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shimmering moths lit up the darkness, and he watched them dazedly, the effect was almost hypnotic.  The voices behind him ceased to bother him, they felt almost soothing.  It no longer mattered where he was going or why as long as he kept on walking and he felt like he could walk forever.
    * * *
    Of course, forever is a long time.  Denny came to in a small room that was reminiscent of a cell. His head hurt, as if he had been drinking, as did his leg, foot and his hand, all of which had been thoughtfully bandaged by some unknown person.  He was lying on a camp bed; he got up and tried the door it was quite naturally locked. He decided that there was no point in shouting for help. He was locked in a cell, and presumably whoever had put him in there had done so deliberately and was, therefore, unlikely to respond to a cry for help by letting him out. Besides which, his head hurt too much; at least he was not tied up.
    He sank down on the camp bed; it collapsed, trapping him inside.
    ‘Christ,’ he groaned.  ‘How much worse can this day get?’  He immediately regretted this since asking this question usually guarantees that any minute now you’re going to find out.
    ‘That depends on you,’ said a voice above him, ‘and how co-operative you’re willing to be.’ A hand reached down and helped Denny to extricate himself from the mangled bed.
    ‘Okay,’ said Denny, ‘I’ll buy it, although you might want to work on the voice – a little deeper perhaps; more Darth Vader and less Julian Clary; that is, if you expect to be taken seriously when you make statements like that.
    The man stared coldly at him.
    ‘I was just saying.’
    ‘Hmm, I think that that female has had a bad effect on you.  Before you met her, I think you would have been properly frightened.’
    ‘Of you ?’ Denny was scornful.
    The man stepped into the light.  Denny took an involuntary step backward.  ‘Oh my God!’
    ‘No.’ the man gave an evil, fanged grin.  ‘Not your God.  But I do move in mysterious ways.’
    Denny scanned the cell for an appropriate weapon.  He spotted a wooden chair and dived; he smashed it against the wall and it splintered.  If he had thought about it, he might have wondered why his adversary did not try to stop him.  When he plunged the broken chair leg into his heart to absolutely no effect, it became pretty obvious.
    ‘Oh, just look at that.’  The (presumed) vampire simpered in camp tones, pulling the piece of wood out disdainfully.  ‘A perfectly good shirt – ruined.’ He grinned and took Denny by the throat in an iron grip.  ‘A lesson,’ he said.  ‘I cannot be killed by any means that you possess, puny mortal.’
    ‘ Puny mortal ?’ croaked Denny.  He was going for withering scorn, but since he was being choked to death the best he could manage was cracked gasping, which is not nearly the same. ‘Who writes your lines?’ he added caustically.
    The vampire (or whatever he was) released him.  ‘You will stay here,’ he said. ‘You cannot be allowed to interfere with our plans.’
    ‘Why don’t you just kill me?’ rasped Denny, and immediately wished he had not.  What fatal flaw was it that made him say things like that?
    ‘Fool,’ said the vampire thing. ‘You have no idea what you are mixed up in, do you?  Well let’s just say I have my reasons.  If it is any comfort to you, you will die soon enough, but I do not have to explain my reasons to you.’
    Denny remembered something.  ‘Tamar,’ he said, more to himself than anything else.
     His captor turned and grinned evilly at him.  ‘Tamar Black cannot save you,’ he sneered, ‘if she’s even still alive – which I doubt.’
    ‘She is,’ said Denny defiantly.  ‘She is,’ he whispered to himself.  ‘I’d know – I’m sure I would – I’d feel it.’
     

~ Chapter Nine ~
     
    ‘T amar Black is dead, or she soon will be. We have to send another.’  The thin man addressed his cabal.
    There was