There in the garden of his burning house, the vampire -the Wamphyri Lord, Harry Keogh - had picked Paxton up like a stuffed toy, examining him eye to eye, face to face. One fragile human being, albeit a piece of trash, up against someone who had been the most human being and was now a monster. Paxton, gape-jawed and bulge-eyed, his trembling, cold-sweating flesh only inches from the white-gleaming, salivating gates of hell.
Harry's face, his mouth ... that crimson cavern of stalactite, stalagmite teeth, glistening and jagged as shards of broken glass. What? The gates of hell? All of that and worse.
And Trask had thought: Paxton is a piece of candy, a sweetmeat, a Coconut Flake. He's something to munch on. Why, Harry could bite his face off if he wanted to! Following which, the thought had occurred: Maybe he does want to! Maybe he will!
The memory persisted, with Trask shouting, 'Harry, don't!'
And the Necroscope slowly closing those monstrous, mantrap jaws, looking up in the ruddy illumination of the burning house and glaring at Trask across the misted garden. Then:
Your world is safe, Ben, Harry had told him in his mind. I'm not staying here.
And: Starside? Trask had wondered.
Harry's mental shrug. There's nowhere else.
At which he had released Paxton and let him fall to the earth like the piece of rubbish he was, and at the same time let Trask know that the war was over. But it hadn't been over for Paxton.
Snatching up his crossbow, again the telepath had tried to shoot Harry, at which the Necroscope had disappeared into the Mobius Continuum. And that had been the first time Trask had ever seen it, close up, in actual use:
With the deceptively sinuous grace of the Wamphyri, Harry had stepped or flowed backwards away from Paxton and into . .. nothing! And to Trask and the E-Branch agents in the garden, it had seemed that he had simply ceased to be. Paxton's bolt had shot forward into the misty swirl of Harry's vacuum and been eaten up by it, leaving the telepath panting: 'I got him! I'm sure I got the bastard! I couldn't miss!'
But the mist where it had closed on the Necroscope opened up again, and a clotted, gurgling, apparently incorporeal voice had come out of it, saying, 'How sorry I am to have to disappoint you.'
At that, Trask had snatched a breath of hot, smoky air, as a clawlike hand with nails like rusted fish hooks reached out of empty space, closed over Paxton's head and dragged him shrieking out of the garden and out of this world. Then ...
Harry might oh so easily have killed the telepath, but he hadn't. Instead, moments later, he'd delivered him back to the garden: a man bereft of his telepathy. Which was the last favour that the Necroscope had ever done for E-Branch and the world in general.
Following which: a brief exchange of words - an acknowledgement of the friendship they had known - and Harry had said, 'Look after yourself, Ben.'