'For someone had an arm up inside him, at full stretch, and that someone's hand was gripping his spine from inside, holding him upright! A glove-puppet, yes, as he folded in the middle to topple out of the turret, and another's head and shoulders came into view. But such an Other!
'Zek's legs were rubber, her hand, too, where she forced it to reach for the gun in her waistband. She was stumbling backwards, away from this scene of uttermost horror, yet every move she made was in some kind of dreadful slow-motion. And the figure in the hatch wrenching its crimson arm from Trennier's body… blood flying, splashing Zek's face in a red slap… yellow eyes burning on her, seeming to burn into her, their cores blazing scarlet in a moment. They were like the holes in a Hallowe'en mask, those eyes, but they were alive!
'He — it — came out of the hatch in one flowing movement, while another figure rose up behind him; all of this happening in a surreal slow-motion that was simply a trick of Zek's mind. For in fact it was very fast, and in her extreme of numb, gnawing terror, almost too fast to follow.
'She snapped out of it, put her hands together, aimed with the torch and the gun both. But even as she pulled the trigger, that bloodied arm swept the gun aside, sent it flying, and the torch,
too. And a cold wet hand caught at her wrists, trapping both of them in its icy grip…'
Trask had paused. His eyes were staring, unblinking. Gaunt and grey, he seemed to have collapsed down into himself a little.
When a crackle of static sounded from the radio, the Duty Officer gave a start. But then a tinny voice was heard, reporting the jetcopter's progress. 'Bird One to base… ETA twenty to twenty-five minutes, over.'
'Roger, out,' said the D.O. into his handset. That served to bring Trask out of it, and:
'I suppose I'd better finish it,' he said. And in a little while, lacklustre and robotic, but inured now, he carried on.
'Understand, this wasn't my dream — not all of it — though I'm sure that parts of it were. What I've told you so far is my… my reconstruction of the so-called "Radujevac incident," as I've pictured it time and time over in my mind's eye, and in my current nightmares. It's built out of details that Nathan Keogh gave us, out of… God, evidence… that we found at the Refuge, and lastly out of Zek's telepathic contact with me, while I lay tossing and turning during her final moments.
'Her final moments, yes…
'For that was when she knew it was over, when that bastard thing Malinari trapped her wrists, gripped them in his freezing cold hand, and smiled his dreadful smile at her. Smiled at Zek, inclined his head, and began reading her like a book. But every page as he absorbed it was torn out, discarded, went fluttering into oblivion. And knowing it was over, that was when she contacted me. Once before she'd done it, when she'd thought she was dying. But this time she was dying.
'In my nightmare I saw his face. Handsome, yes, but a vacant sort of beauty, superficial, cosmetic. Lord Malinari looked as he willed himself to look, young but not too young, dark but not too dark, thirsty and… and no way to hide it. Greedy for knowledge, and the power it would bring. Zek's knowledge, which she wasn't going to give him without a fight.
'At first she didn't look at him, could only stare at poor Trennier, sprawled on the floor in his own blood, his face alternating between glaring white and shadow, white and shadow, as her torch rocked to a standstill close by. At his bulging eyes, his gaping mouth. Poor Trennier, raped and dead. But—
'"Ah, no," said Malinari the Mind, in a voice like bubbles bursting on a pool of oil. "Not dead but undead, or soon to be. He knows things — of metals, machines and engines — and I would know them, too. But you… the things thatjyow know are of far greater interest. Moreover, I see that I am not the first of my kind that you have known."
'Zek could feel her knowledge slipping from her — slithering out of her and into him, like a greasy rope in a tug-o'-war — and she fed her thoughts to me that much faster. But Malinari would not be denied; he read her telepathic messages, too, interpreting them as best he might. As for her knowledge:
'It was as if Zek's past, her memories, her understanding of the world… as if it were all iron filings, and Malinari's mind a vast magnet drawing them out of her. But she fought — oh, how she fought — so that what came to me was of the moment, not of the past, as she allowed me to see how it was, and explained in a kaleidoscope of telepathic scenes how it had been for her, and how if would be for the world if I didn't receive her warning.
'But she knew that it couldn't go on — couldn't be allowed to go on — for he was taking too much, and if she let him he'd get it all. About me, E-Branch, our espers, their talents Malinari would get it all, if she let him.
'By now the others were up out of the sump: Vavara, incredibly beautiful in Zek's mind, lit by her own radiance, alluring so as to further weaken Zek by her presence. And I saw her, but I'll spare you any description because I know that any description would be false. For the beauty of a vampire Lady is literally skin deep. Let me just say this: most women — young women, especially those of great beauty — would hate her; they would be irresistibly attracted to her, but they'd hate her. And even the most blase man, a man drained by his excesses, sated to his full measure, would lust after Vavara.
'And finally Lord Szwart. A darkness… a flowing, oozing something… a shape without a shape… the ultimate in metamorphism… scorning any fixed form for the constant, ongoing, unceasing mutation of protoplasm which was his existence. A fly-the-light, but more so than any other Great Vampire: the closest comparison we could make would be Nathan Keogh's description of Eygor Killglance of Madmanse in Turgosheim, in a vampire world. But where Eygor was made of flesh and bone
— albeit the flesh and bones of others — Szwart was of a far more elemental material. And most of it was darkness.
'Vavara, seeing Zek drawn up against Nephran Malinari, and jealous of any naturally attractive woman, said, "Take what you will and finish it." Her voice was beautiful as her lying form, as ugly as her words. And Szwart's was a hiss of air driven out through temporary lungs specifically created, as on the spur of the moment, to enable speech:
'"Aye, get done with it. There are young ones up above…. sweet meat for the taaaking… and a world entire to conquer." But:
' "No, ah no," said Malinari, and moved his slender hand to lift Zek's chin. "She fights me with a will of iron, and I desire what's in there." And to Zek — and through her to me — "Do you know, the eyes are the windows of the soul? It's true, Zekintha. But to these fingers of mine, they are also the doorways to the mind. And I weary of this and would have it quickly." He held up two fingers before her, aiming them at her, only inches from her eyes.
'Zek knew what he would do; but seeing his fingers vibrating, pulsing with purple veins, elongating and reaching towards her, she also knew what she must do. She volunteered a picture, thrust it at him, showed him the doom she'd planned for him and the others and seared it into his probing mind. Oh, she lied — described a devastation far greater than the truth, that would come ripping through the floor in rivers of fire and tortured concrete, threatening him even here — and perhaps Lord Malinari suspected it was a lie. But the way Zek's eyes were locked on that open hatch, out of which the last of three lieutenants was even now appearing, he couldn't take the chance.