'Come then, come!' he taunted them. 'And only see what's waiting for you!'

At the bottom of the garden, someone pushed the gate creakingly open. 'Harry?' Penny stepped into view and started up the path towards him.

'Penny?' The Necroscope reached out to her with his arms and with his mind, but her mind was a blur - or rather a mist - in which her psyche hid without even knowing it. Mind-smog!

Harry felt devastated, but he must hide it. Now she was a vampire, or would be, and now she was his thrall. It wasn't a crush any longer. And he wondered if it ever had been. After all, he had brought her back from the dead.

'What were you doing out in the night? I told you to wait.'

'But the night was so beautiful, and just like you I needed to think.' She let him fold her in his arms.

'What did you think about?' The night lured you. You felt the first fires racing in your veins. And tomorrow the sun will hurt your eyes, irritate your skin.

'I thought... maybe you didn't want to take me with you. Maybe you wouldn't.'

'You thought wrong. I will.' I have to, for to leave you in this world would be to sign your death warrant.

'But you don't love me.'

'Oh, but I do,' he lied. But it won't matter one way or the other, for you won't love me, either. Still, we'll have our lust.

'Harry, I'm frightened!'

Too late, too late! 'I don't want to leave you here now,' he told her. 'You'd better come with me.'

'But where?'

He took her into the house, ran through the rooms turning on all the lights, quickly returned to her. And he showed her Johnny's knife, with her name on it. She gasped and drew back from him. 'Can you imagine him?' he asked her, his voice dark as a winter night. 'Can you picture him looking at this and remembering your pain and his pleasure?'

She shuddered. 'I ... I thought I'd forgotten. I've tried to forget.'

'You will forget.' He nodded. 'And so will I ... when it's over. But I can't leave you here, and I have to finish it with him.'

'Will I see him?' She turned pale at the thought.

Harry nodded. 'Yes.' His scarlet eyes lit in a strange smile. 'Yes - and he will see you!'

'But you won't let him hurt me?'

'I promise.'

Then I'm ready...'

One hour earlier on Waverley station in Edinburgh, Trevor Jordan had boarded the overnight sleeper for London. He'd made no plans as such; tomorrow morning, early, he would probably give E-Branch a ring and see if he could sniff out which way the wind was blowing. And if it felt right he'd offer them his services again. They'd check him out (in the circumstances it was only to be expected) and of course they'd want to know all about his experiences with Harry Keogh. But he'd make sure that all of that took time, and by then Harry wouldn't be here any more. In the event he was still here, Jordan would cry off any work that went against him.

Not out of fear but respect, and out of gratitude... yes, and if he was truthful out of fear, too. Harry was Harry and a vampire. In that respect, anyone who didn't feel at least some trace of fear had to be an idiot.

The telepath had paid for a bed but couldn't sleep. There was just too much on his mind. He was a man back from the dead and he couldn't get used to it, probably never would. Not even a man who makes a full recovery from a desperate illness could feel like Jordan felt. For he had gone beyond illness - beyond life itself- and returned. And it was all down to Harry.

Unknown to Jordan, unknown even to Harry himself, was the fact that there was a lot more than that down to him. For the one thing Jordan hadn't taken into account was that Harry had been in his mind: the Necroscope had touched upon his mind - 'fingered' it, however briefly -but enough that he'd left his prints there. And no way to erase them.

To E-Branch - certainly to the two espers who had followed Jordan on to the train, one a spotter and the other a telepath - those prints took the form of a reeking mental mist called mind-smog. Of course, they couldn't probe too deeply, because Jordan was himself a quality telepath and he'd know it; indeed Gareth Scanlon, one of the two men who shadowed him, had once been Jordan's pupil, brought on by him until his own talent had matured and taken shape. Jordan would know his mind (not to mention his face, his voice) immediately. Which was why the two kept well away from him, boarded a carriage far down the train, on the other side of the buffet car, and sat for the first part of their journey with their hats on, hiding behind newspapers which they'd already read four or five times.

But Jordan never once headed in their direction or sent a single thought their way; he was satisfied just to sit in his sleeper compartment, listen to the clatter of the wheels on the tracks, and watch the night world roll by beyond his window. And be glad he was once more a part of that world, without once pausing to wonder for how long.

As the train slowed down a little for a viaduct crossing between Alnwick and Morpeth, Scanlon sat up straighter in his seat and closed his eyes in sudden, half-fearful concentration. Someone was trying to get through to him. But the thoughts were sharp, clean and entirely human, with nothing of vampire mind-smog about them. It was Millicent Cleary at the HQ in London, from where she, the Minister Responsible and the E-Branch Duty Officer were co-ordinating and running the show.

She kept it short: Gareth? Do you have a Sitrep?

Scanlon relaxed his screen of static and gave a brief situation report, finishing: He's in a sleeper, coming all the way into London.

Maybe not, she came back. It depends how things are going, but the Minister says we might pull the plug on all three of them very soon now.

What? Scanlon's concern was obvious; also his horror, that at any moment he and his colleague might be called upon to kill a man - indeed, to kill a former friend.

Clearly picked that up. A former friend, yes, but now a vampire. And a moment later: The Minister wants to know, is there a problem?

There wasn't, except: I mean, we are on a train, remember? We can't very well burn him on the bloody train!

The train will be stopping in Darlington, and we already have agents there. So be ready for the word. You may have to get off the train there and take Trevor... er, Jordan, with you. That's it for now. We'll get back to you.

Scanlon passed the message on to his companion, the spotter Alan Kellway, who was one of the Branch's more recent recruits. 'I didn't know Jordan all that well,' Kellway answered, 'and so have no problem that way. All I know is he was dead and now is alive - life of a sort -and that it isn't natural. So we'll only be restoring the natural order of things.'

'But I did know him.' Scanlon shrank down in his seat. 'He was my friend. It will be like murder!'

'A Pyrrhic killing, yes.' Kellway put it his way. 'But is it really? You have to remember: Harry Keogh, Jordan and their kind... they could murder our entire world!'

'Yes.' Scanlon nodded. 'That's what I keep telling myself. That's what I have to keep telling myself.'

In the Möbius Continuum, Johnny Pound's unthinkable knife was like a lodestone: it pointed in Pound's direction. Rather, Harry's locator talent pointed the knife, and he simply followed where it led.

Penny clung to him with her eyes closed; she had looked once, but that had been enough. The darkness of the Möbius Continuum seemed solid. That was because of the absence of everything material, the absence even of time. Where there is NOTHING, however, even thoughts have weight.

It's a kind of magic, she whispered, as much to herself as to anyone.

No, the Necroscope answered, but you can be forgiven for thinking it. After all, Pythagoras thought it, too. At which point, expert in the ways of the Möbius Continuum that he was, Harry sensed a cessation of motion and knew he'd found Found.