"Lumley, Brian - Vampire World 2 - The Last Aerie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

As for Ben Trask, he reckoned they all owed Harry
Keogh something, the whole world. It would have been so easy for the Necroscope to release the plague of vampirism which he carried within himself upon all humanity and be emperor here, with an entire planet for his empire. But instead he'd let them hound him into exile in an alien world of vampires, where he would be just one more monster. Harry had let it happen, yes, before the Thing inside him could take full control.
But whenever Trask thought back on that, on the alien passions which had governed Harry - how he'd looked the last time Trask saw him, in the garden of his burning house not far from Edinburgh - then his own mixed emotions would sort themselves out in short order, and he would know it was for the best:
The lower half of Harry's figure had been mist-shro-:ded, visible only as a vague outline in the opaque, milky swirl of his vampire mist ... but the rest of him had been all too visible. He'd worn an entirely ordinary suit of dark, ill-fitting clothes which seemed two sizes too small for him, so that his upper torso sprouted from the trousers to form a blunt wedge. Framed by a jacket held together by one straining button, the bulk of Harry's rib-cage had been massively muscular.
His white, open-necked shirt had burst open down the front, revealing the ripple of his muscle-sheathed ribs and the deep, powerful throb of his chest; the shirt's collar had looked like a crumpled frill, insubstantial around the corded bulk of his leaden neck. His flesh was a sullen grey, dappled lurid orange and sick yellow by leaping fire and gleaming moonlight. And he towered all of a foot taller than Trask, quite literally dwarfing him. But his face --
- That had been the absolute embodiment of a waking nightmare.' His halogen Hallowe'en eyes which had
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seemed to drip sulphur. And his ... grin? A grin, was that what it had been? Maybe, in an alien vampire world called Starside on the other side of the Mdbius Continuum. But here on Earth it had been the rabid slavering grimace of a great wolf; here it was teeth visibly elongating, curving up and out of gleaming gristle jaw-ridges to shear through gums which spurted splashes of hot ruby blood; here it was a writhing of scarlet lips, a flattening of convoluted snout, a yawning of mantrap jaws.
That face ... that mouth ... that crimson cavern of stalactite, stalagmite teeth, as jagged as shards of white, broken glass. What? Like the gates of hell? That and worse, for Harry had been Wamphyri!
Trask started massively as Anna Marie English, standing on his right, grasped his elbow and needlessly, breathlessly stated, 'Sir, he's moving away from us.'
She was right, as everyone there could see. The hologram of the corpse was getting smaller, falling or receding faster and faster towards a multi-hued, nebulous origin or destiny out of which the blue, green, and red ribbons of neon light reached like writhing tentacle arms to welcome it. The smoking, rotating figure dwindled; it became a mote, a speck; it disappeared!
And where it had been -
- An explosion! A sunburst of golden light, expanding silently, hugely, awesomely! So that the thirteen observers gasped and ducked down; and despite that it was in their group mind, they turned away from the blinding intensity of the glare and what flew out of it. All except Ben Trask, who shielded his eyes and shrank down a little but continued to watch - because he must know the truth. Trask, and also David Chung, who cried his astonishment, staggered and almost fell. But they had seen, both of them:
Those myriad golden splinters speeding outwards from the sunburst, angling this way and that, sentient, seeking, disappearing into as many unknown places. Those - pieces - of the Necroscope, Harry Keogh? All that remained of him? And as the last of them had zipped by Trask and vanished silently out of view - out into the corridor, apparently - so the streamers of blue, green and red metaphysical light had blinked out of being, returning the briefing room's illumination to normal.
Except ..". that last golden dart had seemed so real. Why, Trask could have sworn that it had actually materialized right here in the Ops room, sentient and solid, before speeding out into the corridor and disappearing from view!
And now, within the room, thirteen startled, gaping, extraordinary human beings. But perfectly ordinary in comparison to what they had witnessed ...
Trask forced himself into action, stepped across the room to where David Chung was still mazed, staggering. He took hold of him, steadied him, snapped, 'David, are you all right?'
