"Lumley, Brian - E-Branch 3 - Avengers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

One other problem with Korathi if Ben Trask found out about his coexistence with Jake, it might yet be a case of having to kill two birds with one stone - or, more properly, one man and a parasitic mind-thing with however many bullets were required to do the job.

But even that, self-preservation, wasn't Jake's only reason for quitting the Branch. In fact, he was driven to leave by some unknown but increasingly insistent force that demanded that he pursue his own or perhaps someone else's? -agenda. Moreover, the longer he remained with E-Branch, the greater the chance of a romantic attachment with Liz Merrick, with whom he'd developed a semi-telepathic rapport. The last thing Jake needed was to be close to someone he couldn't touch for fear of a dead vampire's voyeurism!

In Jake's absence, while he used the Mobius Continuum to pursue and harass Luigi Castellano's Mediterranean-based drug-runners, E-Branch had tracked down Malinari and Vavara to the tiny Greek island of Krassos. This time, as distinct from the Australian operation, Trask's task force was a very small one, and politically and economically (even climatically, in an El Nino year), there were huge problems to be overcome. But with the help of a Greek friend of theirs from an earlier adventure - an Athenian police inspector called Manolis Papastamos - finally E-Branch located and burned Vavara's monastery aerie, while her deadspawn garden was dynamited and buried in a series of explosive attacks.

But at the same time there had been two major setbacks. In London, Ben Trask's newfound love of only a few days' duration, the telepath Millicent Cleary, had been kidnapped by Szwart and his minions down into his Roman temple dedicated to dark gods in a forgotten cavern deep under the city. And in Krassos, Liz Merrick had been taken by Vavara when that mistress of evil made her escape from the blazing monastery. It had looked like the end for both of these brave women. But:

In Sicily, where Jake had finally rid the world of Castellano and his organization - and in the process discovered why he had felt so driven by his vendetta: that this had been part of a task begun but left unfinished, even unremembered, by the original Necroscope - the new Necroscope 'heard' Liz's desperate cry for help. Across all the many miles between them, Jake beard it. It was the rapport which existed between them that had boosted Liz's developing telepathic talent.

But when Jake required Korath to show him the Mobius equations in order that he might use the Continuum to find Liz and rescue her . . . then Korath had sprung his trap!

Korath had already discovered that Jake couldn't be bribed or threatened when his own life was at stake, for without Jake there would be


9


no Korath; so whatever else the vampire did, he would try to keep his host alive. But Jake would definitely be open to persuasion if another's life were at risk . . . and more especially if that other was the woman he loved. Now Jake knew Korath's real objective: access to his inner mind to be one with him, a part of him -and perhaps permanently!

Jake couldn't refuse . . .

Without Korath's help, Liz was as good as dead . . .

In order to view the equations, create a Mobius door, teleport through the Continuum and rescue Liz, Jake must first accept this dead but incredibly dangerous thing's conditions. And this despite Harry Keogh's warning: that he must never let a vampire into his mind . . .

But there was no longer any other way . . .

He went along with it, gave Korath access to the very core of his mind and welcomed him in 'of his own free will' . . . and only then discovered how he had been duped, that he would have been able to conjure the formula all along - if Korath had not been blocking his every attempt!

Too late now, though, to do anything about it, for Liz was in trouble on a small Greek island hundreds of miles away . . .



Jake was in the nick of time. In Krassos, he reunited Liz with her E-Branch colleagues, who then informed him of the plight of the telepath Millie Cleary in London. Using the Continuum, Jake returned Trask and company to their London HQ, where the espers combined their weird talents to locate Millie. Still alive, her psychic aura was well known to Liz who was then able to contact her and determine her precise whereabouts. Now it was up to the new Necroscope.

Taking Millie's coordinates from Liz's mind, Jake 'went' to the distraught telepath in her previously unknown temple prison. There he found not only Millie, but also Lord Szwart's terrible deadspawn garden, which (after a nightmarish confrontation with the 'Lord of Darkness' himself) he managed to destroy by bringing about an explosion of natural gas.

So now, and despite that the plans of the Wamphyri were in disarray, the main question had to be: how many of the invaders themselves had survived? Had Vavara died when her limo crashed, throwing her into the sea? Had Malinari been trapped below, in Vavara's garden, when it was buried? Had the metamorphic Szwart suffered the true death in a Roman temple whose destruction had even registered on the seismographs at Greenwich?

Now, too, with Ben Trask and his people in Jake's debt, it was time for a showdown. Time for Jake to give up bis secret - the fact that he harboured a vampire intelligence in his mind - and ask for E-Branch's help. But also time for him to demand to know the full story: why Trask



10


had been so reticent in his dealings with him, and what had been the problem with the previous Necroscope that the Head of Branch hadn't dared talk about it?

Harry Keogh's ability to raise the dead? But Jake had found that out for himself; indeed, it accounted for the grey streaks at his temples, and the hint of fearful, forbidden knowledge in his eyes. But he knew that wasn't the entire story. Perhaps one day the teeming dead - that Great Majority of human souls gone before -- might believe in Jake, have enough faith in him that he could ask them, but for now he was asking Ben Trask.