Bloodwars

by Brian Lumley

  Bloodwars

  Series: Necroscope: Vampire World [3]

  Published: 1995

  Rating: ★★★★

  Tags: Vampires, Science Fiction Fantasy, Horror, Fiction - Horror, Fiction, Science fiction, Horror - General

  Vampiresttt Science Fiction Fantasyttt Horrorttt Fiction - Horrorttt Fictionttt Science fictionttt Horror - Generalttt

  * * *

  SUMMARY:

  The twin sons of Harry Keogh, the Necroscope, have taken very different paths. Nathan as his father's powers--to talk to the dead, to travel instantly through space. Like Harry, this new Necroscope fights evil wherever he finds it.His twin, Nestor, has become the most horrifying evil imaginable: a shape-shifting, blood sucking Wamphyi Lord! Devoid of human feeling, Nestor and his companion, the beautiful, malevolent Wratha the Risen, hunt without mercy.The battle between the brothers mirrors the war between vampires and humans. On mankind's side: terrible weapons brought from Earth by Nathan's allies. But the vampires are numerous and powerful, and neither side has a clear advantage...until Nathan and his legions of the dead discover a way to destroy the vampires forever.In the midst of a titanic battle, Nathan makes a desperate move that forever changes millions of lives and two worlds: the vampire world...and earth. The twin sons of Harry Keogh, the Necroscope, have taken very different paths. Nathan as his father's powers--to talk to the dead, to travel instantly through space. Like Harry, this new Necroscope fights evil wherever he finds it.His twin, Nestor, has become the most horrifying evil imaginable: a shape-shifting, blood sucking Wamphyi Lord! Devoid of human feeling, Nestor and his companion, the beautiful, malevolent Wratha the Risen, hunt without mercy.The battle between the brothers mirrors the war between vampires and humans. On mankind's side: terrible weapons brought from Earth by Nathan's allies. But the vampires are numerous and powerful, and neither side has a clear advantage...until Nathan and his legions of the dead discover a way to destroy the vampires forever.In the midst of a titanic battle, Nathan makes a desperate move that forever changes millions of lives and two worlds: the vampire world...and earth.

  THAT A THING LIKE THIS could lift its

  massive bulk even an inch from the earth, let

  alone fly, seemed patently impossible; yet here

  it spurted against the star-spattered horizon like

  an alien, aerial slug. Just looking at it, details

  were branded on Nathan’s feverish mind:

  Of grey-mottled flesh, with fish-scale armour

  gleaming metallic-blue in starshine … of gasbladder

  clusters bulging like strange wattles or nests of morbid

  tumors from both sides of thesegmented, flexible spine,

  constantly shrinkingand expanding, regulating the monster’s

  balance … of cartilage hooks, sawing appendages,and chitin

  grapples in the shape of crab claws.But over and above everything

  else the evilpseudo-intelligence of its swivelling, searchingsaucer

  eyes in that vastly sloping prow of askull!

  Only fifty yards away now, it had spotted the three men. Propulsors blasting, the vampire warrior lowered its head and zeroed in on them!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Brian Lumley was born in the coal-mining village of Horden, County Durham. At the age of twenty-one, he was called up for National Service and was assigned to the Royal Military Police. He subsequently joined up and in his twenty-two years of service travelled widely.

  A devotee of horror and fantasy fiction all his life, he began writing while still in the army in the 1960s and his first stories were published in America. His early influence was that of H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos cycle of fiction. After returning to civilian life in 1981, Brian Lumley became a full-time writer and began working on his longer, more ambitious novels: first the Psychomech trilogy, then individual novels such as Demogorgon and House of Doors, culminating in the highly original series of bestselling vampire novels, the five Necroscope books. Blood Brothers and The Last Aerie, also published in ROC, are the first two volumes of this new trilogy, Vampire World, which is a spin-off from the Necroscope series. Bloodwars is the last volume in the trilogy. Fruiting Bodies and Other Fungi and Return of the Deep Ones and Other Mythos Tafes are also published in the ROC series.

  With more than thirty books and over a hundred short stories published in English, Brian Lumley has also had his work translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese and, most recently, Polish and Czech. His story ‘Fruiting Bodies’ won the British Fantasy Award for the Best Short Story and he has also been the recipient of Fear Magazine’s Award for Necroscope III: The Source.

  BRIAN LUMLEY’S VAMPIRE WORLD VOLUME THREE

  BLOODWARS

  A ROC BOOK

  For Steve Jones.

  Thanks for giving me the

  magic words. You’ll note

  that I gave them back

  … to Zek!

