hoping Jordan would hear him. But things are getting nasty now and I can't rightly say what's going on.
Get back over the wall and call for backup. Let's have the police in on it.
H.Q. has been tracking us, Jordan answered. / called for back-up the moment you ... what, went into shock? I thought it was all over for you, Harry!
No, not quite, not yet, Harry answered. Now for Christ's sake leave me be! I need to concentrate.
And as Jordan cleared the telepathic ether, so Harry took over. He spoke to R.L. Stevenson Jamieson: R.L.? I hope you've got your obi going full blast. A.C. 's going to be pretty mad when he finds out he's lost a bosom pal!
'Fraid not, Necroscope, R.L. came back at once. You is on your own. My obi maintains the balance, that's all. But now the balance is all in your favour! And in case you is interested, I wants you to know we just welcomed a stranger into the ranks of the Great Majority. Or we will, eventually, when he quits fussing and screaming, and if he be worth it.
Skippy? (Harry scowled, and knew that R.L. would feel the depth of his loathing, the way he shuddered in his soul). Wel, he isn't worth it! But in the moment of speaking, Harry sensed that the shuddering wasn't his alone. The intruder, A.C. Doyle Jamieson, was back. Except now he was whimpering like a whipped dog where he crouched in Harry's metaphysical mind - almost as if he were trying to hide there!
Get out of there, A.C., Harry quietly, coldly told him. / don't want to share your pain with you when finally you die!
Let me show you something, Fuckscope. The other's terror was transformed on the instant, replaced by rage and madness. Now he no longer panted his fear but his hatred and bloodlust. Let me show you how it was for the rest of those bastards who tried to bring the werewolf to heel!
But before he could begin: No! the Necroscope refused him point-blank. I've already seen how it was, A.C. I know exactly how it was. So instead, I'd like to show you something: (A mental picture of Skippy, transfixed by a crossbow bolt, stopped dead - literally - in his tracks, and sprawled in the bloody swarf where he'd falen). But because that didn't seem enough:
Harry opened up his metaphysical mind to display al the unknown depths, the gauntly yawning vacuum, the absolute otherness of the endless Mobius Continuum. A.C. saw how Harry was a part of it, linked to it, and finaly sensed the preternatural chil of The Great Unknown creeping in his bones. Then, as the psychic ether slowly cleared:
Well? The Necroscope was very quiet now. And are you still coming for me, Arthur?
The answer was a howl - but one of anguish, of a diseased mentality frustrated to the breaking point - that reverberated in the darkness of the garage and went echoing off into a throbbing silence. No, A.C. wasn't coming for him; A. C. was running!
From somewhere below came the cough of a motor revved into tortured life, the scream of its abused engine, and Harry supposed that A.C. was heading out of here. There was only one way out, down the old car-park ramp and through the barrier. But if the barrier were lowered?
Harry judged the co-ordinates and made a hasty jump to the garage entrance, just inside the retractable doors. To his left he saw the dark tunnel of a two-lane down-ramp to the basement; down there, headlight beams swerved erraticaly, tyres shrieked their shrill protest as the revving roar came closer.
Hurriedly, Harry scanned the wals on both sides of the exit for the buton controling the overhead door, to no avail. And it was too late to cover the thirty or so feet to the barrier's tiny control shack, switch on and lower the boom; A.C.'s vehicle was already roaring up the ramp from the basement! But: Don't sweat it, Necroscope, said George Jakes's incorporeal voice in his head. Didn't you hear the bugle sounding the charge? The cavalry's right here, Harry!
Harry looked, and he saw, and even the Necroscope himself scarcely believed what he was seeing. But conversation with the dead often conveys more than is actually said, and Jakes showed him the whole picture in the time it took for the battered van to make it up the ramp; or rather, he showed him the picture as it had been