Trevor! Harry gasped, his own agony almost as great as the telepath's as he received the full, searing impact of his final seconds. Trevor, I'm coming - right now -just keep talking and I'll find -
No! Jordan cut him off, as all the pain of a life at its termination faded away and death's cool darkness crashed over him, laving him like an ocean wave. No, Harry, don't... don't come here. They're expecting you, and believe me they have the right gear. And anyway, you have no time. The girl, Harry, the girl!
The Necroscope understood. Of course: Penny.
The Branch had been closing in on him; they had closed in on Jordan; they would close in on Penny - and they'd be doing it even now!
Trevor! Harry was torn - felt himself riven - two ways: a secondary agony, of frustration and indecision. But Jordan was right. No one should be put to such an agonizing death, and certainly not an innocent. Jordan had been just such a one, and so was she. No matter what name anyone gave her now, or what she would be tomorrow, tonight she was an innocent.
You can't help me, Harry, Jordan told him, trying to make it easier for him. Not this time. You can only jeopardize your own safety - and Penny's. But it's OK, it's OK. I lived twice, which was enough. And dying twice was... that was too much. I don't need any more.
In the Möbius Continuum, Harry still felt himself dragged apart, pulled two ways. He moaned his horror -and his anger - as he deliberately shut Jordan's deadspeak thoughts out of his mind. Later, maybe later, he'd have time to thank him for the warning. But as for now -
- Bonnyrig.
He emerged along the river bank, well away from the house, emerged to a darkness shot with the crimson of his fury. Wamphyri fury! The thing within held sway; its awareness washed out from the Necroscope like human -like inhuman - radar, scanning the house standing in darkness. Except... when Harry left here the lights were ablaze!
Harry's telepathy was carried on his vampire probe. In the house, five people - five warm beings full of blood - five clever, thinking creatures, and four of them possessed of wild, weird talents. But nothing so weird as Harry's. His metaphysical mind touched upon their minds, but guardedly, so that they wouldn't suspect.
Penny first, terrified for her life, but as yet unharmed. Then Guy Teale, an as yet undeveloped seer, given on occasion to glimpsing the future, which Harry well knew was an unwieldy, unforgiving talent at best. And Frank Robinson, a spotter with the ability to recognize another esper on sight, or even in close proximity (his mind flinched a little when Harry touched it, but not enough that the Necroscope's presence was revealed; Robinson's talent, too, was as yet embryonic). But then... ah, then there was Ben Trask. A sad thing: Harry had hoped there'd be no old friends here, but here was Ben. And finally -
-Paxton!
Paxton the mind-flea, the previously unreachable itch, a vampire no less than Harry himself, who scorned the blood of others for the secret juices of their minds, their very thoughts. And indeed Paxton was something else: keen beyond the call of duty, zealous to a fault, vicious as the crossbow he even now held on Penny Sanderson in the Necroscope's bedroom. So that quick as Harry was to withdraw his probe, still he wasn't quick enough and Paxton knew he was there.
The telepath at once narrowed his eyes and quietly, with a shiver in his voice, called downstairs: 'He's close! He's coming!'
In the spacious front room of the house, which had served mainly as Harry's study - whose French windows looked out over a garden descending in shallow terraces to a high wall and the river bank beyond - Ben Trask and Guy Teale received Paxton's hushed warning and acknowledged it with tight-lipped glances and cramped, edgy movements. Moon and starlight were their only sources of illumination, which in itself was a mistake on their part. Their eyes had needed to adjust to the darkness, and even now worked inefficiently in the room's gloom. But the Necroscope's every sense was already adjusted; the night was his element.
It was the same for those upstairs as for Trask and Teale: their only light was that of the moon, creeping into Harry's bedroom through a window with the curtains thrown back. But downstairs: Teale felt Harry's presence, touched Ben Trask's elbow and husked, 'Paxton's right. He's close. And my God, I suddenly realize what we're doing here! Ben, what if he comes here, right to this room?'
'You do nothing,' Trask answered, gruffly. 'You hold that crossbow on him and do nothing. You give me a chance to talk to him, is all. But if I don't get that chance, or if you yourself are threatened, then you shoot - and you shoot for real! The heart. Is that understood?'
It was.
'Now be quiet. Watch. And listen.'
Outside in the garden, mist crawled through the gate in the wall where it hung on rusted hinges. Milky tendrils covered the lower terraces and lapped along the paths. And Trask knew well enough what that meant.
Harry made a Möbius jump from the river bank beyond the gate and emerged with his back to the wall of the house, just to one side of the open French windows. He listened and could hear the breathing of the two men in the room, could feel their very heartbeats. One of them was Ben Trask, but Penny wasn't with them. She was upstairs... and so was Paxton.
'Jesus!' Teale panted, the short hairs rising at the back of his neck. 'He's here! I know he is! And I've just seen a lot of trouble, a whole load of pain, for one of us.'
Trask cocked his SMG. He took two paces out through the French windows and stood ankle-deep in mist, looking this way and that about the night garden. But he failed to look up. He backed into the room and said, Trouble? Pain? For me? You? Who for, for fuck's sake?'
'Paxton!' Teale hissed. 'For Paxton!'
Trask turned horrified eyes to the ceiling. Paxton, Robinson and the girl were upstairs; Harry owed Paxton one, maybe several, and that vicious little bastard was holding his woman up there. Trask had worked out, with entirely human logic, that like any ordinary adversary the Necroscope would enter the downstairs rooms first; which was the main reason he'd sent Paxton upstairs: to keep Harry safe, for a little while anyway. Long enough that Trask could maybe talk to him and make sure he got whatever breaks were due him. But Harry wasn't any ordinary adversary and Trask might have guessed he wouldn't work that way. He'd work his way, which was unique. But Paxton was in charge up there, and Robinson had a bloody flamethrower!
'Upstairs!' Trask gasped. 'Let's go - now!'
Harry, too, had decided that it was time. Upside down above the high window of his bedroom, he used the great webbed sucker discs of his hands to cling to the pitted wall of the house and lowered his head to look in. A cloud scudding over the moon obscured the small shadow which his head cast. He glanced inside for a moment only, then withdrew. But adding together what he saw and the thoughts of those inside, he now had a complete picture. And before anyone or thing could move or do anything to change that picture, he acted.
He relaxed his hold on the wall, conjured a door and fell through it -
- Into the bedroom.
Robinson knew it at once. 'He's here!' the spotter yelped, spinning on his heel, jumping and gyrating, trying to aim the hot nozzle of his flamethrower in every direction at the same time but seeing and aiming at nothing.
Paxton knew it was true; he could actually feel the Necroscope's mind touching his own like an oozing slug -as close as that - but inside the room nothing seemed to have changed. And from downstairs the voices of Trask and Teale were hoarse where the two came running, thundering through the house and up the stairs, shouting their warnings.