Free A Coven of Vampires by Brian Lumley

limits.
    Following which the Hrossak climbed rickety ladder to shady platform, tossed awhile making his plans, and finally fell asleep….
    • • •
    Tarra slept until dusk, during which time Stumpy Adz was busy. When the Hrossak awoke Stumpy gave him a throw ing knife and sat down with him, by light of oil lamp and floating wick, to study several parchment sketches. There was meat sizzling over charcoal, too, and a little weak wine in a stone jar beaded with cold moisture. Stumpy lived pretty well, Tarra decided.
    As for the Hrossak: he was clear-headed; the stiffness was still in his shoulder but fading fast; the two-pronged bite on his neck had scabbed over and lost its sting. What had been taken out of him was replacing itself, and all seemed in working order.
    He took leave of Stumpy’s place at the hour when all cats turn grey and headed for the south gate. At about which time, some three hundred and more miles away in the heart of the Nameless Desert….
    Deep, deep below the furnace sands, cooling now that the sun was caught once more in Cthon’s net and drawn down, and while the last kites of evening fanned the air on high—in a crimson cavern with a lava lake, where red imps danced nimbly from island to island in the reek and splash of molten rock—there the Lamia Orbiquita came awake at last and stretched her leathery wings and breathed grate fully of the hot brimstone atmosphere.
    She lay cradled in smoking ashes in the middle of a smouldering island which itself lay central in the lava lake; and over her warty, leathery, loathsome form hunched a mighty black lava lump glowing with a red internal life of its own and moulded in perfect likeness of—what else but another lamia? And seeing that infernally fossilized thing crouching over her she knew where she was and remembered how she got here.
    The whole thing had been a folly, a farce. First: that she failed to make adequate preparation for her journey when she knew full well that the five-year cycle was nearing its peak, when her powers would wane even as the hated moon waxed. Next: that having allowed the time to creep too close, and most of her powers fled, still she had not used the last of them to call up those serfs of the desert, the djinn, to transport her here; for she scorned all imps—even bottle imps, and even the biggest of them—and hated the thought of being in their debt. Finally: that as her choice of guise under which to travel she had chosen that of beautiful human female, for once the change was made she’d been stuck with that shape and all the hazards that went with it. The choice, however, had not been completely arbitrary; she could take comfort in that, at least. The human female form was small and less cumbersome than that of a dragon; and where girls sometimes got molested and raped, dragons were usually slain! She could have been a lizard, but lizards making a beeline across the desert are easy prey for hawks and such, and anyway she hated crawling on her belly. Flying creature such as harpy or bat were out of the question; since they must needs flit, they could not shade themselves against sun and moon. Her true lamia form was likewise problematic: impossible to shade in flight and cumbersome afoot. And so she had chosen the shape of a beautiful human girl. Anyway, it was her favourite and had served her well for more than a century. The victims she had lured with it were without number. Moreover, yaks and camels did not shy from it.
    Ah, well, a lesson learned—but learned so expensively. A veritable string of errors never to be repeated. The ravish ment had been bad enough and the beating worse, but the loss of her rune-book and ring were disasters of the first magnitude. Orbiquita’s memory was not the best and the runes of metamorphosis were anything but easy. As for the ring: that had been gifted to her by her father, Mylakhrion of Tharamoon. She could not bear to be without it. Indeed, of the entire episode the one