Brian Lumley - Blood Brothers

… Something of the dream remained, niggling there in the back of his wounded mind. The whirling wall of numbers, fading but — real? Absent for so long and only now — returned?

Returned…

The thought of that — of his Great Enemy, returned — made Nestor's vampire flesh tingle. And what of his stolen love? Was she out there even now, together with him? And were they lovers again, plotting against Nestor anew as once before they'd plotted in a time long forgotten?

'What's on your mind? Do you walk in your sleep?' Wratha's sleepy mumble reached him from their bed, or her bed, to which she invited him ever more frequently, until it was hard to remember when he'd last slept in his own. 'Have no fear but open the drapes if you want to look out, for I would know it if the sun were up. Oh, it is, and burning — but in Sunside! Not on Wrathspire, not yet. No, for I would feel it there, scorching the stone.'

He glanced at her sprawled unashamed, half-in, half-out of the sheets; then looked again, stared, and held his breath. One marble breast that lolled a little, tip-tilted; a flat, dimpled belly; a pale, rounded hip; the curves of thigh, leg, ankle and delicate foot. And central, a tight black mass where her thigh joined her body, half-hidden by the sheet. He breathed again. She was a wanton, this Wratha, and beautiful.

'I don't need to look out,' Nestor told her, his voice already choked with lust, like his bruised manhood, reacting to the lure of her sex as if he'd never known her. 'For I know what's out there… and also what's in here.' The room was in total darkness; it made no difference, for they were Wamphyri. Wratha lifted her head and saw him as clear as daylight, his shaft rising and hardening as his red eyes fed upon her.

Then come to bed and ride awhile,' she said. 'Or let me ride you, until you fire your juices into me. Or let my tongue tease the sweet nectar from you. Whichever way you will it, so long as we then may sleep. For though I'm weary, still I won't rest, not with you at the window like that.' And to herself: You are young, strong, beautiful, and mine.' And innocent? Oh, you were, you were.' Not a virgin, not quite, but next best. Some duJJ Szgany cow had known you, without knowing how to handle you. Ah, but Wratha knew! A touch was all it took. Why, I remember how you almost came in my hand the first time I touched you, and how I brought you along like an infant learning to walk… since when you've learned to run/ But to think of you running with someone else… I would kill her first, or you, or both of you! Is that what disturbed you? Did you dream of her again? Of Misha? Only let me come upon a Misha — any Misha — among Sunside's sluts… I'll throw her from the highest balcony!

He went back to the bed and at once sank into her flesh, which sucked at him as powerfully as the first time. That was how it was with Wratha: always like the first time. It was hot and it was cold and it was pain and it was pleasure, and when he thought he had nothing left there was always more. But it was not love, and both he and Wratha knew it.

Before they slept he let his mind drift out, out across the boulder plains to Sunside. But the searing sun was higher now and he felt it on the mountains; it leeched on his probe and weakened it, until he could feel its heat even from here. If the numbers vortex was there, it was shielded by an impenetrable veil of golden fire, which would last even as long as the day. But when the long day was done -

— There was always the night…

Two miles into the woods, in an area of freakish rock formations, hot springs and volcanic blowholes, there Lardis Lidesci and a team of tried and trusted men worked hard and sweated in tropical heat and acrid reek. Settlement lay to the north-east something less than three miles away, and the honeycombed outcrop of Sanctuary Rock stood half a mile closer, due north in the foothills. But here where the sprawling forest thinned out into an ugly scar or natural clearing, and the earth was a treacherous, crumbling, steamy grey crust streaked with ashes, sulphur and other mineral deposits, Lardis and his team built warrior traps.

The morning was already a quarter spent when Kirk Lisescu and three others, one of them a stranger, came out of the woods from the north. They hailed the old Lidesci where he supervised the lowering of the last framework of brittle poles into position over a lethal sulphur pit, to be covered with a camouflage of coarse nets and tufts of withered gorse dipped in sulphur to simulate life; the finished effect being to imitate firm ground. Tonight someone would stay out here, just one brave soul in all the empty miles around, to light small, discreet fires in the centre of this vast trap. The first would be lit an hour after sundown, the second when the first went out, and the last — if the others proved ineffective — midway through the night. From on high the place would have the appearance of a Szgany encampment, where some fool had forgotten to damp down the evening's fire. But as for any flyers or warriors who fell to earth here to investigate….hey'd very quickly discover that it wasn't earth!

Eventually Lardis was satisfied; he looked up, squinted his eyes and frowned inquisitively at Kirk and his party, then walked a well-marked path to the safe margin where they waited. And: 'Kirk,' he called out. 'But you should be at the Rock and resting by now! And a well-earned rest at that! So what brings you…?' His query petered out, for in that moment Lardis had taken a closer look at the stranger.

'Someone I thought you'd like to see,' Kirk answered with a grin. 'For it's been… what, almost a three-year?'

'Lardis,' Nathan smiled, however tiredly. They had slept on the way here, under the trees, but he was still bone-weary. His eyes were hollow and his flesh wan; there was grey in the corn of his hair, which was no longer cropped but fell behind his ears and over the back of his collar; he stood taller, and his voice was deeper. But still, of all the Szgany in all Sunside, there could be no mistaking this one. And yet…

… For a moment Lardis stood stock still, blinking like a man struck between the eyes. For it seemed as if there were two men here, and that he should know both of them. Or was it simply that his mind made connections with times, places, and faces? No, for Nathan wasn't born then. What possible connection could there be between him and… Harry Hell-lander?

But in another moment the double picture swam into one as Lardis's eyes focused and finally goggled. And as his mental confusion receded, so his jaw fell open and his breath was expelled in a gasp of acceptance, recognition. 'Nathan Kiklu!' He choked on the words, staggered forward, grabbed Nathan and clasped him to his barrel chest.

'Careful, Lardis!' Kirk warned, only half-jokingly. 'It's Nathan, all right, but he came out of Starside — on the back of a Wamphyri flyer!'

'What?' The old Lidesci stepped back a pace, held Nathan at arm's length. 'You did what?'

'It's a long story,' Nathan nodded.

'Long and daft,' Kirk agreed. 'I know for I've heard it! But I believe it, because no one could lie like that! Why Nathan's been where Wratha and the others came from, and come out of it unscathed!'

'Unscathed?' Lardis had a grip on himself. Narrowing his eyes, he looked at Kirk more seriously, questioningly now.

'Oh, I've tested him,' the wiry hunter nodded his understanding. 'Silver, kneblasch, whatever. But the best test of all is sunlight, and here he stands soaking it up! He's pale as ever, is Nathan, but he's still one of us.'

Everything from three years ago came back to Lardis in a rush. 'Nathan! We sent a runner after you but he didn't find you. You don't know about your mother, and Misha, and — '

'- I know it all,' Nathan cut him short, laughing. But the laughter went out of him in a moment. 'And all that time wasted, when I could have been here with you… with them.'