Brian Lumley - The Source

The Dweller's trog forces, when they saw what now battled on their side — even though they were on their side, hemming the invaders in all about — broke in terror and fled for their secret places. No matter, the grim army of the dead would do their work for them. And they would win, for as the Necroscopes had pointed out, they couldn't die twice.

Shrieks of terror split the night, wrenched from hundreds of Wamphyri-trog throats when they saw and understood what they were fighting. Sickened, the two Harrys turned away from the carnage. But -

'Son,' said Harry Snr, grasping the other's arm. 'Look!'

The sky was dark with Wamphyri flyers and warriors. They circled the garden, descending toward it. And some of the warriors were truly gigantic; any five of them, falling on the garden in unison, would totally obscure and obliterate it. Up there in the mountains, even now, a greater battle was about to be waged…

They took their own special route back to the garden.

Warriors had already landed below the cliffs fronting the wall, where the Lady Karen's creatures were now locked in hellish combat with them. Their shrieking and bellowing alone was deafening. Other warriors circled, looking for an opening in the ultraviolet searchlight beams which swept the sky and seared their hides.

Up on a certain peak, mirror-weapons blinked out as Lesk the Glut deliberately crashed his flyer down on the Travellers who sweated and swore and died there. But they'd seen him coming; before his flyer struck they had turned their shotguns on it, pumping shot after shot at both beast and rider right to the end. Lesk, wounded and more dangerous than ever, goaded his half-crippled beast to slither free of the peak, directed it in an insane suicide dive on the heart of the garden.

He was seen; smoking ray-beams converged blindingly on him; his flyer felt artificial sunlight eating at its hide, burning in its many eyes. It reared back from its headlong dive, pulled up, swooped low over the garden. Then someone threw a grenade, which exploded directly in front of the beast. With its spatulate head blazing, screaming like a safety-valve under high pressure, it swooped to earth, struck the wall and carried a great section of it away, and with it several defenders. The creature's huge manta body tore up the earth, somersaulted like a derailed train, hurled Lesk out of the saddle.

Other flyers swept down out of the darkness on the periphery. They crashed among the greenhouses and allotments, floundered in the pools. Down from their backs sprang lieutenants of Shaithis, Belath and Volse, to create carnage within the garden itself. Jazz Simmons saw them; he tracked them with tracers and streams of exploding shells. Two at least ducked away into the shadows and smoke, to commence their task of cold butchery on whichever Travellers or trogs they should come across.

Jazz saw Harry and his son on the balcony of the latter's house. They watched the battle. He breathlessly called up: 'How's it going?'

In the glare and sweep of hot beams, the booming of automatic weapons, howling of monsters and cries of men, it was hard to say. 'We should be in this!' Harry said to his son.

'No,' the other shook his head. 'We're the last resort.'

Harry didn't understand, but he trusted.

Zek came running, caught Jazz's arm where he stood by The Dweller's house. 'Look!' she cried.

High overhead a warrior dragged some bloated, puffing, incredible thing through the sky. A second warrior, higher, was similarly burdened. Scything searchlight beams cut across them and Zek gasped: 'Gas-beasts!'

'What?' Jazz gaped. He saw the bloated thing cut loose, begin drifting like some obscene balloon down toward the garden. The thing drifted a little northward, over the wall, where the battery of searchlights was concentrated. The beams picked it out, centered upon it, and it began to smoke. Puffing black evaporation and clouds of steam, it settled faster toward earth.

Jazz saw the strategy. 'AW he cried. Then he grabbed Zek, threw her down and hurled himself on top of her.

The gas-beast — a living creature, once a man — issued a hissing, high-pitched scream as its skin blackened and ruptured — and then it blew itself to bits with all the force of a thousand-pound bomb! The ray-gunners directly underneath it died instantly in the blast, their bodies and equipment flattened. At a stroke, one-third of The Dweller's defences had been wiped out.

A foul, stinking hot wind blew across the garden, and when it cleared Jazz helped Zek to her feet. The Dweller's house was still standing, but all of its windows had been blown in and half of its roof was missing. Harry and his son had ducked inside the space under the eaves in the moment before the blast; now they came out, white and shaken.

More warriors had landed at the back of the saddle. There they fought with Karen's creatures, overwhelming and quickly silencing them. But there were Travellers back there and they were armed with grenades; lobbing their deadly eggs, they gave the warriors blow for blow.

Lieutenants of the Wamphyri seemed to be ravaging in every quarter of the garden, their war-gauntlets drenched in Traveller blood. The night was covered with smoke and stench, split by shotgun blasts, made still more hellish in the surreal slash of searing light and long moments of total blindness…

Down by the shattered wall, the Lady Karen saw something coming up out of the smoke-filled depression. It crawled, but as it reached level ground reared up and charged! It was the mad Lord Lesk, bloodiest of all the Wamphyri, almost fully recovered and little the worse for his wounds and the tumble he'd taken. He saw Karen, rushed upon her full of nightmare intent.

She thrust aside a dazed Traveller and turned his lamp's beam full in Lesk's hideous face, blinding his eye. He cursed, clapped a hand to his face, came on and kicked the lamp from her grasp. Half-blind, he turned his left side toward her, glared his fury from the lidless eye in his shoulder. But as he swung his gauntlet, so his body turned with the swing and he again lost sight of her. She ducked under Lesk's arcing blow, tore away the flesh and ribs from his left side with one raking, razor-sharp swipe of her own gauntlet.

He cried out, staggered, gasped his amazement. He felt fumblingly with his free hand at the terrible damage to his body. His heart pounded like a great yellow bellows, plainly visible against the dark, pulsing sac of his exposed left lung. Travellers leaped on him, tried to trip him and drag him down. While he roared and raged, Karen stepped in and grasped his naked heart with her awesome weapon-hand. She cut the heart's pipes and tore it out of his body. He coughed blood, puffed himself up… and toppled like a felled tree! The Travellers fell on him like wolves, beheaded him, poured oil on his body and set fire to it. Lesk went up in flames.

Meanwhile:

A second gas-beast had come drifting directly toward The Dweller's house. The two Harrys fled the place, encountered a pair of Wamphyri lieutenants in their way. Their strategy in dealing with them proved their kinship: they let the grinning, gauntleted vampires close with them and charge, then ducked through Mobius doors. As their pursuers plunged into that unknown realm directly on their heels, so they closed the doors and exited through others. The lieutenants had simply disappeared; perhaps faint echoes of their screams came back, to be quickly drowned in the row and confusion of battle.

The mewling gas-beast over The Dweller's house was hit by a stray burst of gunfire. It exploded with a devastating roar, demolishing the place and sending out a great rush of vile stench.

Warriors were coming over the saddle behind the settlement. Another crashed down on the low structure housing Harry Jnr's generators. The remaining ultraviolet lamps blinked out, leaving only a handful of lanterns and starlight to light the reeling night. The bellowing voices of the Lords Belath and Menor Maimbite sounded inside the garden! From overhead, the Lord Shaithis shouted down instructions.