She thrust aside a dazed Traveller and turned his lamp's beam full in Lesk's hideous face, blinding his eye. He cursed, clapped a hand to his face, came on and kicked the lamp from her grasp. Half-blind, he turned his left side toward her, glared his fury from the lidless eye in his shoulder. But as he swung his gauntlet, so his body turned with the swing and he again lost sight of her. She ducked under Lesk's arcing blow, tore away the flesh and ribs from his left side with one raking, razor-sharp swipe of her own gauntlet.
He cried out, staggered, gasped his amazement. He felt fumblingly with his free hand at the terrible damage to his body. His heart pounded like a great yellow bellows, plainly visible against the dark, pulsing sac of his exposed left lung. Travellers leaped on him, tried to trip him and drag him down. While he roared and raged, Karen stepped in and grasped his naked heart with her awesome weapon-hand. She cut the heart's pipes and tore it out of his body. He coughed blood, puffed himself up… and toppled like a felled tree! The Travellers fell on him like wolves, beheaded him, poured oil on his body and set fire to it. Lesk went up in flames.
Meanwhile:
A second gas-beast had come drifting directly toward The Dweller's house. The two Harrys fled the place, encountered a pair of Wamphyri lieutenants in their way. Their strategy in dealing with them proved their kinship: they let the grinning, gauntleted vampires close with them and charge, then ducked through Mobius doors. As their pursuers plunged into that unknown realm directly on their heels, so they closed the doors and exited through others. The lieutenants had simply disappeared; perhaps faint echoes of their screams came back, to be quickly drowned in the row and confusion of battle.
The mewling gas-beast over The Dweller's house was hit by a stray burst of gunfire. It exploded with a devastating roar, demolishing the place and sending out a great rush of vile stench.
Warriors were coming over the saddle behind the settlement. Another crashed down on the low structure housing Harry Jnr's generators. The remaining ultraviolet lamps blinked out, leaving only a handful of lanterns and starlight to light the reeling night. The bellowing voices of the Lords Belath and Menor Maimbite sounded inside the garden! From overhead, the Lord Shaithis shouted down instructions.
Still reeling from the gas-beast blast, Harry clutched his son's arm. 'You said we were a last resort,' he breathlessly reminded him. 'Whatever you meant by that — whatever's on your mind — you'd better say it now.'
'Father,' the other answered, 'in the Mobius Continuum even thought has weight. And you and I, we're linked. Wherever we are in the Mobius Continuum, we know each other.'
Harry nodded. 'Of course.'
'I've done things with and to the Continuum that you've never dreamed of,' The Dweller continued, but innocently, without boasting. 'I can send more than mere thoughts through it — as long as there's someone to receive what I send. In this instance, however, what I must send is dangerous. Not to you, but to me.'
'I don't follow you.' Desperately aware that the battle was being lost, Harry licked suddenly dry lips, shook his head.
'But you will.' Quickly, The Dweller explained.
'I've got you,' Harry said. 'But won't it hurt the garden, the Travellers?'
'I'm not sure. A little, perhaps. Nothing serious or lasting. But you should get the Lady Karen out of the way.' He went running back to the ruins of his house, found a shimmering metallic robe of foil where he'd stored it and put it on. It covered him from head to toe, with tinted glass discs for his eyes. 'I've used it before,' he said, 'out beyond the stars. Now you'd better see to Karen.'
Harry had followed him, said: 'Where will I find you?'
'Here. I'll wait for you.'
Harry used the Mobius Continuum and went to the wall. Men with flame-throwers were hosing down a stricken warrior; Karen fought with a lieutenant, dispatching him even as Harry arrived. 'Don't question this,' he said. 'Come, quickly!'
He caught her up, stepped through a Mobius door, emerged down on the plain of boulders at a safe distance from the glaring sphere Gate. Dazed, she swayed for a moment and her scarlet eyes went round as saucers. 'How.?'
'Which is your stack?' he asked her.
She pointed and he caught her to him again…
Harry left her in her deserted aerie, returned to the garden. His son was waiting. 'Do you understand?' The Dweller wanted to know.
'Yes,' Harry nodded. 'Let's get on with it.'
They entered the Mobius Continuum and Harry Jnr moved away very quickly, across the mountains to Sunside and from there -
— To the sun! He stood off from that monstrous furnace in deep space, opened a Mobius door. Harry heard his hiss of torment, also his directed thought: Now!
