The three creatures separated, each of them moving toward a chosen target: Ned to Layla, the other two intent upon Zach and Big Jon. And sensing his revenge so close, Ned’s chuckle was as ugly as black bubbles bursting in an oily swamp as Layla turned to flee, tripped on a root, and tumbled once more to the forest floor.
In the next instant he stood over her. He was still unmistakably Ned; thinner and less solid-seeming, perhaps, but apart from his eyes and the length of his face and jaws, his features were mainly unchanged. Ned’s lust, however, was something else; it literally radiated from him! Lust, hatred, and the merciless cruelty in his every move, his every word as he hissed:
“There’s only one thing missing, yesss! That horny Slattery youth who you preferred to me! But Ned Singer—the man he used to be—is still in here…well, somewhere. And soon he’ll be in you! But where’s that horny pup now, eh? Oh, ha, ha, haaaa!” And reaching down he took her wrist and lifted her effortlessly to her feet.
“Oh, don’t cower so!” he told her as she tried to pull back from him. “You can be Layla for a little while longer, at least until you’re tried and tested. Oh yes, tested first and then tasted! That’s the least I can do: let you go on being the Layla I’ve known so well, but never well enough, until we’ve shared this, that and the other together—but mainly the other—and you’re ripe for the change. For there’s little of sensuality in the night by night existence of a vampire bride, and you should get what you can while you can. So I’ll have you as you are now, then have you forever the way you’re going to be!”
Still cringing from him, Layla tried shaking herself loose; Ned only laughed and carried on speaking:
“I considered letting this so-called ‘leader’ and this old cripple watch me pleasuring you, but…ahhhh!” Suddenly aware that the situation was changing, his molten silver eyes pierced the gloom this way and that, until rather more urgently he went on: “But no, not here and not just yet. Instead, we shall watch them—we’ll watch both of them die!”
Even going unheard by human ears, Ned’s orders were sensed by the creature standing over Zach where he lay dazed and deafened among the leaf-mould; also by the vampire that Big Jon was facing down with his machete. And now that pair of monsters began to move with more purpose; the one hunching forward, reaching for Zach, while the other advanced on Big Jon, apparently regardless of the heavily slimed weapon he was flourishing before him.
Meanwhile the rest of the encampment was returning to something akin to normal. Voices, nervous and urgent, but no longer quite so fraught, were sounding throughout the entire area, and even the gloom was being pushed back as more lamps began flickering into life. From not too far away a male voice called out: “Here’s another! Oh my God! It’s young Greg! He’s been savaged, blood drained…but he isn’t dead! I’m sorry Greg, but as the good Lord’s my witness, you’ll never be undead!” This was followed at once by the decisive, echoing crack of a gunshot…
Other voices were calling, answering each other across the length and breadth of the camp. There were other gunshots, too, and the wailing of women and children—even some menfolk—as the butchered, dead and undead alike, were dealt with as mercifully and swiftly as possible: irrevocable denials of any monstrous recoveries.
From the direction of the bridge over the river, the rallying cry of defenders was heard: the voices of those men who had gone down to the bridge crossing to reinforce Garth’s team. Reentering the forest prepared to fight, they didn’t know what to expect, couldn’t know that the internal ambush and the fighting was all but over—all but the threat to Layla Slattery and the men who were risking their lives to protect her.
Ned Singer saw the danger. Human figures were hurrying to and fro in every direction, their flashlight beams cutting pale swathes through the gloom, along with which their hoarse voices reached out before them as they came ever closer:
“Big Jon, is that you?” Chief tech Andrew Fielding’s voice.
Followed up at once by: “What the hell…?” in the gravelly tones of perimeter boss Don Myers, as he and Fielding materialized more surely out of the shadows.
“Over here!” the leader shouted, recoiling from his attacker’s deceptive, almost aimless seeming advances: in fact clever manoeuvres that brought the vampire ever closer. But the newcomers had already apprised themselves of the situation—at least some of it.
They saw Zach on his back in the pine needles, jabbing at the thing that leaned over him with his shotgun’s splayed muzzle; saw Big Jon dancing his deadly dance with his own creature; but they failed to see Ned Singer, where he clapped his coarse hand over Layla’s mouth and half-dragged, half-carried her behind the bole of a giant evergreen.
And there in the safety of a somewhat deeper gloom he whispered throatily in her ear: “No entertainment for us here, dear Layla. So it appears we must make our own, but safely away from this place, eh?” with which he cast about, seeking a route from the central area to the perimeter, and beyond it to the darker heart of the forest.
Even as he did so, however, suddenly out of nowhere—
—What was this? Ned found himself wondering. This strange irritation—an invasive something in the back of his mind—a vague yet oddly familiar…contact?
Who or what was probing his innermost thoughts, and through them tracking him!?
Then, as Ned sniffed at the air and his vampire senses penetrated the night:
And what, or who, was this grim shape advancing upon him so surely and determinedly through the gloom? No fly-by-night ally of Ned Singer’s, that much was certain! Nor any need to inquire further, as the bruised and limping figure drew closer.
For finally Ned recognized Garth Slattery, while simultaneously he “heard” his enemy’s vengeful message:
Softly softly catchee monkey, Ned! That bitterly cold voice stabbed like an icy knife at his vampire mind. And again: Softly softly catchee monkey—you ugly undead bastard thing…!
No more than fifteen paces away, around the curve of the mighty tree’s bole, Don Myers took aim with his self-loading rifle and fired at the legs of Big Jon’s attacker where it was side-stepping the leader and putting him off balance. But even as it got within range of its intended victim, so Myers’ shot blew one of its knees apart; and keening, flapping its arms, the thing toppled sideways. Big Jon saw his chance, took one short pace forward and aimed a devastating blow at the vampire’s scrawny neck. Its head came loose, flew free; its body collapsed into itself and crumpled to the spongy ground; it twitched and lay still.
Now Myers turned his weapon on Zach’s attacker—aimed and squeezed the trigger—and cursed as the gun jammed!
Myers looked around for Andrew Fielding, and saw the small, nervous chief tech fumbling with a bulky, ugly-looking machine gun. “It isn’t working!” Fielding cried out shakily. “I thought…thought I’d fixed the damn thing, but it’s still not working! It won’t fire!”
“Try freeing the bloody safety catch!” Myers yelled, scrabbling with desperate fingers where he tried to clear the breach of his own self-loader.
Frustrated by Zach’s jabbing with the splayed muzzle of his weapon, the surviving vampire was reacting to the shot that had killed its companion. As it straightened, turning its head away from Zach to see what was happening, he managed to rise up onto his good knee. And grunting from the great pain of the effort, he struck upwards, ramming his shotgun’s ragged snout deep into the creature’s groin.