Wamphyri! Brian Lumley

Roberts had screamed once — one high, shrill scream —before he fell silent under Yulian’s onslaught. Blow after blow the vampire rained on him, until his head was a raw red pulp that dripped brains onto the piano’s keyboard. And only then did he stop.

Inside the room, Clarke had heard the thrumm of the bolt where it missed him by a hairsbreadth. And looking out through the gap in the door, half-blinded by the light, he had seen what this nightmare Thing had done to Roberts. Numb with horror, nevertheless he tried to line up his own weapon for a shot, but in the next moment Yulian had thrust Roberts’s corpse back inside the room on top of Clarke, and rammed the piano back up against the door. And that was when Clarke broke: he couldn’t fight that Thing out there and his talent! The latter wouldn’t let him. Instead he dropped the crossbow, stumbled back inside the flat and sought a window looking down on the street outside.

There was no longer any coherency left in him; all he wanted to do was get away. As far and as swiftly as possible .

In the garret flatlet, Brenda Keogh had been asleep for only twenty minutes. A scream — like the welling cry of a tortured animal — had snatched her awake, brought her tumbling out of bed. At first she thought it was Harry, but then she heard scuffling sounds from downstairs and a noise like the slamming of a door. What on earth was going on down there?

She went a little unsteadily to her door, opened it and leaned out to listen for any recurrence of the sounds. But all was silent now, and the tiny landing stood in darkness

— a darkness which suddenly flowed forward to send her crashing back into the room! And now Yulian was within an ace of his revenge, and his coughing growl was full of triumph as he gazed with a wolf’s eyes on the girl sprawled upon the floor.

Brenda saw him and knew she must be nightmaring. She must be, for nothing like this should live and breathe and move in any sane waking world!

The creature was or had been a man; certainly he stood upright, however forward-sloping. His arms were .

long! And the hands at the ends of those arms were huge and clawlike, with projecting nails. The face was something unbelievable. It might have been the face of a wolf, but it was hairless and there were other anomalies which also suggested a bat. His ears grew flat to the sides of his head; they were long and projected higher than the rearward sloping, elongated skull. His nose — no, his snout was wrinkled, convoluted, with black, gaping nostrils. The skin of the whole was scaly and his yellow eyes, scarlet-pupilled, were deep sunken in black sockets. And his jaws!. . . his teeth!

Yulian Bodescu was Wamphyri, and he made no effort to hide it. That essence of vampire in him had found the perfect receptacle, had worked on him like yeast in a potent brew. He was at the peak of his strength, his power, and he knew it. In everything he had done, no trace had been left which might definitely identify him as the author of the crime. INTESP would know it, of course, but no court could ever be convinced. And INTESP, as Yulian had discovered, was far from omnipotent. Indeed, it was impotent. Its members were merely human, and fearful; he would hunt them down one by one until he’d destroyed the entire organisation. He would even set himself a target: say, one month, to be rid of all of them for good.

But first there was the child of this woman, that scrap of life which contained his one and only peer in powers —his helpless peer .

Yulian swept upon the girl where she cringed, locked his beast’s fist in her hair and half dragged her to her feet. ‘Where?’ his gurgling voice questioned. ‘The child —where?’

Brenda’s mouth fell open. Harry? This monster wanted Harry? Her eyes widened, flashed involuntarily towards the baby’s tiny room — and the vampire’s eyes lit with knowledge as he followed her glance. ‘No!’ she cried, and drew breath for a scream of sheer terror — which she never uttered.

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