Necroscope V Deadspawn - By Brian Lumley Page 0,207

a metaphysical equation, 'whose only justification is to extend Mind beyond the span of the merely physical'.

On one level, it was the subconscious whirlpool of Harry's instinctive mathematical genius enhanced by his now ascendant vampire; while on a higher plane it was a violent confrontation between two entirely elemental powers: Darkness and Light, Good and Evil, Knowledge for its own sake (which is sin), and the total absence of knowledge, which is innocence. It was the Necroscope's subconscious battle with himself, within himself, which must be fought and won lest the final darkness fall; for Harry himself would be the bright guardian of worlds still to come, or their utter destruction before they were even born.

But Karen didn't know any of that, only that she mustn't wake him just yet. And Harry fevered on. 'I could give you formulae you haven't even dreamed of...'he sneered out of some all but forgotten past time, while the lights of his eyes burned scarlet through lowered, frantically fluttering lids. 'An eye for an eye, Dragosani, and a tooth for a tooth! I was Harry Keogh... became my own son's sixth sense, before Alec Kyle's emptied head sucked me in and made his body mine... The great liar Fa茅thor would have lived in there with me, but where's Fa茅thor now, eh? And where's Thibor? And what of the Bodescu brat? And Janos?' Suddenly he sobbed and great tears squeezed themselves out from under his luminous eyelids.

'And Brenda? Sandra? Penny? Am I cursed or blessed...?

'I had a million friends, which would be fine except they were all dead! They "lived" in a dimension beyond life, where I could still talk to them and they could still remember what it was to have been alive.

'There are many dimensions, planes of existence without number, worlds without end. The myriad cone-shaped universes of light. And I know how they came about. And Möbius knew it before me. Pythagoras might have guessed something of it, but Möbius and I know\

'Let there be...' (He screwed up his tightly closed eyes.) 'Let there be...' (Great slugs of sweat oozed out of his shuddering lead-grey body.) 'Let there be....'

Until Karen could stand his pain - for this could only be pain - no longer. And clutching him where he writhed upon her bed, she begged him: 'Let there be what, Harry?'

'Light!' he growled, and his furious eyes shot open, aglow with their own heat.

'Light?' she repeated him, her voice full of wonder.

He struggled to sit up, gave in and let himself sink down into her arms. And he looked at her, nodded and said, 'Yes, the Primal Light, which shone out of His mind.'

Harry's eyes had always been weird, even before his vampire stained them with blood, but now they were changing from moment to moment. Karen saw the fury go out of them, then the fear, and watched fascinated as all alien vitality - even the very passion of the Wamphyri -died in them. For with only one exception the Necroscope was the first of his sort to know and believe.

'His mind?' Karen repeated him at last, wondering at the softness of his face, which was that of a child.

'The mind of ... God?' Even now Harry couldn't be absolutely certain. But near enough. 'Of a God, anyway,' he finally told her, smiling. 'A creator!'

And inside him, instinctively aware of looming defeat, his vampire shrank down and was small, and perhaps bemoaned its fate: to be one with a man who desired only to be ... a man.
Part Four Chapter 6
6

Sky Fight!

From then on the Necroscope had been different; his parasite's ascendancy had been reversed; once again his humanity had the upper hand. Karen to the contrary: she tried to insist that he accompany her on raids into Sunside to 'blood' himself. Naturally he would hear nothing of it, and she would be furious.

'But you're not blooded!' she'd growl at him as they made love. 'There's a frenzy in the Wamphyri which only blood will release, for the blood is the life! Unless you take, you may not partake in your fullness. You must fuel yourself for the fight, can't you see that? How may I explain?'

But in fact there was no need for explanations; Harry knew well enough what she meant. He'd seen it in his own world. In boxers, the moment they draw blood: how the first sight and smell of it inspires them to greater effort, so that they go at their opponents with even more determination, and