Brian Lumley - Necroscope V - Deadspawn

His lope was more wolf — more alien — than human, and he covered ground like the shadow of a fast-fleeting cloud under the moon. But as he entered the trees on a diagonal course calculated to intercept Johnny Found and his captive, he knew he'd made a mistake. The trees and the shrubs beneath them were an ornamental screen designed to separate the two car parks, and as such they were protected by high wire-mesh fences. Precious seconds were lost as Harry came up against a fence, cursed and conjured a Möbius door. In another moment he cleared the belt of trees and emerged on the perimeter of the hard-standing…

… Where a reeling, gagging figure collided with him and brought him to a halt! It was the esper. He knew Harry at once — sensed the awesome power of his metaphysical mind, that and the vampire in him — and threw up a hand to ward him off. The hand was bloody as the gaping wound in his cheek, where Johnny Found had torn a third of his face away.

Harry held him upright, snarled at him, then thrust him toward one of the paths through the trees. 'Go and get help, quickly, before you bleed to death!'

And as the esper choked out something inarticulate and staggered away, the Necroscope reached out with his vampire awareness to cover the entire park. He found three people at once: Penny, unconscious; Johnny Found, furious and bloody; and the policeman, dead where Pound's weapon had crashed through his ear to gouge into his brain.

Harry pinpointed their location, conjured a door and ran through it… and out again at the rear of the Frigis Express truck, where even now Johnny was slamming home the bolt on the roller door. At his feet, the policeman lay crumpled in a pool of his own blood, the left side of his face a raw red pulp.

The necromancer had taken the policeman's gun; he sensed Harry's presence, whirled, aimed and fired! Harry was coming head-on; he felt a colossal blow as the bullet smashed into his collarbone on the right side, spun him round and hurled him down on the tarmac.

Then, startled by the explosion and the flash, Johnny was fumbling the gun and dropping it. Stumbling across Harry, he kicked at him where he lay curled up in his pain; and running past the trailer toward his truck's cab, the madman raved, cursed and laughed all in one.

The pain in Harry's shoulder was a living thing that took hold of his flesh with white-hot pincers and twisted it, causing him to moan his agony. And he thought: Bastard thing in my blood, my mind! Your fault, you berserk, headlong, idiot! Very well, you've caused me to be hurt — now heal me!

Found was in his cab, starting up and revving the engine. Air-brakes hissed and the reversing lights blazed crimson to match Harry's eyes or the jelly coagulating on the side of the dead policeman's head. Racked by pain, the Necroscope saw the huge bulk of the truck jerk, shudder and start backing up; in another moment a pair of its twinned wheels skidded viciously, then gripped and dragged the policeman's body under. Blood and guts gushed as the wheels lifted up barely an inch and the weight of the truck squeezed the corpse's innards like toothpaste from a tube.

He's lucky he's dead! Harry dazedly, unthinkingly thought. It's something he wouldn't want to happen while he was still alive! They were instinctive thoughts, shocked out of him by the squelching eruption of brains and shit and flailing guts, but they were also deadspeak and the policeman heard him.

Exhaust gases belched in Harry's face where he rolled desperately from the path of the reversing truck; the scarlet-dripping wheels missed him by inches; but through all the roar and the stink and the mess on the tarmac he heard and was riveted by the policeman's answer:

But I did feel it! And God, it was like dying twice! And Harry's blood — even his blood — froze as he remembered who was driving the truck: Johnny Found, necromancer, whose actions his victims could feel even as the teeming dead had once felt Dragosani's!

Then the air-brakes hissed again and the truck jerked to a halt, shuddered, started forward, turned and rumbled away towards the exit. Johnny Found was making his escape, with Penny aboard. But: No, you fucking don't! Harry fixed the truck's location in his mind, got to his knees, toppled through a Möbius door and out again into the refrigerated trailer. It was dark in there but that was nothing to the Necroscope. He saw Penny, crawled to her, put his left hand under her head and drew it into his lap. She opened her eyes and looked into his where they blazed.

'Harry, I… I didn't stay in the diner,' she whispered.

'I know,' he growled. 'Did he hurt you?'

'No.' She shook her head, but weakly, 'I… I think I just fainted.'

Harry had no time to waste. Not now, for his blood was up. Literally! 'Cling to me,' he said.

She did as she was told and Harry let the Möbius equations roll across the computer screen of his mind. One moment later and Penny felt the awesome immensity of the Möbius Continuum, and in the next gravity returned where they fell prone on to Harry's bed in the house outside Bonnyrig. 'This time stay here!' he told her. And before she could even sit up he was gone again…

In the operations room at E-Branch HQ, Millicent Cleary and the Minister Responsible sat with David Chung, who was also the Duty Officer, at one end of a large desk. The desk was equipped with a radio receiver, a radio telephone, standard telephones, blown-up Ordnance Survey maps of England under illuminated plastic, and a tray containing various small items of property belonging to Branch agents in the field. Spotlights in the ceiling were concentrated on the desk, turning it and its immediate surroundings into an island of light in the large room's comparative darkness.

Millicent Cleary had just a moment ago received a brief telepathic message from Paxton at the house near Bonnyrig, stating that the assault team was in position. Keogh and the girl had been back, briefly, but Paxton was sure that the Necroscope was no longer in the house. Similarly Frank Robinson, the spotter who was Paxton's partner on the job, believed one of the two was still there; since there was no noticeable disturbance of the psychic 'ether', he would guess it was the girl. Keogh must have used the Möbius Continuum to drop her off at the house before moving on. If there'd been any indication that the Necroscope himself was still in there, then the team would have maintained ESP silence. But since he wasn't… Paxton was eager to learn what was happening.

Cleary passed the mind-message on and the Minister Responsible gave a snort. 'I've come to the conclusion that you're right about Paxton,' he said. 'All of you. I get the feeling he won't be satisfied until he's running the world!'

Cleary frowned and nodded. 'Ruining it, you mean!' she said, sourly; then quickly added, 'Er… sir! But we are right, and you don't have to be psychic to know it. He's a menace. We're lucky Ben Trask is up there keeping an eye on him. Do you want me to tell him anything?'

The Minister looked at her — also at Chung where he busied himself touching and concentrating on his many contact sigils in their tray, fathoming the whereabouts, mood and feelings of the agents in the field — and mentally reviewed the situation:

The telepath Trevor Jordan (who by all rights and natural laws should be a small heap of ashes in a vase), was on a night train heading for London via Darlington. Two E-Branch agents were on the same train and didn't anticipate too much trouble, even though it was a pretty safe bet that Jordan was a vampire. They were equipped with powerful automatic weapons, and one of them had a small but deadly crossbow. Another man was on his way to the mainline station in Darlington to give them a hand. He had a car, and in its boot a flamethrower.