Deadspawn

For after all Found knew that the other Pe

Leaving Joh

She nodded and said, 'You seem very... well, cold about all of this, Harry.'

He shook his head. 'Just determined. But you see, Found is cold, which might give him an advantage if I allowed myself to get too heated.'

As he spoke, Harry saw two men enter the diner from the car park. They seemed ordinary enough but there was something about them. As they moved along the self-service bar collecting cold drinks, their eyes sca

He withdrew immediately. At least one of these men was an esper, which meant E-Branch was closing in ... on both Joh

Now, too, he remembered the car he'd seen tailing Pound's truck out of Darlington: an unmarked police car with... how many men aboard? Two or three? He'd thought they were all policemen but now knew better. Suddenly, coming from nowhere, he felt a growl rising in his throat. His Wamphyri side was reacting to the threat. Aware of Pe

'Harry.' Her voice was concerned. 'You're very pale.'

Fury, my love. 'There's something I must do,' he told her. 'It will mean leaving you here - but only for a minute. You'll be OK?'

'In here, alone with him?' Her eyes were huge and round.

There are fifty people in here,' he answered. And two of them at least are pretty sharp characters. 'I promise I'll be right back.'

She touched his hand and nodded. Then I'll be OK.' But she avoided looking Pound's way.

Harry stood up, smiled a robot's smile at her and went out into the night.

At first, to anyone watching, it would appear that he'd been heading for the gents' toilets, but as he passed close to the swinging glass doors of the exit he turned sharply and pushed through them -

- And as soon as he was outside crouched down, breathed a mist and moved wraithlike between the cars ranked like soldiers on the hard-standing. His Wamphyri senses guiding him, he went straight to the unmarked police car and approached it from the rear. There was a driver, a plain-clothes policeman, with one elbow on the sill and a cigarette dangling from his lips where he sat silhouetted in a steel frame, looking out of his wound-down window into the darkness and breathing the mild night air.

Exuding fog, the Necroscope moved like a low-slung spider - performed a weirdly loping limbo - to draw silently alongside the car. And then he stood up.

The policeman's jaw fell open in a gasp of astonishment as a shadow, coming from nowhere, blocked out the stars and flowed over him; his cigarette flew as the Necroscope hit him once, hard enough to send him sprawling across the front passenger seat.

He was out like a light - or like his cigarette, which Harry ground under his heel. Then he reached inside the car and snapped the key in half in the ignition. So much for that: they wouldn't be following Joh

The Necroscope's eyes were attuned to the night, which was his element. He could see into the back of the car just as clearly as in broad daylight. And there on the back seat, a bulky, ugly, dark-snouted shape which Harry knew at once: a flamethrower. And on the floor back there, the blued-steel glitter of a pair of loaded crossbows. Loaded crossbows!

Harry hissed and crouched down into himself. They were ready for him, all of them. It must be coming soon. Perhaps sooner than he'd anticipated. Bastards! And he was the one who'd showed them how!

He attacked a second tyre and grunted his satisfaction as it collapsed into extinction, then moved round the car and did a third. Following which he paused and drew a ragged breath, and forced himself to be calm, calm...

He was trembling, but only trembling. No more hissing, snarling. Mere moments of violence, but they had acted as a safety valve on Harry's awful pressure. As his mist began to thin he sighed his relief, stood more humanly erect, put away the knife and headed back towards the diner...

Mere moments - less than two, three minutes at most -but more than sufficient time that the menace of Joh

Mere moments, yes, but enough time for Joh

He put aside his plate and placed his hands on the table, palms down, as if to push himself to his feet. And all the while he stared at Pe

Joh

And that was the whole thing of it: Joh

Pe