Necroscope - The Lost Years, Vol II Part 1

Necroscope: The Lost Years.

Brian Lumley.

Volume II.

Harry Keogh is a young man in another man's body: his mind has reanimated the brain-dead Alec Kyle.

Recently he has had to get accustomed to the idea - to the feel and looks of his new self - which would be problem enough without the additional complications of being Harry Keogh. For Harry is the Necroscope, the man who talks to dead people in their graves! Moreover, employing the formulae of the long-dead mathematician and astronomer, August Ferdinand Mobius, he has learned the secret of instantaneous travel in s.p.a.ce and time. He's a teleport But since his 'death' and metempsychosis the Necroscope's problems have been unending. His wife, Brenda, traumatized by past events and faced with the prospect of life with a total stranger,' has taken their infant child and vanished off the face of the earth. The agents of E-Branch - the British, London-based ESPionage agency Harry worked for - cannot find her, and despite his skills Harry, too, is at a loss as to Brenda's whereabouts... or perhaps not He knows his son's powers are at least as great as his own. It is possible that the baby has taken his mother and hidden her away. But where?

In order to devote himself to the search, Harry has left E-Branch and returned to his home outside Bonnyrig, near Edinburgh, Scotland. Unknown to him, however, Darcy Clarke, Head of E-Branch, has taken certain measures to ensure the Necroscope's unique skills can't be put to use by alien powers. For British E-Branch isn't the only parapsychological intelligence organization in the world: Red China and the Soviet Union have long followed similar lines of research and run similar covert agencies. Clarke couldn't simply let Harry walk, and take a chance that he wouldn't be recruited or coerced by some foreign agency or criminal organization.

Indeed, the Ne croscope's wife and baby may well have been stolen away by such an agency! Which is why, before Harry left E-Branch, 4 Clarke had him drugged, hypnotized, and his mind seeded with post-hypnotic commands forbidding him to divulge or display his powers to anyone else.

That was three and a half years ago. In some ways Clarke's scheme has worked out in Harry's favour; in others it has added to the complications of his rehabilitation, his coming-to-terms with the weirdness of his situation...

In Scotland, lonely and plagued by nightmares - residual 'echoes' of Alec Kyle's precognition, inexplicable glimpses of future events -Harry has developed a romantic relations.h.i.+p with Bonnie Jean Mirlu, 'a wrong- headed girl" who helped him out of trouble on a case in London. With a staff of attractive girls, B J. runs a wine bar in a seedy area of Edinburgh. But the bar is a front, and B J. Mirlu is more than she seems.

In fact she is a two-hundred-year-old vampire thrall who all her life has kept watch over an ancient horror from a monstrously alien parallel world. Her Master is Radu Lykan, whose lair is an inaccessible cavern complex in the high Cairngorms. Waiting out his time in suspended animation - as he has waited for six centuries - Radu is Wamphyri! The first of the Wamphyri were banished into our world almost two thousand years ago. There were four Nonari the Gross Ferenczy, the Drakul brothers, and the dog-Lord Radu Lykan, a werewolf. And they brought with them a blood-feud that was already hundreds of years old.

But our world was different Its teeming tribes were warriors who had their own bloodwars, in which the Wamphyri might easily get caught up and crushed. It was a far cry from their home world, where they had only one real enemy - themselves! At first they failed to adjust; the times were many when they came close to extinction, before learning the golden rule for survival: that longevity is synonymous with anonymity.

Then, gradually, they began to blend in. With their metamorphism it wasn't dif ficult to play the roles of men; in their own world they had been men before they were Wamphyri! Now they must be men again, find positions best-suited to their skills, use them to build their power-bases in this new world. So the banished vampire Lords went their diverse ways.

They became sparing in the dissemination of their evil; they chose their egg-sons carefully and made fewer bloodsons. Mainly they settled in remote areas, and kept themselves secret from the affairs of men. The Drakuls built their redoubts (or aeries) intheTransyhranian Mountains, where in nine hundred years they became powerful Boya rs. Nonari Ferenczy fled east from the dog-Lord Radu Lykan; he changed his name, became a citizen of Rome and eventually the 5 Governor of a small province on the Black Sea. He got vampire sons out of comely slave women; these made fives of their own in the gloomy east-facing mountains, which Asiatic invaders were loath to climb.

