down from above; the Necroscope began skidding on his heels, deliberately aimed himself at the bole of a huge tree - an oak, he thought, well over three feet in girth - to slow himself down. Above him the canopy was dense, with patches of daylight showing through ... and one unmistakable large patch of dangling, broken branches.
Using the great gnarly roots of the oak as hand and footholds, Harry scrambled around the bole of the tree ... and was there. Directly overhead, trapped in a tangle of branches, the twisted, dented wreckage of the station-wagon's roof lay horizontal on a platform of crushed foliage, like a metal blanket flung carelessly into the tree. And down below -
- The vehicle was standing on its nose, which had dug in, then crumpled as the soil compacted. Its rear end was trapped, compressed in a fork of mighty branches, else the impact might easily have caused the petrol tank to explode.
Maybe better if it had, the Necroscope thought.
Better for the driver, anyway.
For the driver was stil in the car, pinned like a fly on the column of his stripped steering wheel, where the blast of the grenade had thrown him. His face had come forward so that his chin was resting on the frame of the shattered windscreen, and crimson trails were seeping from his ears, nose, and mouth down the vertical, crumpled bonnet and dripping into the dark soil. But his yellow, Asiatic face was mobile, drooling, grimacing, and even as Harry watched his eyes opened.
Inverted but on a level with his own eyes, they looked straight at him, and he saw how red they were in their cores ...
Then the mouth blew red bubbles and made a noise, and a bloodied, broken hand twitched up onto the window sill of the sprung door. It jerked and trembled there, making feeble beckoning motions. And those awful eyes pleaded.
The red-robe was asking for help.
'Oh, sure!' the Necroscope said, and stepped back a pace. But even if this one had been human - or especially if he were human - there'd be no helping him. Several pulsating loops of lacerated intestine were dangling out from under the driver's door, dripping blood.
Somewhere overhead, back through the tunnel of trees, the drone of a car's engine coughed into silence, and in the next moment a shout came echoing on the suddenly still air. 'Harry! Where are you?'
B.J. - she must have seen the broken fence and guessed something of what had happened.
'Down here!' Harry called back - which startled the wood pigeons again, set them fluttering, and broke the awe-stricken mood of the place. 'Be careful how you go. It's steep ...' And the thought struck him: just like we were out rambling! Except they weren't out rambling, and there was monstrous danger here. What about the other red-robe?
Then, smelling a new but no less lethal danger, he stepped back another two paces and began circling the suspended vehicle.
Along with the blood seeping into the soil there was a shimmering pool of vaporizing fuel in the area of the buried fender. A trail of petrol led back to the fractured tank ...
He became aware of B.J.'s sounds as she descended towards him through the trees. But suddenly everything felt wrong. What about the vampire who had been clinging to the roof? Where was he? And just who was it who was coming down the slope under the trees anyway?
Thinking of the one who had been on the roof of the station-wagon had caused the Necroscope to glance up into the tree again.
At which precise moment there was movement; the twisted blanket of metal tilted a little ... and a tattered, blackened sleeve, once red, came into view. But the hand projecting from the sleeve continued to hang on to the roof!
The roof tilted more yet and the red-robe came fully into view. He was conscious, furious! He saw Harry directly beneath him, and snarled; his eye-teeth were fangs! Then he let go his hold, slid from the roof face-down, and fell directly towards the Necroscope!
Harry hurled himself backwards, missed his footing, tried to conjure a door. The vampire was on all fours, muscles bunching to spring. His robe was in tatters, limbs and body a mass of cuts and scratches. And his face was a mask out of hell!
B.J. stepped over Harry, aimed her crossbow almost point-blank, squeezed the trigger. The bolt sprang free, buried itself to the flights in the red-robe's heart.