Harry looked at him through halogen Hallowe’en eyes which seemed to drip sulphur, looked at him and . . . grinned? A grin, was that what it was? In an alien, vampire world called Starside on the other side of the Möbius Continuum, there at least it might be called a grin. But here it was the rabid, slavering grimace of a great wolf; here it was teeth visibly elongating, curving up and out of gleaming gristle jaw-ridges to shear through gums which spurted splashes of hot ruby blood; here it was the gradual inclination of a monstrous head through several degrees to an almost curiously inquiring angle, the way you might look at a mischievous pet. And having looked it was a writhing of scarlet lips, a flattening of convoluted snout, the beginning of a slow yawning of mantrap jaws to tut-tut and even chastise that disobedient lap dog.
And perhaps to punish it?
That face . . . that mouth . . . that crimson cavern of stalactite, stalagmite teeth, jagged as shards of white, broken glass. What? The gates of Hell? All of that and worse.
When Harry had grabbed Paxton and lifted him off his feet, he’d knocked the telepath’s crossbow from his grasp and thrown it down. Unarmed, Paxton was a piece of candy, a sweetmeat, a Coconut Flake. He was something to munch on. Why, Harry could bite his face off if he wished it! And suddenly Trask thought: Maybe he does! Maybe he will!
‘Harry!’ Trask shouted. ‘Don’t!’
The Necroscope slowly closed his jaws, looked up. He glared at Trask across the misted garden, in the ruddy illumination of the burning house. At Ben Trask, once a friend, with whom he’d stood side by side against . . . against just such a creature as he had now become.
And Trask, whey-faced, staring back, thinking: For fuck’s sake don’t, Harry!
Would you shoot me, Ben?
You know I would. I wouldn’t want to, even now, but I’d have to. It’s you or the world, don’t you see? I don’t want to see my world die screaming . . . then laugh and crawl right back out of its grave! But if you let him go -Paxton, I mean – if you let him live, then I’d be ready to believe you’d let us all live.
Your world is safe, Ben. I’m not staying here.
Starside?
Harry’s mental shrug. There’s nowhere else.
Trask looked down the sights of his SMG. He could shoot at Harry’s mist-wreathed legs and maybe chop him down, or he could aim at the Necroscope’s head and upper body and try not to hit Paxton into the bargain. But he was a good shot and unlikely to miss his target. Or he could simply take Harry’s word for it, that he was going away from here and the world had nothing to fear from him. Except, looking at him now, who could believe that?
Harry read these things in Trask’s mind and tried to make it easier for him: he put Paxton down. Which was anything but easy for the Necroscope: he had to fight the Thing inside him, and fight hard. But he did it. And speaking out loud, or rather grunting in the deep bass monotone of the Wamphyri, he asked, ‘How’s this, Ben?’
Trask gasped his relief. ‘It’s good, Harry. It’s good.’ But even answering he was aware, out of the corner of his eye, of Teale and Robinson unfreezing and lining up their weapons. ‘Hold it, you two!’ he shouted.
Harry shot a blood-tinged glance at Teale, which sufficed to send him staggering back, and tuned into Robinson’s mind to advise him: Better listen to Trask, son. Try to fry me on Earth and I’ll fry you in Hell!
Trask put his SMG on safe and tossed it aside. ‘The war’s over, Harry,’ he said.
But Paxton, lying in the mist where Harry had dropped him, squeezed the trigger of his regained crossbow and cried, ‘Oh no it fucking isn’t!’
Moments earlier the Necroscope had picked up the message from Paxton’s mind: that a deadly hardwood bolt was about to come winging his way. Almost instinctively he had conjured a Möbius door; and now, with the deceptively sinuous grace of the Wamphyri, he stepped or flowed backwards into it. To the four espers it seemed that he had simply ceased to be. Paxton’s bolt shot forward into the misty swirl of Harry’s vacuum and was eaten up by it, leaving the telepath panting: ‘I got him! I . . . I’m sure I got the bastard! I couldn’t miss!’ Laughing however shakily, he got to his feet . . .