Generally the Drakuls and Ferenczys would remain covert in their ways; they desired that the legends arising out of their earlier days on the Danube and the wooded hills of Dacia - terrible legends of blood-sucking beasts and loping man-wolves - be forgotten by men in the wake of all the b.l.o.o.d.y wars that had washed across those parts. And in the main they were forgotten.

But as for Radu Lykan: With that of a wolf in him, he was the wild one. Initially Radu ignored the tenets of the rival Lords - he would not hide himself away but go out in the world, become a mercenary, revel in the reek and roil of warfare! Which he did with tremendous enthusiasm. And as the other vampire Lords established themselves in their various places, Radu and his pack became warhounds caring nothing for isolation or anonymity but l.u.s.ting after the spoil of sacked cities. They fought as mercenaries for personal gain - as well as for the sheer joy of it! - under human warlords whose knowledge and skill in battle was varied far beyond that of any vampire Lord in the world of Radu's origin. Thus he became an artful warrior in his own right But eventually, following an act of human treachery, Radu knew it was time to take stock. Returning to Romania, the dog-Lord determined to isolate himself in a mountain 'den.' Except he must find a livelihood, and the only way he knew was by the blood which is the life. Wherefore he built an aerie, and set himself up as Voevod - a warlord protector - to the mountain-dwelling peasants of the eastern Carpathians. But the Drakuls, long-established in the western arms of the Carpathian horseshoe, knew his plan. They swept down on him to murder him and destroy his manse. Radu wasn't to house; but when he returned and saw what was done... he knew who to blame.

There was nothing he could do about it; yet again his pack had been decimated, and Radu hadn't the manpower to fight back. But at least the Drakuls had shown their true colours, and from now on Radu would know where he stood with them. Indeed, he had always known, but this was in effect the first actual 'declaration' of war. A bloodwar, aye!

Down all the centuries from that time forward, no quarter would be given or expected by the rival Wamphyri factions. Drakuls and Ferenczys, their descendants and thralls, Radu and the pack: they formed a far-flung triangle of mutal animosity, of a hatred and loathing far beyond the pa.s.sions of any merely human adversaries. From time to time they might come into c ontact - though usually they would find it prudent to avoid one another - but in the right place at the right time...

6 ... Blood wiU out And blood will be let out! Keeping his band small and fighting in many of the ancient world's great battles, Radu went on as a mercenary. When times allowed he would return to Romania, which he considered a home of sorts. But he knew that the Drakuls continued to Lord it in the mountains, and that his worst enemies, the Ferenczys, were still abroad in the world. He begged of his mistress moon that eventually he would meet up with them to right the wrongs they had worked against him. And in a way - though not entirely as he had wished it - his prayers were eventually answered...

Time went by; the world changed; a new terror came ravaging from the east No conquering Mongol horde this time, but a horde of rats! The Black Death had come to Europe - and vampires as well as entirely human beings were dying from it In the Vampire World there'd been only one human disease that the Wamphyri feared: leprosy, which infected their metamorphic flesh faster than their leeches could repair or replace it. Now in this world there was another. It seemed grotesquely ironic: that where the Wamphyri were the greatest parasites of all, this plague was spread by the very smallest - the fleas that infested the Asiatic rats! The last Drakul (Egon, a Starside original) lived in Poland for the duration of the terror, Poland suffered little or no plague mortality.

As for any remaining Ferenczys: at least one may have seen out the plague years on some easily-defended island, for at that ti me they we re powerful in the Mediterranean. But Radu Lykan was ever the mercenary, the adventurer and wanderer.

And he was caught out in the open.

Fleeing west through a panic-stricken, plague-ridden Europe, Radu was attacked, wounded, and infected with the plague. Overburdened with Radu's strenuous physical life-style and the disease in his blood both, his parasite grew weak and began to Ml him. So that by the time he and the survivors of his pack reached Scotland, he felt exhausted and had but one recourse.

