it to reach for the gun in her waistband. She was stumbling backwards, away from this scene of uttermost horror, yet every move she made was in some kind of dreadful slow-motion. And the figure in the hatch wrenching its crimson arm from Trennier's body... blood flying, splashing Zek's face in a red slap ... yellow eyes burning on her, seeming to burn into her, their cores blazing scarlet in a moment. They were like the holes in a Hallowe'en mask, those eyes, but they were alive!'He - it - came out of the hatch in one flowing movement, while another figure rose up behind him; all of this happening in a surreal slow-motion that was simply a trick of Zek's mind. For in fact it was very fast, and in her extreme of numb, gnawing terror, almost too fast to follow.
'She snapped out of it, put her hands together, aimed with the torch and the gun both. But even as she pulled the trigger, that bloodied arm swept the gun aside, sent it flying, and the torch, too. And a cold wet hand caught at her wrists, trapping both of them in its icy grip ...'
Trask had paused. His eyes were staring, unblinking. Gaunt and grey, he seemed to have collapsed down into himself a little.When a crackle of static sounded from the radio, the Duty Officer gave a start. But then a tinny voice was heard, reporting the jet-copter's progress. 'Bird One to base ... ETA twenty to twenty-five minutes, over.''Roger, out,' said the D.O. into his hand-set. That served to bring Trask out of it, and:'I suppose I'd better finish it,' he said. And in a little while, lacklustre and robotic, but inured now, he carried on.'Understand, this wasn't my dream - not all of it - though I'm sure that parts of it were. What I've told you so far is my ... my reconstruction of the so-called "Radujevac incident," as I've pictured it time and time over in my mind's eye, and in my current nightmares. It's built out of details that Nathan Keogh gave us, out of ... God, evidence ... that we found at the Refuge, and lastly out of Zek's telepathic contact with me, while I lay tossing and turning during her final moments.'Her final moments, yes ...'For that was when she knew it was over, when that bastard thing Malinari trapped her wrists, gripped them in his freezing cold hand, and smiled his dreadful smile at her. Smiled at Zek, inclined his head, and began reading her like a book. But every page as he absorbed it was torn out, discarded, went fluttering into oblivion. And knowing it was over, that was when she contacted me. Once before she'd done it, when she'd thought she was dying. But this time she was dying.'In my nightmare I saw his face. Handsome, yes, but a vacant sort of beauty, superficial, cosmetic. Lord Malinari looked as he willed himself to look, young but not too young, dark but not too dark, thirsty and... and no way to hide it. Greedy for knowledge, and the power it would bring. Zek's knowledge, which she wasn't going to give him without a fight.'At first she didn't look at him, could only stare at poor Trennier, sprawled on the floor in his own blood, his face alternating between glaring white and shadow, white and shadow, as her torch rocked to a standstill close by. At his bulging eyes, his gaping mouth. Poor Trennier, raped and dead. But - '"Ah, no," said Malinari the Mind, in a voice like bubbles bursting on a pool of oil. "Not dead but undead, or soon to be. He knows things - of metals, machines and engines - and I would know them, too. But you ... the things thatjyow know are of far greater interest. Moreover, I see that I am not the first of my kind that you have known."'Zek could feel her knowledge slipping from her - slithering out of her and into him, like a greasy rope in a tug-o'-war - and she fed her thoughts to me that much faster. But Malinari would not be denied; he read her telepathic messages, too, interpreting them as best he might. As for her knowledge:'It was as if Zek's past, her memories, her understanding of the world ... as if it were all iron filings,