  ROC

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London WB 5TZ, England Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published 1994 13579 10 8642

  Copyright © Brian Lumley, 1994 All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Roc is a trademark of Penguin Books Ltd

  Filmset by Datix International Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

  Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic

  Set in 9.5/11.5 pt Monophoto Melior

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject

  to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

  re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s

  prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in

  which it is published and without a similar condition including this

  condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  PART ONE

  Earth

  I

  Outside, Inside

  Returning from an early lunch at an Indian restaurant just a five-minute walk away from E-Branch HQ in the heart of London, Ben Trask sweated inside and out. Inside, from the curry which was still searing his mouth and throat; outside, from the unusually warm May weather. The noonday sun blazed down on him from a sky as vast and blue as the Ionian which he hoped his visitor from another world was enjoying, because Trask sure as hell was not! In fact, ever since Zek Foener and Nathan Kiklu (or Nathan ‘Keogh’, as the Necroscope preferred to be called now) had gone off to the Greek Islands a few days ago, Trask had been right out of sorts with himself, and with everyone else in his top-secret ESPionage organization.

  He thought about the two, worried about them equally … but for different reasons. About Nathan, because he was probably the most valuable and certainly the most -what, unique? - man in the world; even in two worlds. And about Zek, because he loved her. At his age (Trask snorted), finally to have fallen in love! Not that he was ancient, and he certainly wasn’t ‘past it’, but … it compJicated matters. And with Zek in the Greek Islands, things seemed even more complicated. That silly old saw which has it: ‘out of sight, out of mind’, had it backwards as far as Trask was concerned. She was out of sight, all right, but she’d never been more in his mind than right now .. .

  And even as he thought it, the thought itself was like an invocation:
>
  Deep water … the salt sea .. . weeds and sediment

  obscuring Trask’s vision - no, Zek’s vision/ - and the pain in his/her chest … heart hammering, vision bJurring, lungs screaming for air! Sweet Jesus, she was drowning! And she was Jetting him know about it in the onJy way she could … for Zek was one of the world’s finest telepaths.

  BEN! The word exploded into his mind like a bomb. TRY NOT TO FEEL .. . TOO . .. BAD .. . ABOUT … IT.

  ‘Zek!’ he yelled out loud, and could actually taste the water flooding into his/her mouth.

  GOOD… BYE… BEN…!

  Trask staggered, whirled, fell, and felt his knees slam down hard on the dusty pavement. But it didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt except the fact that Zek’s telepathic voice was dead in his mind. And that Zek herself-?

  Across the road, people were staring. A car’s horn blared and its astonished driver gazed down at Trask where he kneeled half-on, half-off the road. Then the car swept on by and people came running, questioning. Someone asked if Trask had been hit. He shook his head, got to his feet and staggered again. A young couple grabbed him, held him upright, and the girl asked, ‘Are you all right?’

  Numb, he nodded. He was all right, yes. But Zek -?

  It was mid-May 2006, and under the hot sun Trask was cold. Sweat rivered his face and stuck his shirt to his back, yet he was cold. Cold in his mind, from the feel and the taste of the deep salt water, but far colder from the memory of Zek’s telepathic voice, crying there and dying there, in his mind. Cold from the sudden emptiness of … everything. ‘Zek!’

  He shook the young couple off, shouldered people aside, started to walk along the pavement and ended up running, and ran sweating and shivering down the sidestreet to the back of the hotel whose top floor housed E-Branch HQ. He found the private door; after the sunlight it was like night in there; there was only the darkness until he used his pass-card to enter the elevator with its electric ceiling light. And even then it was dark; but that was in his mind, and he

  knew that the darkness was only the absence of Zek. In which case, it might last forever.

  Then the elevator shuddered to a halt, the doors hissed open and Trask stumbled out into the main corridor …

  . .. Which was — flooded?

  An inch of water went sluicing into the elevator! Now what the hoJy . ..?

  There were espers in the corridor. Trask recognized faces without considering the amazement — the relief, the .. . what? … triumph, jubilation? — written on every one of them. There was a smell of ocean, seaweed, salt. The smell matched the taste of Zek in Trask’s mind. So that once again he asked himself: now what the holy . ..?

  The tall, cadaverous, usually melancholy figure of the precog lan Goodly loomed into view; but now his eyes were alight with elation. He grabbed Trask’s arm, husked, ‘Ben — he’s done it! Nathan’s done it!’

  ‘Done it?’ Trask found it hard to gather his thoughts, concentrate his mind. Goodly was wet, splotched; he smelled of sea-water just like the entire corridor smelled of it. His trousers were drenched from the knees down and clung to his thin calves. And now David Chung, Branch locator, had arrived on the scene; he, too, was soaked from head to toe, and grinning like an oriental lunatic.

  ‘Done what?’ Trask demanded, looking from one to the other. ‘What has Nathan done? And, anyway, he’s somewhere in the Ionian with … with Zek.’ And finally losing it: ‘Why doesn’t someone tell me what the fuck - is going -on - here!?’

  They were in the Greek Islands, Ben,’ Goodly suddenly saw how close Trask was to shock. But he also knew how difficult it would be to shock a man who always knew the truth, a human lie-detector like the current Head of E-Branch. And, looking at him, Goodly thought to himself, he’s improved, hardened with age and time. Oh, Ben has soft, human edges, too, but the man inside - the mind, soul and personality, the id — is diamond-hard.

