was spurting in bursts from his savaged throat; but even as Nestor considered the meaning of this, so the crimson fountain grew spasmodic, lost height and gurgled out of existence. And with it the man's life.
But it had been only one life, and this was only one body among many. Looking around, Nestor could see plenty of others, almost all of them lying very still.
And so he came to the old meeting place, that great open space which stood off-centre in Settlement, a little closer to the east wall than the west, and there discovered life in the midst of all this death. But not immediately.
First: The East Gate was burning. Yellow and orange flames were leaping high over the stockade wall, where the gate seemed to have been set on fire deliberately. The wide path from the gate to the gathering place was strewn with bodies; Nestor dimly recalled, however, that there had been a crowd here. Well, while the corpses were a great many, still they would not have made a crowd. So some had escaped, anyway. But from what?
Wamphyri! said a voice in the back of his mind.
But another said: Impossible, for they are no more!
And a third, his own, insisted: But I am the Lord Nestor!
The smoke was clearing now and the vampire-spawned mist evaporating, sinking into the earth. People were starting to come out of hiding, stumbling among the dead, crying out and tearing their hair as they discovered dead friends, lovers, relatives. Central in the open space, where tables lay overturned and the ground was strewn with the spoiled makings of a feast, a young man, Nestor's senior by five or six years, stood over the body of his girl and tore his shirt open, beat his breast, screamed his agony. She had been stripped naked, torn, ravaged, brutalized.
Stepping closer, Nestor stared at the man and believed he knew him ... from somewhere. And a frown creased his forehead as he wondered how it was he knew so much yet understood so little. Then he saw the rise and fall of the girl's bruised breasts and noticed a slight movement of her hand. And as her head lolled in Nestor's direction, he saw a strange wan smile upon her sleeping or unconscious face.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
He moved closer still, touched the sobbing man on the arm and said, 'She isn't dead."
Wild-eyed, the other turned on him, grabbed him up with a furious strength, shook him like a rag doll. 'Of course she's not dead, you fool - you bloody fool! She's worse than dead!' He thrust Nestor away and fell to his knees beside the girl.
Nestor stood there - still frowning, still mazed - and repeated the other's words: 'Worse than dead?'
The man looked up, peered at him through red-rimmed eyes, and finally nodded. 'Ah, I know you now, Nestor Kiklu, covered in dirt. But you're one of the lucky ones, born at the end of it. You're too young to know; you don't remember how it was, and so can't see how it must be again. But I do remember, and only too well! I was only six years old when the Wamphyri raided on Sanctuary Rock. Afterwards, I saw my father drive a stake through my mother's heart, watched him cut off her head, and burn her on a fire. That's how it was then and ... and how it must be now.' He hung his head and fell sobbing on the girl, covering her nakedness.
There were more men in the open space now, a handful, but these were different, older, harder men. They had grown hard in their young days, spent in the shadow of the Wamphyri, and were now filled with some grim purpose. Nestor seemed instinctively to know these things, and felt he should know the men, too, but their names wouldn't come. They were hurrying towards the east wall, where colleagues on the high wooden catwalk beckoned to them, urging them on.
Nestor followed in their wake, but more slowly, and tried to understand what one of the men on the catwalk was shouting to them. In the still night air - with only the dazed, bewildered, trembling voices of other survivors, and the whoosh and crackle of the fires to compete with - his words carried over the open area loud and clear. And for all that they were hard words, still there was a catch and even a sob in his familiar voice: