"Lumley, Brian - Necroscope - The Lost Years Volume 2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

recognized and was helpless to fight against his dependency, his desire for BJ., and the fact that he hadn't seen her for over a week now.
Then the howling was gone into limbo (along with a dream he knew he should remember) and all that remained was the fact that BJ. had called and he'd missed it. As indeed he'd missed BJ. herself for the last six or seven days. Too long by far.
He blinked his eyes, rubbed at them, forced himself more fully awake. Which wasn't easy. His mind was buzzing with half-memories, dreams and fancies -- and fantasies? Almost as if he hadn't woken up at all. Or wished he hadn't
Six or seven days...
Well, the last couple of days without her were only to be expected; it was her time, when she would -- or should -- have been up in the Highlands doing her own thing, hunting and living off the land. What even in this weather?...But the Necroscope didn't even give that a second thought It was one of the many things he wasn't allowed to question, something that might from time to time register, until his mind made an automatic compensation. For until she said otherwise, BJ. was 'an innocent.' And even then -- despite that in a hidden place inside he knew something of who and what she really was -- still Harry was in thrall to her, beguiled by her, in love with her.
He shivered, because in his hidden place he did know what was behind her, yet took pleasure in her voice -- even her recorded voice -- and thrilled to her reality. For his dependency was as much physical as mental: the addiction of her body, her companionship, and the fact that she was all he had.
...All he had, yes.
It was true, and the Necroscope felt obliged to admit it he seemed to be shutting himself down. He'd long since severed his connections with his friends at E-Branch -- his only real, living friends -- cut himself off almost entirely from the real world, and even neglected the dead. Including his beloved Ma.
Something of his dream came back again, fleetingly -- only to dissolve into atoms a moment later.
As for Brenda...but who was Brenda? She'd been gone so long now that her face, its memory, was only a blur. Harry only remembered her as she had been: as a girl, his childhood sweetheart. And the child, Harry Jr...would be four years old now! He'd be walking, talking, and doing...whatever he did. Except that wouldn't be what other infants did. Not him, for just like his father he was a Necroscope, too. He could talk to the dead, and knew all the secrets of the Mttbius Continuum.
'He can go wherever he wants,' the Necroscope told himself out loud. They can hide...anywhere!' Or be anywhere, as long as he
wasn't there. And he knew that if they wanted to be found he and the whole professional army of investigators that he had bought would have found them. Well, they obviously didn't want to be found, and so were gone. But because it was his obsession now, he had to keep on looking.
It was unreal, everything -- except BJ., whose number he was already dialling.
/ chase around after her like a puppy, he thought -- then laughed, however drily, because it seemed such an accurate analog or simile -then stopped laughing, because he didn't know why it seemed accurate. A puppy?
The phone was answered by one of her girls: Zahanine, he recognized her slow, sultry voice. 'BJ.,' he said, and Zahanine didn't even ask who it was. Then B J. was on the phone.
'Harry?' (That might be a note of anxiety in her voice.)
'Aye,' he mimicked the brogue he knew she affected. 'It's yere wee man.' (Yere wee fucking puppy.)
And after a moment's thoughtful silence: 'But are you...angry about something?" The note of anxiety had turned to curiosity now.
Harry shook his head, blinked his eyes, thought Well, am I? Or was he just blaming her (again) for something that wasn't her fault? Something he didn't understand but which couldn't be her fault anyway, because she was innocent?
'No,' he said, 'not angry. Just fucked up.'
Another pause, and: 'Something you want to talk about?"
'Radu,' he said, almost automatically. The word, or name, slipped off his tongue as easily as that popped from the forbidden limbo of subconscious mind into his real thoughts like a champagne cork teased too far, too soon. And for the life of him, Harry couldn't understand why he'd said it! But deep down inside, something churned. The champagne, he thought But long since turned to vinegar, to bile. And now he felt sick to his stomach, still without knowing why.
On the other end of the line, B J. was in the bar. Two of her girls were with her, tidying up. Catching their attention, she put a finger to her lips. And when they were still:
'Forget what you just said to me, Harry,' she told him, as naturally as she could. 'You're not to talk about that or even think about it If it's bothering you, you can tell me why when you see me. In an hour's time, maybe? Is that OK?'
'See you tonight?' he replied after a while, sounding distant and dazed. 'I've...I've really missed you, B J.'
