A light came on in a garret room under steeply sloping eaves. Another winked into being on the second floor, and one on the third. Harry looked away for a moment, up and down the street, then looked back -
- In time to see a fourth, much dimmer light come on in an angled corner window in the ground-floor flat. But he hadn't seen Found go in.
The house stood on a corner; there must be a side-door; Harry waited for the traffic to clear, then crossed to the other side of the road and turned the corner. And there it was: a recessed doorway at the side, Johnny Pound's private access to his lair. And Johnny himself was in there.
Harry crossed the cobbled street away from the house and merged with the shadows of the building on the far side. He turned and leaned back a little against the wall, and looked at the light where it shone out on this side, too, from a tiny window in Pound's ground-floor flat. And he wondered what his quarry was doing in there, what he was thinking... until it dawned on him that he didn't have to just wonder. For Trevor Jordan had given him the power to find out for himself.
He let his vampire-enhanced telepathy flow outwards on the night air, out and away into the dark and across the road, and through the old brickwork into the smoke-grimed, stagnant house of evil. But the probe was aimless, unpractised and lacking authority, spreading out like ripples on a dark pond in all directions. Until suddenly -the Necroscope found more than he'd bargained for!
His telepathy touched upon a mind - no, two minds -and he knew at once that neither one of them belonged to Johnny Found. They weren't in the house, for one thing, and for another... they were already intent upon him! Upon Harry Keogh!
Harry drew breath in a sharp hiss of apprehension -fought hard against the urge to crouch down, which would only serve to illustrate his awareness - and looked this way and that along the dark alley. E-Branch? No, for there was no strength there, no talent, no metaphysical power. So who and what were they? And where?
Along the alley a cigarette glowed in the dark as someone took a drag, someone keeping to the shadows no less than the Necroscope himself. And across the main road under a lamp-post, there stood a figure in a dark, lightweight overcoat with his hands stuffed forlornly in his pockets, turning first this way and then that, for all the world like a man stood up who still hopes that his date will show: a decoy, to distract attention from the one in the shadows.
And both of them wondering about Harry, so that he picked up their thoughts in snatches right out of their unsuspecting minds.
The one under the lamp-post: Pound's home, but who's this bugger?... Up and down the street, prowling like a cat... The one we were told to watch out for?... Said if he showed up we shouldn't touch him, but... feather in the old cap... Promotion to Inspector?
And the one in the shadows, who was now stepping out of the shadows and heading Harry's way: Dangerous, they said... Well, let him try it on. If I'm obliged to protect myself... blow his fucking head off! (And Harry could actually feel the man's hand tightening nervously about the rubber grips on the butt of a pistol in his pocket.)
As the one with the gun came almost jauntily on, so the other straightened up and took his hands out of his pockets, then headed across the road towards Harry. And quite casually, patiently (but with their hearts pounding in their chests and their eyes sharp as daggers), so they converged on him.
Harry glared at them and was surprised to hear himself snarl. A river of fire raced in his veins, setting light to something inside which blazed up and sang to him of slaughter and spurting, crimson blood; of life, and of death! Wamphyri!
But the human side said: 'No! These are not your enemies! Upon a time, before you were a law unto yourself, they might even have been your friends. Why hurt them when you can evade them so easily?'
Because it isn't my nature to flee but stand and fight!
'Fight? Not much of a fight! They're like children...'
Oh? Well, at least one of these children has a gun!
The man crossing the road waited for a stream of cars to go by in the nearside lane; he was ten to fifteen paces away, no more. The other one was maybe twenty paces away. But both of them were definitely homing in on Harry. His vampire knew the danger no less than he did, and worked to protect him. The Necroscope sweated a strange, cold sweat and breathed a weird mist, which clung to him like an ever-thickening cloak. And as the two policemen came on, so Harry's mist spilled out of the shadows where he waited and poured itself into view like the exhalations of a basement boiler room.
Their guns are useless now. They can't see me in this. But I can see, smell, sense, even reach out and touch them, if I wish it. Reach out and snuff them!
'Damn you!' Harry cursed himself- or the thing inside him - out loud. 'Damn you - you slimy black bastard thing!'
'Yeah, well never mind all that, pal,' one of the policemen answered him, crouching down and aiming his gun two-handed into the fog. 'We've been damned and cursed before, right? So just come on out of there, OK? I mean, all of that steam has to be bad for you. Do you want to ruin your lungs? Or do you want me to do it for you, eh? Now, I said come on out of there!'
There was no answer, only a sudden swirling as the fog seemed to fold inwards upon itself, as if someone had shaken a blanket or slammed a door right in its heart. And in a few seconds more the mist thinned out, fell to earth, turned to a film of liquid which made the cobbles damp and shiny. And the wall was high, black and blank, with no alley and no basement boiler room.
And there was no one there at all ...
Back in Bonnyrig, Trevor Jordan was awake; some immediately forgotten night terror had drenched him in his own sweat and snatched him panting out of his bed in the attic room; now he prowled the rooms and corridors of the old house where it stood by the river, putting on all the lights, his every nerve jumping as he looked out from curtained windows into the night. Just what his apprehensions were he couldn't say, but he felt something looming, hovering, waiting. Some terrible Thing for the moment conserving its energy, but full of monstrous intent.
Was it Harry, Jordan wondered? The thing that Harry was far too rapidly becoming? Possibly. Could it be concern over Harry's fate if - when - E-Branch finally moved on him? Well, yes, that too. Or was he worried about his own fate, if he was still with the Necroscope at that time? Was this how Yulian Bodescu had felt at Harkley House in Devon, that evening when the Branch had closed in on him to destroy him? Something like this, Jordan was sure.
It was time for Jordan to leave Harry, and he knew it. To leave him for good and merge back into the mundane world of ordinary men. Oh, the telepath knew he could never more be truly mundane, for he had seen the other side and returned from it. But he could try. He could work at it, work into it, gradually forget that he had been - God, he couldn't bear the thought of the word even now! - that he had not been alive, and eventually become just another man again, albeit one with a talent. And when Harry was well out of it and fled into that other world which Jordan could scarcely imagine, then he might even return to the Branch. If they would take him back. But of course they would want to be sure about him first. They would want to check that he was who and what he was supposed to be.
But the trouble was (and Jordan knew now that this must be the source of his nightmare) that he couldn't be sure he would be the same person. For if Harry's awful metamorphosis continued to accelerate...