Harry dreamed that he sped down Starside’s future time-stream; his eyes were full of the dazzle of blue, green and red lines of life, and his ears seemed tuned to the unending Ahhhhhhhh! monotone of life’s expansion into all of the tomorrows of all the Universes of Light. Last time he had been with Karen, but this time he was alone, paying more attention to his surroundings, and aware of the convergence of scarlet vampire threads upon his own. And just when it seemed they must fuse together in some weird temporal collision, that was the point at which Möbius time turned golden in that furious melting-pot which terminated . . . everything?
Maybe not.
But that was when his dream terminated, and Harry sprang awake in the ruined Traveller dwelling which he and Karen had made their headquarters. And Karen, too, waking up in his arms.
The warriors!’ she gasped, expanding her hand to thrust it into the coarse-lined matrix of her gauntlet.
‘I’ll see,’ Harry answered, already on his feet and conjuring a Möbius door, which coincided with the doorframe of the stone-fashioned dwelling. And as he stepped through both, so he glanced at the sky. Up there, flyers! He saw them in the moment before the Möbius Continuum enveloped him: vast manta shapes pulsing on high, from whose saddles Wamphyri riders directed the attack of their warriors. But apart from warriors already landed and joined in battle with Karen’s creatures, there were several still airborne, squirting across the stars like aerial octopi, their vanes extended and propulsion orifices blasting. Three of them in a protective triangle formation around their controllers, but how many were already down?
Harry emerged from the Continuum at the back of the saddle. Karen’s guardian warrior was under attack from two lesser but incredibly ferocious beasts; one was underneath, pincers and sickles working to disembowel, while the other rode its back, biting a way through to the spine. Even metamorphic flesh must soon succumb to this!
Disengage, the Necroscope ordered. Get aloft if you can. Harass the enemy in the sky. In order to address the warrior, he had opened his mind.
Karen was in at once: I’ve launched the warrior from the ledge in the crags, she immediately informed him. He’s fast and fierce. If you can get that one airborne . . . Shaithis and Shaitan may well be disadvantaged. Their flyers are unconventional, heavily armoured, but still no match for warriors. Maybe we can knock the bastards out of the sky!
But now, in close proximity with the enemy, their thoughts were no longer private. Ho, Karen! Shaithis called down gleefully from on high. Ever treacherous, eh? Why, I do believe you’d damn me with your last breath. And so you shall, for I shall see to it! And to Harry, growlingly, As for you, hell-lander: ah, but I remember you well enow! For I had an aerie, upon a time – till you and your Dweller son reduced it to so much rubble. But where’s your son now, eh? A great wolf, I hear, siring pups by the light of the moon. Oh? Ha, ha, ha! And what bitch did you get him out of, eh?
Harry heard Shaithis’s sneering clearly enough; also Shaitan’s abrupt interruption, which oozed in his mind like mental slime: Taunting serves no purpose. Kill him by all means, when the time is right – but until then let it be.
The Necroscope’s vampire raged; it wanted its way; its demands on Harry were mental as well as physical, so that he could almost hear it screaming: ‘Give me the right! Let me smite them! Only give your mind and body to me, and in my turn I’ll give you . . . everything!’ But Harry knew it was a lie and that in fact his parasite would take everything.
He heard a buffeting of air, adopted a defensive crouch and glanced aloft. Karen was already airborne; Harry’s flyer, which she had sent, made a tight turn and descended towards him. As the creature’s fifty-foot span of membranous manta wing, spongy flesh, cartilage and alveolate bone swooped low overhead, Harry leaped and snatched at the harness fittings under its neck. Another moment and he was hauling himself into the saddle. And on the ground the beleaguered warrior threw off its attackers and squirted aloft.