on Nestor's nerves - and commenced a shuddering vibration which only ceased when several of the shattered pines were displaced and the flyer slumped down between them to the forest's floor.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
And there the sun continued its cleansing work, blazing through the trees to reduce the monster to so much glue and blackly smouldering gristle. But in a little while it became obvious that this would take hours, and what with the poisonous odour and disgusting mess, Nestor didn't wait for the end.
But in his mind's eye, now more visions were waking; and as he began to climb down the wooded slope towards the near-distant town - and as a waft of foulness reached down to him from the dissolving flyer - he 'remembered' a previous rush of reeking air ...
.. .Wind in his hair, yes, and dark diamond shapes adrift on the updrafts under glittering ice-chip stars -flyers just like that one back there, with riders proud and terrifying in saddles upon their backs - and a distant cry of horror faint on the morning air, but fading now as the scene itself faded back into vaults of memory. 'Wamphyri!'
Wamphyri? The cry had been real, carrying to him from the town in the 'V of the rivers; but the Lord Nestor ignored it in deference to its evocation.
He paused, looked back and up the slope to where smoke and steam continued to pour from the pines, spilling out of them like a slow-motion waterfall over the rim of the bluff. Had that been his flyer back there? But that couldn't possibly be, for here he stood in sunlight and felt no harm.
But at the same time ... did he still feel comlortabJe in the sun's warm rays? Had he ever?
Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri...
It seemed like a dream, some game which he'd played as a child, but he remembered now how he had hunted his human prey in the deep forests, sniffing them out, searching for them with all of his vampire senses alert! Except... where were his vampire senses now?
A vampire - indeed, Wamphyri - was he? He shrank down a little from the sun, which paid him no heed but burned, as ever, benevolently on the southern horizon.
Chapter 17
Had he been a vampire, then? But if that were so, how may one of the undead return to human life? And why would he want to? And what of the people in the town down there, Twin Fords? How would they receive him if he werht' among them?
He frowned, sat down in the long grasses of the slope and considered his position. He must be cautious; he must know himself, before he dared show himself to others. But where was his past? What had it been? If people asked him, what could he tell them? That he was the Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri? Hardly!
Then, close by, a distraction: A rabbit, emerging from its hole, blinked pink eyes and turned twitching ears this way and that before hopping tentatively forward - and uttered a short shrill scream as a wire snare tightened around its neck! Then, triggered by the animal's sudden frenzy, the weighted branch of a sapling slipped its anchor, sprang erect and hauled the poor creature aloft to hang it.
Now here at last was something that Nestor remembered and understood well enough: hunting and trapping. So what did it matter that the trap wasn't his; surely it would make good sense to satisfy his hunger here rather than in Twin Fords, whose people might well be suspicious of him?
Just a few short paces away, Nestor had already noted the reflective glitter of a flinty outcrop weathering up out of the shallow soil. Using a fist-sized rock to knock a pair of good firestones free of the mass, now he gathered together the rabbit and the makings for a fire. And in a nest of tall boulders which provided him with shade and cover both, he set about to prepare his meal. If the smoke of his fire was seen from below, then he'd probably be reckoned for just another lonely hunter having his breakfast up in the hills.
But for some reason as yet unfathomed (perhaps it had to do with the many fires burning down there, the black smoke roiling, and a too-familiar stench carried up in the heat and the smoke?), Nestor fancied that the people of the town would have problems enough this morning, without worrying too much about