'No - yes,' the other answered. 'But he isn't.' He licked dry lips and closed his slack mouth, half-pointed and flapped a hand towards the centre of the room where the espers were moving about once more.
'Was it Harry?' Trask breathed.
Chung sighed heavily and collapsed a little into himself. 'Oh, yes. It was Harry, Ben. It was him.'
The end of him?'
Chung nodded, opened his trembling hand and showed the other what he was holding: a pig-bristle hairbrush whose oval wooden plaque fitted snug in his palm. For a moment Trask was mystified ... then he understood. It was Chung's talent: he was a sympathetic
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tracker, a locator. Following the Bodescu affair Harry Keogh had stayed here at E-Branch HQ for a month, filling in the blank spaces. For a time he'd even considered taking on the position of Head of Branch. But with the loss of his wife and son, the Necroscope's world had collapsed and he'd moved on, become a recluse up in Scotland. The hairbrush had been his, one of several items he'd left behind.
'I've kept it all this time, since I was first recruited into the Branch,' Chung now explained to the other espers as they gathered round. This and one or two other pieces which were his. Six months ago, when the Russians reported Harry's escape through the Perchorsk Gate, I took out his things and tried to locate him. I mean, I obviously couldn't locate him, but it was just the same as when Jazz Simmons went through: I knew that Harry wasn't here, not in this world, but he wasn't dead either. He was in Starside.'
'And now?' It was Anna Marie English, worrying for her world, for herself.
Chung shook his head. 'Now he isn't.'
'Not in Starside?' one of the younger espers gasped. 'You mean he's come back? He's here?'
Again Chung shook his head, showed them the brush in his hand. 'This piece of wood, these few bristles, meant something, told me something. They told me that the Necroscope was alive; if not here, alive somewhere. Only let me pick up this brush or Harry's other things, and I knew it. Now ... it's just a hairbrush, no longer alive. And neither is Harry Keogh. He died a few moments ago, somewhere. And we all saw it.'
'Harry's dead.' Ben Trask made no bones of it. 'What we've just witnessed was him. Somehow, he found a way to let us know, give us peace of mind. That's how I see it, anyway.'
lan Goodly came in with a pair of late arrivals: another esper and the Branch's Minister Responsible. The Minister was in his mid-forties, young for his job, but had a mind sharp as a knife. He was small and dapper, with keen blue eyes, and dark hair brushed back and plastered down. His blue suit was fashionable in the Corridors of Power; somehow his dress as a whole marked him as a person of class. In no way psychically talented, still the Minister was Branch; he too had felt the call - something had lured him here -until a moment ago, when it had stopped.
While Trask told the Minister what had happened, Goodly fetched coffee. Then for an hour, two, the entire group sat around and remembered Harry. They said very little but were satisfied just to be there. And despite that they should be jubilant, they weren't. And for all that a great plague had passed them by, most of them felt they'd lost a friend.
David Chung had put Harry's brush in his pocket; every now and then he would reach in and touch it with his fingertips. But it was just a brush now, wood and glue and bristle, inanimate, without being.
And that's how it would stay for sixteen long years ...
A fortnight later Zek Foener called from her Greek island home in Zante. She'd put it off until it was unbearable, but in the end had to speak to Trask. 'Are we friends again, Ben?'
For all that she couldn't see him, he nodded and smiled. He knew that Zek would sense it, for she was a powerful telepath. 'After that job we did on Janos Ferenczy's creatures in the Med? We'll always be friends, Zek.'
'Despite that I helped him in the end?' Her voice was
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a little distorted by the line but her anxiety was real enough. Trask's talent was working for him, so that her sincerity was as tangible as the steady beat of his own heart.
He shrugged, which she would also sense, and said, 'You're not the only one who helped Harry, Zek.'
'You, too? I somehow thought you would.'
'I took a chance,' he told her. 'If it had gone the other way ... I could have ended up the biggest traitor mankind has ever known! By now there might have been a new world order.'
'I know. I thought much the same thing. But it was Harry, after all.'
'Half of it was, anyway,' Trask answered.