You were sure! You must have been, because
"innocent" people don't go shooting at people for being bad drivers! So what's going on, B.J.? What do these men have against you?'
She didn't answer but looked in her driving mirror - and saw at a glance that it was time to switch him on. Definitely, because the black station-wagon was coming at them again, and B.J. knew she couldn't handle this on her own. 'Harry, mah wee man!' she yelled as the rear window shattered, showering diced glass inwards, and something hot buzzed and spanged inside the car. 'Are you listening? Do you understand? You can talk normaly.'
'Listening, yes,' he mumbled dazedly as the moon blinked out, the wolf quit howling and the inner man surfaced. 'Understand, no.' His voice was like a child's: uncertain, afraid.
'I told you the time might come when I would send you out after them, the Ferenczys and the - '
' - Drakuls,' he cut her off.
'Well, now they've come for us!'
'Vampires!' Harry said. And as suddenly as that, his voice had changed. This was the man she'd first seen in a dark garage in London -the one in the alley, after he had got her out of trouble - the one who had faced up to Big Jimmy in B.J. 's wine bar. Then for the first time in a long time she remembered just who he was supposed to be: Radu's Mysterious One! Maybe he was, at that! So it should come as no surprise that this Harry was a very hard, very cold one.
Up ahead, the road narrowed to a single lane on the left. The right-hand lane was coned off for some forty or fifty feet where the surface was badly potholed; but it was a Sunday and no one was working. Also on the right, a wooden fence guarded the road from a steep descent to the river. If a car went over, it would keep right on going until it hit the water.
Just as B.J. entered the defile, Harry reached his foot over and stamped on the brake. The car behind was almost on top of them. It skidded right, then sharp left; its nearside tyres skipped over the ditch, which was shallow here, and it ran nose first into a clump of springy saplings that bent over with its weight and finaly stopped it. It would take a litle while to untangle.
But: 'Shit!' Harry said, as he released the brake and B.J. shot Auld John's car forward again.
'What?' She was jubilant. 'But we stopped them!'
'Only for a little while,' he said.
Then they were round a slight left-hand bend and the road ran straight ahead for maybe a mile or more. At the end of the mile, the road was cut into the hillside on the left at another left-hand bend, while on the right the drop was sheer to dense woodlands. 'Drop me here,' Harry said.
'What?' She looked at him out of the corner of her eye.
'Drop me here!' he repeated, harshly.
She gave a snort. 'What, and do you think you're the lone highwayman, or something?'
'Or something,' he nodded.
'You'l jump out and surprise them, wil you?'
'Drop me now, before they come round that bend back there and see us,' he said.
She saw that he was serious. 'They'l kil you.'
'No, they won't,' Harry shook his head. This is what I do, remember?' So she dropped him.
But as the Necroscope headed for the trees at the side of the road, he caled out, 'Now go like hel! That car of theirs is more powerful; if they're not back on your tail in a couple of miles you'l know I got them. Then you can come back for me. And if they are ...' He left it at that, and watched from cover as B.J. drove away ...
Harry fixed the contours of the forested hillside ahead in his mind's eye and registered the co-ordinates. He would have liked to double-check them but didn't have the time. Then, conjuring a Mobius door, he made a jump to the atic of his house in Bonnyrig. It took only a moment or so to colect what he needed and make a return jump back into the trees at the side of the road.
Speeding south-west, Auld John's car had almost reached the place where the road was cut into the hillside. But in the opposite direction -just coming into view and rocketing down the road - the black station-wagon! At the speed they were going, they'd catch