had seeded would not die unless it were put down, deliberately and utterly destroyed. Ah, the tenacity of the Great Vampire, and of his works!As for the last of Malinari's human watchdogs: the spiderlike, gangling Garth Santeson was by now no more. He had served his purpose the moment he warned of E-Branch's arrival here, an intrusion that Malinari had been expecting ever since his lieutenant Bruce Trennier died the true death some few days ago far in the western desert, and of which he'd had warning apart from and since Trennier's demise, not alone from Garth Santeson.
A warning, aye, and delivered by a seeming idiot! But even an idiot may have his uses. Malinari had certainly found a good use for that one ...
But poor Trennier, the manner of his passing. Malinari remembered it well, those last few moments of the man's miserable life: the faithful servant crying his agonies, and Malinari the Mind, the master, feeling something of those agonies even here, in Xanadu:
The/ire! That awesome, all-consuming, withering fire that melted even metamorphic flesh, exploded bone, liquefied sinew, and reduced all to ashes! It had lasted a while - the pain, too, Trennier's pain - until Malinari had been obliged to shut it out of his mind. But through the jet of blistering heat that stripped Trennier's flesh from his body and finally blinded and destroyed him, Malinari had recognized some of the faces of his lieutenant's tormentors. The face of Ben Trask, remembered from the mind ofZek Foener, and that of lan Goodly, yet another man of weird talents ...
But if only Malinari had had longer with the Foener woman. There had been so much more that he might have learned (such as the nature of their skills, these men of esoteric talents), and so very much more that he would have enjoyed ... of that beautiful woman herself, perhaps, and not only her mind.Well, too late for that now - too late from the moment he hurled her down that shaft into oblivion - but at least he had fathomed something of the dangers of this world. Especially the greatest danger of all, which was E-Branch.And now they had found him ... as he had known they would, against which inevitability he'd long since taken ingenious and even marvellous precautions.On a board bolted to the wall close to Malinari's 'window' (which was simply a large hole in the moulded concrete facade), a master switch stood in the 'off position beside a series of smaller electrical switches set in a roughly oblong array. The array was a precise match for Xanadu itself, its concentric pattern of switches duplicating the cobweb design of the resort in the gloom of the mountain saddle.Now, waiting there in his secret bolthole, Malinari threw the master switch. There was a low, answering hum of power, but nothing more. And his slender fingers were impatient where they fluttered over the smaller switches - those electrical messengersof instantaneous death - as he gloatingly rehearsed a certain sequence:'First the outer chalets, to close them in. Then the inner structures, to catch them where they run. And when finally they think they have me "trapped" in my night-dark dome ...' His hand trembled with pent anticipation over the central switch.'A pleasure dome, aye. But for my pleasure, not theirs!'He laughed a coughing laugh, long and low ... then paused abruptly. Down there, coming into view along the approach road toward Xanadu's gates: a vehicle. The night was dark now - but night and darkness were Malinari's greatest allies - and that vehicle with its lowered, carefully probing lights; the coiled-spring tension in its vengeful passengers!Malinari sensed it, their human bloodlust - or what passed for bloodlust in men - and laughed again. Bloodlust? Why, Nephran Malinari had pissed thicker blood than coursed through the veins of whelps such as these!And with his telepathic probes concentrating on the vehicle, he felt what its occupants felt:Fear, of the Great Unknown that was Malinari. Oh, he recognized and relished it! Primal fear of the night and what the night might bring, its roots burrowing like worms in every human fibre, revenant of cavern-dwelling ancestors. Fear in the face of an alien threat, the menace of the blood-beast!But tempering the fear, holding it at bay, there was also a wall of grim determination. And bolstering that blind determination, the sure