Brian Lumley - Necroscope 8 - Bloodwars

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THAT A THING LIKE THIS could lift its
massive bulk even an inch from the earth, let
; alone fly, seemed patently impossible; yet here
! it spurted against the star-spattered horizon like
I an alien, aerial slug. Just looking at it, details
were branded on Nathan's feverish mind:
| Of grey-mottled flesh, with fish-scale armour
gleaming metallic-blue in starshine . . . of gas-
| bladder clusters bulging like strange wattles or
nests of morbid tumors from both sides of the
segmented, flexible spine, constantly shrinking
and expanding, regulating the monster's bal
ance ... of cartilage hooks, sawing appendages,
and chitin grapples in the shape of crab claws.
But over and above everything else the evil
pseudo-intelligence of its swivelling, searching
saucer eyes in that vastly sloping prow of a
skull!
Only fifty yards away now, it had spotted the
three men. Propulsors blasting, the vampire
warrior lowered its head and zeroed in on them!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brian Lumley was born in the coal-mining village of
Horden, County Durham. At the age of twenty-one, he
was called up for National Service and was assigned to the
Royal Military Police. He subsequently joined up and in
his twenty-two years of service travelled widely.
A devotee of horror and fantasy fiction all his life, he
began writing while still in the army in the 1960s and his
first stories were published in America. His early influence
was that of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos cycle of
fiction. After returning to civilian life in 1981, Brian
Lumley became a full-time writer and began working on
his longer, more ambitious novels: first the Psychomech
trilogy, then individual novels such as Demogorgon and
House of Doors, culminating in the highly original series
of bestselling vampire novels, the five Necroscope books.
Blood Brothers and The Last Aerie, also published in
ROC, are the first two volumes of this new trilogy,
Vampire World, which is a spin-off from the Necroscope
series. Bloodwars is the last volume in the trilogy. Fruiting
Bodies and Other Fungi
and Return of the Deep Ones and
Other Mythos Tafes
are also published in the ROC series.
With more than thirty books and over a hundred short
stories published in English, Brian Lumley has also had
his work translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish,
Dutch, Japanese and, most recently, Polish and Czech.
His story 'Fruiting Bodies' won the British Fantasy
Award for the Best Short Story and he has also been the
recipient of Fear Magazine's Award for Necroscope III:
The Source.
BRIAN LUMLEY'S VAMPIRE WORLD
VOLUME THREE
BLOODWARS
A ROC BOOK
ROC
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London WB 5TZ, England Penguin
Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
First published 1994
13579 10 8642
Copyright © Brian Lumley, 1994
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Roc is a trademark of Penguin Books Ltd
Filmset by Datix International Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic
Set in 9.5/11.5 pt Monophoto Melior
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
For Steve Jones.
Thanks for giving me the
magic words. You'll note
that I gave them back
... to Zek!
PART ONE
Earth
I
Outside, Inside
Returning from an early lunch at an Indian restaurant just a
five-minute walk away from E-Branch HQ in the heart of
London, Ben Trask sweated inside and out. Inside, from the
curry which was still searing his mouth and throat; outside,
from the unusually warm May weather. The noonday sun
blazed down on him from a sky as vast and blue as the Ionian
which he hoped his visitor from another world was enjoying,
because Trask sure as hell was not! In fact, ever since Zek
Foener and Nathan Kiklu (or Nathan 'Keogh', as the
Necroscope preferred to be called now) had gone off to the
Greek Islands a few days ago, Trask had been right out of
sorts with himself, and with everyone else in his top-secret
ESPionage organization.
He thought about the two, worried about them equally ...
but for different reasons. About Nathan, because he was
probably the most valuable and certainly the most
-
what,
unique? - man in the world; even in
two
worlds. And about
Zek, because he loved her. At his age (Trask snorted), finally
to have fallen in love! Not that he was ancient, and he
certainly wasn't 'past it', but ... it compJicated matters. And
with Zek in the Greek Islands, things seemed even more
complicated. That silly old saw which has it: 'out of sight, out
of mind', had it backwards as far as Trask was concerned.
She was out of sight, all right, but she'd never been more in
his mind than right now .. .
And even as he thought it, the thought itself was like an
invocation:
Deep water ... the salt sea .. . weeds and sediment
obscuring Trask's vision - no, Zek's vision/ - and the pain in
his/her chest . . . heart hammering, vision bJurring,
lungs
screaming for air! Sweet Jesus, she was drowning! And she
was Jetting him know about it in the onJy way she could ... for
Zek was one
of
the world's
finest
telepaths.
