Ellen sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the dishevelled, bleeding man before her. Brady was still shaking. His face was white, save where it was smeared with blood and several dark streaks of grime. He had at least twenty cuts on his body, one of them, on his stomach, bleeding very badly. The blood had drenched his dark pubic hair.

  'That was very foolish,' she said. 'You could have been killed.'

  'I thought that if I challenged it directly I might sense the mind behind it.'

  'But you didn't.'

  He shook his head, walked to the bedroom chair, and sat down, rested his head in his hands and took several deep breaths. 'I was frightened,' he whispered. 'I kept hearing Marianna's voice, almost lost against the wind. But it was her voice.'

  'It was the voice of the thought-form.'

  Angrily, Brady said, 'I know that. You already warned me of it! But it was still ... it was still powerful. It frightened me to hear her voice.' Dejectedly he stared at the floor. Softly: 'I keep wondering if she's dead. I keep imagining her, buried in woodland somewhere, rats and foxes trying to fight over her . . .' he shivered violently, then again breathed deeply. 'I'm a mess,' he said, and stood, walking quickly to the bathroom to attend to his cuts and grazes.

  Ellen got back into bed. She had watched Brady's senseless confrontation from Marianna's room. What had concerned her most was the strength of the attack. Its radiant energy had affected her despite the depth of zonal defence between her and the elemental. And it had broken the zona magnetica! It was using the man's mind far more, then. It might take a day or two to recoup his energy, but he was getting deeper. He was able to come that much closer. Next time he might get to the house itself. . .

  They had to find out who was projecting the Stalker. They had to destroy him, before his hideous creation destroyed them.

  Again she felt the revulsion of those hands upon her body. And again she felt the sense of familiarity in the attack, the mind behind the beast aware of her, conscious of her, more involved with her than just a random striker. The names of those she knew flashed through her head again. Names, faces, men she knew, men she had worked with . . . and one man in particular, one man whom she instinctively feared, disliked almost tangibly. But she couldn't base any charge at all on just a whim, just a seventh sense.

  She had to know for sure! She had to see him.

  It made her sick to think of it. But when Brady limped back into the room and climbed unsteadily into the bed, reeking of germoline and iodine, she knew that, all things considered, she had no choice.

  Whether she liked it or not she needed Brady. And that meant alive. She couldn't let him risk another fatuous confrontation with something as powerful as this elemental. It would get him nowhere but in his grave.

  For all their sakes, and for the sake of Michael and Justin, and all of Brady's family too, she had to tempt the Stalker out again . . .

  Attract it to her, and let it attack . . .

  15

  * * *

  She could think of many things that that might have got in the way of her journey home to Islington, but she never expected the encounter in Upper Street.

  She had left Brook's Corner at midday, after helping Brady to rebuild the breached defences, and compounding a fresh mix of the mandragora incense. Brady had been subdued, still shaken by his early morning encounter, reacting, now, to the shock and the fear that he had repressed during his challenge. And he ached, and was sore, and grumped about his physical discomfort, the more so for hearing Ellen's unsympathetic criticism.

  As she left, she had said, 'Watch television, read pulp novels, anything to fill your mind with the mundane. Okay? Hot baths if you feel you're being targeted. Eat well. Don't drink. Don't masturbate . . .' she kissed him on the nose and grinned.

  'Fill my mind with the mundane?' he queried.

  'Sure. It's hard to influence a mind absorbed by Tom and Jerry. There are a hundred little things you can do to maintain your integrity, Dan. You'll learn them all soon, get Andrew round, or Bill -'

  'Bill won't come. And it's too risky.'

  'Andrew, then. He knows what's going on. Company helps. Fill the house, fill it with talkative mundanes. Just lay off the booze; and no drugs, no solitary walks, and no girls - that's not part of the defence, that's just because I don't want you to.'

  She had taken a taxi to the station, and arrived shortly alter at Paddington. The journey had been uneventful, almost relaxing. It was not until she reached Baker Street, travelling on the underground, that the first prickling sensation of unease struck her. The tube was crowded. She had entered the smokers' compartment by mistake. Two or three of the silent passengers looked up at her audible gasp of shock as she realized she was being targeted, and stared at her. She knew she had gone pale, and that she was radiating the beginnings of fear. But there was nothing she could do about it.

  At Kings Cross she left the tube, climbed to the station forecourt and caught a bus to Islington.

  The Watcher pursued her. She was unsure whether or not it was purely a Watcher, or the more sinister, and destructive form of elemental that had been sent against Brook's Corner. From this distance it was very hard to tell. What appalled her was that the presence pursued so easily. It was no paranoid fantasy of hers. When she looked round, when she studied the crowds, she could observe the unconscious movement of the masses around, and away from, a focus of energy that they couldn't appreciate with their senses, but were nevertheless responding to.

  Unless the man behind it were following her himself, this thought-form was stretched to a very long range. It had come against her in her apartment several times, but she had always assumed that its source was close by. Now she was not so sure.

  This man was more powerful than she had imagined. A true adept. A true long range.

  She left the bus just before Upper Street and strode briskly towards the small park at the bottom of Essex Road, picking up two or three items from the chemist on the way.

