The man looked at his gauntlet and, incredibly, struggled to his feet. Khuv backed away, aimed his gun. ‘Take that bloody thing off your hand!’ he demanded.
But the man from the sphere only smiled. He looked at Khuv’s gun, at the flame-projector whose nozzle pointed directly at him, and smiled a twisted smile. It was a strange expression, combining triumph, unbearable irony, even sardonic sadness or melancholy. But never a sign of fear. ‘Wamphyri,’ the man thumbed his chest, lifting his head in pride. Then … he laid back his head and literally howled the word: ‘Wamphyri.r
As the echoes of that cry died away, he thrust his face forward and glared once more at the men on the walkway, and there was that in his look which said: ‘Do your worst. You are nothing. You know nothing!’
‘The gauntlet!’ Khuv cried again, pointing. He fired a shot in the air for emphasis, aimed his gun at the warrior’s heart. But in the next moment he inhaled sharply, audibly, and let his air out in a gasp.
Standing there on the walkway, swaying a little from side to side, the man from the sphere had opened his jaws, opened them impossibly wide. A forked tongue, scarlet, lashed in the cavern of his mouth. The gape of his jaws expanded more yet; they visibly elongated, making a sound like tearing sailcloth. And because all else was total silence and the rest of the tableau was frozen, the sight and sounds of his metamorphosis were that much more vivid.
Jazz had held his breath as he watched; and now, in his cell, he held it again at the very memory of what he’d seen:
The warrior’s fleshy lips had rolled back, stretching until they split, spurting blood and revealing crimson gums and jagged, dripping teeth. The entire mouth had resembled nothing so much as the yawning muzzle of a rabid wolf – but the rest of the face had been as bad if not worse! The squat, flattened nose had grown broader, developed convoluted ridges like the snout of a bat, whose oval nostrils were shiny-black flaring pits in dark, wrinkled leather. The ears, previously flat to the head, had sprouted patches of coarse hair, growing upward and outward to form scarlet-veined and nervously mobile shapes like fleshy conchs; and in this respect, too, the effect was bat like. Or perhaps demoniac.
For certainly hell was written in those outlines, was limned in the nightmarish expression of that face: a visage which was part bat, part wolf, and all horror! And still the change was incomplete.
The eyes, which before were small and deep-sunken, had now grown large as gorged leeches until they bulged crimson in their sockets. And the teeth . . . the teeth gave a new meaning to nightmare. For growing and curving up through the lacerated ribbons of the creature’s gums, those bone daggers had so torn his mouth that it filled to overflowing with his own blood; and his teeth snarled through the blood like the awesome fangs of some primal carnivore!
As for the rest of his body, that had remained mercifully anthropomorphic; but through all of his metamorphosis his ravaged trunk and legs had taken on the dull gleam of lead, and every inch of his body had vibrated with an incredible palsy. But finally –
– Finally it was done. And knowing what he was doing, at last the man, or thing, from the sphere reached out its arms and took one more, stumbling step forward. And with that last lurching step in Khuv’s direction, the creature gurgled: ‘Wamphyri!’
Khuv had thought the thing was human, and he’d scarcely had time to recover from the shock of his error. His nerves, legs, voice – all of these things almost failed him. And that would have been a fatal malfunction. But in the last moment he stepped back out of range and croaked: ‘Burn him – it! God, burn the whore’s bastard to hell.’
That was all the man with the hose had been waiting for; he needed no further urging, and it required only the pressure of his forefinger on the trigger. A yellow jet of flame with a searing white core roared out from the nozzle, broadened, enveloped the horror from the Gate. For long seconds the squad hosed the thing down with chemical fire, and it simply stood there. Then the shape in the heart of the fire crumpled, seemed to melt down into itself, collapsed into a sitting position.