8
The Vampire Killers
Even though the Great Majority no longer trusted him, Harry had always respected them. He thanked Pamela and those of her friends who had assisted in bringing Johnny Found to justice; and as they commenced their arduous return to what would now be their final resting places, so the Necroscope employed his metaphysical mind’s fantastic equations and materialized a Möbius door. But in the moment before he stepped through it …
. . . An agonized voice – not deadspeak but telepathy, which even as he received it changed to deadspeak -reached out to him from a deserted stockyard not far from the mainline station in Darlington. It was Trevor Jordan: alive at first, then dead, turning to fused flesh, bubbling blood and charred, blackened bone as a squad of former E-Branch colleagues torched him to sticky, steaming cinders!
Trevor! Harry gasped, his own agony almost as great as the telepath’s as he received the full, searing impact of his final seconds. Trevor, I’m coming – right now -just keep talking and I’ll find –
No! Jordan cut him off, as all the pain of a life at its termination faded away and death’s cool darkness crashed over him, laving him like an ocean wave. No, Harry, don’t . . . don’t come here. They’re expecting you, and believe me they have the right gear. And anyway, you have no time. The girl, Harry, the girl!
The Necroscope understood. Of course: Penny.
The Branch had been closing in on him; they had closed in on Jordan; they would close in on Penny – and they’d be doing it even now!
Trevor! Harry was torn – felt himself riven – two ways: a secondary agony, of frustration and indecision. But Jordan was right. No one should be put to such an agonizing death, and certainly not an innocent. Jordan had been just such a one, and so was she. No matter what name anyone gave her now, or what she would be tomorrow, tonight she was an innocent.
You can’t help me, Harry, Jordan told him, trying to make it easier for him. Not this time. You can only jeopardize your own safety – and Penny’s. But it’s OK, it’s OK. I lived twice, which was enough. And dying twice was . . . that was too much. I don’t need any more.
In the Möbius Continuum, Harry still felt himself dragged apart, pulled two ways. He moaned his horror -and his anger – as he deliberately shut Jordan’s deadspeak thoughts out of his mind. Later, maybe later, he’d have time to thank him for the warning. But as for now –
– Bonnyrig.
He emerged along the river bank, well away from the house, emerged to a darkness shot with the crimson of his fury. Wamphyri fury! The thing within held sway; its awareness washed out from the Necroscope like human -like inhuman – radar, scanning the house standing in darkness. Except. . . when Harry left here the lights were ablaze!
Harry’s telepathy was carried on his vampire probe. In the house, five people – five warm beings full of blood – five clever, thinking creatures, and four of them possessed of wild, weird talents. But nothing so weird as Harry’s. His metaphysical mind touched upon their minds, but guardedly, so that they wouldn’t suspect.
Penny first, terrified for her life, but as yet unharmed. Then Guy Teale, an as yet undeveloped seer, given on occasion to glimpsing the future, which Harry well knew was an unwieldy, unforgiving talent at best. And Frank Robinson, a spotter with the ability to recognize another esper on sight, or even in close proximity (his mind flinched a little when Harry touched it, but not enough that the Necroscope’s presence was revealed; Robinson’s talent, too, was as yet embryonic). But then . . . ah, then there was Ben Trask. A sad thing: Harry had hoped there’d be no old friends here, but here was Ben. And finally –
-Paxton!
Paxton the mind-flea, the previously unreachable itch, a vampire no less than Harry himself, who scorned the blood of others for the secret juices of their minds, their very thoughts. And indeed Paxton was something else: keen beyond the call of duty, zealous to a fault, vicious as the crossbow he even now held on Penny Sanderson in the Necroscope’s bedroom. So that quick as Harry was to withdraw his probe, still he wasn’t quick enough and Paxton knew he was there.