Necroscope V Deadspawn - By Brian Lumley Page 0,173

skidmarks, blue exhaust smoke, even the roar of the engine, slowly echoing into silence. But no bike and no rider. And the plate glass was still in one piece.

Haunted! The man thought, before he passed out. Christ, I've always known it! This place is haunted to hell!

He was right and he was wrong. The place had been haunted, but no longer. For Pete the Vampire Biker was now with Harry Keogh, and like Harry he wouldn't be back...

Harry coasted through the Möbius Continuum to Zakinthos, conjured a door and blazed out through it at forty onto the uneven surface of a starlit Greek island 'road'. An inexperienced rider, he might have come to grief right there and then, but Pete the biker was in his mind and his hands, and the huge machine stayed upright and steady on the potholed tarmac.

Zek met the Necroscope on the white steps which wound to her door, but she had spoken to him moments earlier: Penny's awake. She's been drinking coffee - a lot!

My fault, Harry had answered. We did a little celebrating. A moving-outparty. And he thought of his place near Bonnyrig, Edinburgh. House-warming with a difference, yes.

Wow! said the Vampire, seeing Zek mirrored in Harry's mind. Is this your Pillion Pussy? But of course his exclamation and question were deadspeak and Zek couldn't hear them or even know he was here at all.

No, it isn't. Harry spoke only to Pete. She's just a good friend. Anyway, mind your business - and your mouth!

Penny joined Zek and Harry even as they touched hands. She came ghosting to the door and smiled (however tiredly, however... eerily?) when she saw the Necroscope had returned. And there in the Greek night Zek saw the cores of Penny's eyes glowing red as a moth's where they reflected the light of the lamp over the door. As for Harry's eyes: Zek avoided looking at them. In any case there was no need, and no need to say anything out loud, not when their minds were touching.

Zek, he said, I owe you.

We all owe you, she answered. Every one of us.

Not any more. You've squared it for the rest.

'Goodbye, Harry.' She leaned forward and kissed his lips; just a man's lips for the moment, but cold.

He led Penny through the trees to the big bike, and mounting up looked back. Zek stood in lamplight and starlight and waved. The Harley-Davidson's lights cut a swath under the trees, picking out the track back to the road.

Zek heard the roar of the engine pick up to a howl, saw the headlights cutting the night, held her breath. Then -

- The engine noise was only a receding echo doing a drum roll along the hills, and the headlight beam was gone as if it had never existed ...

Are your eyes closed? Harry asked over his shoulder.

Yes. Her answering thought was a whisper.

Then keep them that way - tight-closed - until I tell you to open them.

Hurling the big bike through the Möbius Continuum, with Penny and Pete the Vampire riding pillion, Harry headed for the Perchorsk Gate. He knew exactly - indeed precisely - where the Gate was. Möbius equations flickered across the screens of his metaphysical mind, opening and closing an endless curve of doors as he went. But when the doors began to warp and waver he knew he was almost there. It was an effect of the Gate: to bend the Möbius Continuum as a black hole bends light. A moment later, Harry guided the bike through the last fluxing, disintegrating door, and hurtled out of the Möbius Continuum on to the perimeter of the steel disc surrounding the Gate.

And Viktor Luchov saw it all even as it happened.

At the very rim, where the plates of the disc were covered in rubber three inches thick, the Projekt Direktor was conversing with a group of scientists; the perimeter had been made safe, roped off with non-conductive, plastic-coated nylon; the disc not only carried a lethal voltage but was now linked to the sprinkler system. Fat white and blue sparks danced as Harry's huge, powerful machine came roaring off the Möbius strip to erupt into this space-time.

The Screaming Eagle's Dunlops were wide, heavy and of the very best rubber, but the sudden shock of the bike's five hundred and seventy-plus pounds jarred fish-scale plates together in a crackle and hum of electrical discharge. Blue energies skittered across the disc like snakes of lightning, adding to the throaty chaos of snarling pistons