Karen cried out in her sleep, came awake and jerked bolt upright in the tumbled bed. ‘Harry!’ Her face was ghostly pale – a torn sheet, with a triangle of holes for eyes and mouth – where she gazed all about the room. But then she saw the Necroscope at the window and the holes of her eyes came burning alive. ‘They’re coming!’
Their scarlet glances met and joined, forming a two-way channel for thoughts which moments ago were sleeping. Harry saw through Karen’s eyes into her mind, but he answered her out loud anyway. ‘I know,’ he said.
She came off the bed naked and flew to him, buried herself in his arms. ‘But they’re coming!’ she sobbed.
‘Yes, and we’ll fight them,’ he growled, his body reacting of its own accord to the feel and smell of her flesh, which was soft, silky, pliable, ripe, musty and wet where his member grew into her.
She trapped him there with muscles that held him fast, and groaned, ‘Let’s make this the very best one, Harry.’
‘Because it might be the last?’
‘Just in case,’ she grunted, forming barbs within herself to draw him further in. After that –
– It was like never before, leaving them too exhausted to be afraid. . .
Later, he said: ‘What if we lose?’
‘Lose?’ Karen stood beside him; they leaned together and gazed out through a window in a room facing north, towards the Icelands. As yet there was nothing to be seen and they hadn’t expected there would be. But they could feel . . . something. It radiated from the north like ripples on a lake of pitch: slow, shuddery and black with its evil.
Harry nodded, slowly. ‘If we lose, they can only kill me,’ he said. And he thought of Johnny Found and the things he had done to his victims. Terrible things. But compared to Shaithis and any other survivors of the old Wamphyri, Johnny Found had been a child, and his imagination sadly lacking.
Karen knew why the Necroscope closed his mind to her: for her own protection. But it was a wasted effort; she knew the Wamphyri much better than he did; nothing Harry was capable of imagining could ever plumb the true depths of Wamphyri cruelty. That was Karen’s opinion; which was why she promised him, ‘If you die, I die.’
‘Oh? And they’ll let you die, will they? So easily?’
They can’t stop me. On this side of the mountains it is sundown, but beyond Sunside . . . true death waits there for any vampire. It burns like molten gold in the sky. That’s where I’d flee, far across the mountains into the sun. Let them follow me there if they dared, but I wouldn’t be afraid. I remember when I was a child and the sun felt good on my skin. I’m sure that in the end, before I died, I could make it feel that way again. I would will it to feel good!’
‘Morbid.’ Harry stood up straighter, gave himself a shake. ‘All of this, morbid. Keep it up and we’re defeated before we even begin. There must be at least a chance we’ll win. Indeed, there’s more than a chance. Can they disappear at will as we can, like ghosts into the Möbius Continuum?’
‘No, but . . .’
‘But?’
‘Wherever we go -‘ she shrugged’ – and however many times we escape, we’ll always have to return. We can’t stay in that place for ever.’ Her logic was unassailable. Before Harry could find words to answer – perhaps to comfort her, or himself – she continued, ‘And Shaithis is a terrible foe. How devious – ‘ she shook her head ‘ – you could scarcely imagine.’
True, a voice came startlingly from nowhere, entering the minds of both of them. Shaithis is devious. But his ancestor, Shaitan the Fallen, is worse far.
The Dweller!’ Karen gasped, as she recognized their telepathic visitor. And then, incredulously, ‘But did you say … Shaitan?’
The Fallen One, aye, the wolf-voice rasped in their minds. He lives, he comes, and he, not Shaithis, is the terror.
Harry and Karen reached out with their own telepathy, tried to strengthen the mind-bridge between themselves and their visitor. And for a moment the aerie was filled with flowing mental pictures: of mountain slopes where domed boulders projected through sliding scree; of a full moon lending the crags a soft yellow mantle; of great firs standing tall. And in the shadow of the trees, silver triangle eyes blinking – a good many – where the pack rested before the hunt. Then the pictures faded and were gone, and likewise the one who lived with them and moved among them.