'd.a.m.n it, why do you have to make everything so difficult?' Stoker took a drag on her cigar and smiled thinly.

'No pain, no gain.'

'And 'just how much pain do you intend to go through here,' asked Lawrence hotly, 'without any gain at all?'

'Set your weapons to stun,' said the Doctor. He turned to Tegan. 'I've always wanted to say that.'

Tegan watched the company of Adamantium Adamantium crewmen dutifully adjust their blasters and marvelled once again at the Doctor's knack for working his way into a position of trust and authority. crewmen dutifully adjust their blasters and marvelled once again at the Doctor's knack for working his way into a position of trust and authority.

'What exactly are you expecting to find down here?'

asked Ravus Oldeman. He sounded irritable and Tegan couldn't blame him; the Doctor had insisted that he came along but had not yet given a reason.

'At best, Silas Cadwell and my companion Nyssa - unharmed,' the Doctor replied. At worst, a being of total evil and devastating power already risen from the grave. Does that answer your question?'

Oldeman bridled. 'I still don't see why I have to come. I'm an old man!'

'It's my hope that by the time we've finished here, you will understand exactly why I wanted you to come,' the Doctor told him stonily. 'And for your information, Professor, you may be pushing three hundred years old, but you're not the only one here who doesn't look their age.' The Doctor glared at Oldeman for a long moment and then turned back to address the Adamantium Adamantium men. 'Follow me, stay close and don't get lost. We'll be going through a labyrinth of underground tunnels and falling behind could prove fatal. We're going after Silas Cadwell, but don't forget that there is still the Bloodhunter to contend with. Keep your eyes peeled and stick together.' men. 'Follow me, stay close and don't get lost. We'll be going through a labyrinth of underground tunnels and falling behind could prove fatal. We're going after Silas Cadwell, but don't forget that there is still the Bloodhunter to contend with. Keep your eyes peeled and stick together.'

'Sir,' said one of the crewmen, a thickset young tough called Vinson. 'Is Cadwell armed?'

'It would appear so, yes,' the Doctor answered. 'But according to Captain Lawrence, he's probably carrying a projectile weapon of some sort: simple but highly effective at close range.'

'You mean lethal, sir,' said Vinson.

'Er, yes. And please, call me Doctor.'

'Well then, Doctor, 'Vinson went on, 'can you tell me why we're only shooting to stun? If Cadwell intends to take a pop at me with a b.l.o.o.d.y bullet, it doesn't seem fair.'

There was a murmur of agreement from the other crewmen.

The Doctor stepped forward and took Vinson's blaster.

With a sharp twist the Doctor reset the pistol and aimed it at the crewman's forehead. 'This gun is now set to kill. When I pull the trigger, it will burn a hole right through the middle of your head. The energy pulse will fry your brain into a charred lump and exit via the back of your skull. It will then burn its way right through the heads of the men standing behind you.'

The men standing behind Vinson shuffled back nervously.

'If there's going to be any shooting, then it will be in an enclosed s.p.a.ce, in darkness, and very quick. I don't want you all shooting lumps out of one another.' The Doctor smiled grimly and handed the gun back to Vinson. 'We'll have to leave that side of things to Mr Cadwell.'

Fingers shaking, Vinson returned the blaster to stun.

His point made, the Doctor offered them all a cheery smile. 'All right, follow me,' he said, moving off. Tegan fell in behind him with Oldeman, and the Adamantium men formed a line behind them.

They pa.s.sed quickly through the underground lab complex; Tegan was surprised to find it strangely familiar now. Beyond the laboratories were the deeper, darker caves that were certainly not familiar to her and decidedly unwelcoming.

The Doctor pointed out significant landmarks on the way: most interesting of these were the glowing snakes buried in the translucent rock. They pulsed with a weird green light that made everyone look ill and fear-stricken.

'Look,' whispered the Doctor, coming to a halt. His fingers brushed a section of the rock that had clearly been chipped away. There was a deep gouge in the tunnel wall and fragments of the gla.s.sy stone scattered over the ground.

'What is it?' Tegan asked.

'Bullet damage. Some kind of high-density projectile at any rate'

'Cadwell?'

The Doctor nodded solemnly. 'There's no sign of any blood, so presumably Nyssa's unharmed.'

'But for how long? We'd better get a move on!'

'I wonder what happened?' the Doctor muttered.

'Does it matter? Nyssa must have tried to make a break for it.'

'Do you have to a.n.a.lyse everything?' hissed Tegan. 'We must be running out of time!'

'Yes, I am aware of that. It's just that... well, something must have prompted Cadwell to shoot.'

'Like I said, Nyssa probably tried to escape.'

'Yes, but... well, fighting? It's just not Nyssa, is it?'

'You're forgetting something,' said Oldeman. 'Cadwell may not have been shooting at your friend. He may have seen the Bloodhunter.'

