Thus the fly-by-nights had coerced Ned to their needs, who in his turn had coerced them to his. His need for vengeance: to destroy his enemies in the clan—in particular Zach and Garth Slattery, and that swaggering fool Jon Lamon—then to take the girl Layla and use her, changing her as he had been changed and bending her to his will: the will and ways of the vampire which he’d become, and from now on must always be.
His plan had seemed to Ned a simple one, which only now was proven less than simple in its execution. He had assumed that the fly-by-nights from across the river, while they would doubtless lose many of their members to clan defenders at the bridge, would nevertheless quickly overcome the opposition and swarm on the encampment. There they would indulge themselves in a feasting frenzy, leaving him to his own devices.
But something was amiss, for Ned was sensing—even feeling—a mass extermination! Undeath to true death: that worst case scenario he had more or less ignored because it had seemed contrary to any reasonable expectation. It was of course due to the advent of the kindred: their men, vehicles, and murderous weaponry. But all Ned sensed was an impression of searing heat, the dissolution of at best vague and tenuous fly-by-night thoughts, and a sudden yawning emptiness in what had been the eery, restless flow of enigmatic vampire mentality.
There were, however, those one or two members of the swarm whose minds were marginally clearer, more perceptive and conscious of self and being than the fly-by-night norm—“leaders,” presumably, of the less well endowed majority—and, most probably the ones who could get into the minds of men, even to the extent on rare occasions of recruiting such to their monstrous existence. As yet ignorant of what was going wrong, Ned now determined to contact one or another of the latter.
And at least one was out there, down on the river’s rim and fleeing south. But fleeing….?
Ned issued a mental query, nothing more than a thought: Why do you run? From what?
The reply registered on the screen of his mind like a badly blurred picture: From the fire and the leaden sting of relentless men. From jets of blistering heat and the collapsing cadavers of molten fellows. From death—the true death—come from the north, all unforeseen, in fire and flying metal! If I would feast some other night and sup on good sweet blood, then flee I must or…
…Ahhhhhh!!!
No sooner contact than this long-drawn-out mental sigh—of vast relief? Yes, it would seem so!—as the mind that Ned had found suddenly shrivelled away, perhaps indeed to ashes, before dispersing into the waning flow of the telepathic aether.
Then for the first time the vampire Ned Singer contemplated failure—but not of his plan in its entirety, not while eight of his remained at large in the encampment—and not until he’d enjoyed his revenge!
No, definitely not till then…
The leader and first of his cabal, but the last member to half-climb, half-drift down from the canopy, by the time Ned’s bony, chisel-toed feet settled to the forest’s pine-needle floor, the howling of dogs and cries of doomed clan folk—men, women, and children; not to mention the hoarse, vivid curses and small-arms fire of others as yet unscathed—had wrenched the entire camp from its bone-weary slumbers.
Big Jon Lamon was up and out of his command vehicle, a side-arm in his belt and another in his hand, shouting to anyone who was listening: “Light! We need more light! If you’ve got a hand torch or oil lamp, switch ’em on or get ’em lit now! We have to see what’s happening here. And you men shooting off those guns: who-the-hell-ever you are, you’d best be damned sure you’re not hitting clan folk!”
Excellent advice, for in the smoky sulphur and pine-scented gloom, lit with sporadic flashes from muzzle discharges and the flickering light of a handful of torches and lamps, the shadowy figures that moved like ghosts against the nebulous velvet backdrop could as easily be men as monsters.
As for the remaining vampires, the eight survivors of Ned’s advance guard: they had no such problem. Creatures of darkness, to them this all-shrouding gloom was as daylight to human eyes. But at the same time and paradoxically, such vampire vision was their greatest disadvantage; for the darker the night, the more brightly burned those feral eyes, appearing to any who saw them as if to drip molten gold or sometimes silver.
