"Brian Lumley - Necroscope 15 - The Touch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

hole gate on their world, only to reemerge on Earth in old Wallachia, the
 10 BRIANLUMLEY
ancient source of all vampire "legends." And for centuries Wallachia, now
Romania, was their secret seat.
But when their plague had looked set to explode across the world,
inundating mankind, then it had been time for the Necroscope, Harry
Keogh—the man who talked to dead people in their graves and used a
metaphysical medium known as the Môbius Continuum as an instanta-
neous means of conveyance—to seek out and destroy them, one by one.
But when dealing with the most devious of all Earth's Wamphyri, that
Father of Lies, Faethor Ferenczy, Harry had come too close and had
been infected.
And so when he left our world for Starside, the Necroscope wasn't
simply running for his life, but for ours. E-Branch might kill him, true,
but what if they failed? He was by far the most powerful being in cre-
ation, and if he should unleash his plague on Earth . . . what then? The
end of mankind, which he had fought so long and so hard to forestall.
Harry's problems were only just beginning. On Starside the Necro-
scope discovered that far from being extinct, the Wamphyri had risen
again in a new, yet more terrifying form. And Shaitan—the Devil
himself—was their leader! Crucified and burned, even as Harry's life
force drained from him, he was transferred by the will of Others to the
metaphysical Môbius Continuum. And there, hurtling across the cen-
turies of past time, he underwent a final metamorphosis. And this was
what those thirteen members of E-Branch witnessed in their HQ on a
wild, wet Sunday morning in mid-February, 1990:
A nebulous telepathic projection, a fading 3-D hologram of the
Necroscope's smoking corpse, falling or receding faster and faster into
unknown depths. But as his twirling figure dwindled to a speck, a mote,
and finally nothing, there where it had been, the observers saw an awe-
some, silently expanding novalike sunburst of pure golden light! And al-
though it existed only in their group mind, still the coven turned away
from the blinding intensity of the glare—and from whatflewout of it!
Only two of them caught the final moment, saw those myriad golden
splinters speeding outward from the sunburst—angling this way and that,
sentient, seeking, disappearing into as many unknown places—those
"pieces" of the Necroscope Harry Keogh. But were those golden shards all
that remained of him? Perhaps, in a way, they were. While in another way,
they were not.
For on Starside, as Harry's incorporeal mind fragmented in that glo-
rious bomb burst, he had been aware that each and every one of those
 NECROSCOPE: THE TOUCH 11
fragments, those golden shards, were him! And that wherever they were
bound—into whichever time or place—some echo or knowing part of
him would go with them.

But at a time some three and a half months prior to the Necroscope's
passing . . .
 PROLOGUE