For a long time the dog-Lord had pondered the preservative, perhaps curative powers of resin. Now he would take refuge in a resin 'tomb,' immerse himself in a great vat of the stuff, and place his trust in the tenacity of his leech. Relieved of some of its burden, his parasite would have an opportunity first to cure itself, then to work on him. And it would have ample time in which to perform its duties.

Radu had a skill other than his hypnotism and mentalism; he was a server on future times, which he glimpsed in oneiromantic dreams. Scanning the future, however, is a dubious art The events witnessed may not come to pa.s.s exactly as foreseen. But the one thing Radu '

saw' quite clearly was the duration of his planned 'sleep' - more than six hundred years! It came as a blow at first but as the dog-Lord got 7 weaker so he resigned hi mself to the idea. In the high Cairngorms he prepared a lair and set watchers over it; when all was done, he consigned himself to the resin...

That was then and this is now.

The centuries are flown and the time is right; Radu will return. Except first he awaits the coming of a certain 'Mysterious One' - a 'Man-With-Two-Faces' - whom he has scried close at hand in the imminent hour of his resurgence. And B J. Mirlu has brought just such a one to her Master's attention: the Necroscope, Harry Keogh.

Radu communicates telepathically with B J. from the resin vat in his Cairngorms hideaway. When she attends him, they converse as if he were up and about He has ordered her to present Harry at her earliest opportunity. He wants to know the Necroscope's mind, to see if this is indeed the man of his dreams of the future. But Radu is not merely curious. Since his mind is mainly 'divorced' from his physical body by virtue of his long period of suspended animation, he cannot be sure that his body is fit and well and that his leech has beaten off his disease. However, and even in a worst-case scenario, he believes he may still survive resurgence by use of metempsychosis: mind transference - to the body of Harry Keogh. In which event the Keogh ident.i.ty would be entirely subsumed, and Harry would be Radu!

Bonnie Jean knows Radu's plan and is in two minds about it Soon to be Wamphyri hi her own right - if indeed she has not already 'ascended' - she would have Harry for herself. For the moment, however, she is under Radu's spell no less than the Necroscope is under hers. She must obey her Master, even though her every fibre cries out against it Perhaps if she knew Harry's history, his esoteric skills, she would be of a different mind. But she can't know, for despite that BJ. is a powerful beguiler, second only to Radu himself, E-Branch got to the Necroscope first Even twice-hypnotized he is forbidden to reveal his talents. Radu's hypnotism, on the other hand, is of a different order. It is possible he can even use it to enter Harry's mind. Indeed, to achieve metempsychosis he will have to do just that! Thus Harry's secrets may yet be discovered...

Radu is not the only Great Vampire who survived the turbulent centuries. The only original, yes, but not the last On Tibet's Tingri Plateau, Daham Drakesh, a Drakul, is the self-proclaimed High Priest of a monastery where he is breeding an army of vampire thralls. Ostensibly he is in league with a parapsychological unit of the Chinese Red Army, based in Chungking. But in a region as d es olate and ina ccessible as the Roof of the World, Drakesh is left much to his own devices. He knows that Radu Lykan is still 'alive,' and that h.e.l.l 8.

soon return as a power in the world. Drakesh emissaries, vampire disciples, are searching for Radu's lair, to destroy him before he can re-establish himself.

Likewise the last Ferenczys, twin brothers, have risen to the status of Dons of Dons in Sicily. They are not part of the Mafia as such, but they are 'advisers' to the heads of all the Families on a world-wide scale; also, they are part-time advisers to the KGB, the CIA, and other intelligence organizations. Their 'oracle,' the source of their information, is the vastly mutated Angelo Ferenczy - great-grandson of Nonari the Gross!

Some three hundred years ago Angelo's parasite suffered a metabolic breakdown; his metamorphism overran him, reducing him to a freakish, lunatic Thing who is now confined to a pit under Le Manse Madonie, a Villa'

in the Sicilian mountains of the same name. His bloodsons, Anthony and Francesco, feed him, extorting the information that keeps them in business. For, paradoxically, Angelo's vampire talents have been enhanced by his disorder; he is a server and seer of extraordinary power.

