FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM, THE WORLD NEEDS A NEW NECROSCOPE

Harry Keogh, Necroscope, is no more... And the Wamphyri are back - not only in the Vampire World, where the ancient northern ice has melted to release the original, the most evil, most powerful vampires of all time, but in our world, too. Without the Necroscope - the one man who could talk to the dead and the undead alike - only Ben Trask and his weirdly talented espers of his secret organization, E-Branch, stand between Mankind's survival and its domination by terrible invaders out of Starside.

Trask: human lie-detector; David Chung: locator of all things evil; Ian Goodfly: precog, whose glimpses of ever-furtive future have so often saved the lives of his E-Branch colleagues. Three men, their technology and their esoteric talents against shape-changing challengers from a parallel universe. The odds don't look good, and Harry Keogh is dead and gone, his motes scattered throughout all the universes of Light. But as Harry himself was witness, death isn't like that...

Harry may be dead, but his legacy lives on.

HARDCOVER

PAPERBACK

Copyright © 1999 Brian Lumley
Cover art by Bob Eggleton
ISBN:0-340-79245-0
Published by Hodder and Stoughton

Jake Cutter is reluctantly learning how to be a Necroscope -- how to use the Möbius Continuum to travel instantaneously from place to place, how to talk to the dead -- but the dead don't like him much. It seems Jake's got a hitchhiker in his mind, a dead vampire named Korath. Since Korath holds the key to the Möbius equations, Jake can't just kick him out ... though he's certainly trying!

Jake's not sure he really wants to be a member of E-Branch, the super-secret ESP-powered organisation that's dedicated to eradicating the vampire infestation of Earth. To the freewheeling, passionate Jake, the E-Branchers seem a little stuffy and hidebound -- except for the lovely Liz, whom Jake wants to get to know better, body and mind. But Liz is a telepath, and if Jake's not careful, she'll find out about Korath. And that will likely be the end of Jake Cutter.

In Australia, Jake helped E-Branch destroy the aerie of the mind-master, Nephran Malinari, one of the trio of Great Vampires who came to Earth from the vampire world. Malinari escaped and went to ground with the hideously beautiful Lady Vavara. Vavara has taken over a holy monastery on an idyllic Greek island and turned the nuns into most unholy creatures of fearsome appetites for all things carnal.

Jake wants revenge against the Italian mobsters who killed the woman he loved, and nearly killed him. As far as he's concerned, E-Branch can search for Malinari, Vavara, and the metamorphic Lord Szwart without him until he's satisfied his own bloodlust. But it seems vampire-hunting is truly Jake's job now -- the men he's trying to kill aren't men at all, but vampire spawn, hidden for two generations in human guise!

To defeat them, Jake will need every weapon in the Necroscope's arsenal, including the power to call the unsleeping dead out of their mouldering graves...

They're on the run! Now that their monstrous vampire 'garden' under London, in Australia and on the Greek island of Krassos have been razed, two 'Lords' and a 'Lady' of the Wamphyri -- Malinari the Mind, Lord Szwart and the hag Vavara -- have joined forces, leaving a trail of undead destruction as they flee headlong from Ben Trask's E-Branch and the dead-waking Necroscope, Jake Cutter.

But headstrong Jake has problems of his own. In the metaphysical Möbius Continuum, it appears that his blue life-thread -- the emblem of his humanity -- is gradually fading, changing to red. And not only red but blood red, dreaded insignia of the Great Vampire!

Could this be the downside of Harry Keogh's legacy? And if so, are the Necroscope and Trask's ESP-talented Avengers -- his team of precogs, telepaths, and locators -- hastening in pursuit of their own hideous doom? Earth's fate is undecided, mankind's destiny on hold, the future a page as yet unwritten.

And the future was ever a devious thing...