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

lies outside the Branch's sphere of influence. Closed down five years ago by the Russian premier,
who diverted water from the Perchorsk dam into the mainly ruinous scientific complex to flood it,
recently the artificial Gate has been reopened by the leader of a burgeoning military faction.
This was done out of greed; the power-mad Russian general who ordered it had found out that
Sunside/Starside is rich in gold,- he and a platoon of soldiers went through into Starside in an
attempt to fathom the extent of its riches.
Their expedition coincided with a vampire resurgence,- the Russians were taken, and before the
general was done away with, two Lords and a Lady of the Wamphyri extracted from him and the men in
his command knowledge of our world.
Under constant guerilla attack by Nathan, the three Great Vampires, Wamphyri, decided to take
their chances on Earth. Invaders (albeit secret invaders),

13
i^ BRIAN LUMLEY
they used the natural Gate to enter our world at E-Branch's Romanian "Refuge," a special hospice
for traumatized orphans on the banks of the Danube at the junction of Romania, Bulgaria, and the
former Yugoslavia.
Slaughtering the Refuge's personnel and inmates, the trio split up, dispersing themselves abroad
in the world . . .
E-Branch alone knew of the vampire invasion. Zek Foener, the love of Ben Trask's life, had died in
the massacre at the Romanian Refuge,- but in her final moments the telepath contacted Trask to
tell him what was happening. Thus Trask was "with her" when she died-at which moment, in his grief
of griefs, he had vowed revenge!
But the rest of the world couldn't, mustn't be told. Else panic at the thought of an invisible,
almost invincible plague loose among us would run riot. E-Branch's Minister Responsible must be
told, however, and he gave the Branch carte blanche to track down and destroy the monsters out of
Starside. Moreover, liaison with many of the world's great powers guaranteed their assistance,
too, in the event that Trask's organization should need it. These were, of course, covert
agreements/ only the most tried and trusted leaders were privy to the facts, and then not to all
the facts . . .
Some three years after the invasion, finally E-Branch "locators"-human-bloodhound trackers of men
and monsters-picked up the "mindsmog" spoor of the Wamphyri in Western Australia's desolate Gibson
Desert. But even as plans were made to counter the menace, so a timely quirk of synchronicity (not
to mention the paradox of a once-familiar phenomenon) took place.
Jake Cutter, a young man with a dubious record, had been incarcerated in a top-security Turin
prison for certain acts of vengeance which in fact amounted to murder. But murder only insofar as
the law's legal definition. For Jake had taken revenge on a gang of drug-running thugs and rapists-
affiliates of the Russian Mafia-who had brutalized and murdered a woman of his intimate
acquaintance.
In answer to Jake's revenge serial killings, the leader of the gang-a mysterious Sicilian called
Luigi Castellano-made arrangements to have Jake killed inside the prison. Learning of this, Jake
had attempted to escape. But prison guards in Castellano's pay had opened fire on him as he scaled
the prison wall. In which moment of extreme danger, there had come an astonishing intervention. At
first Jake had thought that he'd been shot, he had actually seen the bullet-or the track of a
golden bullet, or the coruscation of its ricochet, or something-strike home into his forehead. And
then he had fallen, but not to the hard-packed earth of the prison's exercise yard.


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