effort of conscious will, and even then it had sometimes failed him, but when he slept it was quite beyond his control. For then his talent seemed to work on its own, or occasionally with the help of what Nathan had long since named 'the numbers vortex'.
Now he was in that vortex, but only for a moment. For in the next he felt himself expelled, hurled out and down - into water! Into the river!
And because he had searched for Nestor, now he was Nestor. He was one with his brother's mind. He knew what Nestor knew, felt what he felt, observed what he observed. Which was nothing.
Nathan knew what 'dead' minds feel like. This was it, and yet at the same time it was less than death. For the dead know many things, and this mind - Nestor's mind - knew nothing at all! And Nathan believed he knew what that meant: that his brother was freshly dead, and as yet had learned nothing from all of those others who had gone before.
He felt what Nestor felt: nothing. Or perhaps he did feel or was aware of something: the gentle flow of cold, cold water - his lungs full of the stuff, which weighed like lead to drag him down - and the first, tentative nibble of some small, curious fish. He observed what his brother observed: nothing. Or if not that, a drift of dark green weed sliding slowly across his blurred, submerged view, to fill the screen of his gaping, glazing eyeballs ....efore the final darkness closed in!
And with that he knew that Nestor was dead, drowned, and gone from him forever.
He started awake -.'
- To find Eleni Sintana down on her knees beside him, her brown eyes wide and anxious where they stared into his. She had hold of his shoulders, holding him down under the water. Except ... there was no water. And at last he breathed, stopped struggling, allowed her to push him back into his own depression in her bed. And:
'A dream?' she inquired, her concern clearly apparent.
Nathan nodded, felt cold sweat drip from the tip of his nose. More than that, Eleni, he wanted to say, but couldn't, because he knew that she wouldn't understand. But looking up into her face, her eyes ... she so reminded him of his mother ... and of Misha ... he wished she would wrap her arms around him, for his protection.
He saw that she was going to - until Nikha's soft voice sounded from the door of the tent, saying: 'We're about ready to eat, Nathan. Will you join us?'
And the spell was broken.
Nathan joined the others to eat, but he was quiet and had no appetite. There was nothing wrong with the good food, nothing wrong with the company, just with him. For he knew now that he was alone, entirely alone, and that what he'd mistaken for his awakening into this world had only been the beginning of the end. The Wamphyri had wrought reality out of a fantasy -changed everything, made him aware of his place here, and given him an identity - only to rob him of his roots. Now he was drifting, as Nestor's body had drifted, and not even the weeds of what might have been to anchor him.
For the last link had been broken, Nestor was dead, and Nathan felt in his heart the coldness of his brother's watery grave ...
And two miles down river, in a shingly bight, a burly, bearded fisherman cried out, tossed aside his rod, went plunging into the water to his thighs.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
He had been monitoring the progress of a log drifting out of the main current and into the shallows of the backwater. And knowing that fish sometimes swim in the shadow of floating debris, he had thought to see a big one accompanying this piece of driftwood. But lolling closer to the bank, suddenly the log had given a lurch and turned over, and in the next second the fisherman had seen that what had come adrift from it to slip down into the clear water was anything but a fish!
That had been a moment ago; now Brad Berea waded to the log and thrust it aside, sank to his knees in the shingle, and gathered up the body of a young man from where it bumped slowly along the bottom. The youth's clothes were ragged, waterlogged; he was limp, cold ... dead? Well, very likely. But