Well, Layard offered a deadspeak shrug, I'm already in your mind — in contact, anyway — so I suppose you'll just have to open up and let me look deeper inside. I mean, I know my own trick, the mechanism which makes me a locator, and if I can find a similar thing in you…
… And activate it?
Something like that.
And you want me to open up to you of my own free will, right?
Layard chuckled, albeit drily. You've played this game before, Harry.
Harry nodded. Yes, I have, occasionally with disastrous consequences.
Layard was serious at once. Harry, there's none of that shit in me. I was still myself when I went out. I don't have anything up my sleeve.
The Necroscope considered it. But what did he have to lose? Very well, he finally said, except… I've already warned you that my mind's a weird place. Don't try to mess with me, Ken. You don't have much, I know, but I swear if you fool around in there I won't leave you with anything.
Hey, you don't have to convince me!
OK, Harry said. And, after a moment: One last thing. You said you came to thank me, for what I did for Jordan? I take it you mean his resurrection? So how did you know I'd brought him back?
Layard shrugged. Just because the Great Majority don't speak to me doesn't me I can't eavesdrop now and then. Also, the dead don't move around too much, you know? But Trevor does. So I knew that what I'd heard was true. You have a heap of rare talents there, Harry. A pity you didn't get Darcy's too, before they got him!
That focused the Necroscope's attention to a pin-point.
He fastened on it in a moment. Darcy's dead? I thought that was just a nightmare. I hoped it was, anyway. Which means I have to hope this is, too.
You have my sympathy, Harry, Layard told him. But it's all real.
No one brings me any good news any more… Lost for words, Harry shook his head, then deliberately returned to the former subject. All right, Ken, my mind's all yours.
The locator went in — and was out again almost as quickly. And: You're right and that's a strange place, Harry, he said. It's as if it was radioactive in there: hot and cold at the same time! But I found what I wanted; or rather, I didn't find it. You don't have the equipment. There's nothing there for me to switch on.
Harry shrugged. You tried, anyway.
But you do have David Chung's kind of mind.
Chung? The sympathetic locator?
That's right. So I tripped that switch instead. Now all you need is something belonging to the one you need to locate. You focus on it, and bingo! Except being what you are — everything you are — you'll probably be better at it than Chung is.
Harry nodded, said: Well, I suppose it's my turn to owe you again. Thanks, Ken.
Oh, I'll be back later to collect, Layard told him. I mean, Trevor was like my kid brother, you know? And now I'll go and let you get some sleeping done. You're tired, Harry, in mind and body both.
As Layard backed off and faded into nothing, the Necroscope's mind cleared itself for whatever else, whoever else, was waiting. And she didn't take long in coming.
He dreamed of Penny. But was she a dream… or just a fancy? Even dreaming, he wondered about it: was she an adjustment of psyche — part of the pigeon-holing of mundane occurrences into all the subconscious slots between forget it, through trivial, to highly important — or just a remnant left over from a moment or two of waking lust?
He'd known of course that the dead girl had a crush on him. It had been obvious even from their first meeting. For after all, how many men get to see their ladies naked on a first date? In Harry's day, damn few! Maybe this was simply the extrapolation of something his subconscious mind had been working on, and should have been titled: 'How Things Might Have Been if Harry Keogh Could Spare the Time and if He Wasn't a Bloody Vampire'.
Whichever, it was a soothing and blessed relief to his tormented mind after the nightmare of association with Johnny Found, the delirium of Darcy Clarke's accusations, and the revelations of Ken Layard; and it brought physical relief, too, as he answered Penny's caresses and loved her with his body as any ordinary man loves a girl. The initiative, however, was all hers — had to be — else his exhaustion must drag him down even deeper into dreamless sleep.
And Harry wondered about that, too: how come she knew how to do it all? For after all, he knew she was an innocent… his little innocent, whose death he would soon avenge.
'Isn't bringing me back enough?' she whispered, guiding his rubbery fingers to her stiffening nipples. 'Do you have to go after him, too? You know, Harry, I've been doing a lot of thinking since all of this happened. And, I mean, I've got so much to be glad for. I was dead, and now I'm alive! It would be sort of ungrateful of me to want revenge, too. Oh, I wanted it at first, I know, but now I'm not so sure. But I'd settle for you, certainly.'
He lay back and listened to her, and felt her small, gentle fingers tight on his flesh where it throbbed, but lazily as yet like a motor waiting for the throttle. And in the darkness she sat up beside him, crouched over him, and patted him with her hands so that he swayed from side to side, jerking and snatching at the darkness.
Are the sexual arts instinctive in some people? Harry couldn't remember who had shown him. Or had he just known? Maybe he would remember when he woke up. But for the moment he didn't want to wake up. Here, now, asleep, he was just a man. No more the Necroscope, no more the vampire, just a man being loved and making love, and waiting for the sweet sucking thing which was the heart of Penny's womanhood to descend on to his silently singing flesh. And hoping against hope that the dream wouldn't fade or change its course, and that he would get to come. The last time he'd made love had been… just weeks ago, but already it felt like forever. He felt full to bursting. Maybe it was just being with this girl, Penny, just being human, which from now on he could never be again.
And the poignancy of that was so great that when at last, gasping, she actually slid her sweet young body down onto him, he came almost at once, like an urgent youth stroking his first love's breasts. And feeling him shuddering within her — the hot spurt of his juices — she clenched him that much tighter, until the jerking of his flesh had spent him to the last drop.
Following which… the gradual resurgence of his need was slow but sure, and her guidance unwavering, until he was in her again.
This time they lay on their sides, and while his left hand stroked, squeezed and compressed the pillow of her right buttock, so the tight tube of her vagina sucked on him for the milk of love and life. And Harry thought: If this were real I wouldn't dare, for fear of making her pregnant with my damned 'milk of life'! Or in my case, my tainted Wamphyri sperm!
And deep inside his vampire laughed at him. Milk of life? Frothing spume of lust, more like. For as everyone knows, only the blood is the true life.
'Harry!' she clawed at his shoulders, rubbed his chest furiously with her flattened, generous breasts. And, 'Harry!' she panted again. 'I'm coming… coming… coming!'
It brought him to climax, too, the thought of her orgasm and the feel of its wet, wrenching tremors. But more than that, it brought him to his senses. Suddenly he was awake. Wide awake in their sweat and their fluids and the pungent smell of their love — which wasn't fading back into the depths of his subconscious mind! Which wasn't the ephemeral stuff of dreams! Which was in fact totally, terribly, real! Because Penny was there in his bed with him!