BEN! The word exploded into his mind like a bomb. TRY
NOT TO FEEL .. . TOO . .. BAD .. . ABOUT ... IT.
'Zek!' he yelled out loud, and could actually taste the water
flooding into his/her mouth.
GOOD... BYE... BEN...!
Trask staggered, whirled, fell, and felt his knees slam
down
hard on the dusty pavement. But it didn't hurt. Nothing hurt
except the fact that Zek's telepathic voice was dead in his
mind. And that Zek herself-?
Across the road, people were staring. A car's horn blared
and its astonished driver gazed down at Trask where he
kneeled half-on, half-off the road. Then the car swept on by
and people came running, questioning. Someone asked if
Trask had been hit. He shook his head, got to his feet and
staggered again. A young couple grabbed him, held him
upright, and the girl asked, 'Are you all right?'
Numb, he nodded. He was all right, yes. But Zek -?
It was mid-May 2006, and under the hot sun Trask was
cold. Sweat rivered his face and stuck his shirt to his back, yet
he was cold. Cold in his mind, from the feel and the taste of
the deep salt water, but far colder from the memory of Zek's
telepathic voice, crying there and dying there, in his mind.
Cold from the sudden emptiness of ... everything. 'Zek!'
He shook the young couple off, shouldered people aside,
started to walk along the pavement and ended up running, and
ran sweating and shivering down the sidestreet to the back of
the hotel whose top floor housed E-Branch HQ. He found the
private door; after the sunlight it was like night in there; there
was only the darkness until he used his pass-card to enter the
elevator with its electric ceiling light. And even then it was
dark; but that was in his mind, and he
knew that the darkness was only the absence of Zek. In which
case, it might last forever.
Then the elevator shuddered to a halt, the doors hissed open
and Trask stumbled out into the main corridor ...
. .. Which was — flooded?
An inch of water went sluicing into the elevator! Now what
the hoJy . ..?
There were espers in the corridor. Trask recognized faces
without considering the amazement — the relief, the .. . what?
. . . triumph, jubilation? — written on every one of them.
There was a smell of ocean, seaweed, salt. The smell matched
the taste of Zek in Trask's mind. So that once again he asked
himself: now what the holy . ..?
The tall, cadaverous, usually melancholy figure of the
precog lan Goodly loomed into view; but now his eyes were
alight with elation. He grabbed Trask's arm, husked, 'Ben —
he's done it! Nathan's done it!'
'Done it?' Trask found it hard to gather his thoughts,
concentrate his mind. Goodly was wet, splotched; he smelled of
sea-water just like the entire corridor smelled of it. His
trousers were drenched from the knees down and clung to his
thin calves. And now David Chung, Branch locator, had
arrived on the scene; he, too, was soaked from head to toe,
and grinning like an oriental lunatic.
'Done what?' Trask demanded, looking from one to the
other. 'What has Nathan done? And, anyway, he's somewhere
in the Ionian with ... with Zek.' And finally losing it: 'Why
doesn't someone tell me what the fuck - is going -on - here!?'
They were in the Greek Islands, Ben,' Goodly suddenly saw
how close Trask was to shock. But he also knew how difficult
it would be to shock a man who always knew the truth, a
human lie-detector like the current Head of E-Branch. And,
looking at him, Goodly thought to himself, he's improved,
hardened with age and time. Oh, Ben has soft, human edges,
too, but the man inside - the mind, soul and personality, the id
— is diamond-hard.
Trask was about five-ten, just a pound or two overweight,
mousey-haired and green-eyed. His broad shoulders sloped
just a little, his arms dangled somewhat and his expression
was - what, lugubrious? Or maybe that was a direct result of
his talent; for, in a world where the simple truth was
increasingly hard to come by, it was no easy thing to possess a
mind which could not accept a lie. This was an election year,
and Trask's current gripe was with politicians. Watching
party-political broadcasts, he would frequently burst out: 'The
trouble with these people is that they never lie! But they never
tell the truth, either!'
And now he was staring hard at Goodly, asking, 'What was
that you said? They were in the Ionian? What the hell do you
mean?'
Goodly knew there was only one way to tell it, and so
answered, They were there, yes, Ben. But just a few minutes
ago, Nathan brought them back!'
Trask's jaw fell open. Not without an effort, he closed it
and said, 'He brought them —?'
'— Brought them back here, yes,' Goodly nodded. 'Through
the Mo'bius Continuum.'
