Let it be, Harry Jnr whispered.
Father and son went back to the garden. They emerged as the smoke and reek were lifting, and as the dazed Travellers and their friends from a different world looked all about them and rubbed grime from stinging eyes.
The Dweller’s cloak of foil had fused to his body. Smouldering, he swayed there a moment – a black and silver thing that groped blindly as it took a single pace forward – then crumpled into its father’s arms . . .
In what would have been three days Earth-time the news was: The Dweller would recover! It was the vampire in him, which given time would repair the damage he’d suffered. But Harry Snr knew he could never take his son, or Brenda, back to the world where they were born. Harry Jnr was Wamphyri; however different from the others, still he must stay here forever. Indeed he wanted to stay here. This was his place now, his territory which he’d fought and paid dearly for. And of course he could never be sure how things would go.
But . . . the Lady Karen was different, too. For the moment, anyway. Also, if what Harry had heard about her was true, she’d one day be more dangerous than all the others put together. He cared nothing for her, but he did care for his son. And an idea had formed in his mind.
Leaving The Dweller in the care of Jazz, Zek and the ever-faithful Travellers, Harry went to Karen’s aerie. It was memorable when he left the garden, because for one thing there was gold on the peaks again, and also he had witnessed a strange reunion. Wolf, his paws bleeding, had made the crossing to find his mistress. No vampire in him, just a great deal of love and a lot of faith.
There’d been another, perhaps even more joyous reunion, too: along with Wolf had come a weary Lardis Lidesci and a handful of his people . . .
23
The Last Warrior – The Horror at Perchorsk!
Following the battle at The Dweller’s garden, Shaithis of the Wamphyri guided his half-crippled, seared flyer for home. He fancied the creature wouldn’t make it, not for all his goading, for it was burned all along its underbelly and dripping fluids like rain. He, too, had taken a dose of direct sunlight, but had been nimble-minded enough to throw himself down on his flyer’s back, in the trench of horny ridges formed of its huge wing muscles.
The blast had come as Shaithis’s creature was turning away from the garden after a trial landing run, and so he’d not been blinded; but still he’d felt the hideous, searing heat of the true sun, and so had known that The Dweller could not be defeated. His weapons were simply too powerful, beyond Wamphyri understanding and certainly beyond their control. Which, together with the loss of his lieutenants and warriors, had convinced Shaithis that the attack was a pointless exercise. Wamphyri losses had been devastating, and the survivors had come to the same conclusion as Shaithis, quitting the fight en masse and heading for home.
Down across the Starside plain they’d flown their creatures, many limping, all humiliated, and Shaithis had felt their hatred of him beating like hammer blows on his psychic Wamphyri mind. They blamed him for their losses, for he’d been the one who instigated the attack, their self-appointed leader in the abortive affray. Generals who lose are rarely feted, mainly scorned.
On the way east, using the half-dome of the shining sphere for pharos and rolling in his saddle, Shaithis had seen Fess Ferenc and Volse Pinescu go down, fluttering out of the sky on flyers finally too weak to resist gravity’s pull, and he’d watched them crash in clouds of dust far below on the moon-silvered plain. The Lords must finish the rest of their journey afoot, for Shaithis doubted they’d have strength for flight metamorphosis. He certainly wouldn’t, if his flyer were to succumb. Still, walking had to be better than dying.
The Lords Belath and Lesk the Glut, Grigis and Menor Maimbite, Lascula Longtooth and Tor Tornbody were missing, along with many lesser Wamphyri lights. Of warriors there were none to be seen . . .no, Shaithis corrected himself, one – only one? – spurting through the sky eastward, acting of its own volition. Doubtless its master was dead, and now it returned to the only home it knew.