"Brian Lumley - A Coven Of Vampires" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

know I've read it half a dozen times since. It probably delayed my attempts to write my own
vampire novels by, oh, twenty years . . . Because it was that damned good! But that wasn't a bad
thing (in a couple of decades I'd learned a lot, not only about authorship but about the world).
And if I was going to do it at all, I knew it would have to be wide-screen.
And eventually I did do it, let all of that stuff I'd once soaked up so avidly leak back out of
me, and even occasionally splatter. The Necroscope novels and Vampire World Trilogy are the end
results.
Between times, though, I had worked up to it in a host of shorter stories that explored the
vampire myth and came at it from many diverse angles, some of them so far removed from the
original that even I didn't realize what I was really writing until the stories were finished.
A host of them? Well, a coven of them, in fact. Thirteen tales that dance widdershins around the
central concept, and occasionally rock 'n' roll with it, too. Stories that are


more or less traditional, some less so, and others straight out of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.
So there you go. I 'blame' this collection on EC Comics, Weird Tales, Christopher Lee, Richard
Matheson, et al, whose stories in this sub-genre really bit me. To all of them and to others long
forgotten I offer my thanks. They all have a stake in this collection . . .
Brian Lumley Devon, England, February 1997.

WHAT DARK GOD?

'. . . Summanus - whatever power he may be ..."
Ovid's Fasti

The Tuscan Rituals! Now where had I heard of such a book or books before? Certainly very rare . .
. Copy in the British Museum? Perhaps! Then what on earth were these fellows doing with a copy?
And such a strange bunch of blokes at that.
Only a few minutes earlier I had boarded the train at Bengham. It was quite crowded for a night
train and the boozy, garrulous, and vociferous 'Jock' who had boarded it directly in front of me
had been much upset by the fact that all the compartments seemed to be fully occupied.


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'Och, they bleddy British trains,' he had drunkenly grumbled, 'either a'wiz emp'y or a'wiz fool.
No orgyniza-tion whatsayever - ye no agree, ye sassenach?' He had elbowed me in the ribs as we
swayed together down the dim corridor.
'Er, yes,' I had answered. 'Quite so!'
Neither of us carried cases and as we stumbled along, searching for vacant seats in the gloomy
compartments. Jock suddenly stopped short.
'Noo what in hell's this - will ye look here? A compartment wi' the bleddy blinds doon. Prob'ly a
young laddie an' lassie in there wi' six emp'y seats. Privacy be damned. Ah'm no standin' oot here
while there's a seat in there . . .'
The door had proved to be locked - on the inside - but that had not deterred the 'bonnie Scot' for
a moment. He had banged insistently upon the wooden frame of the door until it was carefully,
tentatively opened a few inches: then he had stuck his foot in the gap and put his shoulder to the
frame, forcing the door fully open.
'No, no . . .' The scrawny, pale, pin-stripe jacketed man who stood blocking the entrance