Necroscope - The Lost Years, Vol II Part 45

Francesco Francezci, Guy Tanziano and Luigi Manoza found Auld John's rope still dangling into the pothole where he had left it, and clambered down into darkness. Vampires, they found no great difficulty in the climb; the lack of daylight was hardly problematic; the light of the full moon and the coldly enigmatic stars lit their way through the first stage, and when they were down into the labyrinth their eyes quickly adjusted.

The Francezci's eyes flared red, and those of the others were the sulphur yellow of vampire thralls.

They went carefully, soundlessly at first. Radu's redoubt wasn't what they had expected. It seemed rough, uninhabitable, deserted -it seemed deserted, at least. Its many levels were hollow and echoing; the deeper they penetrated, the more constant and life-sustaining the temperature, which was typical of cavern complexes world-wide. Overall, the silence, both physical and psychic, was utter.

The three we saw,' Tanziano whispered hoa.r.s.ely, the old tracker and his friends: they were definitely headed this way. And then there's that rope. Some body came down here.'

'Obviously,' said Francesco. 'But th at was hours ago, and they could just as easily have left. On the other hand ... perhaps something stopped them from leaving. Radu has been down a long time, with little or no sustenance to see him through the centuries. Personally, I shall be interested to see how he did it But now, waking, he would have his needs - immediate needs, I mean. And while you may not smell it, to me this place stinks of wolf! So, it could be that he's resting - after taking food? Anyway, let's keep it quiet. Sound will travel a long way down here, and thoughts go further and faster yet. So as of now you would be wise to guard your thoughts, and if you feel or sense anything at all...' He looked at his thralls, nodded meaningfully, and left the rest unspoken.

They followed footprints, occasionally mere scuff marks in places where the dust of centuries lay thin on the naked stone. After a while, descending a steep pa.s.sage to a floor of broken flags laid in a rough crazy-paving fashion, Tanziano pointed a blunt finger, grunted, Two sets of tracks, going in both directions.'

Francesco nodded, and whispered, 'But the majority go this way.' He eased back the c.o.c.king handle on his machine-pistol so that the distinctive ch-ching as it engaged was kep t to a minimum of noise. And the others followed suit They were down now onto the floor of the main cavern, into the lair itself, and every one of Francesco's vampire instincts told him it was so. But he still couldn't detect the dog-Lord himself. He was here, certainly - wolf-musk lay thick in Francesco's mind, almost as if he felt it on his skin - but Radu's actual location remained unknown.

Anthony Francezci (had he been here) would not have found this surprising. Through greater contact with his father, Anthony had learned far more of Wamphyri history than his brother; he knew that two thousand years ago in Starside, the dog-Lord was already a powerful telepath. He could control his thoughts - disappear from the mental aether - as surely as Angelo Ferenczy himself. But Tony Francezci wasn't here... and this was the last place he would want to be despite that he had a.s.sured his brother of his coming triumph...

Following the major trail of prints and scuffs, eventually the trio came to Radu's sarcophagus atop its dais of piled debris. Here the wolf-taint was thick, if only to Francesco. But something of the eeriness of the place - its pregnant silence perhaps, or distant, monotonous, almost musical drip of water - had got through to Guy Tanziano.

Tugging on Francesco's sleeve where the Francezci looked up at the great stone coffin, he whispered, This place makes the pit back at Le Manse Madonie feel downright friendly!'

Francesco shrugged him off, scowled at his obvious reluctance. 'Stay here then, and watch our backs,' he said. And with a twitch of his head he indicated that Manoza should accompany him up to the sarcophagus.

Leaving Tanziano at the foot of the pile, tile two climbed to the dais's platform and lit the stubs of several torches in their sconces. Then, stepping across the pooled resin, they carried on up to the rim of Radu's coffin.

's.h.i.t!' said Manoza then, gazing down on what the bath of gluey yellow fluids contained. But Francesco only grinned, and used the folded b.u.t.t of his weapon to prod the pair of corpses where they lay half-submerged in the resin.

'I was right,' he said. 'He's not only awake but he's up, and he's hungry. He teas hungry, anyway...'

One of the corpses was that of a young man; nothing extraordinary about him, except the wolf-taint. 'Moon- child,' Francesco commented. 'Drained to the last drop, and drowned in the resin just to be sure that Radu's bite wouldn't take. The dog-Lord isn't making lieutenants - not just yet, anyway.