'Hm,' said the Doctor again.

'Either way Nyssa's in trouble,' Tegan said impatiently.

'Let's go!'

'Is this it?' Cadwell asked.

Nyssa shivered and nodded. 'It's through there,' she told him, indicating the tunnel entrance. She could see the ugly little runes lining the pa.s.sage walls, telling their evil, sordid story. And beyond that, she could even make out the faint green glow of the crypt.

She could also feel the heavy, black presence of the thing in the pit: a brooding, impatient sensation bubbling in her stomach like bile. Cadwell prodded her with his gun. 'Go on, then.'

'Please don't make me go in there!'

'Don't be stupid.'

'You don't understand,' Nyssa said quietly. 'I can't can't go in. go in.

It knows I'm here.

Cadwell frowned. 'The Dark?'

'If that's what you call it.'

'You're shaking.'

'It's in my mind already. And my blood!'

'You're talking rubbish,' Cadwell told her, but he sounded unsure. The thick, black blood stirred in Nyssa's veins, pushing its way through her body faster and faster with every laboured heartbeat. 'It hates me. It hates everyone.

Everything.'

Cadwell peered down the tunnel. 'Is that so?'

'Please, Cadwell. listen to me: don't go in there. You don't know what you're dealing with.'

'I've a shrewd idea, actually. It's a pit full of ashes - the remains of an ent.i.ty so ancient and evil none of us can truly comprehend its power.

It's being revitalised, though. Slowly. Using the blood and bile and snot and what-have-you, sucked out of living beings by its servant and spat back into the ashes.'

Nyssa trembled. 'How do you know all this?'

'Privileged information.'

'Why have you come here?'

'To keep an appointment,' Cadwell said simply. 'One for which I do not intend being late, so please, carry on,' He gestured graciously to the tunnel entrance with his gun. 'After you.'

The Doctor led Tegan, Oldeman and the crewmen into a cavern full of stalagmites and stalact.i.tes that looked to Tegan like ghostly, fossilised trees. Their footsteps echoed strangely through the unnerving black silence of the forest. Tegan clutched her blaster tightly as they crept forwards, aware that they seemed to be heading down, as if they were descending the slope of a natural amphitheatre, overgrown with grey, petrified trees.

'Wait, I thought I saw something: said Oldeman, reaching out to touch Tegan on the arm. 'Something moving, over there.'

They halted and peered into the gloom around them. It was impossible to see much through the stalact.i.tes and stalagmites. 'I can't see anything,' Tegan said.

'What did it look like?' asked the Doctor.

Oldeman was rattled. 'I don't know, I only caught a glimpse, and my eyesight isn't what it used to be!'

'Could it have been Nyssa?' wondered Tegan. 'Or Cadwell?'

'Or the Bloodhunter,' Oldeman said anxiously.

'There it is!' cried one of the Consortium men, pointing to a thick patch of stalact.i.te-trees.

Immediately Vinson swung his blaster up, but the Doctor's hand flashed out and caught his wrist. 'Don't shoot: he hissed. 'The flash will alert whatever's there to the fact that we're here!' here!'

Vinson glared at the Doctor, his gun hand trembling. His finger was white on the trigger.

'Stun guns won't be effective on the Bloodhunter,' the Doctor warned him quietly. 'You fire that thing now and it could very well be the last thing you ever do.'

Vinson glanced nervously back into the stony forest.

Gradually the Doctor let go of his wrist and Vinson lowered the blaster. 'Thanks: 'What now?' asked Tegan.

The Doctor took a deep breath. 'We go on. It's not far from here.' The message was pa.s.sed back along the line of Consortium men.

'Nyssa and Cadwell must have reached that crypt thing by now,'

Tegan said as they moved on and the stalact.i.tes began to shrink.

The Doctor agreed. 'We'll have to go into the actual crypt. I was hoping to avoid this. Tegan, you don't have to come. In fact, I would advise that you didn't.'

Tegan looked at him in the gloom and recognised the honest concern in his eyes. She had seldom seen the Doctor look so full of trepidation. 'I'm not leaving you or Nyssa,' she told him bluntly.

He nodded but didn't say anything. He clearly hadn't expected any other response, and Tegan felt glad.

'I'll stay out here then: said Oldeman, 'if it's all the same with you.'

'No you won't,' said the Doctor. 'I want you to witness the full extent of your folly.'

'But I don't feel very well.'

Nonsense. You're extremely fit for two hundred and sixty-five.'

But Oldeman was sweating and beginning to shake.

'What's up with him?' Tegan asked, sensing something was wrong.

Oldeman shook violently and collapsed into the Doctor's arms. The Doctor lowered him to the ground, where he began to suffer severe convulsions.

'He's fitting,' groaned the Doctor. 'I should've realised!'