'Yes,' said the Doctor.

Stoker looked up, her eyes glittering. 'Then promise me something.'

promise me you will destroy the Dark. Stop it, kill it, do whatever you have to but get rid of it forever.' get rid of it forever.'

Stoker's words echoed vehemently around the chamber.

The Doctor said, 'I promise.' But he would not look her in the eye when he said it.

Abruptly he stood up and turned away, one hand rubbing absently at the grey mark on his face. He looked distraught.

Tegan moved away from where Stoker lay with Lawrence's body, thinking that she might want some privacy.

Besides which, Tegan didn't feel she could cope with another dead body now. She took the flickering torch across the chamber, only to find another corpse at her feet.

Ravus Oldeman's cadaver lay on the floor where it had been discarded. Tegan moved the torchlight quickly over his remains, not wanting to linger. They had come to a place of death. There was no way out. This is where they would have to make their final stand, like children against a ravenous tiger.

'Why have we come back here?' she complained, her voice echoing stridently.

'There's nowhere else to go,' Nyssa said.

'Don't you start!'

The Doctor was making a circuit of the pit, staring into the empty well. 'Bring the torch over here,' he instructed.

Tegan held the flame over the pit and they peered down into the shadows. There was something moving in the glimmering light.'

something the colour of raw meat, with a nest of tentacles for a face.

'It's the Bloodhunter!' Tegan exclaimed, drawing back.

The light from her torch wavered drastically as she withdrew from the edge of the pit, and the Doctor quickly shushed her. 'Don't frighten it,' he said.

But this was the least of Tegan's concerns. 'Don't frighten it?'

Doctor, we've got to get out out of here...' She began to back towards the exit. of here...' She began to back towards the exit.

'Wait,' the Doctor ordered. 'It's not attacking us. Look.'

Nyssa joined Tegan and together they watched as the Doctor took a careful step closer. The Bloodhunter crouched low in the pit, glaring back up at them from the shadows. The flickering light glinted in its cl.u.s.ter of eyes. Its gaze fixed on the Doctor, who was now leaning over the edge to examine the creature.

'Be careful, Doctor.'

'It's all right, Nyssa,' the Doctor said quietly. He kept his voice low and soothing. 'I think it knows its usefulness is over.

It served the Dark, but now it has no further purpose. It's rather sad, actually.'

'That thing killed Bunny Cheung,' spat Tegan, 'and a good many other people besides. Don't ask me to feel sorry for it.'

The Bloodhunter let out a low growl, its face-tentacles stirring. It was still staring at the Doctor, but there was a l.u.s.ting gleam in its eyes. 'On the other hand,' said the Doctor, 'it might be safer to keep our distance.'

Tegan's torch flickered wildly and the shadows leapt around the chamber in a frenzy.

'Please,' Nyssa implored, 'don't let the light go out!'

'I didn't do anything!' Tegan retorted. The flame was jumping and snapping on the end of its stick like a flag in a high wind. But Tegan was holding it steady. 'It's gone crazy, that's all.'

'It must be caught in a draft,' Nyssa persisted.

'There's no draft.' the Doctor said.

They watched as as the flame now began twisting and turning like a wild animal trying to escape from a trap. the flame now began twisting and turning like a wild animal trying to escape from a trap.

'It's the Dark,' said the Doctor. 'It's found us.'

Tegan whirled and held the torch out towards the chamber entrance. 'Get back!' she shrieked. A now familiar moan began to swell up from the distant past as the shadows dragged memories of ancient torment with them. Tegan waved the spitting flame about with primeval desperation.

'We're trapped,' wailed Nyssa. 'The Dark's out there and the Bloodhunter's in here!'

The Doctor looked quickly around the chamber for his friends.'

Stoker cradling Lawrence's body on the far side, Nyssa clutching his sleeve, Tegan standing her ground with the torch. Its flame was nearly free, tugging at the oily rag which gave it life with desperate vigour. A spark leapt from its tip into the gloom, but it was a futile gesture.' The shadows simply turned on the brave little light and crushed it.

The tip of the torch glowed for a moment longer and then began to fade.

'No!' shouted Tegan.

The Dark hissed eagerly, drawing closer, filling the chamber.

The Doctor crossed the room in two quick strides and held Tegan firmly by the wrist. 'Let it go,' he said.

'What?' Tegan peered at his face in the semi-darkness.

The dying torch cast a sickly umber light across his features, turning them muddy in the gloom. Like a ghost, he hardly seemed to be there at all.

'Doctor?'

'There's nothing more we can do,' he said. His voice sounded resigned but firm. 'It's time to stand and face the Dark.'

And with that, the last embers finally died, turning to grey ash for a second before the blackness claimed them.

The chamber was plunged into more than darkness.'

Something ma.s.sive and blacker than anything else surged into the air around them. Tegan found herself discarding the spent torch and grasping hold of the Doctor; not for comfort, just for something or someone to anchor her s.p.a.ce in the void.

'Is it here?' she heard Nyssa whisper.

'Very nearly,' replied the Doctor. 'It needs total darkness to achieve a physical presence.

'Then we've lost.'

Was there ever any doubt that we would?' asked Tegan.

