Necroscope IV Deadspeak - By Brian Lumley Page 0,50

on the sea. The hole he made in it quickly sealed itself; the echo of the shot which had killed him, caught by the fog and tossed back, was still ringing.

'Holy Mother of - I' Themelis breathed, helpless as his men were rounded up. But as Janos advanced on him he backed away and again, disbelievingly, observed the length of his head and jaws, the teeth in his monstrous mouth, the weird scarlet blaze of his terrible eyes. 'J-J-Jianni?' the Greek finally got his brain working. 'Jianni, I -'

'Show me this cocaine,' Janos took hold of his shoulder with a steel hand, his fingers biting deep. 'This oh so valuable white powder.'

'It - it's below...' Themelis's answer was a mere breath; he could not, daren't, take his eyes from the other's face.

'Then take me below,' said Janos. But first, to his men: 'You did well. Now do as you will. I know how hungry you are.'

Even below decks Themelis could hear the screams of his crew; and he thought: What, Christos Nixos a fool? Maybe, but at least he didn't know what hit him! And he wondered how long before his screams would be joining the rest...

Forty minutes later the Lazarus's diesels coughed into life and she drew slowly away from the now silent, wallowing Samothraki. The fog was lifting, stars beginning to show through, and soon the horizon would light with the first crack of a new day.

When the Lazarus was a quarter-mile away, the doomed Samothraki blew apart in a massive explosion and gouting fire. Bits of her spiralled or fluttered back to the foaming sea and were put out, leaving only their drifting smoke. She was no more. In a few days pieces of her planking might wash ashore, maybe a body or two, possibly even the bloated, fish-eaten corpse of Pavlos Themelis himself...
Chapter 5
5

Harry Keogh Now: Ex-Necroscope

Harry woke up knowing that something was happening or about to happen. He was propped up in the huge old bed where he'd nodded off, his head against the headboard, a fat, black-bound book open in his slack hands. The Book of the Vampire: a so-called 'factual treatise' which examined the elemental evil of the vampire down through all the ages to modern times. It was light reading for the Necroscope, and many of its 'well-authenticated cases' little more than grotesque jokes; for no one in the world - with one possible exception - knew more about the legend, the source, the truth of vampirism than Harry Keogh. That one exception was his son, also called Harry, except that Harry Jnr didn't count because in fact he wasn't 'in' this world at all but... somewhere else.

Harry had been dreaming an old, troubled dream: one which mingled his life and loves of fifteen years gone by with those of the here and now, turning them into a surreal kaleidoscope of eroticism. He had dreamed of loving Helen, his first groping (mental as well as physical) sexual experience; and of Brenda, his first true love and the wife of his youth; so that however strange and overlapping, these had been sweet and familiar dreams, and tender. But he had also dreamed of the Lady Karen and her monstrous aerie in the world of the Wamphyri, and it seemed likely that this was the dreadful dream which had started him awake.

But somewhere in there had been dreams of Sandra, too, his new and - he hoped - lasting love affair, which because of its freshness was more vivid, real and immediate than the others. It had taken the sting of poignancy from some of the dream, and the cold clutch of horror from the rest of it.

That was what he had been dreaming about: making love to the women he had known, and to one he knew now. And also of making love to the Lady Karen, whom mercifully he had never known - not in that way.

But Sandra... they'd made love before on several occasions - no, on many occasions, though rarely satisfactorily - always at her place in Edinburgh, in the turned-down green glow of her bedside lamp. Not satisfactory for Harry, anyway; of course he couldn't speak for Sandra. He suspected, though, that she loved him dearly.

He had never let her know about his - dissatisfaction? Not merely because he didn't want to hurt her, more especially because it would only serve to highlight his own deficiency. A deficiency, yes, and yet at the same time something of a paradox.