'The TARDIS? I've already told you, you can't have it. Is there anything else I could interest you in? I have a cricket bat signed by Mike Gatting, if you'd like that. Worth a fair bit, now, I'd say.'

'On your knees!' the Dark roared.

'I'd rather stand, thank you very much.' The Doctor suddenly let out a gasp of pain and dropped heavily to his knees.

'That's better,' said the Dark.

'Psychokinesis,' grunted the Doctor, now on all fours. 'A cheap trick.'

'But effective. I've already touched you, Doctor.' you bear my mark! If I wanted to, I could make you act like the dog you are, Time Lord. Running around on all fours, panting, with your tongue hanging out like that of the lowest mongrel.'

The Doctor groaned as his mouth opened painfully and his tongue lolled out. With an effort he regained control. 'You can only pull strings,' he gasped. 'I won't do anything for you of my own free will.'

'Such presumption!' The Dark moved closer's don't think you quite understand, Doctor. I could make make you behave like a frightened puppy, it's true. But I'd rather you did it voluntarily.' you behave like a frightened puppy, it's true. But I'd rather you did it voluntarily.'

The Doctor raised a hand and tentatively touched the shadowy mark on his face again. It was ice cold, right through to the bone. He could feel its evil. The Doctor suddenly shook his head. 'I think you'll find I fight for my principles.

'Worm,' said the Dark.

The Doctor gagged and sank to the floor, as if pressed down flat by a giant hand. Forced to prostrate himself, the Doctor came face to face with the corpse of Ravus Oldeman.

Oldeman's eyes were still open, dry and blind but still full of pain.

His expression was frozen into one of anger and torment.

The Doctor lay transfixed, almost unable to breathe. The dead man's eyes bored into him and the Doctor experienced a sudden sense of importance, as if the man was trying to tell him something from the grave.

The Doctor blinked. He was starting to hallucinate, surely. Oldeman just lay there, unmoving, empty and lifeless.

The Dark cackled. 'Do you doubt my power, Time Lord, even now?'

'Not at all,' the Doctor panted, struggling to his knees with as much dignity as he could muster. 'I admit manifesting yourself out of nothing but darkness like that is a pretty good trick. But telekinetic torture... well, I've seen it before.'

The Dark moved closer. 'But I can sense your terror, Doctor. Your juvenile prattling is the thinnest of disguises.'

'Is it really so obvious?'

'You seek to sh.o.r.e up your companions meagre courage with humour. It won't work.' The Dark gave a throaty chuckle.

'Your mind is overflowing with dread. Your hearts are pulsing, faster and faster, as the blood races around your frail body in blind red panic. I can even hear hear your hearts, Doctor, rushing through their last remaining beats in such a terrible hurry. your hearts, Doctor, rushing through their last remaining beats in such a terrible hurry.

You're going to die soon - you know that, don't you?'

'Be that as it may,' said the Doctor stonily, 'I won't let you have the TARDIS.'

'Death after death,' the Dark reminded him. 'You've seen the future, Doctor. You know it isn't good.'

The Doctor climbed slowly to his feet. A terrible weight seem to have descended on his shoulders. 'I haven't seen the future. You're just trying to scare me with the prospect of death.'

'Death is your weakness!' spat the Dark. 'All of you!'

The Doctor gave him a sad smile. 'But for us, death is inevitable.' A condition of our existence. condition of our existence. We live, we die. We live, we die.

Nothing can alter that.'

'You had better listen to him, you filth,' said a voice from the other side of the chamber. It was Stoker. She spoke from where she lay, still holding Lawrence's corpse. 'You've had all you're going to get from us.'

'Vega Jaal, Bunny, Jim, all my friends and all the other people. And the man I love! You can And the man I love! You can do what the h.e.l.l you like now because do what the h.e.l.l you like now because you just can't hurt us any more!' you just can't hurt us any more!'

The Doctor looked across at Stoker and she caught his eye. He nodded.

'A facile argument!' roared the Dark. 'But even if there is no fear in death... then there is fear in life. life. Humans fear me; they fear the dark! They learn to fear it from infancy - what they cannot see, or know, or understand.' Humans fear me; they fear the dark! They learn to fear it from infancy - what they cannot see, or know, or understand.'

'Exactly!' the Doctor said. 'Because fear of the dark is really just a fear of the unknown. unknown. What can't be What can't be seen. seen. Like the future. But I don't fight the future... I fight Like the future. But I don't fight the future... I fight for for the future. And I protect it from the things that thrive on the unknown. Fear, Hostility, Cruelty, Injustice.' the future. And I protect it from the things that thrive on the unknown. Fear, Hostility, Cruelty, Injustice.'

'All the things I represent,' admitted the Dark. 'But I too will fight for my principles.'

'Then it's you against me,' replied the Doctor. He left the statement to drift for a long moment before adding, almost as an afterthought, 'So how come you haven't killed me yet?'

Something bubbled inside the Dark and it took a step towards the Doctor.

The Doctor stood his ground. 'Shall I tell everyone,' he asked lightly, 'or would you prefer to?'

The Dark moved towards him again, lips drawing back from sharp black teeth.

The Doctor looked at his companions and said, 'You see, I've just realised I have something the Dark wants very badly.

And I don't just mean the TARDIS.'

The Dark's mouth hung open, oily saliva hanging from its lips.

The Doctor turned back and stared it in the eye. 'There's something else you want, isn't there? Something you hadn't antic.i.p.ated in your great, greedy plan for universal domination. Which, I have to say, is quite the most ludicrous of schemes! Only a mind warped by an eternity spent bringing terror and cruelty to one single planet could have thought of it. And, of course, one that had been warped by something else perhaps...'

