Necroscope 9: The Lost Years by Brian Lumley

timestream.
    Now he was in the last great aerie of the Wamphyri … Karenstack? And furtive as a thief, he pursued the Lady Karen as she descended to her larder. Sinister and silent as smoke, Karen flowed in through a dark
    Brian Lumley
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    Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I
    33
     
    doorway; folowing her, Harry kept to the shadows while she activated a trog and brought it out of its cocoon. He watched her lead the shambling, comatose neanderthal to a stone table where it lay down, stretched itself prone and bent back its ugly, prehistoric head for her.
    Then the Lady’s jaws opened … opened … gaped! Blood slopped from her crimson mouth; scythe teeth sprouted, poising over a sluggishly pulsing jugular.
    Her nose wrinkled, flatening back on itself, and her eyes burned as red as lanterns in the twilight room.
    ‘Karen!’ Harry heard himself atempting to cry - in the moment before the kaleidoscope scene changed, taking him forward again in time, but only a little way this time …
    … The Necroscope sat absolutely still, waiting … (for what he didn’t know, couldn’t say, only that he felt tense as never before), in the deepest darkest shadows of the aerie. And eventualy it came: Karen’s vampire! By what route it had left her body, Harry neither knew nor wanted to know; sufficient that it was here, where he … where he wanted it? It was a long leech, corrugated, cobra headed, blind-and it had pointed udders, a great many.
    Swaying its head this way and that, it inched forward … then sensed him and commenced a hasty retreat! Curling back on itself, it wriggled like a blindworm; for now it must get back to safety, return itself to Karen’s undead flesh. But the Necroscope wasn’t about to let that happen.
    Using his flamethrower, he burned it… dying, it issued eggs, dozens of them, which spun and skitered, vibrating over the stone flags towards him. Sweating, but cold inside, Harry burned the eggs, too, every one of them. And as if from a milion miles away - as if from someone else’s dream - he heard the awful screaming, which he somehow knew was Karen’s.
    Then, abruptly, leaving him dizzy, disoriented, the scene changed yet again:
    To a high balcony where he leaned out and looked down, and knew why he was dizzy: the terrible height! And way down there, crumpled on the scree, the Lady’s white gown … no longer entirely white but red, too.
    Karen (or what he and the future-Harry thought was Karen), was inside it. And terribly, achingly, none of it made sense to him, or fleeting sense at best - there one minute and gone the next.
    Another jump:
    Cold liquid burned his face, got into his throat and stung him, caused him to cough. It was … alcohol? Certainly it was volatile. It smoked, shimmering into vapour al around him. And … he saw that he was lying in it!
    He struggled to his hands and knees, tried not to breathe the fumes, which were rising up into some sort of flue directly overhead… A blackened flue … Fire-blackened? Harry kneeled in a basin or depression cut from solid rock, kneeled there in this pool of volatile liquid.
    Impressions came quickly: he must be in the very bowels of the castle (but what castle?), down in the bedrock itself… a huge cave. And against the opposite wall where rough-hewn steps climbed to unseen higher levels … there stood Janos Ferenczy, Wamphyri, watching him! The monster held a burning brand aloft, its fire reflecting in his scarlet eyes.
    Their eyes met, locked …}anas’s lips drew back from his unbelievable teeth in a hideous grin. He spoke … but the Necroscope couldn’t hear him, could only sense the threat. Janos’s gaze transferred to the torch in his taloned hand, then to the floor. Harry looked, too: at a shallow trough or channel cut in the rock, which ran from Janos’s feet, across the floor, to the lip of the basin where Harry kneeled. And Janos was slowly lowering his torch!
    Jesus! Harry must use the Mobius Continuum - but couldn’t! His