An arrow hit his leg. Another in his bad arm. The yber screamed at him. He felt dizzy. Another arrow in the back of his thigh. He fell feet first down the immovable curtains, smashing and rolling into the floor.
He was stunned. Unable to move. But he saw that the entrance hall was still in darkness. And from that darkness, they came for him.
Chapter Fourteen
IT WAS OVER.
The claws of the creatures dug into him.
He felt them drag him over the marble floor toward the dark room they gathered in.
They laughed down on him. They tore off their helmets to show him their fangs dripping with spittle and blood.
Their shrieking and howling washed over him until he heard it no more. The yber danced around him frantically, screaming for his blood. But Helman’s mind protected him and he only had senses for the one narrow beam of light that shone through the small hole in the curtains.
The creatures dragged him farther into the darkness.
He saw dust motes dance lightly in the beam. Swirling gently. Then faster. Then madly.
He peered more intently. He realised he was seeing glowing motes where there was no light. They were caught in a luminescent tendril that snaked across the floor in front of the curtains. It was as if the one beam of light was spreading out and melting on the floor, forming impossible shapes.
It was glowing brighter now. Forming more densely. Swirling like thick smoke lit from within.
It rose from the floor. Contracting upwards. And then it was six-and-a-half-feet tall and the swirling stopped. The glowing motes coalesced and the image of the Father stood before them in all his skeletal monstrosity.
And he lifted his arms and he said in a voice that shook the floor and wall, “Behold.”
His hands, all joints and knuckles and tendons, stretched unnaturally far behind him and burrowed into the fabric of the curtains.
The jibbering of the yber had stopped. The hall was silent.
And the Father said: “I am the Resurrection and the Light!”
And he wrenched down and the curtains flew away like leaves in a gale.
The sun poured in like a tidal wave. The Father crumpled and swirled into dust in its impact.
The yber around Helman were smashed to the floor as if by an explosion.
The shrieking began again. And this time it was the haunting cry of mortal pain.
And through it all, Helman could hear Adrienne shouting out his name.
His legs were useless from the arrows and the fall. He crawled to her.
All around him black and red blistered things bubbled and writhed in the death grip of the sun. Frantically they tried to replace their protective helmets, but the shock of pure sunlight had stunned them. The yber in shadows were even more unlucky because the sun worked more slowly on them. Their skin puckered and flaked as if a flame thrower were being held against them. Finally the skin blackened and their cries turned to liquid gurgles. In the end, all that was left was a pile of empty clothes, and a rapidly drying, dust-thickened pool of the blood of life.
Helman crawled to the cries of Adrienne.
He pulled himself painfully, slowly up the stairs. Yber still dissolving around him.
He crawled along the balcony. He came to the door.
Weston lay there. Dead. A Jesuit’s stake through his heart. A blackened, decomposing yber body lay across him. The curtains had opened just seconds too late.
Adrienne was half-uncovered by the rug. A brilliant shaft of light shone through the doorway. It had fallen against her exposed legs. Beneath her knees, her legs were blackened and charred stumps.
Helman dragged Weston’s body inside the door and shut the door to the balcony. Light still spilled out around the door frame.
He went to Adrienne.
Her skin was red. Blisters had formed on the side of her face closer to the door.
“Weston saved me,” she cried. “He got up and threw himself in front of the yber who was attacking. It jabbed the stake it had for me through him. And then the light came…” She cried in his arms and he comforted her.
He was tired and dizzy from loss of blood but he held on to her as if he were never letting her go.
“Whatever happened to our time?” he said to her.
“You can have it,” she said through tears. “All our time. All you need. You can have it.”
She whispered in his ear. Softly. Words meant just for him. Words he had dreamt of.
He held her close and whispered them back to her.
“Kiss me, Granger,” she said. The blisters were blackening on her face. Her body shook. The arrow was too deep and the sun too devastating. Her hand moved at her neck. The blood of life flowed from her wound.
“Kiss me now,” she said.
The taste was indescribable and made him ravenous.
Chapter Fifteen
THE CLOUDS THAT could be dimly seen at the horizon’s edge were as red as the fire that consumed the Father’s house.
Helman stood on a hilltop overlooking the Rand estate and watched the fire he had started eat away at the last resting place of the woman he had loved.
His nephews were safely hidden in the sub-basement by the pumping equipment. The fire would not reach them. If what Weston had said were true then they would be safe from human discovery for a week at least. The small game in the bush and forests would sustain them for the time being. Helman regretted that he couldn’t take them with him, but he was confident that he would return for them soon.
The night would be short for all he had planned to do. He took one last, look at the spreading fire and turned away.
Something in the tall grass hissed his name.
Helman froze. His heightened senses detected subtle movement from a section of the grass to his right. Something was moving toward him.
The grass flattened before him.
Something unspeakable emerged.
It was a giant white slug thing, covered in thick raised weals of flesh. Two dark, human-seeming eyes peered out at him from a bulbous mass of scar tissue at one end. What he thought had been its tail swung around. It was an arm.