Being Wamphyri, however, and mad, Angelo's solutions, his answers, are seldom direct he obfuscates and plays word-games to keep his bloodsons guessing. But he has warned them of Radu Lykan's imminent return, and of what the dog-Lord will do when he returns: that h.e.l.l seek them out to destroy them!

Recently then, both Daham Drakesh and the Ferenczys have set to with greater determination to find Radu and kill him in his lair before his planned resurrection. They have discovered his keeper, B.J. Mirlu, and know that she has the a.s.sistance of Harry Keogh. Except they believe him to be Alec Kyle! Also, it would appear that this same Kyle has somehow contrived to break into the Ferenczys' treasure vault at their 'impregnable' manse, and make off with millions in negotiable currencys.

Daham Drakesh - who has kept himself secret even from the Ferenczys - is playing agent provocateur, he has sent disciples into Scotland to take out Bonnie Jean Mirlu and stir up additional trouble between Radu and the Ferenczys. Drakesh's plan has backfired; protected by the Necroscope, BJ. has survived; Drakesh's bloodson and a thrall have paid the ultimate price.

At Le Manse Madonie, the Ferenczys are furious over their own losses; they believe the break-in was a 'pre- emptive strike' by Radu's people, to discover their weaknesses before the dog-Lord's return and the commencement of all-out war. In addition, they are now aware of a third player, for one of their thralls, a sleeper in Scotland, has witnessed something of the death of Drakesh's disciples at the hands of Harry Keogh.

But whil e Drakesh's losses are considerable (and while he has inadvertently shown his hand in things), he still plans to be the 9 ultimate agent provocateur. In possession of a means to set not only vampires but nations at each other's throats, the last Drakul is simply biding his time while continuing to plot against his own kind and humanity in general ... and BJ. Mirlu and 'Alec Kyle' specifically.

There are desperate, dangerous times ahead for Harry and Bonnie Jean - not least because the Necroscope's mind is under her control. Already, many of the things that have happened to him are blank s.p.a.ces in his memory, missing from his life like pages ripped from a book.

As such, they are part of the lost years...

o s I.

Two of them waited in the snow, both predators however disparate in means and motives. The first was a man, while the other... was Other. It was other than wholly human. That of humanity was in it, but there was a great deal of something else. It was part-human female, and part Other.

Though the man was unaware of the Thing's presence, it had been here for some time, watching him put the finis.h.i.+ng touches to his lair. This was something that it understood well enough: the compulsion to build a lair, a base of operations, a secret, private place to call one's own. Indeed, far to the north, inaccessible in a mountain fastness, the Thing knew of just such a lair: not its own, but that of a Higher One.

Normally at this time of the year, the month, the thirty-day cycle -at this oh-so-dangerous time - the she- Thing might even be there, attending her Master in his lair. But not this time. For this time one of her own was threatened, which meant that she herse lf was threatened. And this was her response: to watch and wait, for the moment, while the human predator prepared his lair.

But there are lairs and there are lairs...

The man's lair wasn't intended as a permanent structure. Scarcely a structure at all, it was... a hollow, a burrow, a low cave scooped out of the snow drifted against the side of a knoll at the foot of the hills, like a play-place such as children might make; except it wasn't a play-place, and he wasn't a child. Its roof was the hard, crystallized snow that crusted the drift, layered now with the grey, camouflaging cover of a fresh fall; its floor was of hard-packed snow, compressed by the body weight of the man during the process of excavation. The cavity was eight feet long, four and a half wide, three and a quarter deep. A fragile/temporary place at best, yet stil l a lair. The den of a monstrous human beast And the beast had completed his work on it a full ten minutes ago.

15.

14.Something less than one hundred and fifty feet away, and seventy higher up the steep hillside in the lee of a rocky outcrop, the Thing sat, watched, scented - generally sensed - the man's activity. She knew what he had done, the preparations he had made and those he was making even now. Her eyes, of a penetrating feral yellow with crimson cores, yet alive with a sentience far beyond the ken of the wild, a more than merely animal cunning, gazed down on the snowcapped knoll and the man's lair at its base. She watched the soft outlines and silhouettes disrupted by his work gradually regaining their bland white anonymity, as the snow continued to fall.