And now Trask's jaw dropped open all the way, so that
once again he must close it before gasping, The ...
Continuum?' At which the truth finally dawned on him; if not
in regard to Nathan, certainly in respect of Zek. The fact that
she was alive! He'd known it was the truth, of course, even as
Goodly said the words, but it seemed so far beyond his
wildest hopes and dreams that even Trask had held back from
letting it register. Just a moment ago he'd known that Zek
Foener was dead — he had literally heard and felt her die -
and yet now .. .
As Trask's feet touched earth again, he snapped out of it
and demanded to know: 'Where are they? Are they okay? And
Zek - is she okay?'
David Chung answered him. They're sedated. We've fixed
up a couple of beds in the Ops room. But it was a close thing.
They were in the sea. And when they came through
... I thought half of the Mediterranean was coming through
with them!'
Trask grabbed him, said, 'But how did it happen? Don't we
know anything about it? Christ, I take an hour off for lunch,
everything goes mad!'
'Nathan said a few words before we put him under,' Chung
answered. 'But we had to put them out of it for a while. They
were exhausted and in shock - especially Zek -and it might
easily have developed into something worse.'
'So what exactly did Nathan say?' Trask headed for the Ops
room with the others in tow.
'It seems it was a party of Tzonov's thugs,' Goodly took up
the story. 'Nathan's Special Branch minders were taken by
surprise - and murdered! Nathan and Zek ran for it, into the
sea. More of Tzonov's people were waiting for them; they had
wetsuits and spearguns and were already in the water; for all
we know at this stage, the entire operation was launched from
the sea. But when the chips were down and there was no other
way out, Nathan did his thing. Except. .. there was probably a
lot more to it than that.'
'Oh?' Trask glanced at him, and pressed on into the Ops
room, where a small knot of espers was gathered around a pair
of six-foot tables.
Goodly followed on behind, nodding. There had been some
pretty weird stuff going on here. Stuff that told us these two
were in trouble.' He gave a shrug. 'So we did what we could
for them.' Goodly was wont to understate things: his British
phlegmatism. But the precog's 'pretty weird stuff statement
told Trask a lot: namely, that there was still a lot he hadn't
been told.
'All of this in an hour?' he said, as the espers around the
tables moved aside to make room for their Head of Branch,
and Trask came to a halt between a pair of prone figures
apparently asleep in hastily made-up beds.
'In a lot less than an hour,' David Chung put in. 'Let me tell
you about it. . .
'Myself, lan, Geoff Smart, we all got the message at the
same time: that something was wrong. With me, it was
Nathan's earring — the thing came alive in my hand! I can't
say what it was for Smart, but he's an empath and he's done a
lot of work with Nathan; maybe he sensed the trouble they
were in even at that range. And of course lan reads the future,
and apparently he'd "seen" me plugging in the computer in
Harry's room. So we went there, and I plugged it in. Then — it
was the same as before: the numbers, equations, whatever; I'm
no mathematician, so you tell me! But it was all on the screen.
Except it wasn't quite the same. This time, the numbers came
together, fused, formed into something else. Something that
was . . . I don't know, solid? Well, almost solid.'
Trask had taken Zek's wrist; feeling the steady pulse, he
issued a sigh of relief. ZeJc, you spoke to me. When you
thought it was aJJ over, I was the one you spoke to! It meant
an awful lot to him. Then, as if it were his first breath in a
week, he filled his lungs to bursting; finally, frowning, he
looked at Chung. 'Something solid, you say? On the computer
screen?'
Goodly took up the story again. 'Do you remember those
golden darts, Ben? I mean, when Harry died?'
'Of course I remember them.'
'And the one we saw entering into the computer? In fact,
the computer showed it to us, right?'
Trask nodded, stepped away from the tables and beckoned
the others back. 'Let them breathe, for Christ's sake!' And to
Goodly: 'What about it?'
The way I see it,' Goodly answered, 'that dart or whatever it
was, it's been waiting in there. Before, the computer seemed
to be running off its own power; you'll remember, it wasn't
plugged in? Well, whatever it was that powered the display
that time - call it a "ghost", if you like, or an "echo" of Harry
Keogh — it must have just about burned itself out. But this
time it was tapping a legitimate power source, which boosted
what was left of it. So ... this is what we saw:
'The numbers stopped dead on the screen and, like David
said, formed into something solid - a golden dart! Oh, it was
faint as a wisp of yellow smoke - pretty insubstantial stuff -
but it was real. And then ... it left the screen!'
'It what?' Trask's frown knotted his forehead.
