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

At the head of carved steps, the yawning mouth in the face was the entrance to...what? A temple of sorts? A monastery, yes, but dedicated to what ancient and evil religion?
There came a distant tinkle of tiny golden bells, growing louder even as the hiss of lancing snow faded.
The scene faded with it, but the bells were louder still, sounding sinister now, as the Necroscope was once again transported, moved by his mind to yet another forbidden memory...
...He seemed to be in a glade where the light was dappled as it fell through the trees. B.J. was with him, and they were standing beside a car, looking back along a track like a leafy tunnel at a station-wagon standing some fifty feet away. Leaning on the vehicle's open front doors, a pair of red-robed Asiatics looked back at them. One of these 'priests' had a gun in his hand, and both had grins on their faces.
But there are grins and there are grins. In the dappling of the trees, their eyes were feral, full of yellow, shifting light. And their grins were vacuous, like those of crocodiles or hyenas, and full of malice!
Drakuls!
B.J. had a crossbow and knew how to use it. Her eyes were feral, too, as she aimed and squeezed the trigger.
There came a thok! sound, and a feeling -- entirely physical -- with it...
...Then B J.'s worried voice: 'Harry! Harry!' -- as he was jarred out of it, back into reality, however confused. His head had smacked against the bed's headboard when he'd jerked out of her arms and toppled over.
And: 'It's OK,' she told him. 'It's OK,' time and time again, as she lay his head back on the pillows, held his frantically if aimlessly waving arms, and riveted his pin-prick eyes with her own hypnotic ones -- until finally he began to believe her. That it was OK.
Then she was turning the lights down low -- her voice, too -- as she
began to reverse the process that had started within him, to once more separate his two levels of being...
In a little while it was as if Harry had been asleep; indeed he had been in a deep sleep induced by B J., in a night-dark place where there had been absolutely nothing except her voice insisting that it was OK. And as he came out of it, it was OK
Her cool fingers were on his brow, soothing away the last traces of fever; her body scent -- masked or mingling with some subtle hint of perfume -- was in his nostrils; her breasts were within easy reach where she kneeled over him.
What -- e said.
She gave a little snort and said, 'Some talker, you!'
Talker?' Harry was baffled, but he was him again. Or the him she wanted him to be, at least. As if to prove it, he instinctively lifted his hands and gentled the marble, hard-tipped globes of her free-hanging breasts.
She threw back her head, stretched to the sensation of his hands on her, and sighed, *We were to have a "real talk" -- but you fell asleep! Some talker, you. And some lover!'
'Knackered,' he said. 'I must have been. But I'm OK now. Except...' He paused and frowned. She had left him in switched-on mode. He knew about her, Radu, everything she wanted him to remember, but everything else was safely back in limbo. It had to be that way, at least until she could check that her hypnotic adjustments had taken.
'Except?' she prompted him.
'Just one thing,' he said. 'Just one...'
'Real talk?'
'Yes,' he nodded, stood up (a little shakily), and quickly stripped out of his pants and shirt. 'Real talk -- about Radu.'
'Oh?' B J. tried to remain calm. Despite the fact that his actions as he prepared for love had cushioned the impact of his query, still his words had seemed cold and calculating.
'He's in his vat, deep in a resin bath -- yes?'
'In a sleep of centuries,' she nodded.
'But hell be up soon?'
Again her nod. 'Has to be if I -- we -- are to survive. We can't fight his enemies on our own. Afterwards I...don't want to know about Radu. Only about us.' That last was straight from the heart. If only it could be so.
He shook his head. This isn't only about Radu, B.J. It's also about you.'
'About me?'
'He's in his vat, deep in the resin. He hasn't...touched you?' It
Brian Lumley
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was as if those soulful eyes of his were looking right into her. Soulful but bottomless, and sometimes as cold as some unfathomed ocean floor. B.J. thought she knew what Harry meant, and believed she understood his concern. He was asking if Radu was more than merely her Master, wondering if perhaps he'd been her lover, too. And maybe, in one sense, B J. was right to interpret his question thus.
But in fact it was deeper than that, and there were parallels here that only the Necroscope recognized, which he could never explain to B.J. because he'd been forbidden to do so. For example: the necromancer Boris Dragosani had also been the guardian of a vampire's tomb in his time, and at first he, too, had been an 'innocent' in his fashion. Dragosani's fate, however...
...Was something Harry must steer clear of as best he possibly could. He daren't think too deeply about it, despite that it had prompted his question. For the idea simply wasn't acceptable, it wasn't tenable, not in tandem with BJ.'s situation.
Touched me?' She contrived to look puzzled. 'But Radu was down in the resin centuries before I was born, like a great fly trapped in amber! How could he possibly touch me, except in his capacity to speak to me through his mentalism?'
It was the truth, and it was a lie. A white lie. And what difference did it make anyway? For it was the cure.
Harry expelled air in a great sigh, as if he'd been holding it in his lungs forever. A single word came bursting like a bubble from his lips: 'Innocent...!' And B J. knew he meant her innocence, the only facet of her post-hypnotic facade that she'd forgotten to reinstate. So Harry had done it for her. It had been that important to him.
Now he was satisfied, and so was she. She switched him off with four simple words, 'Harry, mah wee man,' then switched him on again, with her body...
Afterwards they slept, but the Necroscope's dreams were uneasy and from time to time lurched into grotesque nightmares.
Twice in the night he started awake, fancying that BJ.'s breasts were too many, and that they felt like flaccid, hairy dugs in his hands...
THE WATCHER UNMASKED
It was a late night for Inspector George lanson, and an early morning. A late night because he contacted Police Central and requested a vehicle registration check on the silver-grey car, then waited up until he had the answer; which had taken all of an hour, because they were busy. And an early morning because he didn't sleep too well (too much on his mind) and wanted to do an occupancy check first thing on Number 3, The Riverside.
What was on his mind was B.J., the fact that it was her car old Angus had followed. But why? Surely the old fool knew better than to go carrying out his own investigations on B.J. and her wine bar? He had his own kind of investigations to do, for God's sake! And then there was that look on his face when he'd driven away from the place on the river. If there was an explanation for that -- well, for the life of him the Inspector couldn't think what it might be.
At 9:15 a.m. he phoned B.J. at the wine bar. He couldn't be sure she would be home yet, or even if she planned on returning home today, but he had to try anyway. He got her first go, and without ado asked, 'B.J., didn't you fancy someone might be following you last night?'
He heard her suck in her breath -- and then something that he really hadn't wanted to hear 'Last night?' (All innocence.) 'When, last night?'
So, did she have something to hide? 'Come, come, B.J. When you left the wine bar -- and went to see Mr Keogh?'
'Oh!' But in any case, B.J. had realized her mistake the moment she made it. Stupid to play dumb with lanson. He was no fool, this one.