Zach Slattery came hobbling from the gloom to join Big Jon in the fitful light from a sputtering lamp in the old bus. And:
“Damn it to every hell!” Zach snarled, propping himself up against the vehicle and thumbing shells expertly into his weapon’s breach. “It’s obvious that this has to be fly-by-nights but right here in the camp? Where did they come from, for God’s sake?”
“Down from the trees,” Big Jon replied. “Don Myers saw one of them; he shot it dead before it could reach the ground! Then he heard other shots from around the perimeter and guessed what was happening. He came at a run into the camp and almost bumped into me as I was getting down from the old bus. He told me what he’d seen and went off into the gloom to look for and kill more fly-by-nights! We were ambushed, Zach! They were waiting for us in the canopy, which would seem to make them unusually intelligent, patient, and perhaps even disciplined—the clever bastards!”
“Too clever!” Zach growled. “As for disciplined: d’you mean well ordered? In which case you’re saying that Garth was right, right?”
“About Ned Singer?” The other nodded. “Yes, I think so. But look out!” Half-crouching and lifting his hand gun, he appeared at first to be aiming directly at his friend! But he wasn’t.
With its jaws gaping and spindly arms reaching, a nightmarish figure with dripping, sulphur-yellow pits for eyes had come ghosting out of the smoky shadows behind Zach.
“Move!” Big Jon yelled, but Zach was already toppling sideways in an intuitive, controlled fall, turning as he went down. And at close if not point-blank range the pair fired their weapons together. The fly-by-night’s chest caved in under the massive impact of Zach’s shotgun blast, and its right eye collapsed inward, exploding into yellow froth from the shock of Big Jon’s single bullet. Then as the thing sighed its last and its carcass crumpled to the ground:
“Just like old times, eh?” Zach gasped, wincing his pain as the leader grasped his outstretched hand and hauled him up onto his feet. “Times when we scavenged together, and sometimes went hunting bloody vampires!” But:
“No, Zach,” Big Jon breathlessly replied, shaking his head, “not quite. For this time we’re the ones being hunted, and it’s one of them who’s directing the hunt! But what the hell—let’s go find and kill some fly-by-nights, shall we?”
“Damn right!” Zach grunted. “By all means. But Garth is out there somewhere, thinking he’s protecting us, while his wife is here and alone. Before doing anything else we should find young Layla and make sure she’s safe. What say you?”
Nodding curtly, the other answered, “I saw the pair of them earlier, setting up nearby. I think she’s this way. Let’s go.”
And without another word these old friends—these two “old men” of the clan—stepped forth into smoky, shifting shadows, cordite stench, and the menacing velvet gloom.
While close by, greatly reduced in number but monstrous and merciless still, the surviving members of Ned’s ambushers—his vampire cohorts from the canopy—carried on with their murderous business…
Only three men left…Ned still thought of these creatures who had climbed up into the dusty canopy with him as “men,” because he knew they had been. It was one of the few remaining vestiges of his own once-humanity, and he had chosen the original eleven because of the weird rapport he had with them; not as strong as with the ones he thought of as swarm leaders, but strong enough that their presence—knowledge of their existence—was ever there in his mind, like faces he would recognize in a crowd. By way of explaining this sense of familiarity, Ned had “reasoned” it likely that they had been taken recently and, much like himself, had temporarily retained certain traces of their previous human mentalities and so were connected on similar wavel
engths.
By now, if things had gone to plan, enough of Ned’s kind to constitute a swarm should have completely destroyed the defenders at the bridge and come up to ravage in the forest camp. His fly-by-night ambush party from the high canopy might have suffered some few losses, but the surviving majority would even now be converging on a certain area defined by Ned’s presence. That was how it should have gone and how things should be, but where was the swarm and where his eleven “men” now?
There had been eleven of them, yes, but following immediately on their descent, only eight. Then, as the camp had started awake to the near-distant tumult from the river crossing—and more surely awake to sounds of gunfire and cries of terror from the perimeter—their numbers had quickly reduced to seven, six, five and four. Until a moment ago, even as he searched them out in the telepathic aether, yet another mental connection, like a dully glinting thread in Ned’s mind, had been broken and blinked out, and he was left with three.
