Ahhh! came that gurgling, clotted mental voice in the two Harrys’ minds. Is that you, Haarrryyy? Yesss, I see it is! Well, i’m coming for you, Haarrryyy — I’m coming.
for. . . you! –
The baby’s scream of terror ripped his mother from her bed as if it were the hand of some cruel giant. She stumbled to his tiny room, shook herself awake as she entered and went to him. And how he cried, cried, cried when she took him in her arms, cried like she’d never heard before. But he wasn’t wet, and no nappy pins were sticking in him. Was he hungry? No, it wasn’t that either.
She rocked him in her arms, but still he sobbed, and his little eyes wide and wild and full of fear. A dream, maybe? ‘But you’re too tiny, Harry,’ she told him, kissing his hot little head. ‘Far too tiny and sweet and so very, very young to be dreaming naughty dreams! That’s all it was, baby, a naughty dream.’
She carried him back to her own bed, thinking: Yes, and 1 must have been dreaming, too! She must have been, for the baby’s scream when it woke her hadn’t sounded like the scream of a child at all but that of a terrified man.
It was 3.30 in London, where Guy Roberts and Ken Layard, assisted by the telepaths Trevor Jordan and Mike Carson, had spent the last ninety minutes trying to ‘get through’ to Carl Quint — without any success that they could measure.
They were working in Layard’s private locations room, an office or study set by solely for his use. Wall racks carried maps and charts of the entire world, without which Layard’s work for INTESP would be almost impossible. The map which had been spread on his desk for the last two hours was a blown-up aerial recce photograph of the Russo-Moldavian border, with Chernovtsy circled in red felt-tip.
The air was blue and acrid from Roberts’s endless chain-smoking, and steam whistled from an electric kettle in one corner where Carson was making yet another cup of instant coffee. ‘I’m knackered,’ Roberts admitted, stubbing out his half-smoked cigarette and lighting another. ‘We’ll take a break, find somewhere quiet and try to snatch forty winks. Start up again in an hour’s time.’ He stood up, stretched, said to Carson, ‘Stow the coffee for me, Mike. One addiction’s enough, thanks!’
Trevor Jordan pushed his chair away from the desk, went over to the room’s small window and opened it as far as possible. He lowered himself into a chair beside it and hung his head out into the night.
Layard yawned, rolled up the map and pigeon-holed it in a rack behind him. In doing so he exposed the huge 1:625,000 scale map of England which they had worked on earlier. At ten miles to an inch the thing covered the desk. He glanced at it, at Birmingham’s grey blot, let his talent reach out and touch that sleeping city — and . .
‘Guy!’ Layard’s whisper stopped Roberts half-way out of the door.
He looked back. ‘Eh?’
Layard jerked stiffly to his feet, crouched over the map. His eyes searched frantically and he licked suddenly dry lips. ‘Guy,’ he said again, ‘we thought he was down for the night, but he’s not! He’s off and running again — and for all we know he’s been on the move for the last hour and a half!’
‘What the hell . . .?‘ Roberts’s tired mind could barely grasp it. He came lurching back to the desk, Jordan too. ‘What are you talking about? Bodescu?’
‘Right,’ said Layard, ‘that bloody thing! Bodescu! He’s cleared off out of Birmingham!’
Grey as death, Roberts slumped down into his chair as before. He put a meaty hand over Birmingham on the map, closed his eyes, forced his talent into action. But no use, there was nothing: no mind-smog, no slightest suggestion that the vampire was there at all. ‘Oh, Christ? Roberts hissed through grating teeth.
Jordan looked across the room at Carson where he was stirring sugar into three cups of coffee. ‘Square one, Mike,’ he said. ‘You’d better make it four after all . .