Wran's mind telegraphed his grisly intention; Vasagi saw it coming; he had no answer except to scream a desperate mental denial: Nooooo!
Such was the force of the Suck's telepathic terror that even Nestor heard it. With Harry Keogh's blood running in his veins, and with his own share of his brother's as yet undeveloped mentalist talent, Vasagi's mind-shriek got through to him and froze him to the marrow. Somehow he lurched upright, but incapable of flight he simply fell back against the outcrop.
While Vasagi had somehow avoided his enemy's first blow, still Wran had not relinquished his hold on the Suck's proboscis. Now the Rage flexed his metal-clad hand in a certain way, and in the moment before he struck a razor spine like the curved frill on a lizard's back sprang erect from his gauntlet's knuckles to Wran's wrist. And Nestor saw the rest of it as a blur of bloody motion.
Wran's gauntlet sliced into the Suck's shuddering snout and cut it half-way through, and with a tearing, sawing, snatching action, Wran quickly completed the job. Then he stepped back a pace to toss the severed trunk and its siphon tip hissing into the fire, and laughed at Vasagi where he staggered to and fro, clawing at his crimson face.
Despite Wran's own agony — the fact that the back of his cloak had been torn open, and bloody tatters of meat hung from his gouged ribs — he laughed! 'Ah, and what shall they call you now?' he crowed. 'Vasagi the Slobber?'
Vasagi's face spurted blood from the sleeve of raw flesh which had housed his probe. His pain was greater than Wran's, so much so that tears of agony started out of eyes half-blind from the other's torch-thrust. He held out his gauntlet before him, waving it to and fro like a blind man's stick. But there was no mercy in Wran the Rage. Still baying with laughter, he moved in and snatched up the blazing brand again. Vasagi turned to flee, stumbled blindly over sharp, jutting rocks, and went down.
Wran was on him in a flash; he leaped….ame down massively with both booted feet on Vasagi's outstretched gauntlet forearm. Bones snapped sickeningly, and even Vasagi managed a gurgling shriek — an actual sound — through the scarlet orifice which was his ruined face.
Nestor's mouth was dry as kindling. He glanced here and there in the oh-so-gradually brightening air, looked for his crossbow. It had tumbled with him from on high, gone clattering into the scree. He saw a dull gleam among the rocks and edged towards it, but yet continued to watch the now totally unequal fight.
Wran kicked at Vasagi's gauntlet hand until the weapon came loose, then booted it out of reach. Half-blind, siphon-severed, ungauntleted, and his arm flopping loosely, still the Suck tried to stumble to his feet. Every time he almost got up, Wran kicked his feet from under him again. Finally, close to exhaustion, Vasagi flopped and jerked on the ground. Then Wran went to one knee beside him, grasped the ironwood bolt in his neck, and twisted it until the other's writhing was almost a vibration of sheerest agony.
Nestor's trembling hand dragged his crossbow out from a crack in the rocks. He primed it two-handed, undipped the spare bolt from its housing under the tiller. And -
'Aye, load your weapon,' Wran's deep bass voice growled from only four or five swift paces away. 'Load it, and bring it here.' Nestor obeyed the first instruction, but as for the second: he aimed the crossbow at Wran. The other straightened up but kept a booted foot on the writhing Vasagi's neck. 'Well then,' he said, his scarlet gaze rapt on Nestor, 'and what are you waiting for? Shoot me, if you're sure you can hit my heart. But if you're not, best do as I say.'
Nestor found his voice. 'You… are Wamphyri!'
Wran nodded. 'And you're a fool! But a fool who probably saved my life. Who saved me a deal of trouble, anyway. I owe you for that. But only fire that bolt into me, I'll owe you a great deal more. And I'll pay you back bit by bit, until your screams ring out so loud as to bring down the avalanches! Now then, boy. Don't make me wait but put your bolt in this loathsome thing's heart.' He took his foot off the other's neck and Vasagi sat up.
Nestor looked at him, and was more frightened of him now than he'd been before… such a hideous, pitiful sight… it would be a mercy to kill him. He had only one bolt. He looked at the ugly, broken, bleeding Vasagi, and at Wran. The latter was more the man; he was — what, handsome? Handsomely dressed, anyway. He looked every bit the vampire Lord that Nestor had always pretended, imagined, and now believed himself to be.