Only three survivors of his fly-by-nights, the creatures he had chosen to guard him, watching his back while he avenged himself on those hated men of the clan: Garth Slattery and his old cripple of a father; and Big Jon Lamon, their so-called leader. Well, the latter could die at once and be eaten, but as for the Slatterys: Ned would keep both of them alive long enough to witness the start of what he’d planned for Layla, the many different ways he would use her in bringing those plans to fruition!
Oh yesss! That was how he’d planned it, how it was supposed to have been…but now?
Now things were working out very differently and Ned’s revenge was as yet unrealized, his lust unsated. Ah, but there was time yet and plans can be changed! The girl Layla for instance:
Most of the gunfire within the camp—which had been sporadic at best—had ceased now, for a majority of the armed men had gone down to the river crossing; which meant that Ned might well find Layla all unprotected and incapable of resistance.
He would carry her away into the forest and there have both her body and her blood! Then, if that Slattery pup had survived the fighting at the river crossing, and if his father had likewise survived, they would surely seek Ned out. Indeed, he would even leave a trail that they could follow! For Ned knew that in the dark heart of the forest he and his men—further assuming that by then any of them were left—would have the advantage.
Thus he continued to plan ahead, his ability to do so fuelled by hatred, his once-human lust, and fly-by-night blood-lust. For while the future seemed uncertain now, and despite that his capacity for reasoned thought was gradually failing, all was not lost. No, for with vengeance so close he could almost taste it, Ned knew that he must pursue it to whatever end!
It was dusty, smoky and eerily gloomy under the huge trees, but to Ned’s eyes it was as bright as the daylight he no longer could bear. And while only three of his original cabal remained to guard his back during the next phase of his continually evolving plan, still they were possessed of fly-by-night strength and insensate ferocity, and that must needs suffice.
Moving more purposefully now—his eyes blazing yellow, and his fretted nostrils sniffing at the reeking air—Ned left the perimeter and went ghosting in towards the encampment’s central area. As he went so he “called” on his three to leave what they were doing and join him at the source of a certain unmistakable scent. Almost a perfume in its own right, this was the smell of sweet young female flesh, and to Ned it was unique as a fingerprint. With his vampire senses to guide him unfailingly through the night and his lust fully inflamed, he would know that scent anywhere…
XIV
At that exact moment, as the surviving members of Ned’s ambush party received his message, the creature closest to Layla where she stood confused and uncertain near the entrance to her makeshift shelter, was one of the oldest and most hideously mutated monsters of its kind; but it was also one of the most mentally and physically capable.
Over seven feet tall but spindly as a spider, with its hair drifting three feet behind it when it moved, and hanging almost to its waist when stationary, the creature was in its way anthropomorphic, but so far removed from any human origins as to be utterly alien. Its arms—even longer than its hair and thin as twigs, with hands and taloned fingers fifteen inches in length, the latter barbed at the knuckles—reached out graspingly before it in typical fly-by-night fashion, while its incandescent eyes burned an intense white, like blobs of molten metal. Worse than all of these anomalies together, however, were its yawning jaws that dripped fresh blood, and needle teeth still hung with strips of human skin and raw flesh torn from a recent victim!
Layla failed to see the thing at first…what she did see was a pair of ghostly, long-shadowed, smoke-wreathed silhouettes that came groping directly toward her out of the gloom! They too seemed to be reaching their arms out before them; but while Layla couldn’t know it their hands bore weapons, not talons!
Just a split second after Layla turned away from them, even as she made as if to flee into the night, she realized her mistake, that in fact she knew the pair: Zach Slattery and Big Jon Lamon! But in the same moment she saw the third figure where it came eagerly, purposefully wafting toward her from the opposite direction; a very tall, very thin figure…and one with flaring pits for eyes!