And with that she believed she knew what had happened. It had been some time since she last reinforced the post-hypnotic commands separating his two levels of consciousness, and a week
Necroscope: The Lost Years -- Vol. II
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Brian Lumley
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since she'd had contact with him. But this was no ordinary man; left to its own devices, Harry's mind had been trying to bridge the divide. However slowly, things were beginning to leak from one level to the other. If the process should speed up and the two flow directly into each other...it was possible he could even go into shock, catatonic withdrawal.
Harry, a cabbage! BJ.'s Harry!
No, she corrected herself, Radu's Harry, Her Master's Man-With-Two-Faces. And her tilted eyes narrowed to feral slits as a growl sounded deep in her throat.
'B.J.?' Harry's voice sounded tinny and more distant yet, sad, lonely, and lost. Suddenly fearful -- for him and nothing else, despite that there was plenty to be worried about -- she said, '111 be with you as soon as possible. So why don't you just take it easy now and rest, and wait for me?'
'Yes,' he said. 'OK.' And a moment later, 'B. J.?'
ХYes?'
'I think I may have been dreaming.'
'Well dream together,' she promised. 'Soon.' And she listened for the click as he put the phone down...
Driving west for Harry's place along lonely country roads outside the city, B J. thought: So, it's finally beginning to get to him. He's wondering what's wrong with him and openly admitting that he's fucked up. Well so he is, because of me. But at least he has something, someone, to believe in, to hang onto -- even if it's only me! But what do I have?
And like a stab of pain felt deep inside, coming out as a cry: Oh, Harry, mah wee man! You can take it from me, ignorance is bliss! Knowing what's happening could be far worse than not knowing, and it wouldn't solve or change a thing. It hasn't for me, anyway. Hah! And you think that your're fucked up?
It was true, she was. And just as she had done it to Harry, so he had done it to her. Differently, but in the end it worked out the same. Not so long ago, he'd been just one small part of a big equation, one small cog in a vast wheel. Now he was a big spanner in the works, the one part of the equation that refused to work out Harry's mind was a computer, and she had put a bug in it. Two bugs, in fact One was a lie and the other was love. He had become her personal toy. But the love-bug had been virulent and it had escaped back into BJ.'s system. Harry Keogh, her wee man? Not any longer, and not for quite some time now.
'Mah wee man' was the phrase she used to activate Harr/s post-hypnotic implants and change his mental 'mode.' Employing it as an opening, she could tell him -- impress upon his mind -- anything she desired him to know. And before closing she could delete anything
deemed undesirable for him to know or remember. But as well as a trigger, the phrase now seemed to be mutating into a term of endearment, and in so doing it had lost some of its potency. B J. had to reinforce it for his sake as much as hers, before his two halves clashed and destroyed each other.
Her Master Radu Lykan had once told B.J. that he would need a strong man in the hour of his resurgence, not a sot That was after she had used an ancient, addictive wine to weaken Harry's resistance. And the dog-Lord had further pointed out that there were other ways to enthrall a man than by poisons. He had meant her body, her woman's wiles, which in the course of two hundred years she had learned to use very efficiently.
But love and sex are two-edged swords, and Harry Keogh was something of a beguiler in his own right. A Vee man?' Scarcely that! For it now seemed more than likely that he was indeed the man of Radu's dreams of the future, in whom the dog-Lord might yet rise up again, resurrected from his vat of resin. All well and good...if B J. didn't want Harry for herself.
But she did. Except...nothing was that straightforward; everything was convoluted; BJ. was 'fucked up,' yes.
Without the gradual encroachment of the Ferenczys and the recent declaration of war on the part of the Drakuls (if those red-robed Tibetan vampires had not chosen to come on the scene at this late and difficult hour), then things might be easier and BJ.'s choice less fraught...
(Her choice? Between Radu's resurrection and Harry's continuity? To even consider that there was a choice seemed sheerest madness! Yet she considered it! Oh, she was fucked up, all right!)
...But at last the enemy had shown his hand, and BJ. had realized her own weakness. For all that she was a werewolf she was no warrior, not by Wamphyri standards. As for Harry Keogh: while he would appear to be both a skilful warrior and tactician -- or maybe a reckless madman? -- still he was merely a man. Despite that he'd been lucky once, BJ. knew that in the long run he would be no match for the Wamphyri. Dealing with enemies as terrible as Drakuls or Ferenczys was to have been (and would still be, surely?) the dog-Lord's province.