The Last Aerie Read Online Free

as jagged as shards of white, broken glass. What? Like the gates of hell? That and worse, for Harry had been Wamphyri!
    Trask started massively as Anna Marie English, standing on his right, grasped his elbow and needlessly, breathlessly stated, “Sir, he’s moving away from us.”
    She was right, as everyone there could see. The hologram of the corpse was getting smaller, falling or receding faster and faster towards a multi-hued, nebulous origin or destiny out of which the blue, green, and red ribbons of neon light reached like writhing tentacle arms to welcome it. The smoking, rotating figure dwindled; it became a mote, a speck; it disappeared!
    And where it had been—
    An explosion! A sunburst of golden light, expanding silently, hugely, awesomely! So that the thirteen observers gasped and ducked down; and despite that it was in their group mind, they turned away from the blinding intensity of the glare and what flew out of it. All except Ben Trask, who shielded his eyes and shrank down a little but continued to watch—because he must know the truth. Trask, and also David Chung, who cried his astonishment, staggered and almost fell. But they had seen, both of them:
    Those myriad golden splinters speeding outwards from the sunburst, angling this way and that, sentient, seeking, disappearing into as many unknown places. Those—pieces—of the Necroscope, Harry Keogh? All that remained of him? And as the last of them had zipped by Trask and vanished silently out of view—out into the corridor, apparently—so the streamers of blue, green and red metaphysical light had blinked out of being, returning the briefing room’s illumination to normal.
    Except … that last golden dart had seemed so real. Why, Trask could have sworn that it had actually materialized right here in the Ops room, sentient and solid, before speeding out into the corridor and disappearing from view!
    And now, within the room, thirteen startled, gaping, extraordinary human beings. But perfectly ordinary in comparison to what they had witnessed …
    Trask forced himself into action, stepped across the room to where David Chung was still mazed, staggering. He took hold of him, steadied him, snapped, “David, are you all right?”
    “No—yes,” the other answered. “But he isn’t.” He licked dry lips and closed his slack mouth, half-pointed and flapped a hand towards the center of the room where the espers were moving about once more.
    “Was it Harry?” Trask breathed.
    Chung sighed heavily and collapsed a little into himself. “Oh, yes. It was Harry, Ben. It was him.”
    “The end of him?”
    Chung nodded, opened his trembling hand and showed the other what he was holding: a pig-bristle hairbrush whose oval wooden plaque fitted snug in his palm. For a moment Trask was mystified … then he understood. It was Chung’s talent: he was a sympathetic tracker, a locator. Following the Bodescu affair Harry Keogh had stayed here at E-Branch HQ for a month, filling in the blank spaces. For a time he’d even considered taking on the position of Head of Branch. But with the loss of his wife and son, the Necroscope’s world had collapsed and he’d moved on, become a recluse up in Scotland. The hairbrush had been his, one of several items he’d left behind.
    “I’ve kept it all this time, since I was first recruited into the Branch,” Chung now explained to the other espers as they gathered round. This and one or two other pieces which were his. Six months ago, when the Russians reported Harry’s escape through the Perchorsk Gate, I took out his things and tried to locate him. I mean, I obviously couldn’t locate him, but it was just the same as when Jazz Simmons went through: I knew that Harry wasn’t here, not in this world, but he wasn’t dead either. He was in Starside.”
    “And now?” It was Anna Marie English, worrying for her world, for herself.
    Chung shook his head. “Now he isn’t.”
    “Not in Starside?” one of the younger