'It left the screen,' Goodly repeated. 'And it passed out
through the wall of the room and was gone.'
'Gone? Gone where?'
Geoff Smart the empath had arrived from somewhere.
Having heard what had been said, he now put in: 'I think
that's something you'll have to ask Nathan, when he comes
out of it.'
Trask glanced at the speaker. Smart was something less
than six feet tall, sturdily built, red-haired, crew-cut; he
looked like a boxer, aggressive, but was in fact mild-
mannered. What he lacked in looks found compensation in
what Trask called his 'withness': his intense ability to relate.
His talent was empathy, in which capacity he had worked
very closely with Nathan. It was odds-on that Smart would be
correct in his as yet unspoken estimate of what had occurred.
But unspoken or not, Trask read the truth in it anyway.
'You're telling me that this dart - went looking for him?'
Smart nodded. 'And found him! That's my bet. I think it's
been in there - in the computer - just waiting for him. Which is
why none of you ever messed with Harry's room all this time,
because you could sense it in there. Why not? You're all espers,
after all. But when Nathan got here, the thing revealed itself.
And given a power source at last, when Chung plugged it in .. .'
'.. . The dart went home.' Trask finished it for him. 'Went
home to Nathan.'
Again Smart nodded. That's how I see it, yes.'
'It finished the job that we had started on him,' Trask
continued almost to himself, staring in something approaching
awe at the young man on the second bed. 'It gave him the
Mobius Continuum and made him complete. But .. . this was
his first time ever? And still he was able to find his way back
here — and bring Zek with him?'
9
8
David Chung spoke up. 'He wasn't entirely on his own. I
mean, I think maybe I had something to do with it. Or rather,
that this had something to do with it.' He held up Nathan's
golden earring in the warped shape of a Mobius loop. 'A
vampire Lord called Maglore gave this to Nathan before he
escaped from Turgosheim. I think Maglore was using it to spy
on him. But as a locating device the earring works both ways.
Nathan must have homed in on it, and that's how he found his
way back here . ..'
Trask looked at them all standing around him. Looked from
face to face, and then at Zek Foener and the Necroscope Nathan
Keogh, lying tranquillized in their makeshift beds. Finally he
grinned and shook his head in wonder. And to Smart, Goodly
and Chung, he said, 'So, all three of you had a hand in it, right?
God, what would we do without you? What would any of us
anywhere do without you?' His steady gaze spread to encompass
the rest of his espers. 'And I do mean all of you.'
It was the finest compliment he had ever paid them ...
The plan was simple: Nathan had revisited Sir Keenan
Gormley's resting place to 'fix' its co-ordinates in his mind,
and also to tell the ex-Head of Branch that he was
experimenting with the Mobius Continuum. Now, having
returned to E-Branch HQ, he would attempt a Mobius jump to
Gormley's Garden of Repose. In the event that something
went wrong, David Chung would be ready with Nathan's sigil
earring to guide him home. And so that it would be more in
keeping as a genuine scientific experiment, other Branch
members would be in situ at Gormley's memorial, to time
any lapse between Nathan's jump from HQ and his arrival in
the Kensington cemetery.
All was now in place. It was 9.00 a.m., and the mid-city
temperature was already climbing; Nathan, Trask and a
majority of E-Branch agents were in the Ops room, every
single man of them with a film of sweat on his brow although
the air-conditioning was up full. Finally Trask said, 'Well, son,
and now it's all yours.'
Nathan smiled nervously, looked at them each in his turn,
and last but not least at Zek. She smiled reassuringly,
reminding him, 'You've done it once.'
He nodded. 'When I had to, yes.'
Trask was anxious and said, 'Look, if you want to postpone
this ...'
'No,' Nathan cut him off. 'Let it be now. There's no time
left. If I can do it, it will give me the edge I'll need back on
Sunside.'
David Chung stepped forward, grinned self-consciously,
and said, 'Nathan, I...' and stuck out his hand. They clasped
forearms in the Szgany fashion, and Chung stepped back
again. Then, as if at a signal, the espers backed away from
Nathan where he stood in the centre of the room.
And it was time.
Utter silence fell, and the expressions on all faces grew
tense, expectant. Nathan felt the force of their minds
concentrated upon him from where they stood in a circle but
at a safe distance. And feeling their eyes - their minds - on
him like that, and concerned that they might in some way
interfere with the process, he closed his own eyes to shut
them out. But he couldn't close his mind. Indeed, he must
open his mind -
— Open it, and conjure the numbers vortex!