'Never give up hope.' ordered the Doctor. 'Remember, the Dark craves a physical existence in our universe.' once it's fully manifested it can't go back to its own dimension.'

A thick, glutinous shadow poured into the chamber, distorting everything around it. The s.p.a.ce was moving, full of things they could not see crawling and seething, closer and closer. It felt cold and wet, like something that lived beneath a stone. Then, impossibly, they could could see it: a formless ma.s.s, blacker than the pitch darkness, swelling out of nowhere. The Dark arrived like something being retched from the back of reality's throat. see it: a formless ma.s.s, blacker than the pitch darkness, swelling out of nowhere. The Dark arrived like something being retched from the back of reality's throat.

It filled the chamber like a giant black squid, tentacles of shadow thrashing around the room. A cavernous maw split open and spurted a scream of exultation. Then the writhing ma.s.s turned in on itself, stretching and contracting, reforming into another shape. An even more unsettling shape.

At last,' said a voice that sounded like worms frying. 'I live! I live! I live!' I live!'

It was tall, barely discernible in the gloom, but shaped like a man.

Tegan thought she could make out long, lank hair hanging like rattails on its shoulders.

'h.e.l.lo,' the Doctor was saying. 'So glad you could make it.'

The black figure turned to face him. There were small, sinuous things crawling all over its flesh, so many that the skin seemed to be in constant motion. Tegan thought that she could just make out ragged coat tails hanging level with its knees. The material of the coat was rotten and caked in filth, but with a start Tegan realised that the Dark presented the same silhouette as the Doctor.

The Doctor had not failed to notice this. 'They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.'

Something opened in the shadowy face with a wet, hollow noise. A single word escaped from the orifice, born on dead breath, 'Doctor...'

'That's right. I hope you won't mind if we don't shake hands.'

'You meaningless fragment of dirt,' whispered the Dark. 'I will make you suffer before you die!'

'Ah, straight into the insults and threats,' the Doctor said.

'What a relief. Saves time in the long run, don't you think?'

'Time,' growled the shadow as if savouring the word.

'Yes... I can feel it now, the very progress of the universe around me.' The Doctor was intrigued. 'You mean you couldn't feel it before?' The eyes glittered like coal in the shadowy face as they regarded. the Doctor. 'Yes, what would you know of the endless, empty void that bore me? At last I can sense the soft, stealthy pa.s.sage of time itself.'

'Well, perhaps congratulations are in order.' they say there's a first time for everything. Even feeling the pa.s.sing of time, I suppose.'

The Dark hissed. 'You don't understand, Doctor. How could you? I have drifted, formless and outside of time, for uncountable millennia.

I have been forced to watch from the sidelines of a half-dimension, unable to interfere. But not any more!'

'Ah yes, now about that, there seems to be a misunderstanding. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you appear to believe that, through me, you will now be able to gain access to the rest of time and s.p.a.ce...' the Doctor thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and rocked nonchalantly on his heels. 'Well, I'm sorry but I'm afraid that is completely out of the question.'

'For all eternity I have waited for the chance, the means, to live fully and completely in your universe.

'But you haven't been idle, have you? Your mind has existed within the planet Akoshemon since its formation... lain waste to a thousand million years of that world's evolution, doomed by your will. You your will. You have stirred civilisations into an endless cycle of self-destruction, and the worst kinds of corruption.' have stirred civilisations into an endless cycle of self-destruction, and the worst kinds of corruption.'

'Hardly something to boast about,' added Tegan.

The Dark shrugged. 'That time... is over.'

'Ah, yes. Now you're alive and kicking and ready to spread your malign influence across every world and every civilisation in the universe. Courtesy of my TARDIS.'

'My consciousness sensed your little timecraft in the Vortex. It required only a moment's thought to breach its meagre defences.'

'You mean me.' said Nyssa shakily.

The Dark let out its breathless laughter. 'The last little orphan of a pitifully weak planet torn out of creation and flung, forgotten, into nowhere.'

'You violated my memory of Traken,' Nyssa said. She took the smallest step forward, bravely turning her face up towards the towering figure of night. 'Why?'

'Ah, last daughter of Traken... You were simply the most receptive to my influence. The way had already been cleared for me. There was an empty s.p.a.ce in your mind where Traken had once been; I simply filled that void.'

The Doctor rested a hand gently on Nyssa's shoulder.

She stared back at the Dark and then lowered her gaze.

Tegan felt curiously as if something in her own mind was relaxing, uncoiling, satisfied that a threat had vanished. It left her feeling perplexed, almost introspective. She automatically looked to the Doctor for an explanation, but he was already speaking to the Dark again.

'An intriguing plan, but you've overlooked something.' my TARDIS isn't for hire. It's not an intergalactic taxi waiting to ferry you around the cosmos, spreading doom and disaster!'

'I have finally achieved the transition into your physical universe.'

said the Dark. 'I can do anything.'

The Doctor sighed loudly. 'Your point being?'

'I now have absolute power over you all.'

'I beg to differ.'

'No, Doctor. Not yet. I will tell you when to beg.'

'You know, it's amazing,' the Doctor said. 'The way your kind always has to throw its weight around. Why don't you just kill me and be done with it?'

'But you have something I want, Doctor.'