Necroscope 4: Deadspeak by Brian Lumley Read Free Book Online Page A

so, then it was mistaken, wasted.
    For the final scene was of the same urn, and above it a black bat in flight, rising like a phoenix from the ashes. Indeed, the very sigil of the Ferenczy! And:
    Aye, said Janos darkly, in Dumitru’s head, but not until the advent of the three-fingered man. Not until he comes, the true son of my sons. For only then may I escape from one vessel into the next. Ah, for there are vessels and there are vessels, Dumiitruuu, and some of them are of stone …
    Again the youth’s mind had started to unmaze itself. Of his own will, suddenly he saw how low his torch had burned where he’d placed it in a stone bracket on the wall. He took it down and tremblingly lit another from it, waving it a little to get the flame going. And licking his dry lips, he looked at the myriad urns and wondered which one held his tormentor. How easy it would be to shatter the thing, scatter its dust, thrust his torch amongst those sentient remains and see if they’d burn a second time.
    Janos was not slow to note the resurgence of Szgany will, or to read the threat in the mind he’d mastered. He chuckled voicelessly and said: Ah, not here, not here, Dumiitruuu! What? You’d have me lie among scum? And could it be I heard you thinking treacherous thoughts just then? Still, you’d not be of the blood if you didn’t, eh? And again his evil chuckle, following which: But you were right to rekindle your torch: best not let the flame die, Dumiitruuu, for it’s an exceeding dark place you’ve come to. Also, there’s yet a thing or two I want to show you, for which we’ll need the light. Now see, there’s a room to your “right, my son. Go in through the archway, if you will, and there discover my true lair.
    Dumitru might have struggled with himself … but useless; the vampire’s grip on his mind had returned more solid than ever. He did as instructed, passing under the arch and into a room much like the others except for its appointments. No racks of amphorae or frescoed walls here; the place was more habitation than warehouse; woven tapestries were on the walls, and the floor was of green-glazed tiles set in mortar. Centrally, a mosaic of smaller tiles described the prophetic crest of the Ferenczy, while to one side and close to a massive fireplace stood an ancient table of dense, black oak.
    The wall hangings were falling into mouldering tatters and the dust lay as thick here as anywhere, but yet there was a seeming anomaly. Upon the desk were papers, books, envelopes, various seals and waxes, pens and inks: modern things by comparison with anything else Dumitru had seen. The Ferenczy’s things? He had assumed the Old One to be dead—or undead—but all of this seemed to suggest otherwise.
    No, the Baron’s viscous mental voice contradicted him, not mine but the property of… shall we say, a student of mine? He studied my works, and might even have dared to study me! Oh, he knew well enow the words to call me up, but he did not know where to find me, nor even that I was here at all! But alas, I fancy he’s no more. Most likely his bones adorn the upper ruins somewhere. It shall delight me to discover them there one day, and do for him what he might so easily have done for me!
    While the voice of Janos Ferenczy so darkly and yet obscurely reminisced, so Dumitru Zirra had crossed to the table. There were copies of letters there, but not in any language he could read. He could make out the dates, though, from fifty years earlier, and something of the far-flung postal addresses and addressees. There had been a M. Raynaud in Paris, a Josef Nadek in Prague, one Colin Grieve in Edinburgh, and a Joseph Curwen in Providence; oh, and a host of others in the towns and cities of as many different lands again. The writer to all of these names and addresses, as witness his handwriting on the browned paper, was one and the same person: a certain Mr. Hutchinson, or “Edw. H.”, as he more frequently signed himself.
    As for