emergency generator, their light was less than reliable. Through all of what she had been doing, Zek had worked in the flicker of these weak light sources, all the while conscious of the Refuge's foghorn alarms, their muted blare carrying down to her through concrete floors
and steel stairwells. Yet in a way the sound had comforted her, and even the flickering lights had reminded her of the world above, its relative sanity.
'Now it seemed someone was intent on denying her even these small comforts. For suddenly the alarms ceased, and at the same time the lights burned low, held for a moment, and went out. It could only be that up there in the chaos of the Refuge, someone had turned the alarms off. Whoever it was, he had inadvertently hit the basement light switch, too.
'And now there were only a few minutes left before the sump erupted in death and destruction. Zek couldn't even be sure she herself was safe there in the basement, let alone Bruce Trennier in the sump. And she was tempted to reach out to him yet again and see what progress he'd made. She would have done so — but that was when the telephone jangled.
'Mercifully she'd thought to take a small torch down there with her. Three paces took her to the niche with the telephone, and in another moment she was asking: 'Bruce… are you alright? Where on earth are you?'
' 'At the foot of the duct,' he answered, and his voice was one long shudder. 'I've been dodging… God, Things!! catch them in my torch beam, and they just sort of melt aside! But I can feel them there in the darkness. One of them… it doesn't seem to have a shape! It collapses in my torch beam, flows, reforms. And Zek — God, Zek — they make my flesh creep!'
' 'Bruce, come up,' she told him. 'But as quick as you can, and I'll let you out.'
'And then another slow minute until she heard him banging on the hatch that she'd closed. A moment to spin the wheel, her heart hammering and breath coming in panting gasps; the silence absolute, the darkness, too, except where her torch beam sliced into it. She hauled on the hatch, and he pushed from below, and in that last moment she thought to reach out to him, touch him with her mind. And she did—
'—But his mind was a blinding white agony, and his single thought was a scream that shrank even as it pierced her, gradually disappearing into the distance of mental oblivion! And as it ran and ran, with nowhere to hide, still it echoed her name: 'Zek! — Ah} Zek! — Zekkk! — Zekkkk! — Ah, Zek-k-k-k-kf Until it was gone. Then: 'Zek's strength was as furious as her fear as she tried to slam the heavy lid on Trennier. For in fact it was the New Zealander — his head and shoulders — emerging from the hatch. But it wasn't his mind that drove him; it wasn't his muscles propelling him up out of the darkness, for pain had robbed him of consciousness and all its attendant skills. Try to picture it. His body rising up, loose arms flopping up over the rim, blind eyes staring, back ramrod straight. The engineer was like some grotesque puppet… he was a grotesque puppet.'
'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