  And it was then that she heard a familiar voice: 'Ellen! Ellen Bancroft!'

  Good God, she thought with horror. David Marchant! Oh Christ. What the hell is he doing here?

  Never in all her wildest bad dreams could she have envisioned something so inconvenient at this moment as a chance encounter with an ex-lover, and a man with whom she had worked at the Ennean. She glanced round, praying that she was mistaken, but no; there he was, chasing after her.

  David Marchant. God forbid.

  She tried to ignore him, increasing her pace, but he puffed and panted after her, and finally she could not bring herself to keep walking. She had no antipathy towards Marchant at all. She just didn't want to be bothered with him, now. She knew that he had been desperately anxious at her disappearance, several months ago, but according to Andrew Haddingham he had made little effort to trace her, after the first few days of confusion in her department. So she decided to be cold, abrupt, and spare him the risk of danger. 'What do you want, David?'

  'Ellen,' he said. He was confused and gasping for breath, and she could see by his eyes that he was disappointed at her coolness. 'Ellen, where on earth have you been?'

  'What do you want, David?'

  'Just to talk, Ellen. It's been six months or more . . . What's happened to you? You look ill . . .'

  He had always been the clinging sort. During their affair he had become complacent, dependent, glad to go along with her every whim, unwilling to assert himself. He responded best - and most positively from Ellen's point of view - to cold anger.

  She said, 'Fuck off, David!' then turned on her heel and paced away. Real anger grew in her. He was such a weak man. He knew what had happened to her family; he must have been aware that she was a focus of danger. Haddingham had said that some understanding of her tragedy had filtered through to her old friends. Marchant persisted. Again she shouted at him, 'Go away, David. I beg you, for your sake, for my sake, just leave me alone.'

  The interchange of words continued. Ellen dragged herself away, but he followed.

  And suddenly it was there, no more than forty yards distant. Its presence was tangible, horrifying, close. She could smell it, she could almost hear its breathing. She was a quarter of a mile from her safe apartment, and Marchant was slowing her down.

  Awful panic surged through her breast. Thoughts tumbled through her head: it had attached itself to Marchant; Marchant was the man behind the elemental; Marchant was being used, a carrier, strengthening the elemental which was so distant from its source. Paranoid confusion raged. She screamed at the gaping man before her. 'You! It's with you! You've led it here!'

  Even as she said the words, turning to run at the same time, she knew that she was just rationalizing what she would have to do next.

  She would never make the apartment. It would catch her first, and if it was more than a Watcher . . .

  When David Marchant's hand grasped her arm, she reached quickly into her bag and uncorked the small vial she kept there. She dipped her nails into the pungent cream, a mix of her own blood, urine and skin tissue, then slashed out quickly at Marchant's face, drawing blood.

  Thus she marked him. He carried the scent of her, potently on his skin, and it would attract the Watcher for a moment or two, and give her the chance to make it home.

  I'm sorry, David, she thought as she ran. I'm so sorry. If only you hadn't turned up.

  She made the safety of her apartment in a minute or two and watched from the window as the bemused figure of David Marchant entered the garage court and stood there, looking about him. He was touching his cheek tenderly. He couldn't understand either the reason, or the nature, of that uncalled-for attack.

  Marked as he was, he sensed the Stalker as it came through the alley way and into the courtyard. Ellen tried to close her ears to his shrill and terrible scream; but she felt forced to watch as his body was crushed and twisted, then flung from the fire-escape onto the concrete roadway.

  She kept the lights in her apartment out. She sat on the edge of the bed and watched the flickering blue of the police lamps below, reflected on her darkened window. Three times her doorbell was rung, and she remained silent and still. She heard the police talking to her neighbour, asking about the occupancy of Flat 3. The

  neighbour knew nothing, but thought that the occupant was away.

  The police left it at that.

  It was four hours before the ambulance removed Marchant's body; but the police task force remained below in strength, examining every inch of ground. The lights continued to flash; uniformed police, and plain clothes men, swarmed about the area. Several times she heard footsteps on the fire-escape and moved to hide behind the door. She was aware of the faces that peered into her flat, trying the windows. But it was not unlikely that a resident would be away, and the examination of her rooms was cursory.

  She thought they would never leave. By eleven the task force below had shrunk to about four men; by cautiously peering out of her windows she could see that uniformed police had been stationed at the front of the block of flats.

  The same would no doubt be true of the rear entrance.

  At midnight she risked a phone call to Brady, who was still up and wide awake. It was good to hear his voice; almost reassuring. They talked for ten minutes, Brady not pressing her for details of the killing outside her flat, nor for details of what she was feeling. They just talked. Mostly of the night before.

  At two in the morning Ellen went about the flat and broke the seals on windows and doors. She sneaked out onto the fire-escape and terminated the defences there. Shaking like a leaf, more vulnerable than she had ever been before, she went back to her bed and sat on the edge.

  What the hell am I doing?