And this other one - a Drakul, definitely. Asiatic, a full-fledged lieutenant and leader of his group. Which tells me that his group is probably no more. He would be the last to go.'428.

429.

And Manoza murmured, in something of awe, 'His back's like a "Z*. And those knife marks go right through to his skull. And he's missing his heart! It's like he went through the cogs of a big machine!'

'Not knife marks,' Francesco shook his head. 'Claw marks.'

While down at the foot of the stack Tanziano gave a start and turned in a jerky circle, his eyes swivelling this way and that as they tried to follow a shadow that seemed to leap from wall to wall and surface to surface in the flickering light of the torches. Until finally his gaze rested on a vertical crack in the cavern's wall, where for a moment the torchlight seemed reflected by twin points of red.

And gritting his teeth, nodding his bullet head and unnoticed by his companions, Dancer pointed his weapon ahead of him, moved in that direction...

... While the Francezci said to Manoza: 'It's like I told you it would be: the bloodwar is on and they've already engaged each other. Somewhere in this maze, we'll find the rest of them - those you observed on their way here, the woman and the last of her girls, and of course the dog-Lord Radu - if they haven't killed each other off already! We can always hope, eh?' He turned, glanced down to the foot of the pile, and started to say: 'Guy, now we're going to follow that other set of- '-Tracks? Guy? Dancer?' His voice came echoing back, but that was all. Tanziano wasn't there.

The Francezci and Manoza scrambled down to the floor, and Francesco called: 'Dancer? Where the h.e.l.l... ?'

And it was as if the cavern had been waiting for just such a question.

'Where the h.e.l.l... ? Where the... ? Where... ?' it echoed.

And then something that wasn't an echo, but a hoa.r.s.e whisper -yet sharp and clear as a shout to their enhanced hearing. And not only in Francesco's ears, but in his mind: 'Oh, indeed! Where the h.e.l.l. But the h.e.l.l is here, Ferenczy sc.u.m.1"

'Wolf!' Francesco snarled, as that cough, bark, rumble of sound faded in his head. He and Manoza stood back to back and stared into shadows left and right. Nothing moved - for a moment. Until suddenly something was lobbed out from behind a ma.s.sive, natural column of rock. It spun lazily in the smoky air, landed soggily on the rough-hewn flags, slid a little way, and left a red trail. It was an arm, torn off at the shoulder like a chicken joint, with all of the ligaments, the flesh and tendons of the right shoulder and breast attached. And it was still clad in the sleeves of Guy 'Dancer' Tanziano's parka, jacket, an d shirt!

The howling, when it came, was an anticlimax. But mor e than howling, Francesco knew it was also laughter. And reverberating in his mind as well as through the maze of caverns, it bounced from wall to wall and nerve-ending to nerve-ending like an out-of-kilter dervish.

'Howling!' Manoza said, unnecessarily.

'And laughter!' Francesco snarled. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d's laughing at us!'

'I only heard the howling,' said Manoza, visibly shaken. He looked at the Francezci wide- and wild-eyed. 'Francesco, are we nuts or something? What the/we* are we doing here?'

Francesco indicated the ma.s.sive column of rock. Til take this side, you take the other. Circle the column, stay dose to the rock, and fire at anything that moves.'

But as they came together on the other side without seeing anything: Far too late, too slow, came that deep dark rumble of a voice in Francesco's mind. Three of you came down here - came of your own free will - but now there are only two. Soon, only you and I, Ferenczy. Are you afraid?

For a moment it was as if Francesco had been slapped in the face. Then he snarled out loud, 'What, afraid of a halfling? Of a dog-thing? If you're such a menace, such a threat, Radu, then why not do it here, now, face to face?' It was part-bravado and part something else. For he had sensed - what, frustration? or desperation?

-something, in the dog-Lord's bl.u.s.ter. Something behind it that he was trying to cover up.

And Radu knew that he had sensed it The telepathic contact he'd established had conveyed far more than he had wanted Francesco to know. And the dog-Lord's growl became a furious whine as he withdrew his probe.

Francesco turned to Manoza, who was looking at him as if he were mad. 'Oh? What now?' the Francezci scowled.

'You were... you were talking to him!' Manoza said. "You were challenging him. But he's not here.'

