The Source (57 page)

Authors: Brian Lumley

BOOK: The Source

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Karen's screaming â¦

Exhausted, Harry slept. He slept in the aerie, because there was no longer anything there to fear. He dreamed that Karen stood over him in her white gownâthat gown she had worn so revealingly for the Wamphyri
Lordsâand explained why he was the most miserable of all men. His victory was ashes. She had
been
Wamphyri, and now she was a shell. He thought he had won, but he had lost. When one has known the
power,
the
freedom
the magnified
emotions
of the vampire â¦ what is there after that? She told him she pitied him, for she knew why he had done what he had doneâand he had failed. And then she said goodbye.

He woke up, looked for her. No longer Wamphyri, she had taken the chains from her door, escaped. He searched the stack top to bottom, came and went through the MÃ¶bius Continuum until he was dizzy, but he couldn't find her. Eventually he went out onto her high balcony and looked down. Karen's white dress lay crumpled on the scree more than a kilometer below, no longer entirely white but red, too.

And Karen was inside it â¦

Epilogue

In the garden, the damage done in the fighting had been very nearly put to rights. Travellers worked at it during sunups, and trogs through the dark sundowns. And meanwhile the message had gone out: the Wamphyri are no more! Streams of Travellers, entire tribes, were en route even now, coming here to celebrate and worship at the feet of their saviour. Jazz and Zek, and Wolf, too, had gone home, conveyed to that distant place by The Dweller, who had then returned.

And all in all, The Dweller was well satisfied with his work.

But â¦ feeling a burning on his neck, Harry Jr. turned from where he supervised the rebuilding of the wall, turned to glance at a rising hummock of ground a little way apart. Someone stood there, someone who watched him intently, silently. Someone whose mind was sealed tight as a limpet to its rock. Harry Jr. frowned, peered for a moment through the holes in the golden mask, then smiled. It was only his father.

He waved and went back to work â¦

TOR BOOKS BY BRIAN LUMLEY

THE NECROSCOPE
^Â®Series

Necroscope
Necroscope: Vamphyri!
Necroscope: The Source
Necroscope: Deadspeak
Necroscope: Deadspawn
Blood Brothers
The Last Aerie
Bloodwars
Necroscope: The Lost Years
Necroscope: Resurgence
Necroscope: Invaders
Necroscope: Defilers
Necroscope: Avengers
Necroscope: The Touch

THE TITUS CROW SERIES

Titus Crow Volume One: The Burrowers Beneath &
The Transition of Titus Crow
Titus Crow Volume Two: The Clock of Dreams &
Spawn of the Winds
Titus Crow Volume Three: In the Moons of Borea & Elysia

THE PSYCHOMECH TRILOGY

Psychomech
Psychosphere
Psychamok

OTHER NOVELS

Demogorgon
The House of Doors
Maze of Worlds
Khai of Khem
The House of Cthulhu
Tarra Khash: Hrossak!

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

Fruiting Bodies and Other Fungi
The Whisperer and Other Voices
Beneath the Moors and Darker Places
Harry Keogh: Necroscope and Other Weird Heroes!
The Brian Lumley Companion

The Thing in the Tank

They had captured it when it came through the portal and imprisoned it in a glass-walled tank, sealed away from human contact. But it knew they were out thereâand now it was trying to escape!

It formed into a pearly sphere at the bottom of the tank, resting briefly on the blood-slimed sand. Its myriad flickering cilia propelled it to the feeding tube â¦ and
into
the pipe. The vampire-thing dropped into the feeding tankâoutside its glass prison.

Its keeper, Agursky, stared at it bewildered. Then he opened the container and gently touched the vampire-egg with the tip of one finger.

In that instant the vampire struck. And Agursky was no longer human.

Notes

Necroscope:
Tor, 1988.

Necroscope II: Vamphyri!.
Tor, 1989.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE SOURCE: NECROSCOPE
^Â®III

Cover art by Bob Gladden

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
^Â®is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

eISBN 9781466817722

First eBook Edition : May 2012

ISBN-13: 978-0-8125-2127-6
ISBN-10: 0-8125-2127-7

First Edition: September 1989