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'Jazz,' she said, 'hope springs eternal, but - maybe I should tell you
something of how it could be. I mean, if we're taken.'
'I think maybe you should,' he said.
Something small, black, chittering, flitted close by, came closer in dips and
swoops, then darted off again. Then another, and more, until the air seemed
full of them. Jazz had frozen into stone, stopped breathing, but Zek said:
'Bats - but just bats. Ordinary bats. Not Wamphyri familiars. The Wamphyri use
the real things for that. The big ones.
Desmodus, the vampire.'
A thong parted behind Jazz's back, and very quickly another. Jazz flexed his
wrists and felt a little give in his bindings. Wolf carried on chewing. 'You
were going to tell me about Shaithis's transport,' Jazz reminded Zek.
'No,' she said, 'I wasn't.' Her tone of voice told him not to ask any more.
But in any case he didn't need to. As the last thong parted and his straining
wrists flew apart, he straightened his aching legs, rolled over onto his back
and looked up. His eyes were drawn to an ominous stirring overhead. Level with
the high walls of the pass, a black blot - several of them - shut out the
stars as they began to descend.
'What the hell - ?' Jazz whispered.
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They're here!' Zek breathed. 'Quickly, Jazz! Oh, be quick!'
Wolf loped anxiously to and fro, whining, while Jazz got his cramped fingers
to work on the thongs binding his feet. At last they were free. He turned to
Zek, rolled her unceremoniously face-down across his knees, went frantically
to work on her knots. As each one came undone, he kept glancing up at the
heights a little north of their position.
The descending blots were falling like flat stones dropped in still water,
sliding from side to side, settling like autumn leaves on a deathly still
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early September morning.
Three of them, their true outlines were now distinguishable: huge,
diamond-shaped, where opposing points of the diamonds merged into heads and
tails. They side-slipped this way and that, settling silently down toward the
bed of the pass.
Zek's hands were almost free; Jazz left them and turned his attention to her
feet. It was his thought to pick her up, throw her over his shoulder and run.
But he faced the truth: his legs were still badly cramped and the darkness was
now almost complete. He'd only be able to stumble at best, with Wolf bringing
up a pitifully inadequate rear guard.
Three dull thumps in close succession announced the fact that the flying
things had settled to earth. Jazz's fingers were fully alive now, deft where
they hastened to free
Zek's feet. She was panting, plainly terrified. 'It's OK,' he kept whispering.
'Just one more knot to go.' Down the pass, maybe a hundred metres away, three
anomalous shapes lay humped against a horizon of stars, with spatulate heads
swaying at the ends of long necks. The last knot came loose; and as Zek came
struggling to her feet, staggering a little, so Wolf's tail went down between
his legs. He gave a whining, coughing little bark and began to back off toward
the south.
Jazz's arm was round Zek's waist, supporting her. He said: 'Move your arms,
stamp your feet and get the blood pumping.' She didn't answer but stared with
saucer eyes beyond him, in the direction of the grounded flying creatures. He
sensed more than felt the shudder going through her, moving from her head,
down through all her body.
An entirely involuntary thing, almost like a dog shaking off water. Except
Jazz suspected that this was something which wouldn't shake off. And he turned
to follow her gaze.
Three figures stood not ten paces away!
They were in silhouette, but that hardly detracted from their awesome aura of
presence. It radiated from them in almost tangible waves, a force warning of
their near-
invulnerability. They had all the advantages: they could see in the dark, were
strong beyond the wildest dreams of most Earthly muscle-men, and they were
armed. And not only with physical weapons, but also with the powers of the
Wamphyri. Jazz didn't yet know about the latter, but Zek did.
'Try to avoid looking at their eyes,' she hissed her warning.
The three were, or had been men, so much was plain.
But they were big men, and even silhouetted against a backdrop of stars and
black, nodding sky-beasts, Jazz could see what sort of men. In his mind a
recurring picture of a man like these, dying in an inferno of heat and flame,
screamed his fury and his defiance even now:
'Wamphyri!'
The one in the middle would be Shaithis; Jazz reckoned there'd be close to
eighty inches of him, standing almost a full head taller than the two who
flanked him. He stood straight, cloaked, with his hair falling onto his
shoulders. The proportions of his head were wrong; as he looked with quick,
curious glances from side to side and showed his face in profile, Jazz saw the
length of his skull and jaws, his convoluted snout, the alert mobility of his
conch-like ears. It was a composite face: human-bat-wolf.
The two beside him were near-naked; their bodies were pale in starlight,
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