Penetrating eyes, yes: they saw the fault red glimmer of a torch switched on, even through the cave's ice-crystal roof; and a second torch, to lend the lair a sensual, blood-hued illumination. At last all grew still, except - to the Thing's differently intelligent mind, her alien perceptions - a sense of the man's actions inside his lair, his final preparations. At which she knew that the human predator intended to go through with it Then, maintaining a low profile - her chest ploughing the snow, which tumbled before her in a small, silent avalanche - the Thing came down from the hillside.

Where the ground was uneven she wriggled; where the snow was thin she slid on belly and paws; but on a weathered snow-covered scree saddle between the hillside and the knoll she halted, crouched down low, listened, and continued to sense. She was now less than sixty feet from die man's lair and only twenty feet higher.

As yet, the Thing's telepathy wasn't of a high order - it could scarcely be compared with the 'mentalism' of her Master in his northern lair - but there are other arts, and the human predator wasn't unknown to her. For which reason she attempted to reach out to him across the distance of two dozen paces and implant this message in his mind: You were given a warning. There is still time to heed it. What you do now is of your own free will, and its result win be as you willed it.

Perhaps something of it got through to the man; he switched off a penlight torch, paused in his pig-eyed scrutiny of grotesquely lewd photographs in a wallet of p.o.r.nographic poses, c.o.c.ked his head on one side and adopted a frowning, listening att.i.tude. But there was nothing to hear - except in his head, like a memory: This one is not for you. To pursue and take her will place you in extreme jeopardy!

No, not like a memory, it was a memory - but from where, from when? Some thought he'd had? Some premonition? The customary lump in his throat as the final phase of an operation moved towards its inevitable conclusion? An attack of... what, conscience? Scarcely that! His 'good' side, then (did he have one?), telling him this need not be inevitable?

But it was! It was, and he must have her! (A glance at the luminous dial of his wrist.w.a.tch... 7:30 p.m.) By now she would at be on her way, coming. Soon he'd be coming, too! Then her blood coming... hot spurts from the raw red gash of her throat, gradually slowing, like a well drying up: the well of her life. Her hot b.r.e.a.s.t.s cooling, elastic for now but slowly stiffening. Her face pale as the snow, eyes glazed as the ice on the beck.

He shuddered. It was awful... and it was wonderful! Like being a strange dark G.o.d: the power of life and death. But not really, for a G.o.d has a choice and the man had none. Afterwards ... she must die. Only let her live and she'd talk; it would be the end of everything. They would find him; she'd identify him; they'd crucify him! Not like the son of a G.o.d but like a beast Not on a cross but in a cell, behind bars, forever - or for as long as the other inmates allowed him to live.

Strange how even the most vile and violent men hated his sort...

He had been to the place where she worked. (Funny, but he couldn't remember much about it) A darkish place, and red like his snow cave of red light So she'd lived and so she would die - like a temptress. All who lived as she had lived, luring and teasing and promising, but never living up to the promise, took their chances.

So she'd taken hers.

And he had taken his, just going there, to the place where she worked... but of course he must in order to know all about her. He'd gone there two or three times, yet couldn't remember a thing about it except... it was dark, red-lit with dark-eyed Loreleis serving drinks.

The Lorelei... a legend out of Germany... it was a.s.sociational. There'd been places like it hi Hamburg: low music, low lights, lowlife...

He had been a Sergeant then, but his rank had given him no special privileges with the nightclub girls. Oh, the men in his platoon had had them - wh.o.r.es galore! - but the only way he'd been able to get it was to pay for it How he'd hated that the fact that they rarely took him a second time, not even for his lousy 'geld*. There'd been something about his eyes, something... cold, in his eyes.