Francesco grinned his humourless grin. 'Of course he has moved on, Luigi - gone from here because he's afraid - but he heard me well enough. And I challenged him because he is weak. Radu is ill! He's sick from his hibernation, from the waking, from disease, and from time itself. This is one sick old wolf, and his only advantage is his familiarity with this d.a.m.n labyrinth. But his thoughts give him away. They're tike a beacon to me. Come on, follow the trail...'

It was a trail of blood: Dancer's blood - which after a handful of paces came to an abrupt end at his body, where his legs stuck out from behind a slab of rock. His fat tongue had been ripped hah* from its roots, dragged forward to block his mouth and stop him crying out. His back was broken; his heart had been torn out through a gaping hole in his chest and shattered ribs.

'Holy...!' said Luigi Manoza, his throat bobbing with the effort of gathering saliva to get the one word out 'Holy?' Francesco glared a t him. 'Holy?

431430.

'Holy s.h.i.t!' Manoza finally gasped. He was a vampire, but he was only a thrall. And this was the work of something else. Wamphyri, but different again from Francesco.

Ahead, an interior roc k wall was split into twin tunnels. Tracks went into both of them. 'You can see in the dark,' the Francezci reminded the badly shaken Manoza. "You have a superior weapon. You can pump twenty-five rounds a second into this b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Get into that tunnel. If the trail peters out, come back to this point. And I shall do likewise. Now move!'

Manoza moved. But only a few stumbling paces into the tunnel he saw an irregular patch of light far overhead, and to one side blocks of stone piled into steps, with more steps cut into the wall leading to what looked like the arch of a natural rock causeway. Everything led upwards and out of here, which seemed to Manoza a very good place to be.

The Francezci would kill him, if he didn't get killed himself. But right now, not knowing what Francesco knew or thought he knew, Manoza considered that a distinct possibility. And the chopper was up there. And light, and air, and freedom. And down here: the true death, in the shape of a terror out of time. Not much of a choice - especially with that growling voice in his mind, urging him: Run, little man, run! Save yourself, for your master is as good as dead!

And with a hammering heart Manoza ran, or rather climbed, and a gibbering horror seemed right behind him all the way...

In the Continuum, Harry had thought twice about it. And in the end he hadn't taken the Mobius route directly into Radii's lair. For one thing his olden dream or preview forbade it More than a dream, that had been a nightmare! And for another, he wanted to see what was going on up there on the mountain. With Drakul and Ferenczy involvement it could and most probably would be a minefield. And so he had gone in stages, from false plateau to ledge to rocky b.u.t.te, and finally to the dome of the mountain.

There he had found the helicopter deserted on flat ground close to a huge fissure in the pitted rock. A rope dangled into another, smaller pothole close by, and he rightly supposed that this had been the Ferenczy gang's route into the lair. But knowing they were equipped with high-powered weapons, and likewise their advantage in the dark, he hadn't followed them or tried jumping ahead of them. And despite that the Necroscope's heart was in his mouth for Bonnie Jean - though in truth he couldn't say why - still he'd sat it out for more than half an hour to see what would happen.

Now he was more cold and anxious than ever, and the moonlit scene was as still as when he'd first arrived here. Still, and quiet - or maybe unquiet - except for the low moaning of a steady breeze that swept across the mountain's dome. Quiet, yes... Or perhaps not He was close to the pothole entrance when he saw the rope go taut and heard a distant panting. Then the vibration of the rope as someone climbed into view. By then Harry had moved back into the cover of a clump of rocks, but when the stubby man who climbed out of the pothole headed for the helicopter he stepped into view. The man was in a hurry and failed to see him. Reaching the airplane, he yanked open a door in the machine's side.

Harry couldn't see him too well, didn't recognize him and wanted to be sure of who he was and what was going on here. So he called out: 'Hey, you!'

Luigi Manoza's answer might easily have cut him in pieces. Whirling, the thug opened up with his machine- pistol, and lead - and a little silver - buzzed like a cloud of angry wasps all around. Most of the rounds were wasted, trapped by the Mobius door that Harry erected as Manoza spun and went into a crouch. The ones that went wide of the door were the ones that buzzed. And now Harry could be sure of what he was dealing with.

