all other emotions, everything, and let his mind drift...
The dead drew back from him!
He felt that at once; their shock, even their horror. But this time Nathan's interest Jay with the Jiving ... he hoped. And up in the high hiJJs, in deep caves, grey-furred ears sprang erect, grey heads were lifted, and triangle eyes blinked in gJoomy lairs. There were three of them, three together, who knew his mind as if it were one of theirs: Blaze, whose brow was marked with his mother's white; Grinner, whose damp bJack lips forever twitched, as if on the verge of smiling; Dock, whose tail had been shortened when he was a cub and wanted to play with some brave vixen's brood.
They divined Nathan's purpose at once but couldn't help him, not this time. For none of theirs was abroad in the daylight, and no further reports of Nestor had reached them. If it were night, that might be different. But not now.
Nathan acknowledged them anyway, where they whined a little, curJed up and resumed their contemplations. And moving on, he let his thoughts drift, drift. ..
.. .Until they struck upon a mind he knew, yet at one and the same time did not know! For it seemed different, changed, wiped clean. Or perhaps wiped unclean, with a dirty, bloodstained rag? For this was Nestor, and yet it was not him.
Nathan couldn't understand. It was as if Nestor's mind itself was undecided about his identity! And a great rage of pain and frustration, of need and ambition, and of loss and discovery seethed in the core of him!
Such was Nathan's shock that he snatched himself back from the stranger which was his brother - and jerked erect where he sat with his back against the rock!
And all of his thoughts fled back to him like whipped dogs, and his quandary was deeper than before where he took up the trail again and headed east...
Nestor was asleep, digesting his meal, converting the strong food into energy. He was asleep and wandering in the most fragile of dreams - which were scattered on the instant that the alien Thing entered his mind!
Alien, yes, and a hated enemy! He knew it from the whirlpool of numbers, symbols, meaningless equations and other mathematical devices behind which the Thing concealed its identity and purpose. That same enemy which had plagued him all the days of his life! Shivering despite that the sun blazed down on him, Nestor opened his eyes .,.
.. .and looked up at two men, one about his own age and the other much older, who had come across him where he lay!
The enemy of his dreams was at once forgotten; he saw the men - saw that just for the moment they were looking at each other, not at him - and closed his eyes again, feigning sleep. But what he'd seen stayed etched on his mind's eye: One of them, the young one, was kneeling beside him with his fist knotted round the handle of a knife whose sharp blade gleamed like liquid silver in the sunlight. Slender, wide-eyed, nervous, he looked more than a little frightened. The other, a weathered, surly-looking man in his middle years, stood erect with a loaded crossbow held in his strong brown hands. He had been scowling and was now quietly muttering to himself:
'Steal a rabbit right out of my trap, would you, boy? And what are you doing up here anyway, eh? Especially this morning, after last night...'
'No vampire,' the one on his knees whispered, still glancing over his shoulder at the first speaker, 'else he wouldn't be out in the sun. And look at the state of him, all bruised and banged about! Was he a lone hunter, perhaps, scared down out of the mountains? What do you think, father?'
'What do I think?' the first one's answer was a low rumble of unreasoning hatred and suspicion. 'Oh, I'll tell you what I think: that the bloodsucking bastards have thought up some new tricks, and that this one's some weird Wamphyri changeling! So he's not changed far enough yet that the sun will hurt him ... so what? You saw his flyer up there, all melting away, and its black bones poking through the rot. Too much of a coincidence to find a thing like that up there, and then to find this one down here. That's what I think!'
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
Nestor's flyer? He remembered it. Indeed, it was one of the very