Cold, yes. For other men it was heat that went with l.u.s.t but for him it was the cold that turned him on. Six years ago in die Harz Mountains, on a winter warfare course (before various misuses of rank and privilege had come to light sufficient to see him reduced from a promising middle-ranker to an out-of-work b.u.m in a society with little or no use for die specialized skills of a commando), he remembered being holed-up for a week on a snow-covered mounta in, allegedly acquiring survival skills while in fact fant asizing about s.e.x with hot quivering, naked women. That was where die notion had first occurred to him: in die Harz, in Germany...Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. II 16.17.... But snow is snow the world over, and women are women: good for nicking but small use for anything else. Except a man can't be a 'real* man without he at least has the use of a woman's body; but only the use, since the permanent possession of a woman, the burden of owners.h.i.+p, will very quickly reduce him to less than a man! That was the lair-bunder's understanding of male/female relations.h.i.+ps, anyway - a paradox where the man always came out the loser. And it had seemed to him that there ought to be an alternative.

Well, and so there was, and this was it But since it served only the needs of a minority of one (namely himself) it was unacceptable to the majority. So... f.u.c.k the majority! How he wished he could, except from his point of view the society that rejected him had its own predators. They were called police and he was their prey; or would be, but he was wily and they hadn't caught him yet Almost but not quite, not yet There are predators and predators, known and unknown. Even among the known sort you are only a small creature of the kind, while among the unknown things you are a speck, a mote, a minuscule! So back off now, while yet you may...

What? Talking to himself again? That recurrent dream he'd been having: of something awesome stalking him? Not conscience, no, but guilt pure and simple.

For he was the stalker, the Awesome One. He shrugged off the feeling of eyes where there were no eyes, and warning voices where there couldn't possibly be.

A short distance away, the Thing crouching at the crest of the scree saddle sensed the man's rejection of her - her what? Her reminder? Its suggestion? Sensed, anyway, the human beast's resolution, his determination, the fact that he would indeed go through with it. So be it it was of his own free will.

Beyond the knoll, the narrow road was an icy black ribbon chopped two feet deep through the snow. Maintained by the snowplough team that serviced the local villages, the road had last been cleared two hours ago. Since when it had furred over again with a pelt of fresh snow, through which the tarmac's black ice glittered like jet. In these parts conditions such as this were common; the weather would have to be a lot harsher to dose the roads completely. And in any case, this was only a service road to the hamlet The mam highway, to Perth in the north and Dunfermline and Edinburgh in the south, lay a mile and a half away through a pa.s.s hi the Ochil Hills.

The tiny hamlet itself, Sma' Auchterbecky, lay in a valley or reentry in the Ochils.

This was the only road hi; it came to an abrupt halt at a wooden footbridge over the currently frozen beck. Where the road ended a blacktopped rectangle served a dual purpose, as a turning place for vehicles and as the hamlet's communal car park. The squat humped, anonymous shapes of jacketed cars, three of them - Sma' Auchterbecky's total vehicular complement - crouched on the parking area like a trio of oddly frozen mammoths on some Siberian tundra.

No longer black- but grey-topped under a layer of snow, the rectangle turned briefly to glittering white as the light of a full moon penetrated the threatening cloud blanket Only a momentary effect -a churning of leaden, snow-laden clouds, allowing just one blink of the silver Cyclops eye - still the Thing felt it like the jab of a cattle prod. Magnetized by the moon, a ridge of erectile fur stiffened along her spine; lured by the Lunar orb, & sound died unborn, aborted with difficulty in her throbbing throat But at the same time a need was born in her belly.

The crimson cores of her eyes expanded, driving back the feral yellow; her jaws dripped saliva; her head turned, muzzle twitching, from the safely sealed vault of the sky back to the cyst in the snow that was the man's lair. All of her awareness was now centred on the cavern of the beast - the human beast - where he lay on his back, masturbating by red torchlight to a p.o.r.nographic centrefold ripped from a men's magazine. The Thing smelled his s.e.x, heard his pounding heartbeat and sensed the coursing of his rich blood. But this was scarcely the climax of the man's activity, merely a part of it The last part as he... readied himself. For everything was now in position and the predator was poised. Only one thing was missing: the prey, and she was coming.

It called for one final effort on the part of the Thing; for to simply let this go ahead - to encourage it if only by non-interferen ce - might in the long run mean endangering herself. I ndeed, in any other scenario but this one, the man might even be considered her ally, her cover! But not when he threatened one of her own. Wherefore: You are making a mistake. There is great danger here!

