The two Harrys, Jazz and Zek met her there. It was Zek’s impulse to hug her, but she held back. She saw that Jazz was immediately shaken, stricken by Karen’s looks. Harry Snr, too: awed by Karen’s beauty. It was an unearthly beauty, of course, for it was the work of her vampire. But what it had given her in looks, shape and desirability, it had taken from her in the bloody fire of her eyes. She was unmistakably Wamphyri.
Only The Dweller seemed unmoved. ‘You’ve come to join us in the coming battle?’ His voice was unemotional.
‘I’ve come to die with you,’ she answered.
‘Oh? And is it that certain?’
‘Certain?’ she repeated him. ‘If you believe in miracles, pray for one! For myself, I don’t care.’ And she told them her dilemma, reinforcing what Zek Foener had already made known, how whichever way she jumped the Wamphyri meant to be rid of her. This way … at least I’ll take a few of them with me!’
‘What of your trogs, your lieutenants?’ The Dweller pressed her.
‘I activated my trogs, turned them loose,’ she answered. ‘My “lieutenants”, as you call them, are faint-hearted dogs! Them I sent away. Maybe the Lords have taken them on. I neither know nor care.’
‘Your aerie stands empty?’
‘Aye.’
‘You’ve sacrificed a lot.’
‘No,’ she tossed her head, ‘I have been sacrificed. And now you’d better make your final preparations. You can’t hear them but I can, and they’re on their way.’
‘She’s right,’ Zek confirmed it. ‘Their minds are lusting for war, open to read like reading a monstrous book. They’re coming!’
The Dweller nodded, pointed to the four dark shapes squirting down through the darkening sky. ‘Your warriors. Karen – are they trustworthy?’
They answer only my commands,’ she answered.
Then station two of them at the back of the saddle, over the rise there,’ and again he pointed, ‘and the other pair down there, at the foot of the cliffs where the first trees grow. There they’ll form our protection – some protection, at least – and they’ll be well-positioned for launching, if the need should arise. And how will you fight?’
‘In the thick of it!’ She swept back her diaphanous cloak from her right side, took her gauntlet from her belt and thrust her right hand into it. Blades, hooks and scythes gleamed silver in the bright starlight where she flexed the deadly thing, adjusting its fit.
‘Look!’ Jazz snapped. ‘I see them.’
It was impossible not to see them. The sky to the east was dark with dots large and small, like the approach of a small swarm of locusts. Except, while they were just as ravenous, they were not small and they were not locusts.
‘Everyone to his station!’ The Dweller cried. ‘Are those lamps in order?’ For answer, all along the wall, Travellers turned on their batteries of ultraviolet lamps, aiming them down into darkness. They cut the night with their hot, smoking beams. The light wouldn’t kill vampire flesh, but they would hurt it greatly and blind Wamphyri eyes, however temporarily.
The Dweller caught the elbow of a passing Traveller. ‘What of your women and children?’ he asked. ‘And my mother?’
‘Gone, Dweller,’ the man answered. ‘Down toward Sunside, where they’ll stay until they know the outcome.’
Harry Jnr turned to his father and the others. He nodded grimly. Then we’re ready,’ he said.
‘Just as well,’ Jazz Simmons answered, ‘for it’s already started.’ He inclined his head down toward Starside. ‘Listen -‘
Hoarse trog cries and the clamour of battle drifted up out of the shadows. The roar and blast of gunfire, too, from a handful of trogs whose learning skills had been able to accommodate weapons.
Harry Jnr said: ‘Well, this was to be expected. The Lords have been massing their trogs along the fringes of these mountains for a long time now. There’ll be many hundreds of them . . . but I may have their measure.’ He turned to his father. ‘Harry, I could use some expert help.’
‘Just name it.’
‘When did you last call up the dead?’
Harry took a pace back from the other, his face falling. But then he slowly nodded. ‘Whatever’s in your mind, I’m ready when you are, son,’ he said.