But he forced himself panting to the top and scanned the land around, and spied in the east at the edge of the forest - a fire? Hardly a bonfire; a dull flicker at best, but better than nothing.
It must be Eleni! Despite Nikha's warning to Nathan, that there'd be no friendly light to guide him after sundown, Eleni had kept a small fire burning. Uplifted, he climbed down again to the plain and started out diagonally across the grasslands in the direction of the fire. And now the going was easy where he swished through tall, windblown grasses under ashen skies, wispy clouds and gathering stars.
But ... the sky was strange tonight; there seemed to be several belts of cloud at various levels; some scudded one way and some another. Directly ahead of Nathan and high above the forest, small black rags of cloud sped north for the mountains and were quickly lost in the deceptive velvet of night.
On the level, the light of the fire was no longer visible. Nathan hurried; he covered a mile, two, and was into his third when he saw the light again. After that, as the nighted forest grew up on his left hand, and a racing moon rose over the distant barrier range to light his way, the beacon eye of the fire shone ever brighter. Until at last he was there.
Where the trees met the prairie he saw the carts and caravans of the Sintanas sheltering under the branches of a trio of mighty ironwoods. Their fire was a welcoming splash of leaping orange and yellow light where it held back the shadows in the triangular space between the trees. It welcomed Nathan ...
... In the same way it had welcomed others, who had been here before him!
He slowed down, reached the clearing, stumbled forward with his bottom jaw slowly lolling open. He smelled a certain odour which the squalling wind had almost but not quite blown away. And Nathan remembered the dark, ragged clouds which the wind had also blown away over the forest, towards the distant Star-side pass. And he saw how the doors on the caravans swung to and fro in the eddies, as if they were protesting at their emptiness. The place was ... deserted?
No, not deserted, just empty. Of life ...
Nathan couldn't accept it. He looked beyond the caravans where an area had been roped off into animal pens. Everything stood in shadows cast by the guttering firelight and starshine made pale by the wind and the scudding clouds. The animals were lying down, forming low, humped, motionless silhouettes; which should have been evidence enough in itself. Shads rarely lie down, and never in a group ...
He made his way to a great ironwood where the ground had been swept free of needles to form a small clearing in its own right. But as he paused there and turned in a circle, bloated black shapes like windblown weeds went lumping and fluttering low along the ground into the shadows. He gasped, took a pace to the rear, glanced this way and that as the wind sighed and the branches soughed. And as Nathan's eyes focused so he saw other eyes - like tiny crimson pinpricks - reflected by the fire and glaring back at him from the encircling underbrush.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
One of the things, whatever they were, was hiding behind a broken table where it had been tipped on its side, crouching there like a vulture. Nathan stood breathlessly still, paralysed under the great tree, until some- thing made a shrill chittering sound in the surrounding darkness ....nd was answered from the other side of the circle!
Then, as he gave a start of recognition -
- Something dripped down and splashed against Nathan's forearm where his sleeves were rolled up, and looking down he saw that his arm was red; likewise the ground under his feet. And looking up ... he saw the tree's strange ripe fruit, male all three, hanging by their heels with their throats slashed, and the last of their scarlet juices running down their dangling arms to drip into space!
A giant desmodus bat, glutted with blood, released its hold on a drained corpse and fluttered to earth. Too bloated to fly, the creature scuttled and flopped out of sight, joining its companions in the shadows ...
All the demons of hell rode the wind then, shrieking mad with laughter as Nathan staggered to the fire, took up a brand and lit