‘You shall have light,’ he grunted, nodding . . . and in the next moment felt a deadly fear. For that had been close to blasphemy. But he had not intended it. She would have light, yes: blue light, green, and a little red. And as she clawed at his buttocks and rode his bucking, whipping piston shaft, so he foamed within her and carried her moaning through a future-time door.
And now she saw the future racing away from her, and the scarlet light streaming from her own body, with only the faintest trace of blue. Indeed Karen’s light mingled with Harry’s, twining even as their bodies twined, and his was only slightly less red than hers.
Our life-lines, he told her. We ride them into our future. And then, quoting Faéthor: We ride there faster than life!
We ride each other into the future, she answered, thrilling to the starburst sensation of it, and to the shock of Harry bursting inside her. And in a little while: ‘The blues?’
Travellers, he told her. True human beings.
Then the handful of reds can only be Wamphyri! Survivors in the Icelands. And the greens must be trogs. I. . . I never saw such colours, such light! Even the brightest auroras over the Icelands were never as bright as this.
Harry plied her breasts like dough in his hands and came yet again, and she felt his seed spraying her inner walls and shuddered to its gush. Your come is cold as a waterfall.
No, it’s hot. But cool against your insides, which are a volcano.
It only feels that way, she moaned. For in truth we’re both cold, Harry. Both of us.
We’re Wamphyri, he answered, but we aren’t undead. We’ve never been dead, not in the way some vampirized people ‘die’ and sleep a while before their rebirth from the grave. I had expected to be cold, certainly – expected to feel the lust of the Wamphyri, their raw, roaring appetite for life and for all dark carnal experience – but with nothing of enduring emotion. But this is much more than that, other than that.
For you, perhaps, she answered, for you’re not long a vampire. And yet . . . maybe you’re right. This isn’t as I imagined it. The Old Wamphyri were liars, as anyone knows; could it be that they lied about this, too? Incapable of love, they said. But were they? Or merely incapable of owning up to it? Is it weak to love someone, Harry? And is it strong to be cold and without love?
He welded himself to her, all of his parts melting into hers. Cold? he growled. Well, if we’re that cold, then why is our blood so hot? And if we’re that weak, then why do I feel so strong? No, I think you’ve got it in one. The last and most blatant lie of the Wamphyri: that they were without love. They weren’t, they were merely afraid to admit it.
And the Necroscope knew that at last the truth of the matter was exposed. The Wamphyri had always been capable of dark passions, desires and deeds beyond the human range; but now, on the same far side of the spectrum, he and Karen had discovered in themselves genuine, equally powerful bonding emotions. And letting those emotions rule could only properly be described as an ecstasy. However sudden, weird and alien their love, they were true lovers. There was lust in it, of course, but was there ever a love affair between man and woman without lust?
As a single fused mass – the first half-human couple ever to ‘cleave’ to one another in the fullest sense of the word – they sped down the future time-stream. Until out of nowhere, suddenly:
A new light . . . golden fire . . . incredible . . . bursting . . . all-consuming! At first Harry thought it was some strange and wonderful effect of their sex, their love, but it was more than that. The great, throbbing, one-note Ahhhhhh chorus of the future – which was not sound at all as such but the mind’s reaction to a three-dimensional display of ever-expanding time – changed in the space of a single moment to a fiery hissssss! And the Necroscope brought their headlong rush to an abrupt, tumbling halt. Partly extricating themselves but still mainly fused, they spun on an axis of their own while time rushed on. And Karen, temporarily blind, sank needle claws into Harry’s shoulders to gasp, What was that?