'Hah/' Wran snorted. 'No guts for it, eh? But when I give orders, I expect my thralls to jump!'
Thrall?' Nestor growled back. 'I… am the Lord Nestor!'
'Eh?' Wran frowned, stepped away from Vasagi, took a pace towards Nestor. 'You're what? A Lord, did you say?' Behind him, Vasagi took up a jagged rock in his left hand, came flowing to his feet.
Nestor yelled, 'Look out!' And Wran hunched his shoulders, ducked down, stepped aside. An instant later, Nestor's bolt was sent thrumming through the air to bury itself to the flight in Vasagi's already scarlet tunic. Except this time when the Suck was knocked down, he stayed down…
The bolt had struck close enough to Vasagi's heart to paralyse him. With Nestor's aid, Wran dragged him by the legs, flopping, away from the rocks and up the slope to a place where the hard earth faced squarely south. There he pegged him out face-down, to await the rising sun.
'Of course, we shall be long gone from here by then,'
Wran said. 'A pity, for I fancy I'd relish the Suck's screams as the sun reduces him to so much smoulder!'
'His screams?' Nestor looked in horror at the pegged-out thing. 'But how can he scream?'
'With his mind,' Wran explained. And Nestor remembered how he had 'heard' Vasagi's shriek of denial as Wran went to sever his proboscis.
'Ah!' he said.
Wran turned his scarlet gaze upon him and snorted. 'Huh! You don't know too much for a 'Lord', do you?' He grinned, in his way. 'And just what sort of a 'Lord' are you, anyway?'
'An outcast,' Nestor lifted his chin. 'Cast out of Starside. And now I'm on my way back.'
'Really!' the other nodded, fingered his wen soberly. The lad amused him. 'Cast out, you say? For some heinous crime or other, perhaps? Against the Wamphyri?'
'I don't know,' Nestor shook his head, ran a hand through his hair, felt the plate of new bone where his scalp was thick and rough at the back. 'I don't… remember.' Wran looked deep into his dark eyes; they seemed dazed, and the mind behind them not entirely there. Obviously this one had survived some raid or other — barely! But he was well enough now, physically at least.
'So, you'd be a Lord of the Wamphyri, eh?' Wran nodded again. An amusing scheme was taking shape in his mind. How it would work out he didn't know, must wait and see. But as far as Vasagi the Suck was concerned, certainly it would give Wran the last and loudest laugh. 'Well, it's not everyone who gets to be a Lord,' he said. 'But in your case-maybe I can arrange it.' Then he glanced south and saw the pale stain blossoming on the horizon, and his red eyes narrowed at once. 'Except we must do it quickly.'
'Do what?' Nestor was innocent as a child. He started as Vasagi made a slobbering sound and blew red bubbles, and began to come awake.
Wran made no answer but his eyes were totally evil, menacing — inviting? — when he asked: 'Are you… hungry?' He glanced at Vasagi. 'Me, I'm hungry, and this one has a leech in him. If our roles were reversed, he'd do the same to me.'
Again Nestor felt prompted to ask, Do what? But he kept the question to himself and backed away. For Wran had gone to his knees, and his metamorphic face was less manlike now. His mouth was a gash that opened like a trapdoor, impossibly wide. Teeth grew visibly in that crimson hole, elongating, curving like white daggers from the ruptured ridges of his jaws. They were fangs, with eye teeth like knives; their 'blades' were long as Nestor's own knife, and overlapped Wran's trembling lower lip! His nose — dark and squat before, with large black nostrils — grew yet more convoluted, quivering, sensitive as a bat's. And his eyes seemed almost to drip blood.
'Aye, leave me now,' he coughed the words out, shooting Nestor a look that brooked no argument. 'But not too far. And when I call out for you, come at once.' His blunt fingers tore Vasagi's tunic open, and commenced to knead the ridge of his exposed spine.
Nestor left him, went stumbling back down to the trail, and along it to the dying embers of Wran's fire. The roasted meat smell was heavy in the air now. Some wild creature moved there, a fox or feral dog, scurrying at Nestor's approach. It grabbed up the spit and meat entire from where it lay toppled to one side, dropped the hot food and slunk into the shadows, returned in a moment to snatch up the meat again.
Nestor had not looked at Wran's roast before; but now, as it lay there smoking, and as the fox — it was a fox,
