Thus he continued to plan ahead, his ability to do so fuelled by hatred, his once-human lust, and fly-by-night blood-lust. For while the future seemed uncertain now, and despite that his capacity for reasoned thought was gradually failing, all was not lost. No, for with vengeance so close he could almost taste it, Ned knew that he must pursue it to whatever end!
It was dusty, smoky and eerily gloomy under the huge trees, but to Ned’s eyes it was as bright as the daylight he no longer could bear. And while only three of his original cabal remained to guard his back during the next phase of his continually evolving plan, still they were possessed of fly-by-night strength and insensate ferocity, and that must needs suffice.
Moving more purposefully now—his eyes blazing yellow, and his fretted nostrils sniffing at the reeking air—Ned left the perimeter and went ghosting in towards the encampment’s central area. As he went so he “called” on his three to leave what they were doing and join him at the source of a certain unmistakable scent. Almost a perfume in its own right, this was the smell of sweet young female flesh, and to Ned it was unique as a fingerprint. With his vampire senses to guide him unfailingly through the night and his lust fully inflamed, he would know that scent anywhere…
XIV
At that exact moment, as the surviving members of Ned’s ambush party received his message, the creature closest to Layla where she stood confused and uncertain near the entrance to her makeshift shelter, was one of the oldest and most hideously mutated monsters of its kind; but it was also one of the most mentally and physically capable.
Over seven feet tall but spindly as a spider, with its hair drifting three feet behind it when it moved, and hanging almost to its waist when stationary, the creature was in its way anthropomorphic, but so far removed from any human origins as to be utterly alien. Its arms—even longer than its hair and thin as twigs, with hands and taloned fingers fifteen inches in length, the latter barbed at the knuckles—reached out graspingly before it in typical fly-by-night fashion, while its incandescent eyes burned an intense white, like blobs of molten metal. Worse than all of these anomalies together, however, were its yawning jaws that dripped fresh blood, and needle teeth still hung with strips of human skin and raw flesh torn from a recent victim!
Layla failed to see the thing at first…what she did see was a pair of ghostly, long-shadowed, smoke-wreathed silhouettes that came groping directly toward her out of the gloom! They too seemed to be reaching their arms out before them; but while Layla couldn’t know it their hands bore weapons, not talons!
Just a split second after Layla turned away from them, even as she made as if to flee into the night, she realized her mistake, that in fact she knew the pair: Zach Slattery and Big Jon Lamon! But in the same moment she saw the third figure where it came eagerly, purposefully wafting toward her from the opposite direction; a very tall, very thin figure…and one with flaring pits for eyes!
No less than Zach and Big Jon the ancient vampire was likewise silhouetted, against the nimbus cast by a small, guttering oil lamp which Layla had hung from the projecting ridge-pole of her shelter; but no matter the circumstances—gloom or glimmer—there could be no mistaking this thing for what it was. Again Layla spun on her heel; only to trip and literally fly into her father-in-law’s arms.
Thrown off balance by reason of Layla’s sudden, unanticipated weight, and with his game leg giving way beneath him, still Zach managed to cushion the girl’s fall; even though that meant losing his grip on his shotgun, however temporarily.
And meanwhile, Big Jon had seen the cause of Layla’s abrupt and terrified flight.
“God help us!” The leader muttered his prayer as the fly-by-night wafted toward him, suddenly accelerating into what seemed like a frenzied all-out attack, its wispy white hair and rotten rags floating behind it. Unable to avoid its rush, Big Jon made a stand. Taking aim with a hand that trembled however slightly, he let the nightmarish creature get even closer—only two or three paces away—before squeezing the trigger…and nothing happened!
Bad ammunition—again!
“Jesus Christ!” This time, realizing there was no avenue of escape, Big Jon’s words were little more than a groan; and feeling his knees turning to rubber he sank to the leaf-mould floor. Even sprawling, however, he went on repeatedly, uselessly, yanking on his antique revolver’s trigger in the hope that at least one of the remaining rounds had retained its sting. No use, all such hopes were in vain; and having come down on his right side between tree roots, now Big Jon was having difficulty in recovering his back-up side-arm from his belt!
Meanwhile:
Incredibly, and for all its swooping rush, the fly-by-night elder ignored Big Jon’s slumped figure; it wasn’t here for him. And while the leader gave up trying to reach the spare side-arm trapped under his heavy body, and began fumbling instead in his jacket pockets for bullets to replace the faulty rounds that he was shaking from his revolver’s chambers, the hurtling creature came to an abrupt, astonishingly smooth halt. And with barely a glance at Big Jon, it simply turned away from him! And stepping very carefully, calculatingly over Zach and Layla’s tangled figures—straddling them with its spindly legs—the monster bent forward and down from a wasp-like waist and caged them between all four stick-insect limbs!
Trying to free herself from Zach, who was groping blindly, desperately in the leaf-mould and pine needles for his shotgun, Layla had turned onto her back. Now, as she looked up directly into the fly-by-night’s hideous skull-like face, she wanted to scream but couldn’t. She had stopped breathing; she had no air and her throat was dry as dust; there was nothing she could do but gaze helplessly into those flaring, incandescent orbs that seemed with every passing moment on the point of spilling over and pouring their liquid metal contents down on her! Oh, Layla knew that last was an illusion, but it was an horrific concept nevertheless!
Looking at her through those nightmarish eyes, the monster cocked its head first one way, then the other. It was following unusual instructions—not so much orders as directions—that were very foreign to its nature. But the normally disfunctional group organism that was the swarm had recently taken possession of a man, a human being who, on this very rare occasion, it had endowed with the trappings of authority…all of which, supposedly, for the good of the swarm as a whole.
Well, perhaps, but where was the bulk of the swarm now? For no less than Ned, this old one had sensed the great extermination of so many of its parts—its species?—down at the river crossing, and it was now obvious that this adopted human’s ill-conceived plan had failed utterly. There would be no mass feeding frenzy tonight, nor any creation of fresh new vampires, not for this decimated swarm!
But…not every creature need go hungry, and how was this young female for a choice and tender morsel? This girl with her sweet body and sweeter blood.
The adopted human, this traitor to his own kind, had wanted her for himself; in exchange for which he would work to make it possible for the swarm to glut on the rest of the travellers—this clan whose men had treated him so very badly—but only as long as the girl was left to him alone. Indeed, she and a small handful of his enemies had been pre-eminent, conspicuous in his thoughts and central to a scheme which now had proved so detrimental, so disastrous to the swarm. And to the ancient vampire it seemed only right that Ned, too, should pay—that indeed he should be punished for his failure.