  Trask was about five-ten, just a pound or two overweight, mousey-haired and green-eyed. His broad shoulders sloped just a little, his arms dangled somewhat and his expression was - what, lugubrious? Or maybe that was a direct result of his talent; for, in a world where the simple truth was increasingly hard to come by, it was no easy thing to possess a mind which could not accept a lie. This was an election year, and Trask’s current gripe was with politicians. Watching party-political broadcasts, he would frequently burst out: ‘The trouble with these people is that they never lie! But they never tell the truth, either!’

  And now he was staring hard at Goodly, asking, ‘What was that you said? They were in the Ionian? What the hell do you mean?’

  Goodly knew there was only one way to tell it, and so answered, They were there, yes, Ben. But just a few minutes ago, Nathan brought them back!’

  Trask’s jaw fell open. Not without an effort, he closed it and said, ‘He brought them —?’

  ‘— Brought them back here, yes,’ Goodly nodded. ‘Through the Mo’bius Continuum.’

  And now Trask’s jaw dropped open all the way, so that once again he must close it before gasping, The … Continuum?’ At which the truth finally dawned on him; if not in regard to Nathan, certainly in respect of Zek. The fact that she was alive! He’d known it was the truth, of course, even as Goodly said the words, but it seemed so far beyond his wildest hopes and dreams that even Trask had held back from letting it register. Just a moment ago he’d known that Zek Foener was dead — he had literally heard and felt her die - and yet now .. .

  As Trask’s feet touched earth again, he snapped out of it and demanded to know: ‘Where are they? Are they okay? And Zek - is she okay?’

  David Chung answered him. They’re sedated. We’ve fixed up a couple of beds in the Ops room. But it was a close thing. They were in the sea. And when they came through

  … I thought half of the Mediterranean was coming through with them!’

  Trask grabbed him, said, ‘But how did it happen? Don’t we know anything about it? Christ, I take an hour off for lunch, everything goes mad!’

  ‘Nathan said a few words before we put him under,’ Chung answered. ‘But we had to put them out of it for a while. They were exhausted and in shock - especially Zek -and it might easily have developed into something worse.’

  ‘So what exactly did Nathan say?’ Trask headed for the Ops room with the others in tow.

  ‘It seems it was a party of Tzonov’s thugs,’ Goodly took up the story. ‘Nathan’s Special Branch minders were taken by surprise - and murdered! Nathan and Zek ran for it, into the sea. More of Tzonov’s people were waiting for them; they had wetsuits and spearguns and were already in the water; for all we know at this stage, the entire operation was launched from the sea. But when the chips were down and there was no other way out, Nathan did his thing. Except. .. there was probably a lot more to it than that.’

  ‘Oh?’ Trask glanced at him, and pressed on into the Ops room, where a small knot of espers was gathered around a pair of six-foot tables.

  Goodly followed on behind, nodding. There had been some pretty weird stuff going on here. Stuff that told us these two were in trouble.’ He gave a shrug. ‘So we did what we could for them.’ Goodly was wont to understate things: his British phlegmatism. But the precog’s ‘pretty weird stuff statement told Trask a lot: namely, that there was still a lot he hadn’t been told.

  ‘All of this in an hour?’ he said, as the espers around the tables moved aside to make room for their Head of Branch, and Trask came to a halt between a pair of prone figures apparently asleep in hastily made-up beds.

  ‘In a lot less than an hour,’ David Chung put in. ‘Let me tell you about it…

  ‘Myself, lan, Geoff Smart, we all got the message at the

  same time: that something was wrong. With me, it was Nathan’s earring — the thing came alive in my hand! I can’t say what it was for Smart, but he’s an empath and he’s done a lot of work with Nathan; maybe he sensed the trouble they were in even at that range. And of course lan reads the future, and apparently he’d �
��seen” me plugging in the computer in Harry’s room. So we went there, and I plugged it in. Then — it was the same as before: the numbers, equations, whatever; I’m no mathematician, so you tell me! But it was all on the screen. Except it wasn’t quite the same. This time, the numbers came together, fused, formed into something else. Something that was … I don’t know, solid? Well, almost solid.’

  Trask had taken Zek’s wrist; feeling the steady pulse, he issued a sigh of relief. ZeJc, you spoke to me. When you thought it was aJJ over, I was the one you spoke to! It meant an awful lot to him. Then, as if it were his first breath in a week, he filled his lungs to bursting; finally, frowning, he looked at Chung. ‘Something solid, you say? On the computer screen?’

  Goodly took up the story again. ‘Do you remember those golden darts, Ben? I mean, when Harry died?’

  ‘Of course I remember them.’

  ‘And the one we saw entering into the computer? In fact, the computer showed it to us, right?’

  Trask nodded, stepped away from the tables and beckoned the others back. ‘Let them breathe, for Christ’s sake!’ And to Goodly: ‘What about it?’

  The way I see it,’ Goodly answered, ‘that dart or whatever it was, it’s been waiting in there. Before, the computer seemed to be running off its own power; you’ll remember, it wasn’t plugged in? Well, whatever it was that powered the display that time - call it a “ghost”, if you like, or an “echo” of Harry Keogh — it must have just about burned itself out. But this time it was tapping a legitimate power source, which boosted what was left of it. So … this is what we saw: