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laughed, moving around the table and that much closer to Mike. “Is that so? But you see, my young friend, they have a great deal of life —well, of sorts—remaining in them even now. They are very tenacious creatures, Mike, even as you yourself would appear to be. But with them it is…it’s a far more recent thing, something in their blood. You might even say they were reborn, recreated with it. While in you it’s pure instinct, the natural skill of the predator.”
    “That’s correct,” Francesco had agreed, also moving closer. “And you are very fortunate, for it may even be possible we can find a use for such skills… after all!” That “after all” had sounded oddly ominous, hinting of a brutal fate barely avoided, but Mike had been given little enough time in which to consider or worry about it.
    For while speaking to him—unaccountably and without Mike realizing it, yet startling him and shocking him at the last—the Francezcis had somehow contrived to approach him by moving over the floor in a rapid yet deceptively flowing, indeed effortless fashion. Until now, suddenly, they were at point-blank range!
    Mike had fallen back a short pace; he tripped on one of the groping figures on the floor and barely managed to maintain his balance. But despite his sudden confusion—the rising tide of unaccustomed anxiety, uncertainty he felt welling deep inside—he had retained sufficient control to continually shift his aim from one Francezci to the other and back again, taking no chances but covering both of them, despite that it seemed they were unarmed.
    And it was during one such split-second shift, with his gun in motion, swinging halfway between the brothers, that Anthony had grown bored with the game and acted to end it. As for Mike: He hadn’t even seen the other move—it had happened that fast! But in that single, blurring, unbelievable split-second, Mike’s gun hand had been grasped in slender but vise-like fingers, the safety catch on his automatic had somehow been applied, and the weapon itself had been taken from his fist with such force that he’d felt certain his hand must be broken!
    What had happened, Mike wondered? Was something wrong with him? Had he suffered a stroke, passed out or something, if only for a second or so? And what had changed—what was different —about the Francezcis? Their eyes in the gloom were now…what, feral? Yes! Luminous as a cat’s eyes at night, they flared sulphurous yellow in the twins’ vilely grinning faces, like small lamps burning on Mike. And the monstrous looks of the brothers; their features, changing; the way their lips writhed back from scarlet gums—gums that tore as they sprouted terrible teeth!
    Or was it possible that these anomalies were simply hallucinations, delirious illusions, symptoms of whatever was wrong with him? Was he still entirely conscious and not nightmaring? And if so, how was it that the men he had so severely injured, indeed crippled, were already rising to their feet!?
    By then survival had been uppermost in Mike’s mind, and he had fumbled with his jacket’s sleeve at the cuff, squeezed it, and tried to close his fist on the ugly blade that sprang into view…only to find that his fingers were still numb, unable to obey him. And his knife had clattered to the marble floor.
    And finally Mike had felt himself staggering. Incapable of keeping pace with or even comprehending what was happening to him, he might well have lost consciousness, collapsed from the sheer shock of it—had he not been held effortlessly upright by Anthony on one side and Francesco on the other, their slender but amazingly powerful hands like crutches in his armpits. And when one of the brothers—but which one he couldn’t have said—had clapped a handkerchief soaked in some kind of anesthetic over Mike’s nose and gasping mouth, he had been utterly incapable of doing anything about it.
    So that darkness had swiftly followed…



IV
    Following which