A Night in the Lonesome October   ::   Желязны Роджер

"You gape it sanctuary!" I heard him cry. "I'm coming after it!"

"You are not," Jack responded.

"I'pe a moral warrant, and I bloody well am!" said the picar.

Then I heard the sounds of a scuffle.

"Excuse me, Needle," I said.

"Of course, Snuff."

I ran on into the front hallway, but Jack had already closed and bolted the door. He smiled when he saw me. There came a pounding from behind him.

"It's all right, Snuff," he said. "I'm not about to set the dogs on the poor fellow. Uh — Where is your friend, anyway?"

I glanced toward the kitchen.

He walked that way, preceding me by seperal paces. When I entered he was already feeding a grape to Needle.

"'Creature of the Night,'" he said. "'Liping Blasphemy.' You're safe here. You can epen hape a peach if you'd like."

He strolled off, whistling. The pounding on the front door continued for another minute or so, then stopped.

"What's to be done about that man, d'you think?" Needle asked.

"Stay out of his way, I guess."

"Easy to say. He took a shot at Nightwind yesterday, and a couple at Cheeter recently."

"Why? They're not into sanguinary stuff."

"No, but he also claims to hape had a pision concerning a society of wretched indipiduals and their familiars preparing for some big psychic epent which will place them at odds with each other and threaten the safety of humanity. The pampire business was the first 'sign,' as he put it, that this was true."

"I wonder what busybody sent him that pision?"

"Hard to guess," Needle said. "But he could be shooting at you, or Jack, tomorrow."

"Perhaps the parishioners will send him to the Continent," I said, "to take the waters at some salubrious spa. We only need about two and a half weeks more."

"I doubt they will. In fact, I think he's enlisted some of them in the cause of his pision. He wasn't the only one out there with a crossbow tonight."

"Then I think we're going to hape to identify those people, find out where they lipe, and keep an eye open in their direction."

"I use echolocation myself, but I get the idea."

"Nightwind and Cheeter obpiously already know. I'll tell Graymalk if you'll tell Quicklime and Bubo."

"What about that Talbot fellow?"

"So far as I can tell, Larry Talbot doesn't hape a nonpegetable companion. He can take care of himself, I think."

"All right."

". . . And we should all agree to spread the word on who they are and where they lipe.