  She began to cry, stifling the sound, but allowing the tears to flood down her cheeks and drop unchecked onto her skirt. She tried to imagine Michael's arm around her, and Justin's plaintive voice: 'It's all right, Mum. Don't cry . . .' She tried to remember the smells of the flat they had shared, and the cold, country freshness of the tiny cottage where she and Michael had first lived, in Sussex. The memories were strong, poignant. She clung to them desperately, they were so vivid. She had not been this close to Michael for months. Her shoulder tingled with his touch, his gentle fingers stroking her, reassuring her . . .

  Such a gentle touch . . .

  Fingers on her breasts . . .

  A touch on her face, her throat. The smell of decay!

  She screamed and sat bolt upright, her skin immediately breaking into a sweat. The touch on her body ceased. The room was not quite in total darkness; moonlight cast the shadow of her wardrobe on the far wall. The mirror was a bright reflection on the paintwork.

  It was in the room with her!

  The terror that instantly possessed Ellen made her gorge rise and her body begin to shake; a single rational thought filled her mind; I can't go through with this. I can't go through with this!

  On legs that felt as if they would hardly support her, she rushed from the bedroom and into the lounge, switching on the light as she went. The sudden brilliance lasted only for a second before the bulb exploded noisily and the darkness returned.

  She backed up against the wall, staring into the room, aware of the presence before her, watching her. 'Oh God no!' she said softly, then began to make the pentagram in the air.

  Her hand felt as if it were moving through water. The action was slow, restricted. Eventually she couldn't move her arm at all. She began to slip down the wall, sobbing, until she was seated awkwardly on the floor. She felt her arms lifted by powerful hands and held above her head. She began to struggle, tearful, but silent, not allowing the scream that she so desperately wanted to express to emerge.

  There was breath on her face, and the force that held her secure began to explore her body, a touch that was as tentative as it was relentless, finding every part of her, moving through her clothes, pinching her flesh painfully, probing, rubbing, pressing . . .

  And then the words, whispered to her, whispered at her, like the obscene ramblings of an unseen man, on the end of a phone, through a wall, in her darkest dreams . . . .

  Wantyouwantyouyourbodyloveyousohardalwayswanted youtouchyoumakelovetoyoulieonyournakedbodybreastsinmy handlipstouchingfuckinggentlyellenellenwantyouallthetime lookatmelookatmelookatme

  . . . and though the words began as a low, animal growling, the voice changed, became more human, a whispered voice whose tones she began to recognize. The touch on her body became more insistent, more painful. She didn't fight it. She concentrated on the foul stream of suggestion, trying to hear beyond the obscenity to the voice itself, and as she listened, as she encouraged the words to continue, so she began to recognize that voice, and it was as she had suspected. She felt sick, now, to listen to the filthy words and imagine the middle-aged features of George Campbell, the Director of Hillingvale. These were his thoughts, these were the thoughts that had surged and pulsed at the back of his mind all the time she had been in his presence, talking about projects, discussing psychometry and telepathy, working so hard, so enthusiastically, so glad of this important friend in the field. And he had sat there, chewing on his pipe, and talking back to her, and all the time his mind had been filled with these lustful, disgusting thoughts. She felt sick at the idea of it. She had known it, she supposed, she had sensed it, but to be a party to that incoherent jumble of frustrated desire was appalling; sickening.

  She wanted to scream abuse, to shout his name and let him know, as loudly as possible, just how contemptuous she felt about him. But she resisted the temptation. She realized that if she let the elemental know what she had discerned, then Campbell himself would soon know, and his tactic might change such that her plan of action, her plan to snare the Stalker, would not be able to go ahead.

  She tried to close her mind to everything; she tried to close off her senses to the ghostly assault upon her. She deliberately remembered parts of her training.

  Auditory signals of psychic attack: a sound like the ringing of bells, a creaking sound, and rhythmic thudding. Spoken words are suspicious, and more likely to be auditory hallucination . . .

  The words began to fade away . . .

  She could hardly believe it when the touch upon her body vanished as well, leaving her bruised and shaken, tasting the blood on her lips. She stared into the darkened room, breathing heavily, shaking as she anticipated a renewed assault upon her.

  What had happened?

  She had been convinced that if she allowed the elemental to approach again it would attack her more viciously and completely than before. Perhaps it had withdrawn and was even now watching her from the darkness, waiting to approach again and kill her. But she knew Campbell's unconscious desire for her had tempered the murderous qualities of his creation, and he would have to summon a new elemental if he were to attack her without the undertone of sexual intent.

  Slowly she pushed herself to her feet, sliding up the wall, eyes wide. Her legs were in pain, and she knew she was bruised. The blood that flooded her mouth was sour and unpleasant, but she swallowed hard, unwilling to leave any traces of her body on the floor of the flat. Slowly she picked her way to the bedroom and turned on the light.

  After a few minutes her body ceased to shake. The Stalker had gone. Perhaps it was now moving towards Brook's Corner, and Brady would find himself up against it yet again.

  Right now Ellen didn't care. She made herself a cup of strong, black coffee, and sipped it as she phoned for a taxi. It was nearly three a.m. The encounter had lasted the better part of an hour, and yet it seemed no more than a brutal five minutes.

  If she could get past the uniformed policeman, stationed outside, she could be at Brook's Corner at dawn.

  16

  * * *