"Brian Lumley - E-Branch 1 - Defilers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

"Okay," he nodded, "you can go. If you see him before I do, please let him know 1 want to speak to
him."

L> fc f I Lt Kb
"I will," she said, and at the door turned and looked back. And yet again she was biting her lip.
"Ben . . . ?"
"Eh?" He looked at her. So what was this about: the other ten percent, perhaps?
"I ... I'm not sure about this," she said. "But when he's asleep and I'm in his mind, I get this
weird feeling that someone's watching. I feel - I don't know - hooded eyes, burning on me. A
strange image that retreats when I reach toward it."
Hooded eyes? Again? Trask remembered what Goodly had said. But this had to be different, surely.
"Harry Keogh?" He took a stab at it. More than a stab, really, for to him it seemed perfectly
obvious: some revenant of the ex-Necroscope was in there with Jake. But:
"No," Liz said. "I don't think it's Harry. I mean, I never knew him, but those who did always talk
about his warmth. Well, this one isn't warm. This one's cold. Very."
"Maybe it's the other side of Jake," said Trask. 'The dark side. The side that's lusting after
revenge."
She looked relieved. "You think that's possible?"
"I'm no psychologist," he answered, "but I do know we have different levels of consciousness, and
even when we're awake we don't always say what we're thinking. Huhi And personally, well, I don't
always think what I'm saying - which, incidentally, is about as close as you'll get to a real
apology! So, maybe those eyes are one of Jake's other levels, sensing an intruder."
"You're probably right," she said. "Because that's usually when his shields go up and I get driven
out."
"And now you're out of here, too," Trask told her, and actually managed to smile. "Because I'm
busy. But stick to it, Liz, stick to it. And next time don't hold back. You could have told me
this stuff without all the agony."
"Except there wasn't anything to tell," she answered. "Not of any real importance."
"Even little things could be important." He forced himself to smile again. "You'd be surprised."
But a moment later, as soon as the door closed behind her, the smile slipped from his face.
Someone else in Jake's mind? Someone other than Harry? The teeming dead, perhaps? The Great
Majority? But if so, why would their eyes be hooded? Because Liz was an intruder, and only the
Necroscope Jake Cutter could be trusted with the secrets of the dead? Huh! If he could be trusted.
But right now Trask wouldn't trust him as far as he could throw him.
What was Jake hiding that he had to carry on with this deception, pretending he was just another
empty vessel again?
It was baffling, a mystery within a mystery.
And Trask had more than enough of those already . . .

NhCROSCUHh
U t H 1 L fc K


3
OF THE PRESENT
Fifteen hundred hours in London, but 1,400 miles to the east it was five in the afternoon, and the
small Greek island of Krassos in the Aegean was coming awake from its siesta to the blazing heat
of an El Nifio evening. The last time it had been this dry was following a previous El Nino, the
summer of '98. Then fires had swept across the Greek mainland no less than in the Philippines,
Mexico, Florida, and South Western Australia. And the Greeks, along with