And at once - instantaneously, so rapidly that the effect
almost unnerved him - Mobius equations commenced to
mutate on the screen of his metaphysical mind. It was the
vortex, and yet it was not the vortex. The numbers, characters
and symbols were the same but the pattern was not. There
was no actual whirlpool of numbers as such, but an ordered
march of evolving calculi and ever-changing equations, like
the emerging answer to a question of immense complexity,
unravelling onto the screen of some gigantic computer.
But the big difference was this: Nathan was no longer
ignorant, no longer innumerate. He now knew what he was
looking for, and how to control and use it. And suddenly it
1110
was there, and he froze it: the Big Equation, framed on the
screen of his mind like a page of print-out. Frozen there, yes,
for a single moment, before it dissolved and warped ... and
formed a door.
A Mobius door!
And Nathan sensed that it was here, that it was real. His
eyes snapped open and he saw it, there in the room with him,
a single pace away. And he knew he was the only one - the
only man in the world - who could see it.
The next scene would be remembered forever by everyone
who witnessed it. They were intent upon Nathan; they drank
in every aspect of him, his looks, dress, stance, even
something of his feelings, perhaps, until the picture of the
man entire was etched into their extra mundane minds:
Standing erect, head high, staring a little to one side, and
with his bottom jaw falling open a fraction as he became
aware of something far beyond the sensory range of the rest,
Nathan Keogh was an imposing young man of twenty or
twenty-one years. His simple clothes, of this world, were
nothing special, but the man inside them was. He was the
Necroscope, who talked to dead men in their graves and so
had access to all the secrets of the past — perhaps even of the
future — and yet had no real time to explore or use such
knowledge to his own best advantage. Not yet, anyway.
Nathan was something more than six feet tall. He had an
athlete's body: broad shoulders, narrow waist, powerful arms
and legs. His eyes might be very slightly slanted, or perhaps it
was only his frown, the look of rapt attention on his face as he
gazed at the mainly Unknown, which to the rest, with the
exception of Zek, was completely unknown. His nose was
straight and seemed small under a broad forehead flanked by
high cheek-bones. And over a square chin which jutted a
little, his mouth was full and tended to slant downwards a
fraction to the left. In others this might suggest cynicism, but
not in him. Rather, the opposite.
For, looking at Nathan, Ben Trask knew the 'truth' of him,
which had to be revenant of his father, Harry Keogh: a
natural innocence and compassion, the soulfulness of the
mind behind the face. So that without being Keogh's spitting
image, still the visitor 'felt' like him. These had been Trask's
thoughts the first time he'd laid eyes on Nathan, and nothing
had occurred to change them. As for what was happening
here: that could only confirm these thoughts beyond any
further doubt.
Nathan viewed the Mobius door and stepped forward. The
act was almost robotic, automatic, instinctive; as if he were
drawn to the door, as if the place beyond it lured him
irresistibly, which of course it did. Then, glancing just once at
Trask and the others -
- He took a final, unsteady but resolute pace . .. right out of
this world.
He was there - and he was gone! They saw his right foot,
calf, thigh, half of his body and face disappear, and the rest of
him follow into nothingness. The Necroscope Nathan Keogh
was no longer in the room. Just motes of dust drifting in the
sunlight through the window blinds, flowing into the vacuum
where he had been.
Easily stated, but astonishing to the witnesses. An agent
on the briefing podium almost forgot to say his magic word
into his handset, and only just remembered in time: 'Now!'
And the answer came back at once from the Kensington
crematorium: 'Now!'
The man on the podium frowned at his handset. 'Yes, now,
for Christ's sake! Why are you repeating me? He's just done it.
He's just gone in.'
And again the answer, in a brief burst of static: 'Who's
repeating you? I'm telling you! He's just come out! He's here,
now!'
No time-lapse at all, not to them. But to Nathan:
He stepped in through the metaphysical Mobius door, and
entered a place beyond all places, beyond all times, yet
encompassed by and encompassing space-time itself. It was
not the same as - could not be likened to - any experience
he'd ever known before. Even the first time he'd been ...
12 13
摘要：

THATATHINGLIKETHIScouldliftitsmassivebulkevenaninchfromtheearth,let;alonefly,seemedpatentlyimpossible;yethere!itspurtedagainstthestar-spatteredhorizonlikeIanalien,aerialslug.Justlookingatit,detailswerebrandedonNathan'sfeverishmind:|Ofgrey-mottledflesh,withfish-scalearmourgleamingmetallic-blueinstars...

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