was a small girl, her grandmother had remembered a Ferenczy living in the same house. And her grandmother before her! Nothing strange about that, though - son follows father, right? There were plenty of old Boyar families round here whose names went back to time immemorial. There still are. What's strange is this: to the Widow's knowledge there had never been any female Ferenczys. And how does a man pass on his name if he never takes a wife, eh?'
'And of course you looked into it,' said Dragosani.
'I did. Records were scarce, however, for the war had destroyed a great deal. But certainly the house had been the seat of the Ferenczys as far back as I could trace it, and never a woman among 'em! A celibate lot, eh?'
Without understanding his outrage, Dragosani suddenly felt that he himself had been insulted. Or perhaps it was only his natural intelligence which felt slighted. 'Celibate?' he said stiffly. 'I think not.'
Giresci nodded. In fact he was well aware of the Wamphyri's rapacious nature. 'No, of course not,' he confirmed Dragosani's denial. 'What? A vampire celibate? Ridiculous? Lust is the very force that drives him. Universal lust - for power, flesh, blood! But listen to this:
'In 1840 one Bela Ferenczy set off across the Meridi-onali to visit a cousin or other relative in the mountains of the northern Austro-Hungarian borders. Now this much is well documented; indeed, old Bela seems to have gone to a deal of trouble to let people know he was going visiting. He installed a man to look after the place while he was away - not a local man, incidentally, but someone of gypsy stock - hired a coach and driver for the early stages of the journey, made reservations for connections through the high passes, and completed all of the preparations necessary to travel in these parts in those days.
And he put it about locally that this was to be a journey of valediction. He had seemed to grow very old very quickly in the last year or two, and so it was accepted that he went to say his last farewells to distant relatives.
'Now remember, we were still very much Moldavia-Wallachia at that time. In Europe the Industrial Revolution was in full swing - everywhere but here! Insular as ever, we were so backward as to seem almost retarded! The Lemberg-Galatz railway, skirting the mountains, was still more than a decade away. News travelled extremely slowly, and records were hard to keep. I mention this to highlight the fact that in this case there was good communication, and that a record did survive.'
'Case?' Dragosani queried. 'What case are you talking about?'
'The case of Bela Ferenczy's sudden death when his coach and horses were hurled into a precipice by an avalanche in one of the high passes! News of the "accident" got swiftly back here; the old man's Szgany retainer took Ferenczy's sealed will to the local registrar; the will was posted without delay, showing that the Ferenczy house and grounds were to pass to a "cousin", one Giorg, who had, apparently, already been appraised of the situation and his inheritance.'
Dragosani nodded. 'And of course this Giorg Ferenczy later turned up and took possession. He would be - or he would appear to be - younger far than Bela, but the family resemblance would be unquestionable.'
'Good!' Giresci barked. 'You follow my reasoning precisely. Having lived here for fifty years, which would normally make him an old man, Bela had decided it was high time he "died" and made way for the next in line.'
'And after Giorg?'
'Faethor, of course,' Giresci scratched his chin reflectively. 'I've often wondered,' he said, 'if I had not killed
him on the night of the bombing - if he had survived that night - what his next incarnation would have been? Would he have shown up after the war in some new Ferenczy guise, to rebuild the house and carry on as before? I think the answer is probably yes. They are territorial, the Wamphyri.'
'And so you're convinced that Bela, Giorg, and Faethor were all one and the same?'
'Of course. I thought that was understood. Didn't he tell me as much himself, when he raved of the battles at Silistria and Constantinople? And before Bela there was Grigor, Karl, Peter and Stefan - oh, and the Lord knows how many others - all the way back to Faethor Ferrenzig the princeling and probably beyond! This was his territory, do you see? He held bloody dominion here. And in the olden times, as princelings or Boyars, my God but the Wamphyri were fierce about their holdings! That was why he joined the Fourth Crusade, to keep olden and future enemies off his lands. His lands, you understand? No matter what king or government or system is in power, the vampire considers his home ground to be his. He fought to protect himself, his monstrous heritage, and not for a mangy pack of scummy foreigners out of the West! You've seen the defaced Crusader cross on the reverse of my medallion - hah! When they dishonoured him he scorned them, spat on them!'