But Manoza couldn't He had fired on someone, had used up half a magazine on him from a distance of some forty or forty-five feet away - and that someone, or thing, was still on its feet and hadn't even moved! That was more than enough for Manoza. Scrambling aboard the airplane, he slammed the door shut after him and threw himself into the pilot's chair. The flick of a handful of switches, the pressure of the thug's thumb on the starter b.u.t.ton, and the engine coughed into life. Then the vanes began their whup... whuup... whuuup air- slicing revolutions, quickly blurring into a shining fan whose draught bounced the machine on its pontoons.

Taking out a transmitter from one of his pouches, extending the aerial, Harry waited for the helicopter to drift just an inch or two off the ground, then pressed the b.u.t.ton. At the chopper's tail-end just below the lateral fan, a magnetic mine consisting of a detonator and four ounces of plastic exploded, blew the fan off, and sent the airplane crazy. She keeled over and snapped a pontoon, rolled the other way and forwards until the vanes. .h.i.t the deck and snapped off in razor-sharp sections. One such section shot in through the windscreen and pinned Manoza to his seat, holding him there while the chopper skittered like a singed moth to the edge of the fissure. It tilted for a moment, stood in a ballet-dancer pose on one pontoon, and fell. A count of four and the fuel tanks blew, and seventy gallons of avgas made a blast that shook the rock under the Necroscope's feet, and a smoke-ring that went up and up, following a tongue of fire that licked fifty feet into the night sky.

Harry nodded grimly to himself. Another Ferenczy down and just two to go, of this mob anyway. Moreover, he had destroyed their 432.

433.

escape route. Maybe now it was time he had a look inside Radu's lair. As he conjured a Mobius door, another explosion shook the mountain from deep within. And the great fissure vented streamers of black smoke.

Now more than ever the Necroscope was conscious of his error - the fact that he didn't have a sidearm. His bombs, devastating as they were, and even his grenades weren't designed for close-quarter combat. On the other hand, what good was a conventional handgun against the Wamphyri? Instead, he palmed a heavy little fragmentation grenade before making his jump.

In his dream, remembered as clearly now as if he'd experienced it just last night, he had seen ragged natural 'windows' in the crumbling outer wall of the lair, located at a seemingly 'safe' distance from Radu's sarcophagus. The co-ordinates were clear in his mind as he conjured a door...

... And his dream came to life as he stepped from the Mobius Continuum at one of those precise co-ordinates r- barely in time to witness an astonishing occurrence, and one that he had set in motion.

The place was reverberating with distant and not-so-distant echoes, creakings, and groanings; dust settled in rivulets from a ceiling lost in height and darkness, also from various ledges and levels. Even a handful of stony splinters and one or two geometrically shaped slabs of granite came hurtling from on high. But all of this mainly in the unsupported central section of the cavern, not on the perimeter where Harry stood.

Nor was this disturbance finished. There was a continuous metallic grinding, a nerve-shattering screech of tortured metal, which seemed if anything to be getting louder; and, from a huge boreh ole-like aperture or cave where the dim ceiling curved out of the heights to form an inner wall, an intermittent stream of stony rubble and smoke. But when fire gushed from the hole like a giant's blowtorch, Harry believed he knew what he was seeing.

Through unknown caverns, stony chutes and rock-slides, the wrecked helicopter had found its way down to this level. And as the blowtorch blaze turned to black smoke and a twisted ma.s.s of hot, blistered metal erupted from the hole and smashed down in the cavern's debris, Harry saw that he was right But the glare of the fireball had lit up the whole cavern, and the Necroscope had taken the opportunity to note his position, the best route to Radu's dais and sarcophagus, and especially the fact that the place seemed void of life. But certainly life had been here. For just a few short paces ahead of him, he had also seen BJ.'s crossbow, still loaded, lying on the floor where she had tossed it - or where it had fallen. Stepping forward he put away his grenade, retrieved the crossbow, refused to dwell on what its discovery meant The guttering torches at the base of Radu's coffin served as his guide, and in a little while he was there. A few moments more, and he would know if the dog-Lord was up and about in the world. But if he wasn't, then he never would be. And holding the crossbow waist-high, aiming it ahead, determined to see this thing through to the end, Harry climbed the jumble to its level dais, avoided the slopped resin, and resolutely continued on up to the rim of the great sarcophagus...

