But suddenly, coming from nowhere, there was a gurgling, monstrous voice - unmistakably that of Faéthor Ferenczy - in Harry's mind: Instead of shrinking back when you sense him near, seek him out! He would enter your mind? Enter his! He will expect you to be afraid; be bold! And when he yawns his jaws at you, go in through them, for he's softer on the inside!

A nightmare voice, but one which Harry himself had drawn from memory. For Wellesley's talent made any other sort of intrusion impossible; Faéthor was gone now where no man could ever reach him; he was lost for ever in future time.

That father of vampires had been talking about his bloodson Janos, but it seemed to the Necroscope that the same techniques might well apply right here, right now. Or perhaps it didn't seem so to Harry, but to the thing inside him. Paxton was here to prove Harry was a vampire. Since he was a vampire, there seemed no way he could disprove it. But must he simply sit still and wait for the consequences of this flea's reports? The urge was on him to even the score a little, to give the mindspy something to think about.

Not actually to 'scratch' his itch, no, for that would be conclusive proof in itself and could only drag the Necroscope further into an already unwelcome light, ultimately to the minute scrutiny of bigger fleas, whose bite might even prove fatal. Also (Harry was obliged to forcibly remind himself) it would be murder.

The thought of that evoked visions of blood, and the thought of that was something he must put aside entirely!

He stepped back from the gate in the old stone wall, conjured a door and passed through it into the Möbius Continuum... and out again onto a second-class road where it paralleled the river on its far side. There was no one in sight; the sky was clouded over; down through the flanking trees the river was seen as a ribbon of lead carelessly let fall in the darkness.

A car, Paxton's car, stood half-on, half-off the road under overhanging branches. A recent model and expensive, its paintwork gleamed in the dark; its doors were locked, windows wound up tight. It pointed slightly downhill, towards a walled bend where the access road joined the main road into Bonnyrig.

Harry stepped from the potholed tarmac, past the car and into the cover of the trees, and where he went the mist followed. No, it didn't simply follow, for he was the source and the catalyst. It boiled up from the ground where he walked, fell from his dark clothes like weird evaporation, poured from his mouth as breath. He went silently, flowingly, unaware of his own feet unerringly seeking soft ground, stepping between the places where brittle, betraying twigs lay in wait for him. And he felt his tenant flexing its muscles and securing its hooks more deeply in his will.

It would be a fine test of the thing's power over him, to take control here and now, causing him to do that from which there could be no return.

Until now Harry's fever had been more or less controlled. His angers had been more violent, true, his depressions deeper and his snatches of joy poignant, but on the whole he had felt no real craving or compulsion, or at least nothing he couldn't fight. But now he felt it. It was as if Paxton had become the centre of all that was wrong with his life, a point he could focus upon, a large wen on the already imperfect complexion of existence.

Some surgery was required.

Harry's mist crept ahead of him. It sprang up from the bank of the river and the boles of trees where they joined the damp earth, and cast swirling tendrils about Paxton's feet. The telepath sat on a tree stump close to the river's rim, his gaze fixed firmly on the dark shape of the house across the water, where light spilled out from an upstairs window. Harry had left that light on, deliberately.

But while the Necroscope was unaware of it, still there was a half-scowl, half-frown on Paxton's face; for the mindspy had lost his quarry's aura. He supposed that Harry was still in the house, but for all his mental concentration he no longer had contact with him. Not even the tenuous contact which was his minimum requirement.

It didn't mean a great deal, of course not, because Paxton was well aware of Harry's talents: the Necroscope could be literally anywhere. Or on the other hand it could mean quite a bit. It isn't everyone who will just go flitting off in the midnight hour, putting himself beyond the reach of men and mentalists alike. Keogh could be up to almost anything.

Paxton shivered as a ghost stepped on his grave. Only an old saying, that, of course; but for a moment just then he'd felt something touch him, like an unseen presence come drifting across the water to stand beside him in the silence of the mist-shrouded river bank. Mist-shrouded? Where in hell had that sprung from?

He stood up, looked to left and right and began to turn around. And Harry, not five paces away, stepped silently into darkness. Paxton turned through a full, slow circle, shivered again and shrugged uncomfortably, and continued to stare at the house across the river. He reached inside his coat and brought out a leather-jacketed flask, tilted it and let strong liquor gurgle into his throat in a long pull.

Watching the esper empty the flask, Harry could feel something dark swelling inside him. It was big, maybe even bigger than he was. He flowed forward, came to a halt directly behind the unsuspecting telepath. What a joke it would be, to let go of Wellesley's shield right now and deliberately aim his thoughts into the back of Paxton's head! Why, the esper would probably leap straight into the river!

Or perhaps he'd just turn round again, very slowly, and see Harry standing there looking right at him, into him, into his quivering, quaking soul. And then, if he went to scream...

The dark, alien, hate-swollen thing was in Harry's hands now, lifting them towards the back of Paxton's neck. It was in his heart, too, and his eyes, and his face. He could feel it pulling back his lips from drooling teeth. It would be so easy to sweep Paxton up and into the Möbius Continuum, and... and deal with him there. There, where no one would ever find him.

Harry's hands only had to close now and he could wring the esper's neck as if he were a chicken. Ahhh!

The thing inside sang of emotions as yet unattained, which could be his. He thrilled to its message, to the ringing cry which echoed through his innermost being even now: Wamphyri! Warn -

- And Paxton hitched back the sleeve of his overcoat and glanced at his watch.

That was all: his movement had been such a natural thing, so mundane, so much of this world, that the spell of an alien plane of existence was broken. And Harry felt like a twelve-year-old boy again, masturbating furiously over the toilet bowl and ready to come, and his uncle had just knocked on the bathroom door.

He drew back from Paxton, conjured a Möbius door and almost toppled through it. Too late (and mercifully so), the mindspy sensed something and whirled about -

- And saw nothing there but a swirl of fog.

Drenched in his own pungent sweat, the Necroscope vacated the Möbius Continuum into the back seat of Paxton's car. And he sat there shuddering, retching and being physically ill on to the floor until he'd sicked the thing right out of himself. At last, looking at the stinking mess of his own vomit, his anger gradually returned. But now he was mainly angry with himself.

He'd set out to teach the esper a lesson and had almost killed him. It said a hell of a lot for his control over the thing inside him, which as yet was... what? A baby? An infant? What hope would he have later, then, when the thing was full-fledged?

And still Paxton was there under the trees by the river bank, there with his thoughts and his cigarettes and whisky. And he'd probably be there tomorrow, too, and the day after that. Until Harry made a mistake and gave himself away. If he hadn't done so already.