Harry opened a Mobius door on the garden, trapped and fixed it there, let his son redirect and pour sunlight through the Mobius Continuum and out through Harry's door. The garden was at once bathed in intense, glaring, golden light!
Harry turned the door like the gun-turret of a tank, sending his shaft of concentrated sunlight sliding across the garden. The beam struck warriors where they ravaged forward across the saddle. It ate into them like acid, devouring their vampire flesh. For this was sunlight, but not thinned by distance, not diluted by atmosphere. It was the essence of the sun! The monsters melted, boiled away and slumped down into sticky black pools.
Ahhh! The Dweller's agony was a fire in its own right, burning in his father's mind. The beam shut off, gave Harry time to recoup, rest from the task of holding steady and controlling his Mobius door.
'Son?' his anxious thoughts went out along the Mobius way. 'Are you all right?'
No!… Yes. Yes, I'm all right. Give me a moment…
Harry waited, conjured a door and looked out. He chose new targets: the Lords Belath and Menor where they came striding through a host of panicking Travellers, swatting them like flies.
Now!
Harry fixed the door, guided his son's sun-blast through it. The brilliant beam fell on Belath and Menor like a solid shaft of gold. It super-heated them, blew away their skins and flesh in writhing, stinking evaporation. As the Travellers scrambled wildly away from them, they exploded into tatters of smouldering vileness.
Harry turned his beam to the north, found a warrior in mid-air, descending toward the defenders at the wall. He shrivelled the thing before it could come too close, reduced it to a tarry fireball that fell well beyond the cliffs. Other warriors were overhead, and flyers with their startled riders. Harry swung the door horizontally, turned its beam into a giant searchlight. The sun shone upwards, from the earth!
Monstrous debris rained from the sky, and: Ahhh! Again the beam was shut off.
'Son! son!' Harry cried into the Mobius Continuum. 'Let that be an end to it. They're beaten, moving off. Stop now, before you kill yourself!'
No! the other's Mobius voice was a shudder. They must never recover from this. Go down onto the boulder plain, close to their stacks.
Harry understood. He did as directed.
Now!
The Dweller's beam reached out and licked at the base of Shaithis's stack. It played there for a moment, blazed in across bony balconies and through cartilage windows, found the gas-beasts in their places. In an uncontrollable chain-reaction of living bombs, the stack's base exploded outwards, hurling rock, bones, cartilage carcasses and all far out onto the plain. The stack teetered, crumpled downward into itself, toppled. Falling, it flew apart; but before its gigantic sections could strike earth, already Harry had redirected his beam.
And one by one the aeries were brought crashing down on the shuddering plain, reduced to rubble, erased.
Twice more during the work The Dweller cried out and the beam was shut off. But in the end only the Lady Karen's stack remained. And:
Let it be, Harry Jnr whispered.
Father and son went back to the garden. They emerged as the smoke and reek were lifting, and as the dazed Travellers and their friends from a different world looked all about them and rubbed grime from stinging eyes.
The Dweller's cloak of foil had fused to his body. Smouldering, he swayed there a moment — a black and silver thing that groped blindly as it took a single pace forward — then crumpled into its father's arms…
In what would have been three days Earth-time the news was: The Dweller would recover! It was the vampire in him, which given time would repair the damage he'd suffered. But Harry Snr knew he could never take his son, or Brenda, back to the world where they were born. Harry Jnr was Wamphyri; however different from the others, still he must stay here forever. Indeed he wanted to stay here. This was his place now, his territory which he'd fought and paid dearly for. And of course he could never be sure how things would go.
But… the Lady Karen was different, too. For the moment, anyway. Also, if what Harry had heard about her was true, she'd one day be more dangerous than all the others put together. He cared nothing for her, but he did care for his son. And an idea had formed in his mind.
Leaving The Dweller in the care of Jazz, Zek and the ever-faithful Travellers, Harry went to Karen's aerie. It was memorable when he left the garden, because for one thing there was gold on the peaks again, and also he had witnessed a strange reunion. Wolf, his paws bleeding, had made the crossing to find his mistress. No vampire in him, just a great deal of love and a lot of faith.
There'd been another, perhaps even more joyous reunion, too: along with Wolf had come a weary Lardis Lidesci and a handful of his people…