The dog-Lord Radu Lykan was finished. He knew it and had known it even before rising from the resin. It was only since rising that he had come to accept it: that in his current shape he was finished. In his current shape and form, aye. Which was why he had sent Auld John to bring the Mysterious One - his Man-With- Two-Faces - to him in his lair. For the man called Harry Keogh was his one way out of a fix that had stayed with him, stalking him through six long centuries.

But to think of it at any length, to even consider it was simply too much. That one of the greatest predators of all time, a Lord of the Wamphyri out of Olden Starside - indeed a primal werewolf - should have been brought low by one of the very smallest predators: by the bite of a flea, carried on the back of a rat out of Asia! The Black Death, which had defied even his vampire leech to combat the poison in his otherwise all- conquering system.

He had known it from the moment he crawled from the resin and loped to groom himself in the waterfall near the great vat that contained his warrior creature. Oh, he could still run - especially after feeding (and oh so deliriously) on the blood of a strong man, and the heart and vampire leech of a Drakul! - but even then he had felt the poison coursing in his veins, and had suspected that it was more than just the ache of centuries that gnawed at his bones.

And at the waterfall... he had proved it The black pustules in his armpits and groin, the texture of his flesh, which no longer answered when he called for metamorphosis but seemed stuck in his wolf shape, and the fire inside called l.u.s.t - the l.u.s.t for life, a life that could last forever - which he felt burning low to match the flow of energy.

Energy: he had none. Oh, sufficient to enter the mind of a mere moon-child, and beguile him to suicide, certainty. And then, bolstered by that one's blood, to pluck th e life of some piddling Drakul lieutenant and tear loose the arm of a trembling Ferenczy thrall. But how much energy did that take? None at all, not to the Wamphyri! Not to a vampire Lord in all the strength of his youth!

Except where was his youth now? Left behind in a different world, a different time. And his strength? All eaten up by a flea. And his l.u.s.t434.

435.

for life? But how may one l.u.s.t with great black lumps in his groin, poison in his p.i.s.s, and a sure knowledge of his bones crumbling under the ancient leather of his hide?

Yet even now it seemed a scurrilous accusation, to blame all this on a poor flea. For while black-rat fleas had carried the plague, it was a, different 'bite' entirely that had transferred it into Radu's system. Until now it seemed there was no way of getting it out. For the resin hadn't worked ... it had merely preserved him, to die later, to die now. And his leech hadn't worked, for it was dying, too.

For a little while Radu had felt a surge of power as his system converted Garth Trevalin's life-blood, but every action since then had only served to drain him like a leaking bucket six drops spilled for every five put in. It couldn't go on. He was dying, and the rate of his decline was accelerating. Moreover, along with his physical strength, his mental powers were likewise diminished. That was how the Ferenczy, this weak, so- called 'sophisticated' modern version of a Lord of the Wamphyri, had seen through his bl.u.s.ter.

But wouldn't it be the irony of all time - or of six hundred years of time, at least - if Radu were to be destroyed by a Ferenczy? For it was doubtless an ancestor of this Francesco who, all tho se years ago, first stabbed a plague-ridden corpse, then plunged his swor d into Radu. In which case it were better he had died then, than to let a member of the same cursed clan kill him now!

His one chance: Harry Keogh. Metempsychosis into the body and mind of a new or newer man. And then Keogh's physical conversion into Radu.

And thus Auld John Guiney, sent out upon his most important mission: to bring Keogh here, for Bonnie Jean would not- -Could not, not in her present condition, position...

But Auld John: Radu had found him with a weak pro be, discovered him nursing an arm broken in a fall in t he final stage of his descent Which had made it appear that that avenue, too, was now closed. Yet during all the years of Radu's oneiromantic dreaming he had frequently scried this selfsame Harry Keogh and had known that his Mysterious One would be here to sustain him, in one way or another, at the time of his resurgence.

Ah, but how often in his waking years had it been proved to the dog-Lord that the future is a devious thing?

Oh, the future win always be; of course, for what force can ever stop it? But it will seldom be as foreseen.

And yet... perhaps there was still a chance, albeit a slim one. For B.J. Mirlu was a beguiler second only to Radu himself: a hypnotist with her eyes and mind, and a seducer with her body. If she had followed Radu's good advice - which he knew she had - then by now this Harry was far more her thrall than any mere bite might ever decree! And if he knew she was here, surely he would want to know what was become of her?

