The Last Aerie (50 page)

After the Hunt:

Nestor and Glina

A little over three hours later, after resting their flyers a while in the foothills of the barrier mountains, and having then launched skywards to fly with the clouds once more, Nestor and Canker’s vampire senses simultaneously picked up strong Szgany vibrations. Landing at the edge of dense woodlands six miles west of the great pass, they found warm embers in a dead fire.

Then, going to all fours and sniffing in a wide circle all about, like a great hound or the dog-thing that he was, Canker soon picked up the scent; and with Nestor following on close behind, he began tracking his prey along the overgrown forest paths. In less than half an hour they had found the Traveller group: two young men, two young women, a twelve-year-old girl and an infant.

They had split into two family groups and slept beneath oiled leather awnings roped to the lower branches of trees in a natural clearing. And they were bundled up in cured furs on beds of bracken when Canker and Nestor came upon them.

Now this is more
to my liking!
The dog-Lord coughed in Nestor’s mind where they stood like wraiths wrapped in a mist of their own making, looking down on the sleeping faces of the group.
Aye, this is the stuff: it’s exactly what I had in mind! A man each, a woman each—this sweet girl-child with her sex unexplored, tight as a mouse’s earhole, to open up and fill on the one hand, bite into and drain to the dregs on the other—and an infant for roasting in the mountains when we’re feeling peckish, before we fly back to Starside! And come sunup, four brand new thralls in our manses in Wrathstack! This will have been a night and a half, and time for a lot more business yet. Hah! But we make a good team, you and I.

The infant lives
, Nestor answered.

Of course he does
, Canker agreed.
For now.

No, he is to remain alive, untouched, untainted.

What? But he’ll be succulent! And without these adults—with them as thralls in Wrathstack—what chance does he have anyway?

Plenty of chances, in Suckscar.

You’ll give him to that dumpling Glina? In place of the one she lost? Canker’s
mind was shrewd when he desired it to be.

Aye. It sometimes works with wolves. Without the infant we deprived her of she might hate me, and I want her to love me.

You put a lot of store by that girl. Is she that good?

She was good to me, upon a time. I … have my reasons. Let it be …

So be it
, Canker shrugged.
The child lives. In which case, the young girl is mine.

Will you keep her?

No, but I’ll be into her! And I’ll drink what’s left when I’m done!

Nestor scowled and said:
Fox, dog, wolf? Maybe there’s something of the pig in you, too! She’s a mere child, Canker!
But in fact he knew that she was only meat, or would be soon. And anyway, he didn’t really care one way or the other. Yet in the back of his mind, in the ever shrinking human part of him, perhaps something shrieked its abhorrence even now; but if so its cries were weak and went unheard.

As for what Nestor had said to the dog-Lord, which must surely be seen as an insult: Nestor could say
anything
to him, even things which would get other men killed. Usually Canker would grunt and turn away, to show his disapproval if Nestor’s words had cut him; but this time he was satisfied to laugh in his fashion.
A child, you say? Well I say she’s a she! And she’ll be good and tight!

His laughter died away in Nestor’s mind, to be replaced by cold cunning, insatiable lust, and purest evil. Then, with his eyes blazing like fires as his fangs commenced to lengthen and salivate, Canker went into a crouch over his intended victims and growled in Nestor’s mind:
When you are ready, just say the word.

Nestor was ready. “Now!” he said out loud.

They had hung their gauntlets from branches, to be picked up later when all was done. There had seemed little or no requirement for serious weaponry on this occasion. Now they reached down together, gripped the men by their throats and drew them swiftly from their beds. Canker’s was very young; the dog-Lord nipped him in the neck, delivered a stunning blow to the side of his head, tossed him aside and reached greedily for his suddenly screaming woman.

Nestor slammed his man against the bole of the tree and, as the wind was knocked out of him and he opened his mouth to cry his shock and terror, pinned him there by driving the six-inch blade of his knife through his gasping mouth and right cheek, deep into the bark and tough timber core. Conscious for now, the man stood there naked and shivering, slopping blood and saliva, gurgling where he clung to the tree to keep from falling and ripping his face wide open. He tried once to free the knife, despite the incredible pain it caused him, but only half-awake and weak from shock and horror—and Nestor having driven the knife home with a vampire’s enormous strength—it was a wasted effort.