'And have you actually traced his name that far back? To Constantinople, I mean, in 1204?' Something of his awe of the vampire - or his envy? - was evident in Dragosani's voice.
Giresci cocked his head a little on one side; 'Dragosani, how's your history?'
'Hardly brilliant. Fair, I suppose.'
'Hmm! Well, many names came down from the Fourth Crusade, but you'll be hard put to find a Ferenczy or Ferrenzig amongst them. He was there, though, be sure of it! How do I know? Well, it's possible that you're talking to the world's foremost authority on that particular bloodbath, and I've discovered things which I'm sure many other historians have overlooked. Of course, I had the advantage of knowing what I was looking for - my objectives were specific - but in the process of tracking down the vampire I've naturally covered a deal of extraneous ground. Man, I could write a book on the Fourth Crusade - certainly from Hungary to Constantinople! And talking of Constantinople: Lord, what a hell that must have been! What a battle! And sure enough, right there in the thick of it - wherever the fighting raged fiercest - there was this man and the brutish horde he commanded. He was there too when the city fell, when he and his band of mercenary berserkers rampaged, utterly out of control. Yes, and his excesses spread like a cancer; the entire army joined in; they raped, pillaged and massacred for three long days...
Tope Innocent III had called the Crusade; now, aghast at what it had turned into, he was unable to regain control. The Crusaders had vowed to take the Holy Land, but Innocent and his legate were obliged to absolve them from that vow. He as good as washed his hands of the affair; but in secret communiqu��s he exercised what little control remained to him, ordering that those directly responsible for "gross acts of excessive and unnatural cruelty" must gain "neither glory nor rich reward" for their barbarism but that "their names shall not be mentioned, nor shall they be offered respect or high regard".
'Well, no need to look far for a scapegoat: a certain "bloodthirsty Wallach recruited in Zara" would fit the bill nicely. Nor was he blameless. At first the Crusaders had honoured and elevated him - perhaps, secretly, they'd even envied or feared him - but now he found himself stripped of all honours and disgraced, and his name was stricken from all records. In return he scorned them for their duplicity, and defacing the sigil of their campaign -the cross on his medallion - he took his band and went home, proud and fierce under the banner of the devil, the bat and the dragon.'
Dragosani chewed on his lip for a moment before saying: 'Let's assume that to all intents and purposes all of this is true, or at least based on the truth to the best of your knowledge. Still there are several important questions remaining to be answered.'
'Such as?'
'Ferenczy was a vampire. A vampire takes victims. When the hunger is on him he'll kill as ruthlessly as a fox kills chickens, and just as thoughtlessly. Yet it seems his sheet was clean. How could he possibly live here through all those centuries without once arousing suspicion? Remember, Ladislau Giresci, the blood is the life! Were there no cases of vampirism?'
'Around Ploiesti? None - not one - not as long as they've kept records, so far as I can discover.' Giresci smiled grimly and leaned forward. 'But if you were a vampire, Dragosani, would you take victims right on your own doorstep?'
'No, I don't suppose I would,' Dragosani frowned. 'Where, then?'
'North, my friend, in the Meridionali itself! Where else but the Transylvanian Alps, where all vampire stories seem to have their roots? Slanic and Sinaia in the foothills, Brasov and Sacele beyond the pass. And none of them more than fifty miles distant from Ferenczy's house, and all shunned for their evil reputations.'
'What, even now?' Dragosani feigned surprise, but he remembered what Maura Kinkovsi had had to say on the subject three years ago.
'Stories linger down the years, Dragosani. Especially ghost stories. They take no chances, the mountain folk. If you die young up there and there's no simple explanation, it's the stake for you for sure! As to actual case histories: the last child to die of a vampire's bite did so in Slanic in the winter of forty-three. Yes, and she was buried with a stake through her heart, like a great many 'innocents before her. What? There had been eleven that year alone, in the villages around!'