‘Then they kill the mouse, eh?’
‘No, I don’t think so. They draw off some of its blood, impregnate that with their malefic will, vaporise it, and call up an elemental to feed upon its essence. Then they perform a mystic transfusion in their victim’s veins causing the elemental to poison them. But, Rex–—’
‘Yes, my sweet.’
‘It is not that I am afraid to die. In any case, as I have told you, there is no hope of my living out the year, but that has not troubled me for a long time now. It is what may come after that terrifies me so.’
‘Surely he can’t harm anybody once they’re dead,’ Rex protested.
‘But he can,’ Tanith burst out with a little cry of distress and fear. ‘If he kills me that way, he can make me dead to the world, but I shall live on as an undead, and that would be horrible.’
Rex passed his hand wearily across his eyes. ‘Don’t speak in riddles, treasure. What is this thing you’re frightened of? Just tell me now in ordinary, plain English.’
‘All right. I suppose you have heard of a vampire.’
‘Why, yes. I’ve read of them in fiction. They’re supposed to come out of their graves every night and drink the blood of human beings, aren’t they? Until they’re found out, then their graves are opened up for a priest to cut off their head and drive stakes through their hearts. Is that what you call an undead?’
Tanith nodded slowly. ‘Yes, that is an undeada foul, revolting thing, a living corpse that creeps through the night like a great white slug, and a body bloated from drinking people’s blood. But have you never read of them in other books beside nightmare fiction?’
‘No. I wouldn’t exactly say I have as far as I can remember. The Duke would know all about them for a certaintyand Richard Eaton too, I expectbecause they’re both great readers. But I’m just an ordinary chap who’s content to take his reading from the popular novelists who can turn out a good, interesting story. Do you mean to tell me seriously that such creatures have ever existed outside the thriller writer’s imagination?’
‘I do. In the Carpathians, where I come from, the whole countryside is riddled with vampire stories from real life. You hear of them in Poland and Hungary and Roumania, too. All through Middle Europe and right down into the Balkan countries there have been endless cases of such revolting Satanic manifestations. Anyone there will tell you that time and again, when graves have been opened on suspicion, the corpses of vampires have been found, months after burial without the slightest sign of decay, their flesh pink and flushed, their eyes wide-open, bright and staring. The only difference to their previous appearance is the way in which their canine teeth have grown long and pointed. Often, even, they have been found with fresh blood trickling out of the sides of their mouths.’
‘Say, that sounds pretty grim,’ Rex exclaimed with a little shudder. ‘I reckon De Richleau would explain that by saying that the person was possessed before he died and that after, although the actual soul passed on, the evil spirit continued to make a doss-house of its borrowed body. But I can’t think that anything so awful would ever happen to you.’
‘It might, my dear. That is what scares me so. And if Mocata did get hold of me again he would not need to perform those ghastly rites with impregnated blood. He could just throw me into the hypnotic state and, after he had made me do all he wished, allow some terrible thing to take possession of me at once. The elemental would still remain in my body when he killed me, and I should become one of those loathsome creaturesthe un-dead, if that happened, this very night.’
‘Stop! I can’t bear to think of it,’ Rex drew her quickly to him again. ‘But he shan’t get hold of you. We’ll fight him till all’s blue, and I’m going to marry you tomorrow so that I can be with you constantly. We’ll apply for a special licence first thing in the morning.’
She nodded, and a new light of hope came into her eyes. ‘If you wish it, Rex,’ she whispered, ‘and I do believe that by your love and strength, you can save me. But you mustn’t leave me for a single second tonight, and we mustn’t sleep a wink. Listen!’
She paused a moment as the bell in the village steeple chimed the twelve strokes of midnight, which came to them clearly in the stillness of the quiet room. ‘It is the second of May now my fatal day.’
He smiled indulgently. ‘Sure, I won’t leave you, and we won’t sleep either. One of us might drop off if we were all alone, but together we’ll prod each other into keeping awake. Though I just can’t think that’ll be necessary, with all the million things I’ve got to tell you about your sweet self.’
She stood up then, raising her arms to smooth back her hair, and making a graceful slender silhouette against the flickering flames of the heaped-up fire.
‘No. The night will slip away before we know it,’ she agreed more cheerfully. ‘Because I’ve got a thousand things to tell you too. I must just slip upstairs to powder my nose now, and when I come back, we’ll settle down in earnest to make a night of it together.’
A quick frown crossed his face. ‘I thought you said I wasn’t to let you leave me even for a second. I don’t like your going upstairs alone at all.’
‘But, my dear!’ Tanith gave a little laugh, ‘I can hardly take you with me, and I shan’t be gone more than a few moments.’
Rex nodded, reassured as he saw her standing there, smiling down at him in the firelight so happy and normal in every way. He felt certain that he would know at once if Mocata was trying to exert his power on her from a distance, by that strange faraway look which had come into her eyes and the fanatical note that had raised the pitch of her voice each time she had spoken of the imperative necessity of her reaching the meeting-place for the Sabbat on the previous day. There was not the faintest suggestion of that other will, imposed upon her own, in her face or voice now, and obviously it would have been childish to attempt to prevent her carrying out so sensible a suggestion before settling down. The best part of six hours must elapse before daylight began to filter greyly through the old-fashioned bow window at the far end of the room.
‘All right,’ he laughed. ‘I’ll give you five minutes by that clock but no more, remember, and if you’re not down then, I’ll come up and get you.’
‘Dear lover!’ she stopped suddenly and kissed him, then slipped out of the room closing the door softly behind her.
Rex lay back, spreading his great limbs now in the comfortable corner of the inglenook, and stretching out his long legs to the glow of the log fire. He wasn’t sleepy, which amazed him when he thought how little sleep he had had since he woke in his stateroom on the giant Cunarder the morning of the day that he dined with De Richleau. That seemed ages ago now, weeks, months, years. So many things had happened, so many new and staggering thoughts come to seethe and ferment in his brain, yet Simon’s party had been held only a bare two nights before.
His hand moved lazily to his hip pocket to get a cigarette, but half way to it he abandoned the attempt as too much trouble, wriggling down instead more comfortably among the cushions.
He wasn’t sleepynot a bit. His brain had never been more active and his thoughts turned for a moment to his friends at Cardinals Folly. They, too, would be wide awake, braced, no doubt, under De Richleau’s determined leadership, to face an attack from the powers of evil. De Richleau must be feeling pretty sleepy he thought. Neither of them had had more than three hours that morning after their exhausting night. They hadn’t got to bed much before dawn the night before either, and the Duke had been up, according to Max, at seven in order to be at the British Museum directly it opened. Say six hours in sixty. That wasn’t much, but De Richleau was an old campaigner and he would stick it all right, Rex had no doubt.