Wamphyri! Brian Lumley

And then he ‘spoke’ to the Other, that loathsome extrusion of himself. It was the implanting of suggestions in a blank space, the imprinting of an idea upon a void, the burning of a brand into a beast’s hide. Floor flags buckled in one dark corner, the ground underfoot shifted and dust fell in rills from the low vaulting. That was all. Perhaps it had understood, and perhaps not .

Finally Yulian returned to his room. He changed his clothes, put on a neutral grey track-suit and shoved his wide-brimmed hat into the waistband. He neatly folded a suit of clothes into a small travelling case, along with a wallet containing a good deal of money in large notes. That was that; he needed nothing more.

Then, as the minutes ticked by, he sat down, closed his eyes and pitted his own dark nature against the great Mother Nature herself in one final test of his now mature vampire powers. He willed a mist, called up a wreathing white screen from the earth and the streams and the woods, a clinging fog down from the hillsides.

The watchers, tense now and taut as the strings of their crossbows, scarcely noticed the sun slipping behind the clouds and the ground mist creeping at their ankles; as a man, their attention was riveted on the house.

And time moved inexorably towards the appointed hour .

I Darcy Clarke drove furiously north. He had cursed aloud until his throat was raw,. and then silently until his cursing had come down to one four-letter word repeated over and ver again in his fuming mind. What his fury amounted to was this: he wouldn’t be in on the kill. He was out of the attack on Harkley. Now, instead, he was to be minder in-chief to a . . . a tiny infant!

Clarke was well aware of the importance of his new task and understood the purpose of it: with his talent it is unlikely that any harm would come to him. And so, if he was shielding the young Harry Keogh, the baby should likewise be safe. But to Darcy’s way of thinking, prevention was better than cure. Stop Bodescu dead at Harkley House, and you wouldn’t have to worry about the baby at all. And if he, Darcy Clarke, was at Harkley — if only he was there then guarantee Bodescu would be stopped!

But he wasn’t there, he was here, driving north for that godforsaken hole Hartlepool.

On the other hand, he knew that every single man of them back there was equally dedicated to Bodescu’s destruction. Which helped a little.

Clarke had got back to Paignton before 6.00 A.M. and Roberts had ordered him straight into bed. Later, he said, he would have a big job for him and wanted him to get at least six hours’ sleep. Finally Clarke had dozed off, and though he’d feared the very worst dreams none had come. At noon Roberts had shaken him awake, told him what his new job was. Since when Clarke had been driving, and cursing.

He had joined the M1 at Leicester, then picked up the A19 at Thirsk. He was now something less than an hour from his destination, and the time was (he glanced at his watch)—4.50P.M.

Clarke stopped cursing. God! What would it be like right now, down there?

‘Where the hell did this mist spring from?’ Trevor Jordan shivered, turning up the collar of his coat. ‘Hell, it was a nice day, from the weather point of view, anyway.’ For all his vehemence, Jordan had spoken in a whisper.

All of the INTESP agents, at their various stations around Harkley House, had been speaking in whispers for the last twenty minutes. At 4.30, working to Roberts’s instructions, they’d formed pairs — which was as well, for the mist had thickened up and started to threaten their individual security. It felt nice to have someone really close to you.

Jordan’s ‘buddy’ in the system was Ken Layard the locator. He was shivering, too, despite the fact that he carried seventy-eight pounds of Brissom Mark III flame-thrower on his back. ‘I’m not sure,’ he finally answered Jordan’s question, ‘but I think it’s from him.’ He nodded towards the house where it stood swathed in mist.

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