E-Branch Series
Books 11-13 of the saga
Copyright © 1998 Brian Lumley
Cover art by Bob Eggleton
ISBN:0-312-86814-6
(from the jacket) Three great vampires - two Lords and a Lady - fall upon an unsuspecting Earth, a world teeming with defenseless human life. Easy prey for the marauding vampires, mankind will quickly be laid waste, or so they think.
But Earth has defenders. Though the Necroscope is gone, the ESP-powered spy organization he once led still exists. Mentally alert for the slightest sign of vampire taint, the men and women of E-Branch have already moved against the fringes of vampire infestation.
Destroying minor vampires is all well and good, but the Lords and Lady must be found and eradicated. Without Harry Keogh and his connection to the teeming dead, E-Branch seems crippled, always two steps behind it's enemies.
When a young man turns up in the triply locked "Harry's Room" in E-Branch's London HQ, no one quite knows what to make of him - least of all the young man himself. Jake remembers running for his life, thousands of miles from London...and then nothing.
Now he feels a curious whispering deep within his mind. And his dreams have become very strange, filled with visitations from dead vampires and dead people and Harry Keogh himself.
If Jake is the new Necroscope, he has to learn - fast! - how to control his powers and speak to the dead. E-Branch, with the reluctant Jake along for the ride, is about to go head-to-head with Malinari the Mind, a vampire Lord whose psychic ability is second to none.
But the dead don't trust Jake, not like they once trusted Harry. Jake's spending too much time talking to a dead vampire, and too much time on personal revenge. He's got to start thinking about the future - or he won't have one!
Copyright © 1999 Brian Lumley
Cover art by Bob Eggleton
ISBN:0-312-87261-5
(from the jacket) Jake Cutter is reluctantly learning how to be a Necroscope - how to use the Möbius continuum to travel instantly 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 supersecret ESP-powered organization 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 a 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 a beautiful Greek island and turned the nuns into most unholy creatures of fearsome appetites of 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 a Necroscope's arsenal, including the power to call the unsleeping dead out of their moldering graves.
Copyright © 1999 Brian Lumley
Cover art by Bob Eggleton
ISBN: 0-312-87923-7
ISBN: 0-812-57019-7
(from the jacket) A cruise ship is a great place to get away from the world. It's also a terrific nesting ground for a Lord and Lady of the Wamphyri on the run from E-Branch and the new Necroscope, Jake Cutter. By the time anyone figures out what happened to the suddenly silenced ship and its crew and passengers, it'll be too late, much too late...
Ben Trask, Jake Cutter, Millicent Cleary, Liz Merrick, Lardis Lidesci, and the rest of E-Branch are anxious to find the Lady Vavara and Lords Malinari and Szwart. The Wamphyri may be on the run for now, but soon they'll recover from E-Branch's attacks and be ready to attempt once again to conquer the Earth.
Jake's struggle with Korath, the vampire inhabitant of his mind, has come to a crisis point: Korath is determined to gain control of Jake's life, and Jake is equally determined not to let him have it. But the only way to win this struggle is to confide in Ben Trask - and the head of E-Branch is likely to want Jake dead once he knows of Jake's intrusive passenger.
Szwart's spore garden under London is proving to have borne bitter fruit indeed. A mysterious sleeping sickness is slowly spreading among the population of Great Britain - and the afflicted are becoming something quite other then human. And Millie Cleary was trapped down there with Szwart for a long time. A very long time.
Harry Keogh is summoned from the Great Beyond via the combined powers of E-Branch's strongest agents. Held precariously in this time and place, the oracular former Necroscope gives what aid and advice he can, putting Korath under a form of "house arrest." E-Branch action teams have almost more on their plates than they can handle - locating renegade communists who threaten nuclear homicide; cooperating with Gustav Turchin, head of Russia's mindspy prganization, in trying to permanently close the Gate between the Wamphyri world and Earth; analyzing the spore plague; and always, always hunting the Wamphyri.
A terrible conflagration precedes a horrifying confrontation in the shadow of the Gate as the Wamphyri and E-Branch conduct what should be their final battle. But in the world of the Necroscope, nothing, not even death...or undeath...is necessarily forever.
And as always, the future is a devious thing.