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

The dog-Lord Radu, her 'Master.' BJ.'s thoughts skipped this way and that contradicting themselves as they went...
Radu Lykan: he had become the bane of BJ.'s life and no small threat to Harry's. And she was still amazed at the speed of her conversion -- which was something she scarcely dared to think about even now. Bonnie Jean Mirlu, the guardian of Radu's lair for more than one hundred and seventy years. His 'minder,' as it were, whose every effort had been towards his safety and eventual resurrection.
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BJ. -- a traitor to his cause? Not yet, not physically, but the thought had been there, certainly. And not only the thought but now, with Harry, the motive, too.
What was it with Harry, she wondered? What was his attraction? He was only a man...yet the first man who had ever put his life in jeopardy for her, which had perhaps been the turning point So that now, even thinking such things, she in turn was putting hers in jeopardy for him!
But was it only Harry, his natural attractions, or was it a different kind of nature entirely? Was it her own nature, as the change more surely shaped her? Was it something -- some physical thing -- inside her, deflecting her devotion from Radu and pandering to her own gratification ?
And again her thoughts switched tracks, perhaps to escape the inevitable conclusion...
Radu, who had burned so brightly in her mind: like a god, the creator and father of his own species! A sleeping god, aye, and BJ. the one who watched over him in his undead tomb. That was how it had been for as long as she could remember, so that it was no easy thing to consider the termination of everything that she'd worked so long and so hard for, the efforts and aspirations of a lifetime. Not a life as long as B.J.'s had been, or one as long as it might yet be.
The past passed before her in short order
At first, as a girl, Radu's cause had been hard work; but in the course of a century it had become an almost unbreakable habit, and in the next fifty years a binding duty. She'd lived her entire life so that her Master might live his again; which now, if she would go on living, it seemed he must. For without the dog-Lord, sooner or later her enemies must surely take her out They knew her even now (she had more than enough proof of that) and would have moved against her long ago, but they were greedy and wanted her Master, too.
So much for the past and the present, but what of the future? What would it be -- how could it be -- without Radu? Would she even have a future? What with Harry? But he was only a man...and so she was back to that again!
So many uncertainties, and BJ.'s life in the balance. And Harry's too. Harry: why was he always there, in the back of her mind? She could do without him, didn't actually need him in her life...did she?
Well, did she?
Perhaps not...but it seemed certain she would need Radu; his guidance when he was up again. She would need to learn from him -all the secrets he had promised her -- in order to understand the nature of the Wamphyri, and so understand herself. No less important, she would need his protection. Thus for all her dithering, the dog-Lord was her safest route.
Safe? tfa/j/The truth of it was that she was Radu's thrall and feared
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him! She even feared her own wayward thoughts: that he might discover a germ of treachery in them -- or more than a germ -- and find her wanting.
So the dog-Lord's cause lived on -- if only through revulsion and fascination, fear and need -- and BJ. continued to be torn two ways: between loyalty to a nightmarish creature from an alien world and a past time, and love of a man who was very much of this world and ahead of his time. But it was true that her loyalty to Radu wasn't what it used to be, else there were no contest in the first place.
Oh, upon a time she had worshipped him with the fervour of a dozen thrall forebears before her, moon-children in their own right But that was all they had been: Radu's thralls and caretakers. While Bonnie Jean Mirlu...was Wamphyri!
There, it was out, she had come down to it at last Like the dog-Lord himself, B J. was of that same High Order of vampire, and must soon ascend to a Lady.
How this had come about was hard to say. By the regular, voluntary transfusion of BJ.'s blood into Radu's system? But surely that was impossible; she had always understood it to be a one-way transfer! And in all her time in Radu's service BJ. had never had physical contact with him, except through fluids which had already left her body. How could she possibly, while he lay in a vat of semi-solid resin? Ah, but even the Wamphyri couldn't know everything about their...condition. Its mysteries were diverse as life itself...Perhaps B J. was a throwback then, through genes as tenacious as the Wamphyri themselves, to Starside in a vampire world. Or could it be that Radu had inadvertently issued a spore, to surface gradually through the resin and pass into her system? But whichever, she knew she was possessed of a leech and that her parasite was rapidly maturing.
She knew, felt it as surely as she felt the powerful beat of her own heart, or the breath going in and out of her lungs. And if ever she doubted it, there was always the corroboration of her vampire metamorphosis, which she had had for full forty years now: the change at or near the full of the moon by which she'd be transformed into something else, something other than a woman. In addition, there was this burning desire in her: a need to howl, to run with the pack wild in the moonlight -- and to hunt! The feel of emotions, of passions that rose way above the merely human scale; a raging, ravaging love of life, and a lusting after the blood which is that life! Wamphyri passions all. And one other trait that identified her species like a fingerprint and made it undeniable: BJ.'s territorialism.
