We fight another day! And Harry got a vivid mental picture of the intruder inside the garage, making for his vehicle. But the Necroscope had been challenged; worse, he'd been scorned, called a coward. And deep inside there was still this feeling that he wasn't at risk. Not the Harry Keogh he'd used to be, anyway.
Meanwhile, Jordan had locked on again, deliberately this time, and said: There's more than just him in there. He has a friend with him. Or ... friends?'
'Skippy,' Harry answered, jumping to the wrong conclusion, or one that was only half-right. They're both in there.
And if they get away this time, who knows when we'll be able to bring them to book.'
Jordan saw what was coming next, and said, 'Harry, I... "
'Are you coming?' The Necroscope held out his arms.
Jordan backed off. 'Your way? Not likely! I've seen inside your head, Harry. I know a little of what your Mobius Continuum is like! I'll go over the wal.'
Alowing no time for argument, he left the cover of the aley and made to run across the road, only pausing to turn and toss something back. It glinted blued-steel.
Harry caught it: a 9mm Browning. 'Since you'l be there first,' Jordan quietly caled, 'you may need it.'
Reaching the wal, he looked back ... and saw that he was right, Harry was no longer there -
- But he was inside the garage. And A.C. Doyle Jamieson knew it! The madman's astonishment was like triple exclamation marks in the Necroscope's mind, folowed by a ripple of terror, and a barrage of inwardly-directed questions: What? Where? How? Who? ... and finaly a renewed flaring of anger. His was a mind ful of moon and murder. And Harry was his target for tonight.
There came silence, physical and mental...
Someone switched the lights off; Harry heard the switches trip. And now there was darkness. Only one smal electric bulb, fifty or so feet away in the middle of a massive concrete ceiling, gave any light at al. And it cast shadows.
Moving shadows!
Harry saw or sensed movement... a metal object clatered as someone stumbled over it or kicked it aside. That was to the left. But to the right: a slithering of shadows, just a flicker but enough to bring the short hairs at the back of Harry's neck erect like a cat's brush. His eyes flickered this way and that, glanced upwards.
Overhead, a system of gantries supported rails and a motorized cabin and crane; heavy chains were still swinging a little on their puleys. Or maybe they'd only just been set swinging?
A. C. and Skippy ... and who else? Harry remembered what Trevor Jordan had said only a moment ago: 'He has a friend with him ... or friends?' Wel, great!
But how many of them? Jordan was right: Skippy didn't have to be the only one.
Three! said a voice from the blue, or rather from the metaphysical darkness behind the Necroscope's eyes. And he at once knew its owner for R.L. Stevenson Jamieson. Three enemies. But whose enemies is harder to say! Two of them is against you, for sure. As for the third ... Harry sensed the dead man's shrug.
'R.L.,' Harry whispered, 'you'd best be using your obi to damp down your brother's. I mean, you should save your efforts for that.
Don't waste them talking to me.'
You is there to put things right, Necroscope, and I'll do whatever I can to help you, R.L. told him. Don't you be worrying 'bout my obi. It is working, believe me. And I just read in your mind my own brother boasting how he killed me! So I won't be holding you to no promises,
Harry. Don't be holding off for my sake. You go get that son of a ...
Harry's eyes were now more accustomed to the gloom of the place. The shels of cars lay in various stages of repair, conversion, and reconstruction, in twin rows of bays equipped with inspection pits, overhead hoists, and various hand tools. Jacks and other wheeled machines stood abandoned in the central aisle, and chains dangled everywhere. The garage had been evacuated in a hurry and was now a mantrap. Even to someone wel acquainted with the layout, any abrupt or hasty motion could prove dangerous to say the least.
Harry was shielded by one of the massive steel stanchions supporting the high ceiling; he was located just inside a repair bay, where he'd stepped out of the Mobius Continuum. Some forty or so feet to his left, the