The Source

Harry had followed him, said: 'Where will I find you?'

'Here. I'll wait for you.'

Harry used the Mobius Continuum and went to the wall. Men with flame-throwers were hosing down a stricken warrior; Karen fought with a lieutenant, dispatching him even as Harry arrived. 'Don't question this,' he said. 'Come, quickly!'

He caught her up, stepped through a Mobius door, emerged down on the plain of boulders at a safe distance from the glaring sphere Gate. Dazed, she swayed for a moment and her scarlet eyes went round as saucers. 'How .?'

'Which is your stack?' he asked her.

She pointed and he caught her to him again...

Harry left her in her deserted aerie, returned to the garden. His son was waiting. 'Do you understand?' The Dweller wanted to know.

'Yes,' Harry nodded. 'Let's get on with it.'

They entered the Mobius Continuum and Harry Jnr moved away very quickly, across the mountains to Sun-side and from there -

- To the sun! He stood off from that monstrous furnace in deep space, opened a Mobius door. Harry heard his hiss of torment, also his directed thought: Now!

Harry opened a Mobius door on the garden, trapped and fixed it there, let his son re-direct and pour sunlight through the Mobius Continuum and out through Harry's door. The garden was at once bathed in intense, glaring, golden light!

Harry turned the door like the gun-turret of a tank, sending his shaft of concentrated sunlight sliding across the garden. The beam struck warriors where they ravaged forward across the saddle. It ate into them like acid, devouring their vampire flesh. For this was sunlight, but not thi

Ahhh! The Dweller's agony was a fire in its own right, burning in his father's mind. The beam shut off, gave Harry time to recoup, rest from the task of holding steady and controlling his Mobius door.

'Son?' his anxious thoughts went out along the Mobius way. 'Are you all right?'

No!... Yes. Yes, I'm all right. Give me a moment...

Harry waited, conjured a door and looked out. He chose new targets: the Lords Belath and Menor where they came striding through a host of panicking Travellers, swatting them like flies.

Now!

Harry fixed the door, guided his son's sun-blast through it. The brilliant beam fell on Belath and Menor like a solid shaft of gold. It super-heated them, blew away their skins and flesh in writhing, stinking evaporation. As the Travellers scrambled wildly away from them, they exploded into tatters of smouldering vileness.

Harry turned his beam to the north, found a warrior in mid-air, descending toward the defenders at the wall. He shrivelled the thing before it could come too close, reduced it to a tarry fireball that fell well beyond the cliffs. Other warriors were overhead, and flyers with their startled riders. Harry swung the door horizontally, turned its beam into a giant searchlight. The sun shone upwards, from the earth!

Monstrous debris rained from the sky, and: Ahhh! Again the beam was shut off.

'Son! son!' Harry cried into the Mobius Continuum. 'Let that be an end to it. They're beaten, moving off. Stop now, before you kill yourself!'

No! the other's Mobius voice was a shudder. They must never recover from this. Go down onto the boulder plain, close to their stacks.

Harry understood. He did as directed.

Now!

The Dweller's beam reached out and licked at the base of Shaithis's stack. It played there for a moment, blazed in across bony balconies and through cartilage windows, found the gas-beasts in their places. In an uncontrollable chain-reaction of living bombs, the stack's base exploded outwards, hurling rock, bones, cartilage carcasses and all far out onto the plain. The stack teetered, crumpled downward into itself, toppled. Falling, it flew apart; but before its gigantic sections could strike earth, already Harry had redirected his beam.

And one by one the aeries were brought crashing down on the shuddering plain, reduced to rubble, erased.

Twice more during the work The Dweller cried out and the beam was shut off. But in the end only the Lady Karen's stack remained. And:

Let it be, Harry Jnr whispered.

Father and son went back to the garden. They emerged as the smoke and reek were lifting, and as the dazed Travellers and their friends from a different world looked all about them and rubbed grime from stinging eyes.

The Dweller's cloak of foil had fused to his body. Smouldering, he swayed there a moment - a black and silver thing that groped blindly as it took a single pace forward - then crumpled into its father's arms...

In what would have been three days Earth-time the news was: The Dweller would recover! It was the vampire in him, which given time would repair the damage he'd suffered. But Harry Snr knew he could never take his son, or Brenda, back to the world where they were born. Harry Jnr was Wamphyri; however different from the others, still he must stay here forever. Indeed he wanted to stay here. This was his place now, his territory which he'd fought and paid dearly for. And of course he could never be sure how things would go.

But... the Lady Karen was different, too. For the moment, anyway. Also, if what Harry had heard about her was true, she'd one day be more dangerous than all the others put together. He cared nothing for her, but he did care for his son. And an idea had formed in his mind.

Leaving The Dweller in the care of Jazz, Zek and the ever-faithful Travellers, Harry went to Karen's aerie. It was memorable when he left the garden, because for one thing there was gold on the peaks again, and also he had witnessed a strange reunion. Wolf, his paws bleeding, had made the crossing to find his mistress. No vampire in him, just a great deal of love and a lot of faith.

There'd been another, perhaps even more joyous reunion, too: along with Wolf had come a weary Lardis Lidesci and a handful of his people...

23

The Last Warrior - The Horror at Perchorsk!

Following the battle at The Dweller's garden, Shaithis of the Wamphyri guided his half-crippled, seared flyer for home. He fancied the creature wouldn't make it, not for all his goading, for it was burned all along its underbelly and dripping fluids like rain. He, too, had taken a dose of direct sunlight, but had been nimble-minded enough to throw himself down on his flyer's back, in the trench of horny ridges formed of its huge wing muscles.

The blast had come as Shaithis's creature was turning away from the garden after a trial landing run, and so he'd not been blinded; but still he'd felt the hideous, searing heat of the true sun, and so had known that The Dweller could not be defeated. His weapons were simply too powerful, beyond Wamphyri understanding and certainly beyond their control. Which, together with the loss of his lieutenants and warriors, had convinced Shaithis that the attack was a pointless exercise. Wamphyri losses had been devastating, and the survivors had come to the same conclusion as Shaithis, quitting the fight en masse and heading for home.

Down across the Starside plain they'd flown their creatures, many limping, all humiliated, and Shaithis had felt their hatred of him beating like hammer blows on his psychic Wamphyri mind. They blamed him for their losses, for he'd been the one who instigated the attack, their self-appointed leader in the abortive affray. Generals who lose are rarely feted, mainly scorned.

On the way east, using the half-dome of the shining sphere for pharos and rolling in his saddle, Shaithis had seen Fess Ferenc and Volse Pinescu go down, fluttering out of the sky on flyers finally too weak to resist gravity's pull, and he'd watched them crash in clouds of dust far below on the moon-silvered plain. The Lords must finish the rest of their journey afoot, for Shaithis doubted they'd have strength for flight metamorphosis. He certainly wouldn't, if his flyer were to succumb. Still, walking had to be better than dying.