– Into the bedroom.
Robinson knew it at once. ‘He’s here!’ the spotter yelped, spinning on his heel, jumping and gyrating, trying to aim the hot nozzle of his flamethrower in every direction at the same time but seeing and aiming at nothing.
Paxton knew it was true; he could actually feel the Necroscope’s mind touching his own like an oozing slug -as close as that – but inside the room nothing seemed to have changed. And from downstairs the voices of Trask and Teale were hoarse where the two came running, thundering through the house and up the stairs, shouting their warnings.
‘Where?’ Paxton’s voice was a screech of terror. ‘Where is the bastard?’
He and Robinson faced each other. Paxton looked down the glowing muzzle of Robinson’s flamethrower into the flicker of its pilot light, and Robinson stared at the business end of Paxton’s crossbow. They both reached for the light switch.
Penny was in the bed, naked, a sheet pulled up under her chin, around her neck . . . and Harry was under the sheet with her where he’d materialized. Not knowing what was happening she felt his arms go around her – felt his huge webbed discs restructuring themselves into hands once more – and screamed!
Paxton read her mind; Robinson finally pinpointed Harry’s vast ESP talent; as the room came alive with electric light, both men turned towards the bed and triggered their weapons. But Harry had already conjured a door – directly under himself and the girl, so that they tumbled through it and apparently through the bed itself. As they went he dragged the bedsheet after them. In the Möbius Continuum Penny opened her eyes, then gasped and screwed them shut again. But now that she knew who had her it was OK.
Harry took her to a safe place, wrapped the sheet around her, grated, ‘Stay here, be quiet, wait!’ And as she sat down with a breathless bump in the shade of a wind-carved tree on a deserted, midday, Australian beach, so he returned to the house.
He had to go back, for he’d been challenged.
Paxton had challenged him – ignored his warnings and challenged him – and Harry’s vampire was furious!
In an upstairs room in the house outside Bonnyrig, the Necroscope’s bed roared up in fire and smoke, with Paxton and Robinson dancing like maniacs around it, trying to damp down the flames. But already they knew that Harry and the girl had escaped. Trask and Teale came crashing through the door, and the latter took one look, turned white and backed right out of the room again. Trask went after him and grasped his arm. ‘What did you see?’
Teale’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. ‘He . . . he’s coming back again!’ he finally gasped. ‘And he’s mad as hell!’
Trask stuck his head back inside the smoke-filled bedroom. ‘Paxton, Robinson – out of there, now!’
‘But the house is burning!’ Robinson yelled.
That’s right,’ Trask shouted back, ‘and all the way to the ground! We’ll torch it downstairs – heavily, every room – raze the place. It’s one refuge he won’t be able to use again.’ And to himself: Sorry, Harry, but that’s the way of it.
Except it wasn’t entirely to himself, for the Necroscope was listening, too. Listening with his mind – and watching with his scarlet eyes – from across the river, where a minute later he heard the gouting roar of the flamethrower and saw the fire spreading through all the downstairs rooms.
And: My place, Harry thought, and there it goes in flames. This is the end of it. There’s nothing to keep me here now.
In Harry’s downstairs study Paxton turned on Trask and his face was livid. ‘Just what is it you’re trying to do?’ he demanded. ‘You know he won’t come into a burning house. Teale says Keogh wants me, and Robinson reckons he’s close – but you, you’re holding him off. He has to come to us before we can kill the bastard! Or maybe that’s it. Maybe you don’t want him killed, right?’
Trask grabbed him by the front of his jacket and almost lifted him off his feet. ‘You shithead!’ He dragged him into the garden, out of the blazing room. ‘You scumbag! No, I don’t want Harry killed, for he was my friend. Still, I’d do it if I had to. But that’s OK for in fact I don’t think we can kill him. Not you and me or an army like us. You ask why I’m warning him off? For you, Paxton, for you!’