... For which reason Radu would cling to life to the bitter end, in the hope that his Man-With-Two-Faces would yet put in a late appearance. And meanwhile, there was this Ferenczy sc.u.m to deal with, who might yet deal with him! For Radu had 'seen' in the Ferenczy's mind the devastation he held in his eager hands: a technology lost on the dog-Lord, which he scorned as much as he misunderstood it He, too, could have control of just such a weapon, yet he had taken Guy Tanziano's machine-pistol and broken it in pieces against a granite wall! And all that remained to him now were the wiles of a wolf, with which to combat this ancient enemy. Which was why he had doubled back to the lair's main cavern, in the hope of eluding him.

But just as surely as Radu's mistress moon blazed high in the night sky, his immemorial enemy was returning for him even now. And Radu knew it...

The dog-Lord was right Alerted by a shuddering underfoot and in the walls, and an uproar of inexplicable sounds from behind him, the Francezci had abandoned the trail and returned to the main cavern in time to witness the wrecked helicopter's plunge. Then, working out what had happened had scarcely taxed his intelligence, and while he waited for the rockfall to subside and the dust to settle, he roundly cursed the coward Manoza - for whatever good that would do him. What good to curse the dead, who were beyond it?

Oh, but if only he had the little fat b.a.s.t.a.r.d here, now!

Instead... he had someone else here! For in the cavern's smoky light Francesco had seen a slim male figure climbing the jumbled rock pile to Radu's great coffin. Just who it might be ... he couldn't say, wouldn't hazard a guess, though certainly he seemed familiar. But then again, what odds? If he was here, he was an enemy, and all of Francesco's pa.s.sions were incensed to murder.

So he went from shadow to shadow - flowing in the manner of the Wamphyri, soundlessly, across the rubble-strewn floor - in the direction of the dais and its ma.s.sive sarcophagus. White at the coffin itself: Harry remembered his dream. In it no less than in Radu's, he and the dog-Lord had come face to face - which was the part that had been the nightmare. So that now, in real life, he was taking no chances. With the cros sbow at arm's length, he gradually raised himself up to look in at an angle on the contents of the coffin. And he saw what Francesco had seen. But no sign of Radu- -Until claws like the tines of a garden fork, set in a paw eight

437.436.

inches across, sank into his clothing - but not into his skin, for the dog-Lord wasn't about to pa.s.s on his ancient disease to his future-self and so perpetuate it - at the shoulder, turning him about! Radu had emerged from behind his sarcophagus and was crouching on the uneven tangle of granite slabs at the head of the coffin like some grotesque gargoyle. Inches from the Necroscope's astonished face, a pair of great triangular yellow eyes with crimson cores bored searchingly into his own, and Radu's breath was as hot and rank as molten copper in a forge.

And: 'Ahhhh! The Mysterious One,' that vast mouth cracked open in wonder, in something of disbelief, and finally in a twisted, drooling smile. 'My Mysterious One...'

Harry couldn't get the crossbow between them. Crushed to the side of the sarcophagus, he tried, was rewarded by a glancing buffet from the monster's free paw that nearly broke his wrist and sent the crossbow flying free. Then... Harry knew he was a dead man. Held like a child in Radu's grip, he could conjure a Mobius door but couldn't move to step through it. He knew he was dead, but the dog-Lord only knew he was alive! And his eyes continued to hold him.

To hold him, yes, with a grip as powerful as his great paw. Harry felt himself held, felt his muscles relax, his breathing slow from its hoa.r.s.e panting. And finally he felt Radu's mind, groping to be inside his!

Dr James Andersen's post-hypnotic restraints had been lifted; to such a telepathic power as Radu, Harry's very soul was laid bare. Radu saw and absorbed all, almost in as little time as it takes to tell: Necroscope...

He talks to the dead, and can call them from their graves!

He moves in the s.p.a.ces between the s.p.a.ces -goes from place to place as quick as thought! He is a man of the modern world, and understands all of its technology, its scientific wonders. Yet not one of its wonders, or all of them together, can explain or understand him!

He knows about the Wamphyri... has even removed, destroyed members of our species, Drakuls and Ferenczys!

He knows the locations of all my enemies out of time, their power-bases, their seats in this modern world!

He is my Mysterious One!!!