For almost two hundred years the mountains over the long, wooded valley of the Spey had been her territory, which she had protected. Her small 'pack' -- the girls she'd recruited to make them
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moon-children, replacing them as and when necessary -- were hers. Even the dog-Lord's cavern lair was more familiar to B.J. than it had ever been to him. To Radu it was merely a refuge, a hideaway, a tomb. But to B.J. -- an aerie, her seat, the secret heart of her operations when at last she ascended and became a fullblown Lady of the Wamphyri!
Perhaps it was an idea that had been in her head for some time, even decades, as the year of Radu's re-birth loomed ever closer. So that she had often wondered: How will it be when my Master is up again, when he is back? What will be allowed, and what disallowed? And she had thought: What if he should return to Romania, and take back his horseshoe mountains now that the Drakuls and Ferenczys are no longer there?
If so, he might even leave B J. behind, to watch over the lair in the Cairngorms and become a true Lady in her own right. Then he and she would be equals -- an incredible concept!
Once (oh, a long time ago), when she had been delirious from letting too much of her blood drain down into Radu's vat, she had even broached the subject. And now she remembered his answer
Ah, my Bonnie! But think, just think! If I am a dog-Lord, and the female equivalent of a vampire Lord is a Lady...what would that make you -- a bitch-Lady? Or would you be more bitch than Lady? And then his coughing, barking laughter had sounded in her mind...but behind his laughter, the deep and thoughtful rumble of a growl, too.
She hadn't understood, but he had brushed it aside, saying: Let it be, my Bonnie. For in any case it's all a hundred years away. But you, Wamphyri? First be a wench, then a witch -or a bitch, whichever...
That had been only the first time that Radu denied BJ.'s destiny, but there had been many times since. He hadn't wanted her to think along such lines, and B.J. believed she knew why. For in the dog-Lord's vision of a future world there wouldn't be room for other Lords -- or Ladies...
The headlights of an oncoming car flashed in BJ.'s eyes, and as the car swept by her mind was drawn back to the present. Giving herself a shake, she sat up straighter behind the steering wheel and tried to concentrate on where she was going, who she was going to, and why. The present was more important than the past, and what she had been thinking about was long before Harry's time. Now, even more than she worried about Radu's future or even her own, she worried about his...
Need him? What sense was there in fooling herself any longer? Of course she did, even loved her "wee man.' Madness, aye! And again BJ.'s mind went off at a tangent
Radu had warned her against contaminating Harry; she could seduce him by all means, but on no account let anything of herself get
into him. The dog-Lord wanted him pure, and of course she knew why. If Radu's vampire leech had failed to cure him of the plague in his blood, then he would attempt metempsychosis: the transfer of his entire personality into the body of another -- into Harry's body! For Radu had dreamed oneiromantic dreams of a Mysterious One, a 'Man-With-Two-Faces,' who would be there at the hour of his resurgence. Harry Keogh was just such a man, with survival skills worthy of the Wamphyri themselves.
In one way the idea was intriguing, while in others it was appalling. The thought of Harry with the awful strength of Radu appealed to B.J.; his longevity assured, and with the skills of a special agent, he would make the perfect mate. But she knew that would not be the way of it. For he would have Radu's mind and eventually his metamorphosis. And B J. knew how Harry would look then: as Radu Lykan looked now! He would be as clay in the dog-Lord's hands, to be rebuilt in Radu's image. And picturing her so-called 'Master' in his great vat -- his grotesque man-dog outline as seen through the semi-opaque resin crust -- even B J. shivered.
No, she couldn't even contemplate that, not for a moment. And yet in three months time, in the spring, she would have to do just exactly that. For that was when Radu had determined to be up. He might even be up now, but had wanted to see Harry in advance of the event He should have seen him three months ago, and barring the intervention of a Drakul lieutenant and thrall would have done so. It had been then that Harry Keogh had once again demonstrated his talent for survival -- and his feelings for Bonnie Jean, that he would protect her with his life -- for now those Drakuls were no more.
And half-way to Harry's place near Bonnyrig, B J. remembered what little she had seen of the Drakul attack, and how it had been afterwards...
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IV
LET SLEEPING DOG-LORDS LIE -
COVERT SURVEILLANCE -- AULD JOHN'S
REPORT -- THE LIMBO INTERFACE