Meanwhile, Nestor reached down again into the bundle of furs, but his attack on the man had taken time and given the woman a breathing space. She was already on her feet and running.

“After her, lad!” Canker cried, from where he’d tossed his victim face-down across a fallen tree trunk, mounted her from the rear and was hammering into her while she howled the agony of her violated flesh. “Ah, the thrill of the chase is—ah
, ahh!
—good,” he panted, “but the rewards are so much better! Except you mustn’t forget—ah, ahh,
ahhh!
—leave the girl-child to me. For I’ll not be—
ahhh!
—I’ll not be too long here.”

The girl, who had been sleeping a little apart from Canker’s targeted group, was also running; her long, slim white legs flashed in blue starlight as she sped barefoot into the forest. Nestor noted which direction the youngster took, passed the information to the dog-Lord in a single instantaneous thought, then hurried after the woman and quickly caught up with her.

Panting, whining deep in her throat like a trapped animal, she found her way blocked by thorn bushes, spun on her heel and saw Nestor coming … and rushed straight at him! Taken by surprise, indeed astonished, for a moment he stood stock still—until he saw the starlight glinting on the knife in her hand! And that hand even now arcing towards him. Ducking to one side, he felt the keen blade slicing into his arm: cold metal wetted on blood, cutting skin, muscle, metamorphic vampire sinew.

Furious, snarling—controlling his pain as only a Lord of the Wamphyri can—Nestor struck at the woman’s knife arm and felt it break like a twig. And as she cried her agony he clouted her on the head in the manner prescribed by the dog-Lord. Felled, she at once slumped to the forest floor.

While from some little distance away:

“A-ha!”
came Canker’s bark of triumph, and a moment later the wail of the waif. For the dog-thing had pursued and caught the small girl. And of course Nestor knew what he would do with her. But that was the way of it; the Wamphyri have their needs, and Canker’s needs were … often prodigious. And after all, the blood
is
the life, and young blood is the sweetest.

Briefly, curiously, Nestor found himself wondering whether Canker would drink before or after he’d used her … or during? But in any case the girl was as good as ruined; she would be a vampire in Mangemanse, if the dog-Lord left her enough strength to make it through the pass before the dawn …

The infant’s extra weight was negligible. Bundled up at the rear of Nestor’s saddle behind Glina’s slumped form, it cried out once or twice during the blustery ascent on the night thermals, but that was all. Yet its cries were sufficient to cause Glina to stir and moan in her vampire sleep.

Sensing that she would soon wake up, and again before her time, Nestor decided to test his theory. If Glina took to the child—and if the merest spark of her old love for him could yet be rekindled—then he would carry her to Suckscar, to be his thrall and warm his bed. If not … perhaps he would still take her to Suckscar. There was always the provisioning.

“What now?” Canker called across to him, breaking his train of thought. “What say we settle in the heights and rest awhile, and scan for Szgany fires and such?”

“Not me,” Nestor called back. “I’ll stop while I’m ahead. You carry on if you wish, and I’ll see you back in Wrathstack. Me, I’ve had more than enough for one night. My flyer’s weary. I’ll take a break in the heights, aye, but then I’m on my way back.”

Canker looked across at him and grinned lewdly, shrewdly. “Your mind’s an open door, Nestor. You never even sniffed that girl back there, or touched Glina for that matter. But now at last your juices are working. You want her, but you’re being coy about it. Well, that’s fair enough. Have it your own way. Canker’s not the one to stay where he’s not wanted. And anyway, you’re right: enough’s enough for one night. I have work aplenty in Mangemanse. I want to get back early and see what my lads are up to …
and
my lasses! And then there’s my moon music …”

“Farewell, then,” Nestor told him.