But despite all the effort she put into it the man heard nothing - or if he heard anything at all it was only an echo from that dream again: Of the red-lit darkness... of the Loreleis taunting, and flaunting their flesh... of the Awesome Stalker, not himself'after all but some other, or rather some other's voice in his head, questioning, whose simple questions he couldn't refuse but must answer. That was what really stalked him, gnawed at him: the idea that he might have told someone (some thing?) his innermost thoughts. But... in a dream?

It returned, as dreams are wont to do, unexpectedly. Finally he remembered it something of it at least He stood on a black road on a black night and gazed into the yawning throat of a black tunnel cut in a black mountainside. And he was frozen ther e, bereft of will, unable to move a muscle as something (a vehicle?) approached, bearing down on him in dreadful, inexorable slow-motion out of the tunnel Its yellow headlights shone on him, fixed him in theirNecroscope: The Last Years -Vol. II 18.19.blinding glare, froze him like a rabbit in his tracks. Then, from the utter darkness behind the dazzling yellow lights, a question: 'Why?"

And he knew the meaning of it, also that he must answer.

'Because I want her.'

'For her body?

*Yes.'

'Only for that? 'And for her life.' 'my?

'I can't leave a tndl. Can't leave any tracks.' 'Tracks?

'I mean, she would talk.' 'You've done it before...'

(But since it wasn't a question, there was no requirement to answer that one.) 'Have you done it before?

*Yes.' , 'How often? I 'Three times.' p 'Murder? (A question this time).

'Not for the sake of murder, but for the sake of my needs.. .at first, anyway.'

'You've killed innocents? "T hey weren't innocent! Shaking their backsides, flas.h.i.+ng their [ t.i.ts! They were asking for it!' And att the while the yellow headl ights expanding, coming ever closer; and the darkness behind them and surrounding them growing darker yet... , 'When? 'Soon. When it snows good and deep.' 'Where? (Hesitation. He shouldn't be telling this, not even in a dream, not even to himself. But he couldn 't refuse to answer). TH do it where she lives.' 'How?

'Ill wait for her, and do it in the snow.' A long pause, and then: 'Ofyour own free witt, aye. But I warn you: rtts one is not for you. To pursue and take her witt place you in extreme jeopardy! But if you, mu st - so be it..." Then: The headlights sweeping upon him, expanding to envelop him!

The darkness opening, as if to swallow him whole! A rumbling growl that wasn't the thunder of an engine. And the headlights ...the headlights!

Not yellow but- I -Red?

The man gave his head a shake, snapped out of it He had been daydreaming, staring at his red torches where he'd rammed their tubes into the soft snow walls.

Staring as if hypnotized by them. Hypnotized? Had he been hypnotized by someone, somewhere? He blinked, then issued a snort of self-derision.

Maybe he was losing it Mayb e he was m ad! (Well of course he was, had to be - a homicidal maniac!) But it didn't change anything. Neither did his dream, already slipping away, fading into the mists of his twisted mind. Nothing had been changed. His course was set He was going to do it So be it!

Hidden in the shadow of the hillside, the Thing slid and tobogganed on her chest and belly dow n the slope of the saddle t o level ground. She was only fifty feet or so from the predator's lair now; his man's scent hung heavy in the sharp, otherwise clean night air, which pulsed with his vibrations. He was a strong one, just as she remembered him. Good!

And his timing was perfect Headlights on full beam sliced the night cut twin swaths through the silently falling snow, swung like searchlight beams towards the hamlet across the frozen beck but without reaching it Myriads of drifting snowflakes diffused the light reducing its penetrative power; likewise the sound of the taxi's engine, m.u.f.fled by the snow. Maybe this was what the predator had been dreaming of: the arrival of the taxi, its lights and the purr of its engine.

And out from his lair he crept invisible in a white nylon track-suit and parka, the hood zipped to the neck and his face hidden behind a white stocking mask.

Meanwhile the taxi had slowed, turned, halted on the hard-standing; a female figure was getting out standing in the pale glow from the driver's window. The oval of her face was visible inside the fur-lined hood of her coat; she fumbled with payment for h er ride.