Necroscope 9: The Lost Years by Brian Lumley

take the blast. With one exception it was exactly as it had been during that split-second of precognition in Darcy’s Clarke’s office; the exception was sound. For even though the Continuum acted as a baffle, still there came the subdued roar of the explosion, as the immaterial frame of the door buckled and warped and finally blinked out of existence.
    But not before the Continuum had rid itself of a hideous contamination, and a jet of wet red stinking human debris had erupted like a volcano, flinging the guts and brains and shit and shattered bones of a man up and outwards against the high walls and windows of the street.
    And then the slimy, spattering rain, that smelled of cordite and copper and many a crime corrected …
    It was over but as yet the street was still and strangely silent. Street-cleaning vehicles had been ordered-up and were on their way; somewhere in the near-distance police and ambulance sirens wailed their unmistakable dirges; a handful of unfortunate uniformed officers were picking up … whatever pieces were large enough to be gathered off the street. A man, staggering and bloody, was being led away from a shattered store window, where the rear of his car stuck up at an odd angle.
    ‘You,’ one of the police inspectors said to Harry, with a hand on his shoulder, ‘are a hell of a lucky man. You were the closest to it when that bomb went off.’ But suddenly his voice was very quiet. ‘What did you … see? I mean exactly what was it that happened there?’ Carefully, he dabbed specks of blood and other matter from his forehead.
    Darcy Clarke was fully recovered. Breaking into the conversation with what he hoped would be a useful lie, he said, ‘I saw everything. When Sean was shot he fell on top of his holdall. Then there came the explosion. His body muffled the sound but took the full force of the blast. He just… flew apart.’
    Harry nodded. ‘Something like that,’ he said. ‘Actually, I was looking away from it.’
    As luck would have it, most of them had been looking away from it. But behind the parapet wall of a tall building, white-faced and wondering, a police marksman examined his weapon and thought, what the hell…? For it was one thing to shoot at a man, but quite another to hit him and see him fall - and then watch him disappear right out of this world!
    Not fifty feet away from the group on the traffic island, Harry’s
    Brian Lumley
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    Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I
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    Krishna types huddled in a shop doorway. For once immobilized, they stared at the scene of what could have been an enormous disaster. Harry saw them looking.
    Their sandals might have been stilled for once, but their slanted eyes were still ful of the action that had been, and that they’d seen. One of them - their leader? - was lowering a camera. Harry couldn’t help wondering what he’d been photographing, and why …
    Amazingly, Darcy’s car looked like it might still drive, however dangerously. The senior lawmen seemed uncertain about it, but before they could advise Darcy against it he’d bundled the Necroscope and Trevor Jordan inside and driven off. On the way to E-Branch HQ, he said, ‘It seems we should never underestimate you, Harry. I don’t know what you did, or how you did it, but I do know it was you.’
    And Jordan said, ‘My telepathy seems like a toy by comparison!’
    ‘We al played our parts,’ Harry shrugged. ‘We’ve worked together before, and it’s starting to look like we make a good team.’ But before they could misinterpret that, and perhaps his future intentions, he added: ‘Wel, this time it worked out, at least.’
    Darcy made a derisory noise in his nose. ‘But sometimes I feel like such a … such a bloody coward, that’s all!’
    ‘I shouldn’t if I were you,’ Jordan told him. ‘Oh, it was Harry who saved the day, right enough, but was it al him? How do you know he wasn’t prompted by that guardian angel of yours, Darcy, taking care of you as