This thing was Eduardo Diego y Rey. Lord of the Conclave.
“Helman,” it hissed at him again. Its mouth was swollen shut from the dozens of deep slashes that Adrienne had inflicted on the balcony. Its words were slurred and indistinct.
“You are one of usss now, Helman. You must help me. Take me to sssanctuary with you. You must.”
The thing pulsated slowly in the grass. It was forced to breathe deeply to force air down its multiply severed throat.
“I may be one like Adrienne. But I’ll never be one like the Conclave. Never,” Helman said to it. “Humanity will survive. I have the power, now.”
It looked as if a smile was being forced through the lumps of scar tissue.
“Of course humanity will sssurvive,” it gasped at him. “Where would the yber be without the living blood of humansss? Where would you be now, Helman? We are far ahead of your governmentsss and ssscientists. The girl showed us the way. It’sss all part of the Final Plan, Helman.”
“What final plan? What did she show you?”
“That our gift isss not from the powersss of Hell. It’sss like a disease. Or a mutation.”
“You know about that?”
“Far ahead, yesss. Far, far ahead. We have the cure, Helman. We have the cure. Interferon from the blood of life. All our familiars take it. Immunity from the cancer plague. Immunity for all the humansss we choose. The Final Plan is the final cure. Humanity survivesss as our food supply. Asss it should be. Yesss? You’ll take me to sanctuary and I’ll tell you more?”
Helman felt the primitive anger he had seen in Adrienne course through him.
“You disgust me,” he snarled at Diego. “You don’t even deserve to crawl.”
Helman reached down and grabbed at Diego’s one aim. New strength burned through his muscles. Diego’s mangled arm was no match.
Helman braced a foot against Diego’s shoulder and pulled and twisted brutally.
The arm ripped out from its socket.
Diego’s screams split the night air.
The arm dissolved in Helman’s hands.
Diego’s torso writhed and twisted in horror.
“I can’t move,” it screamed. “I’ll never reach sssanctuary. The sssun will find me. The sun will find me!”
Helman walked around the gnashing white mound.
“Come back! The sun. The sun!”
When Helman had gone about a mile the screams were feint and hard to hear. After two miles, there was nothing.
Helman kept walking. The arrow wounds in his legs and arms were completely healed and he was surprised at the energy he felt. The only discomfort he felt was in his mouth. His incisors had fallen out while he slept during the day and the new ones were painful as they were erupting through his gums.
But he knew it would pass. And he knew he would need them soon. He could feel the thirst grow within him.
Highway 101 was still about five miles away. He could cover that easily in an hour. He could hitch up to Salinas by daybreak and find a quiet, safe church to sleep in.
Tomorrow night he would be in San Francisco and he would meet with the doctor whose name was written on the slip of paper that Weston had put into his weapon harness.
The doctor was an epidemiologist. He had made some surprising discoveries recently concerning the distribution of carcinomas in communities with little or no air pollution.
He had also turned down all of the Nevada Project’s covert offers to accept much higher paying positions in Canada and France to conduct research on anything except carcinoma distribution. He had proved very stubborn to Weston. So much so that Weston had written the words ‘car accident’ beside his name.
Helman took that to mean that the doctor was very close to the truth. Helman hoped so. It would mean that the explanations he would have to make would be simpler.
But then again, Helman thought as he checked out the new length of his rapidly growing fingernails and rubbed them experimentally across his neck, perhaps this first explanation would be even easier if he left all the talk for later and simply began by offering the doctor a drink. He felt certain that the doctor would find it indescribable.
Acknowledgements
I OWE A special debt of gratitude to the original publishers of Bloodshift Ellen Aggar, Mr. Beatty, Susan Bermingham, Mark Biller, Mr. Church, Dean Cooke, Peter Doyle, Maureen Ford, Warren Knechtel, Robert Massoud, Thad Mcllroy, Rob Mitchell, Gary Murphy, Steve Osborne, Susan Perry, Dawn Philips, Grace Philips, Keesha Lorraine Philips, Joel Sears, Peter Selk, Ruth Shamal, Tom Walmsley, Walter Warner, Robert Webster, Mel Wilson, Graham Yost, and our faithful bank messenger, Mr. Gorilla—aka Virgo Press, 1977-1981.
“…for one brief shining moment…”
—GRS
About The Author
GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS writes novels acclaimed for their compelling combinations of best-selling genres, including those of suspense, thriller, horror, and science fiction.
His first novel Bloodshift, published in 1981, is scheduled to be filmed as Phoenix: The Final Cure in 1988.
His other novels include Dreamland (1986), Children of the Shroud (1987), and the forthcoming Nighteyes (1888).
With his wife, Judith, he has also co-authored the Science Around Me series of primary science textbooks, a collection of interactive reading and writing software for children, as well as the Star Trek novel, The Followers.
Mr. Reeves-Stevens lives outside Toronto where he is writing several new novels, including Darktown, the exciting sequel to Bloodshift.
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