The Dark hissed explosively, spraying blackness through the heavy air. 'Give me want I want, Time Lord, and you alone shall live.'

The Doctor smiled sadly and turned again to Tegan and Nyssa. 'You see, having taken on a physical form based on the human blood it absorbed, the Dark is now subject to the same physical needs of its donors - including the late Professor Ravus Oldeman.'

'Give me what I need!' roared the Dark. 'Give me it!'

'What?' said the Doctor. 'This?' He drew his hand from his pocket and held up an injector.

'What is it?' asked Tegan.

'Neurolectrin,' said the Doctor. 'The Dark has inherited Ravus Oldeman's condition... and and his addiction to the neurolectrin. I should have realised when it made me search the laboratory for the drug before. I his addiction to the neurolectrin. I should have realised when it made me search the laboratory for the drug before. I did did realise it just now, when I saw Ravus Oldeman's body again. The Dark wants the TARDIS, certainly, but at the moment it wants realise it just now, when I saw Ravus Oldeman's body again. The Dark wants the TARDIS, certainly, but at the moment it wants this this more.' more.'

The Dark lunged for the injector and the Doctor skipped back out of reach. 'Sorry. But I don't think you deserve it.'

'Imbecile,' snarled the Dark.

The Doctor took another step back, but suddenly found himself trapped by the Bloodhunter. He hadn't noticed it behind him in the darkness.

'My loyal servant,' sneered the Dark. 'You have gone far enough, Doctor.'

The Doctor convulsed, letting out a sharp cry of pain and dropping to one knee.

'I can control your every movement,' the Dark said. 'Don't tell me you have forgotten my cheap trick cheap trick so soon?' so soon?'

The Doctor groaned as the mental pressure forced him to raise the hand holding the neurolectrin.

'No witty riposte, Time Lord?' the Dark inquired as as it moved closer. it moved closer.

It leaned over the Doctor, pushing its diseased, black face into his. 'No clever deception?'

The hand holding the neurolectrin began to shake as the Doctor fought for control. The fingers and knuckles turned white around the injector as the hand began to turn. The Doctor's teeth ground together as his face paled with the exertion.

'I have an idea,' whispered the Dark. 'Why don't you take you take the neurolectrin?' the neurolectrin?'

The Doctor's eyes widened fractionally. His hand, controlled by the Dark, moved slowly towards his own throat, twisting the injector into position. The tip trembled against his skin, ready to deliver the dose.

'It won't harm me,' the Doctor protested.

'I know...' The Dark leant closer, close enough for the Doctor to see the-tiny black worms wriggling on its tongue and lips. 'But I could squeeze it back out of you like blood from an open wound.'

'An easy victory,' gasped the Doctor. 'Wouldn't you say?'

'I'd be disappointed,' replied the Dark, 'if I had expected anything else.'

'Then take away the mark,' the Doctor panted. 'You touched my my face and left your mark. You're using it to control me somehow. Remove it and let me do it myself!' face and left your mark. You're using it to control me somehow. Remove it and let me do it myself!'

'You would inject the drug into yourself of your own free will?' The Dark sounded sceptical.

But the Doctor nodded. 'On one condition.'

The Dark snorted. 'Go on.'

'Do what you will with me but spare my friends.'

'Do you really believe that I would honour such a bargain?'

The Doctor, trembling as he fought the psychokinesis, let out a desperate sob. 'I don't know. B-but it's all I have left!'

The Dark seemed to consider this as the Doctor sagged against the Bloodhunter.

Clearly weakening, the Doctor said, 'Please!'

Ah! Now Now you beg!' you beg!'

'I c-can't fight you m-much longer...'

'I know.' The Dark leant closer, staring into the Doctor's painwracked face. 'So much for principles. But you wish to make your last act in life your own... Very well.'

The grey mark on the side of the Doctor's face gathered into a black pustule and burst through the skin. The poisoned blood oozed down his face and dripped away into the shadows.

'Thank you,' he gasped.

Then the Doctor whipped around and stabbed the injector straight into the Bloodhunter.

The Dark bellowed with rage and surged forward, suddenly relinquishing its human shape in a flailing ma.s.s of tentacles and snapping jaws. It fell on the Bloodhunter as the creature staggered backwards, the neurolectrin injector sticking out of its chest like a tiny arrow.

The Doctor had thrown himself to one side and rolled clear. Tegan and Nyssa helped him to his feet as the air was filled with a terrible, bone-freezing scream.

The Dark had returned to a roughly human shape, a black shadow bearing down on the Bloodhunter. The Bloodhunter responded automatically, latching onto the Dark and forcing its own tentacles and probes deep inside the blackness.

And there it found the blood; the same blood that had been used to reconst.i.tute the ashes of the original Dark.

'What's happening?' yelled Tegan.

'The Dark wants the neurolectrin,' shouted the Doctor.

'The Bloodhunter wants blood.'

The Bloodhunter opened up like a side of meat under a cleaver as the Dark tore into it. The screams were unmerciful.

'They're feeding on each other,' realised Nyssa.

The two beasts writhed and screeched. Although maddened, the Bloodhunter began to succ.u.mb to its own wounds. Sensing its weakness, the Dark went into a frenzy and suddenly the Bloodhunter was torn apart. The Dark literally wrenched it in half and threw the quivering flesh across the chamber.

For a moment there was a stunned silence.

Then the Dark turned and advanced on the Doctor.

'Pitiful thing,' it snarled. 'A presumptuous trick, doomed to failure! You cannot destroy me! I am am death!' death!'

The Dark's black hands fastened around the Doctor's neck. The Doctor gasped and crumpled, his face screwed into a mask of pain.

But still he managed to speak through gritted teeth, 'It's not over yet!'