Necroscope V Deadspawn - By Brian Lumley Page 0,46

own. Get him for me, Harry! Get that dog's bastard for me!

'And for myself,' he told her. 'For if I don't I know he'll always be there, clinging like slime to the walls of my mind. But, Pamela - '

Yes?

'Simply killing this one won't be enough. I mean, it's just not enough! But if you're willing, there's a way you can help me. You're strong, Pamela, in death just as you were in life. And what I have in mind ... I believe it's something you would enjoy even more than you did in life.' He explained his meaning, and for a little while she was silent.

Then: I think I know now why the dead are afraid of you, Harry, she said, wonderingly. And: Is it true that you're a vampire?

'Yes... no!' he said. 'Not like that. Not yet, anyway. And not here. But somewhere else I will be - or may be -one day.'

Yes. He sensed her nod. I think you must be - or will be - for nothing human could ever think the thought you thought just then. Nothing entirely human, anyway.

'But you'll do it?'

Oh, yes, she answered him at last with a grim, emphatic deadspeak nod. Who or whatever you are, I'll do anything you tell me, Harry Keogh, vampire, Necroscope. Anything, everything and whatever it takes to get even. Whatever you ask and whenever you ask it. Anything...

Harry nodded. 'So be it,' he said.

For the next thirty-odd hours the Necroscope was busy; not only him but E-Branch, too. And the next day, a warm evening in mid-May, the Minister Responsible caused the Branch emergency call-in system to be brought into play.

First, acting on disturbing information received from Geoffrey Paxton (concerning among other things the files Darcy Clarke had mailed to Harry Keogh), the Minister had relieved Clarke of all duties and placed him under what amounted to house arrest at Clarke's own north London flat in Crouch End. Second, he must now attend the O-group briefing he'd called at E-Branch HQ. The espers would know, of course, that something big was in the offing: all available agents were to be present.

Paxton was there to meet the Minister on the ground floor. Even as they exchanged curt greetings Ben Trask, just back from a job, came in from the street through the swing doors. Trask looked drawn, even haggard. The Minister took him to one side where they conversed in lowered tones for a minute or two, and for once Paxton knew enough to keep his nose out. Then they all three took the elevator upstairs and went directly to the ops room.

The called-in agents were silent, seated, waiting for the Minister. He took the podium and his eyes swept the mainly ordinary-looking faces of the espers - Britain's ESP-endowed mindspies - where they stared back at him. He knew them all from photographs in their files, but only Darcy Clarke and Ben Trask had ever met him. And Paxton, of course.

If Clarke had been here, perhaps he would have stood up as a sign of respect, and maybe the rest of them would have followed suit. Or there again maybe not. The trouble with this lot had always been that they thought they were special. But here the Minister knew he wasn't fooling anybody, least of all himself. They were special, bloody special!

And looking at them he felt as several before him must surely have felt. Physics and metaphysics, robots and romantics, gadgets and ghosts. Two sides of the same coin. Were they really? Science and parapsychology? The mundane and the supernatural? And he wondered what was the difference anyway? Isn't a telephone or radio magic? To speak with someone on the other side of the world, even on the moon? And has there ever been a more powerful, more monstrous spell or invocation than E=mc2?

These were some of the Minister's thoughts as he scanned the faces of E-Branch's espers and put names to them: Ben Trask, the human lie-detector; blocky, overweight, mousey-haired and green-eyed, slope-shouldered and lugubrious. Possibly Trask's sad expression sprang from the knowledge that the whole world was a liar. Or if not all of it, a hell of a lot of it. It was Trask's talent: to recognize whatever was false. Show him or tell him a lie and he would know it at once. He wouldn't always know the truth of the thing, but he would always know when what was represented as true wasn't so. No facade, however cleverly