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emptied head sucked me in and made his body mine . . . The great liar Faéthor
would have lived in there with me, but where's Faéthor now, eh? And where's
Thibor? And what of the Bodescu brat? And Janos?' Suddenly he sobbed and great
tears squeezed themselves out from under his luminous eyelids.
'And Brenda? Sandra? Penny? Am I cursed or blessed . . .?
'I had a million friends, which would be fine except they were all dead! They
"lived" in a dimension beyond life, where I could still talk to them and they
could still remember what it was to have been alive.
'There are many dimensions, planes of existence without number, worlds without
end. The myriad cone-shaped universes of light. And I know how they came
about. And Möbius knew it before me. Pythagoras might have guessed something
of it, but Möbius and I
know\
'Let there be . . .' (He screwed up his tightly closed eyes.)
'Let there be . . .' (Great slugs of sweat oozed out of his shuddering
lead-grey body.) 'Let there be . .
.'
Until Karen could stand his pain - for this could only be pain - no longer.
And clutching him where he writhed upon her bed, she begged him: 'Let there be
what, Harry?'
'Light!' he growled, and his furious eyes shot open, aglow with their own
heat.
'Light?' she repeated him, her voice full of wonder.
He struggled to sit up, gave in and let himself sink down into her arms. And
he looked at her, nodded and said, 'Yes, the Primal Light, which shone out of
His mind.'
Harry's eyes had always been weird, even before his vampire stained them with
blood, but now they were changing from moment to moment. Karen saw the fury go
out of them, then the fear, and watched fascinated as all alien vitality -
even the very passion of the
Wamphyri -died in them. For with only one exception the Necroscope was the
first of his sort to know and believe.
'His mind?' Karen repeated him at last, wondering at the softness of his face,
which was that of a child.
'The mind of ... God?' Even now Harry couldn't be absolutely certain. But near
enough. 'Of a
God, anyway,' he finally told her, smiling. 'A creator!'
And inside him, instinctively aware of looming defeat, his vampire shrank down
and was small, and perhaps bemoaned its fate: to be one with a man who desired
only to be ... a
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Brian Lumley - Necroscope 5 - Deadspeak man.
6
Sky Fight!
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From then on the Necroscope had been different; his parasite's ascendancy had
been reversed; once again his humanity had the upper hand. Karen to the
contrary: she tried to insist that he accompany her on raids into Sunside to
'blood' himself. Naturally he would hear nothing of it, and she would be
furious.
'But you're not blooded!' she'd growl at him as they made love. 'There's a
frenzy in the
Wamphyri which only blood will release, for the blood is the life! Unless you
take, you may not partake in your fullness. You must fuel yourself for the
fight, can't you see that?
How may I explain?'
But in fact there was no need for explanations; Harry knew well enough what
she meant.
He'd seen it in his own world. In boxers, the moment they draw blood: how the
first sight and smell of it inspires them to greater effort, so that they go
at their opponents with even more determination, and always hammering away at
the same wet, red-gleaming spot. He'd seen it in cats large and small: the
first splash of mouse-blood which turns a kitten to a hunter, or drives the
hunter to a frenzy. And as for sharks: nothing else in all the unexplored span
of their lives has half so much meaning for them!
But: 'I've eaten well,' he would answer.
And:
Hah!
he would hear her mental snort of derision. Of what? The flesh of pigs, and
roasted? What's that for fuel?'
'It fuels me well enough.' 'And your vampire not at all!'
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Brian Lumley - Necroscope 5 - Deadspeak
'Then let the bastard starve!'
But he would never allow himself the luxury of greater anger than that.
Sometimes, he would try to explain:
'What's coming is coming,' he told her. 'Didn't we see it in the Möbius
Continuum, in future time? Of all the lessons of my life, Karen, this is the
one I've learned the best: never try to change or avoid what's written in the
future, for it written. All we can hope for is a is better understanding of
the writing, that's all.'
Again her snort:
Hah!
And bitterly, 'And now who is beaten, even before the fight?'
'Do you think I don't feel tempted?' he said then. 'Oh, I do, believe me! But
I've fought this thing inside me for such a long time now that I can't just
let it win, no matter the cost. If I
succumbed to rage and lust - went out and took the life of a man, and drained
his blood -
what then? Would it give me the strength I need to destroy Shaithis and
Shaitan? Perhaps, but who would be next after them? How long before I started
the Wamphyri cycle all over again, but strong this time as never before, with
all the powers of a Necroscope to play with? And with my vampire's bloodlust
raging, what then? Do you think I wouldn't begin to look for a way back into
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my own world, to return there as the greatest plague-bearer of all time?'
'Perhaps you'd be a king there,' she answered. 'With me to share your
bone-throne.'
He nodded, but wryly. 'The Red King, aye, and eventually Emperor of a scarlet
dynasty.
And all of our undead lieutenants - our bloodsons, and those who got our
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