They walked now, guarding their captives, but it was apparent that flight was their usual method of locomotion. Anything else would be awkward, for their knees bent backward as did the knees of their diminutive Earthly prototype.
They turned, at last, into a huge chamber. And before them, perched obscenely on a platform elaborately laid with jewels and tapestries, was the overlord of the Harpies.
No man, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, could have considered any of the vampires attractive. But of all they had seen, this monster was the most repugnant. It was not only that his frame was tauter, skinnier, than that of his fellows; it was not that his furry body was raw and chafed, as if from ancient, unhealed sores; it was not only that his pendulous nose-leaf perpetually snuffled, pulsed, above a red-lipped, vicious mouth. It was the unclean aura of evil about him that made Tim feel dirty. As though by merely looking on this thing he had profaned himself in some strange, inexplicable fashion.
Dorothy felt it, too. She choked once, turned her face away. And Captain Lane growled a disgusted curse.
"Lord, what a filthy beast! Mallory, I wouldn't mind dying if I could get one shot at that pot-bellied horror first!"
He did not expect—none of them could have expected—that which happened then. There came a high, simpering parody of laughter from the thing on the dais before them. And the words in their own tongue—
"But you cannot, Man! For here I am the Master!"
Lane's jaw dropped; his eyes widened. Tim Mallory felt the small hairs at the nape of his neck tighten coldly. The bat-thing could speak! Was speaking again, its cruel little mouth pulled into a grimace remotely resembling a grin.
"You are surprised that I speak your language? Ah, that is amusing. But you are just the first of many who will soon discover how foolish it was to underestimate the intellect of our ancient race.