And Canker threw back his head and yipped, then sped for a gap between the peaks and was soon lost from sight…

Nestor landed his flyer in the thin soil of a saddle between jutting granite outcrops. Situated at a slightly higher altitude than the Sunside treeline, the hollow was thickly clad in purple night-blooming heather, which gave the place a cloying, sickly-sweet smell.

He lifted Glina down from his saddle and saw how cold and trembly she was. Well, and she would soon become accustomed to that; only the most extreme subzero temperatures will seriously incapacitate a vampire. But for the moment … they might as well be comfortable, at least.

And so he took down the infant child, wrapped him in his own soft leather jacket and laid him to one side, then spread the cured fur in which the child had been bundled and placed Glina upon it. Which was when she woke up.

“What? Who?” She struggled to sit up a little way, then fell back, to lie there wrapped in dark fur, pale and disheveled in the starlight. She looked, and was, a captive thing, a thrall, not only physically but mentally, too; or she would be soon. Which excited him and made him want to use her. But he would not take her by force, for he wanted her to come to him as she had used to. If she wouldn’t, then he would find another use for her. She was only flesh and blood.

She had been watching him for some time, until finally: “You …” she said. But her voice was dead, empty.

He took the child to her, showed her his face. “My baby?” Suddenly Glina’s voice was a whisper of hope; she couldn’t believe it; she reached for the child … and saw that he was not hers.

“No,” said Nestor, shaking his head. “He’s not yours. But he can be, if you want him.” He covered the baby again and put him to one side, in the heather.

“You burned
my
baby,” she said, her voice cold again. “And now you would give me this one? Some other poor mother’s loss?”

“I didn’t burn your child.” Nestor lied easily, for lying is the natural province of vampires. “It was the dog-Lord, Canker Canison. He burned your cabin. In any case, we didn’t know there was an infant in there.”

“But my baby burned nevertheless. And you, Nestor? What do you care? You are a vampire!”

He shrugged. “It was my destiny. To be Wamphyri. Didn’t I always tell you I was the Lord Nestor? Well, and now I am.”

Suddenly Glina was sobbing: deep, wracking, painful sobs.

He sat down with her and put an arm round her shuddering shoulders. “Tears change nothing.”

Amazingly, she snuggled up to him … or perhaps not amazingly. She was after all his thrall, and Nestor was her master. Also, he now felt a power in himself, a talent which he had not used before, because he’d not been aware of it; had not
needed
to know it. And his eyes were hypnotic and his voice languorous when he said, “Aye we sat together many a time, you and I, in your father’s cabin when they were abed. And sometimes we’d go down to the river, too …”

Conscious of her flesh, he opened the furs a little until his hand could steal inside to weigh her breasts. Just as in that other time.

And again she softened and snuggled closer, and said, “You don’t know how many times I’ve cried myself to sleep and longed for your return. But not like this. Nestor, what will become of me? Will you make me a vampire, too?”

“But it’s done,” he said, with another shrug. “My mark is on you. It’s the mark of that which governs me and could be no other way. As to what will become of you: we’ll fly to Wrathstack, the last aerie, if you wish it. And the child, too.”

“And if I do not wish it?”

“Then you must make your own way, for you can’t dwell on Sunside now.”

“Then I have no choice.”

“You loved me, upon a time,” he said, his hands insistent now.

In their turn, her hands found his member standing erect and jerking. She lay back, sighed, threw open her blanket of fur. “How I have wanted you! And even now, when I should hate you, still I want you.” It was his vampire stuff in her. From time to time she would hate him, look back on what she’d lost and hate him. But when he called to her she would always come, and she would never be free from his fascination.

“You were like no other,” he answered, throwing off his clothes, “because you loved me and gave your all. Now, in Suckscar, they only give to fill my needs, because they desire to please me. But … it rarely pleases me.”

And he entered her like never before, and his metamorphic flesh filled her and brought her shuddering to an instant orgasm—and another—and another! Until she cried out for him to stop, for she felt that she couldn’t stand one more. But he gave it to her anyway. And because her sex was bruised, Nestor took her in her mouth and in her exit, and was well-received in both. And for him it was like it had never been in Suckscar.