Deathstalker 01 - Deathstalker

grabbed her by the arm, got her attention by shouting right into her ear and pushed her firmly toward the exit. She nodded disappointedly, and standing back to back, they headed for the door. A few individuals disputed their progress, but backed off rather than face the obvious competence with which Owen and Hazel held their swords. They eased out the door, stepping over the unconscious body
    of the doorkeeper, and lurched out into the street. It seemed very calm and peaceful, though the din inside seemed to be going on uninterrupted. Owen began to breathe more easily and put away his sword.
    "All right, let's get out of here before the law arrives."
    "The law? Around here? Not unless they're new. The watch doesn't bother this neighborhood for anything less than a full-scale riot."
    "And this doesn't qualify?"
    "Hardly. Just a few high spirits, that's all. It'll blow over as quickly as it started. You've got to learn to take things more casually, Deathstalker.
    Mistport's not that bad. It just tends to the dramatic."
    The boarded-up window beside them exploded outward as a body came flying through it. Owen and Hazel backed away instinctively, just in time to miss a second flying form. This one wasn't traveling quite so fast and crashed into a snowdrift not far from the shattered window. He got to his feet with a groan, swayed unsteadily a moment, and then cautiously approached the window.
    "I'd like to apologize."
    "What for?" said a voice from inside.
    "Anything."
    He then set off down the street, walking slowly and carefully, as though he wasn't sure everything was as firmly attached as it used to be. Owen and Hazel shared a smile and set off after him. Up on a slanting roof overlooking the Rabid Wolf, Cat watched them go with a feeling of relief. He'd been a little worried when they actually went inside the inn, and became even more worried when the mayhem started, because whatever happened, he had absolutely no intention of going in there after them. There were limits.
    At the last moment, he glimpsed a movement in the shadows below, and instinct
    sent him diving to one side as the disrupter beam exploded the roof where he'd been crouching. Even so, the blast was enough to send him flying, all arms and legs, trying to find something to grab onto. And then there was nothing but air under him, and he fell thirty feet into a deep snowdrift and didn't move again.
    Lucien Abbott, the Wampyr, smiled and lowered the disrupter. He'd never liked Cat. He started down the street after Hazel and Owen, still smiling, still holding the gun.
    At the entrance of the unlit street, Hazel and Owen stopped dead in their tracks at the unmistakable sound of an energy weapon being fired and moved immediately to stand back to back again. Owen tried to look in every direction at once, but whichever way he looked there were far more shadows than light. Hazel had told him energy weapons were rare on Mistworld, and he'd stopped worrying about them on such an obviously low-tech world. Now he felt naked and vulnerable, and he didn't even know from which direction the shot had come. He had his gun out as well as his sword, but that was all offense, no defense. A disrupter blast would tear right through him without even slowing. He knew he should have brought a force shield with him.
    He looked back and forth, sweat starting out on his face despite the cold. And then, from every side, from every shadow, from every street and alleyway, came a small army of men and women. They were wrapped in greasy, mismatched furs, and they all had some kind of weapon. They moved slowly, remorselessly forward to form a circle round their prey. Owen licked his dry lips. There had to be at least a hundred of them. Maybe more. And then Lucien Abbott stepped out of the crowd, carrying a disrupter, and Owen's heart sank even further. The Wampyr was smiling. His teeth looked large and white and very sharp.

    "You didn't really think it was going to be that easy, did you, Deathstalker?
    Just brush me aside and forget all about me? Takes more than one blow to put me down. You have to remember: I'm Wampyr. I'm not human anymore. Haven't been since they let me die and then brought me back. Do you like my friends? They're all plasma babies. Blood junkies. Blood brothers and sisters, bound to me by ties stronger than love or family, life or death. You never did tell him the whole story, did you, Hazel? What it really means to be a plasma baby. I didn't just drink her