Necroscope V Deadspawn - By Brian Lumley Page 0,159

friend, with whom he'd stood side by side against... against just such a creature as he had now become.

And Trask, whey-faced, staring back, thinking: For fuck's sake don't, Harry!

Would you shoot me, Ben?

You know I would. I wouldn't want to, even now, but I'd have to. It's you or the world, don't you see? I don't want to see my world die screaming... then laugh and crawl right back out of its grave! But if you let him go -Paxton, I mean - if you let him live, then I'd be ready to believe you'd let us all live.

Your world is safe, Ben. I'm not staying here.

Starside?

Harry's mental shrug. There's nowhere else.

Trask looked down the sights of his SMG. He could shoot at Harry's mist-wreathed legs and maybe chop him down, or he could aim at the Necroscope's head and upper body and try not to hit Paxton into the bargain. But he was a good shot and unlikely to miss his target. Or he could simply take Harry's word for it, that he was going away from here and the world had nothing to fear from him. Except, looking at him now, who could believe that?

Harry read these things in Trask's mind and tried to make it easier for him: he put Paxton down. Which was anything but easy for the Necroscope: he had to fight the Thing inside him, and fight hard. But he did it. And speaking out loud, or rather grunting in the deep bass monotone of the Wamphyri, he asked, 'How's this, Ben?'

Trask gasped his relief. 'It's good, Harry. It's good.' But even answering he was aware, out of the corner of his eye, of Teale and Robinson unfreezing and lining up their weapons. 'Hold it, you two!' he shouted.

Harry shot a blood-tinged glance at Teale, which sufficed to send him staggering back, and tuned into Robinson's mind to advise him: Better listen to Trask, son. Try to fry me on Earth and I'll fry you in Hell!

Trask put his SMG on safe and tossed it aside. 'The war's over, Harry,' he said.

But Paxton, lying in the mist where Harry had dropped him, squeezed the trigger of his regained crossbow and cried, 'Oh no it fucking isn't!'

Moments earlier the Necroscope had picked up the message from Paxton's mind: that a deadly hardwood bolt was about to come winging his way. Almost instinctively he had conjured a Möbius door; and now, with the deceptively sinuous grace of the Wamphyri, he stepped or flowed backwards into it. To the four espers it seemed that he had simply ceased to be. Paxton's bolt shot forward into the misty swirl of Harry's vacuum and was eaten up by it, leaving the telepath panting: 'I got him! I... I'm sure I got the bastard! I couldn't miss!' Laughing however shakily, he got to his feet...

... And the mist where it had closed on the Necroscope opened up again, and his clotted, gurgling, disembodied voice came out of it, saying, 'How sorry I am to have to disappoint you.'

Shit! Trask thought, snatching a breath of hot, smoky air as a huge grey hand with nails like rust-scabbed fish hooks reached out of empty space, closed over Paxton's head and dragged him shrieking out of the garden and right out of this universe. And Harry Keogh's monstrous voice left hanging on the air, saying: 'Ben, I'm afraid I just have to do this...'

In the Möbius Continuum Harry hurled Paxton away from him and heard his scream dwindling into conjectural distances. He should leave him there, let him spin on his own axis, flailing across parallel infinities for ever, shrieking and sobbing and, if his heart should burst, finally dying a raving madman. But that would be to pollute this mystical place. There had to be a better way - a more reasonable punishment - than that.

He sped after him, caught and steadied him, and drew him close. And there in the Möbius Continuum - whose nature even Harry was only just beginning to suspect or understand, where even the smallest thought has weight -he said to him: Paxton, you're a miserable creature.

'Get away from me! Get the f-f-fuck away from me!'

Tsk, tsk! Harry sucked his teeth, which as his blood began to cool were halfway to normal again. And you a telepath! You don't need to shout in the Möbius Continuum, mind-flea. Just thinking it is enough. And in that selfsame moment Harry knew what he must do.

Of course. Paxton the mind-flea,

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