No less than Zach and Big Jon the ancient vampire was likewise silhouetted, against the nimbus cast by a small, guttering oil lamp which Layla had hung from the projecting ridge-pole of her shelter; but no matter the circumstances—gloom or glimmer—there could be no mistaking this thing for what it was. Again Layla spun on her heel; only to trip and literally fly into her father-in-law’s arms.
Thrown off balance by reason of Layla’s sudden, unanticipated weight, and with his game leg giving way beneath him, still Zach managed to cushion the girl’s fall; even though that meant losing his grip on his shotgun, however temporarily.
And meanwhile, Big Jon had seen the cause of Layla’s abrupt and terrified flight.
“God help us!” The leader muttered his prayer as the fly-by-night wafted toward him, suddenly accelerating into what seemed like a frenzied all-out attack, its wispy white hair and rotten rags floating behind it. Unable to avoid its rush, Big Jon made a stand. Taking aim with a hand that trembled however slightly, he let the nightmarish creature get even closer—only two or three paces away—before squeezing the trigger…and nothing happened!
Bad ammunition—again!
“Jesus Christ!” This time, realizing there was no avenue of escape, Big Jon’s words were little more than a groan; and feeling his knees turning to rubber he sank to the leaf-mould floor. Even sprawling, however, he went on repeatedly, uselessly, yanking on his antique revolver’s trigger in the hope that at least one of the remaining rounds had retained its sting. No use, all such hopes were in vain; and having come down on his right side between tree roots, now Big Jon was having difficulty in recovering his back-up side-arm from his belt!
Meanwhile:
Incredibly, and for all its swooping rush, the fly-by-night elder ignored Big Jon’s slumped figure; it wasn’t here for him. And while the leader gave up trying to reach the spare side-arm trapped under his heavy body, and began fumbling instead in his jacket pockets for bullets to replace the faulty rounds that he was shaking from his revolver’s chambers, the hurtling creature came to an abrupt, astonishingly smooth halt. And with barely a glance at Big Jon, it simply turned away from him! And stepping very carefully, calculatingly over Zach and Layla’s tangled figures—straddling them with its spindly legs—the monster bent forward and down from a wasp-like waist and caged them between all four stick-insect limbs!
Trying to free herself from Zach, who was groping blindly, desperately in the leaf-mould and pine needles for his shotgun, Layla had turned onto her back. Now, as she looked up directly into the fly-by-night’s hideous skull-like face, she wanted to scream but couldn’t. She had stopped breathing; she had no air and her throat was dry as dust; there was nothing she could do but gaze helplessly i
nto those flaring, incandescent orbs that seemed with every passing moment on the point of spilling over and pouring their liquid metal contents down on her! Oh, Layla knew that last was an illusion, but it was an horrific concept nevertheless!
Looking at her through those nightmarish eyes, the monster cocked its head first one way, then the other. It was following unusual instructions—not so much orders as directions—that were very foreign to its nature. But the normally disfunctional group organism that was the swarm had recently taken possession of a man, a human being who, on this very rare occasion, it had endowed with the trappings of authority…all of which, supposedly, for the good of the swarm as a whole.
Well, perhaps, but where was the bulk of the swarm now? For no less than Ned, this old one had sensed the great extermination of so many of its parts—its species?—down at the river crossing, and it was now obvious that this adopted human’s ill-conceived plan had failed utterly. There would be no mass feeding frenzy tonight, nor any creation of fresh new vampires, not for this decimated swarm!
But…not every creature need go hungry, and how was this young female for a choice and tender morsel? This girl with her sweet body and sweeter blood.
The adopted human, this traitor to his own kind, had wanted her for himself; in exchange for which he would work to make it possible for the swarm to glut on the rest of the travellers—this clan whose men had treated him so very badly—but only as long as the girl was left to him alone. Indeed, she and a small handful of his enemies had been pre-eminent, conspicuous in his thoughts and central to a scheme which now had proved so detrimental, so disastrous to the swarm. And to the ancient vampire it seemed only right that Ned, too, should pay—that indeed he should be punished for his failure.
Yes, and the instrument of his chastisement was even now to hand…