seeing or recognizing anything; there was nothing here that his glazed eyes and stunned mind were prepared to take in. No, there was something: the tall stockade fence, which for a moment focused his attention. But even that was different, gapped in places and leaning outwards a little.
He stood up, staggered, stepped from the debris. Whatever had happened here, his clothing seemed to have been ripped half from him! Automatically, fumblingly -like a man flicking dust from his cuffs after a hard fall - he made adjustments to his trousers, his leather shirt. And slowly, reeling a little, he headed for the town centre, away from the rubble of his mother's house.
His mother's house?
Now where had that thought come from? And turning to look back at the freshly made chaos - at the black, jutting, splintered timbers and smoking mounds of debris, under a dark shroud of still settling dust - he slowly shook his head. No, for his mother's house had been a warm and welcoming place. Hadn't it?
Along the way, voices continued to cry out from shattered buildings; people stumbled like ghosts here and there, calling for help, or for lost families; flames gouted up where hearth fires turned ruined homes to funeral pyres. There was nothing Nestor could do about any of this, for there were far too many people in need of help. And anyway he needed help himself.
He began to remember names and fractured, jumbled fragments of conversation: Jason, Misha, Nathan, Lardis, Andrei... Nestor?
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
Jason: 'What will you do?'
Nestor, growling: 'It's Misha's choice. With or without her, I'll go. But be sure I'll be back one day.'
Misha, afraid: 'Because ... because he needed someone! And I was the only one who cared. But Nestor ... why are you doing this?'
Nestor, determinedly: 'When your father and brothers learn what's happened, then they'll kill me!'
Misha, astonished: 'No, they may not, for you are the Lord Nestor!'
Nestor: 'Of course! And I fear no man, for I am Wamphyri!'
Nathan: (But here there was nothing, no words at all but a cataract of numbers foaming down the falls of Nestor's mind and forming endless, meaningless patterns there, one of which was a weird figure-of-eight symbol like a discarded apple rind or wood-shaving lying on its side. And rising over the rush and swirl of numbers, a distant, dismal howling of wolves. And superimposed over all these things a haunted, haunting face, all sad and lonely and ... accusing?)
Lardis: This is where the powers of the hell-lands and those of the Wamphyri clashed and cancelled each other out.'
Andrei: 'But they're gone now, reduced to dust and ghosts, and we should let them lie.'
Nestor, in anger: 'What, ghosts? The Wamphyri? Never.' For I am the Lord Nestor!'
The voices came and went in Nestor's head: voices out of the past, the present, the imagination. Voices from child-reality, adult-reality, and unreality alike, all seeking the stability of a central focus, revolving together in the grand free-for-all of his trauma. True memories merged into pseudo-memories as his past life faded away and devolved to a single, self-repeating phrase, I am Nestor of the Wamphyri! Until it seemed certain that the present, surreal and incoherent as a dream, could only be a dream, given substance by the subconscious will of its creator. And Nestor felt relieved to know that he was only dreaming.
In the near-distance, amid smoky, flame-shot ruins close to Settlement's east wall, a last lone flyer flopped up hugely on to a pile of rubble and craned its swaying head towards the sky. Pausing to watch, Nestor was vaguely aware of a rider in the saddle where the creature's neck widened into its back. But in another moment the flyer had thrust itself forward and aloft on powerful coiled-spring launching members, and rising up from the ruins it banked in a wide circle over the town and rapidly gained height. Feeling its shadow on him as it passed overhead, Nestor gaped at its massive diamond shape flowing black against the stars, and wondered at its meaning.
Then, slack-jawed, with his head tilted back at an angle and his half-vacant eyes still fixed on the alien shape in the sky, he continued his shambling walk through the reeking smoke and scattered rubble; until his path was obstructed and he felt something splash wet and warm against his torn trousers.
Sprawled at his feet, he saw the shattered body of a man whose face had been flensed from the bone. A dark red fountain