Read Online Necroscope 9: The Lost Years by Brian Lumley - Free Book Online Page B

started as a dream - a precognitive glimpse - turned into sheerest nightmare!
    The figure trapped in the resin was at least seven feet long, two and a half broad at the shoulders, and narrow at the waist and hip. Still only half-discernible but obviously a huge man, still there was that about it that smacked of the un-, the inhuman. It lay on its back, arms folded across its chest, and despite its dimensions Harry felt that it was somehow shriveled, reduced, as if time had taken its toll on it. As to the precise nature of the thing: Quite apart from the earlier phases of his dream, Harry was acquainted with the Wamphyri. Indeed the Necroscope knew more about vampires -real vampires - than any other man in the world. He had seen Dragosani
    at the end of their bloodfeud, in the fullness of his Wamphyri change, and he’d also been face to face with Yulian Bodescu, in the very flux of metamorphosis. He knew exactly what a fully-fledged vampire looked like; that in fact it looked something like …
    like this! And yet this was like nothing he’d ever seen before. But one thing for certain: it exuded evil as surely as its great sarcophagus exuded pungent resin.
     
    And now it seemed the precognitive nature of the Necroscope’s dream was over, and that purest nightmare was taking full sway. At least he hoped so; for if the rest of it was a glimpse into his future, then he wanted none of it!
    Suddenly aware that shadows were creeping where no shadow had been, Harry stepped back from the sarcophagus, fell into a crouch and looked all about. There had been furtive movement, he was sure, there on the paved causeway where it passed under crazily tilting lintels … and in the shadows along the walls … and among the countless jumbles of fallen rock. Grey shadows, flowing, fleet-footed …
    … And a renewed burst of howling, near-distant at first, but then answered from close at hand. Very close at hand!
    Harry’s left hand held up the flaring torch; his right was on the rim of the sarcophagus. And even as he looked again into the coffin, at the barely discernible yet unmistakable outline there, something came bubbling up out of the gluey mess to grab his wrist!
    It wasn’t a hand, or barely. Clawed, black, trembling and shrivelled, yet strong with some inner fever, it was half-hand, half-paw, all horror! And it drew on Harry with an irresistible strength until in a moment he found himself half-over the stone side of the coffin and into the resin. But at the last his wits were returned to him, and drawing back with every ounce of his strength, finally he broke free of the thing that held him. Or rather, it broke free of its arm!
    How Harry danced then, with the alien hand still clasped around his wrist, as he tried to disengage, free himself from that unearthly grip. But he’d hauled so hard that he’d dragged the owner of the shrivelled claw erect in its great coffin. And, God help him, the triangular eyes in its resin-dripping, half-mummified head were slowly opening… and its dog’s jaws were splitting apart in a monstrous grin!
    ‘Jesus! Jesus!’ Harry yelped as the Thing reached for him. And:
    ‘Jesus?’ it replied, its awful voice a surprised cough, a snarl, a bubbling-up of centuries-trapped phlegm and mucus. And tilting its head sardonically on one side: ‘Ah, no, not Jesus!’ it told him. ‘If you would call me anything, call me Lykan . .
    . Lord Lykan, of the Wamphyri! Or perhaps, in your case— ‘(its great arms were folding him in, while its eyes blazed like yellow lanterns, branding his soul as it growled), ‘— in your case I shall make an exception. Aye, for it were best if you call me … father?’
    Harry did no such thing. Starting awake he called out for his Ma, all
    Brian Luraley
    40
     
    mud and bones and weeds in her watery grave nearly four hundred miles away in Scotland. For cold and terrible as she
    might seem (to anyone else), she was the warmest, safest thing in Harry’s world.
    But as has