Known as The Dweller in this weird parallel world, Harry Jr had so far managed to hold his vampire metamorphosis in check; he commanded a small band of Travellers (the original Gypsies), and a regiment of 'trogs', the aboriginal men of Starside. But his enemies were monstrous and far outnumbered him. Only his 'magic' — his mastery of the Möbius Continuum, and of superior science — had so far kept him safe. But under the guidance of the great and sinister Lord Shaithis, the warlike Wamphyri had recently put aside all personal grievances and banded together into an awesome, alien army. Jealous of The Dweller, his garden and works, they would move in unison against him.
The two Harrys must stand alone against this force of monsters, else total Wamphyri domination of Star-and Sunside would become a grim and horrific reality. But they did not stand entirely alone; in the bloody battle for The Dweller's garden, the Lady Karen joined sides with them. A vampire, indeed Wamphyri, Karen was as beautiful as she was clever. She could read the minds of the vampire Lords and forecast their every move. Still Shaithis and his fellow Lords, their lieutenants, and all the vast and terrible warrior-creatures they had created from the flesh of men and trogs alike must surely have won the battle… had it not been for the awesome powers of the Necroscope and his son.
Using the raw light of the sun itself, the garden's defenders defeated Shaithis's vampire army, and went on to level the towering stacks of stone and bone which were the aeries of the Wamphyri. All except Karen's, who had been their ally…
Afterwards, Harry Keogh visited Karen in the grimly forbidding aerie which was her place. She was not long a vampire; the thing within her had not yet gained full ascendancy; if the Necroscope could drive out her vampire and destroy it… perhaps there was yet a chance for Harry Jr.
Harry's method was crude, cruel, even brutal — but hideously effective. Except… how could he have foreseen the consequences? Karen had been Wamphyri! And now? Without her vampire she was nothing but a pretty, empty girl. Where was her power, her freedom, her raw, unfettered Wamphyri spirit now? Gone.
And when Harry awoke from his exhaustion, gone too was Karen!
From on high he saw her body wrapped in the white sheath she wore for a gown, bloody and broken on the flanks of her aerie, where she had thrown herself down from the uppermost levels.
The Dweller saw what his father had done, and knew why. If Harry Sr had found a cure for Karen, he might well have applied the principle to Harry Jr, too. Fearing that one day his father might return to Starside with just such a 'cure', The Dweller used his superior vampire powers to reduce Harry's skills to nothing. He took away his deadspeak (his ability to talk to the dead) and also his numeracy. And then he returned Harry Keogh, ex-Necroscope, to his own world, the world of men…
Forbidden to speak to the dead — a rule he must obey or else suffer terrible mental and physical agony — and denied the use of the Möbius Continuum as a result of his enforced innumeracy, Harry Keogh was as close as he had ever been to being a 'normal' man. Which, after what he had known, equated almost to a prefrontal lobotomy. He had been the Necroscope — and was now powerless.
But although incapable of conscious communication with the teeming dead, still they could speak to him in his dreams. And their message was monstrous. Another Great Vampire had come to stalk the world!
Harry had dedicated himself to the eradication of vampirism; but what could he, ex-Necroscope, do now? As the world's foremost expert on vampires, he could at least advise. He must do something, for unless he and E-Branch found the vampire first, then sooner or later the undead monster would surely find him! For Harry had grown into a legend: he was the vampire-slayer, and locked in his 'crippled' mind were all the secrets of the Great Majority and mathematical formulae governing the Möbius Continuum itself. If the born-again monster should use its necromancy to steal his forbidden metaphysical talents… the result would be unthinkable!
The dead, forbidden to talk to Harry except in his dreams, rallied to him. They used other methods to get their messages across: to tell him that a vampire was at work in the islands of the Aegean. Once more in league with E-Branch, Harry Keogh and the girl who loved him went out to the Mediterranean to see what could be done.
But two British espers had already been vampirized and their esoteric talents added to those of Janos Ferenczy, the bloodson of Faéthor and 'brother' to Thibor, the old Thing In The Ground. Janos was back to reclaim his territories and dig up again certain antique treasure-hoards which he himself had long ago buried as a safeguard against the changes which centuries of immobility in undeath would bring, treasures which would lie lost in the earth until his planned 'resurrection'. These preparations had been made back in the fifteenth century, when Janos had known that his powerful vampire father, Faéthor, was returning again to Wallachia after almost three hundred years of bloodthirsty adventuring with the Crusaders, then with Genghis Khan, and finally with the Moslems. For Faéthor hated Janos and would try to 'kill' him (as he had already put down his brother, Thibor, undead into the earth), for which reason Janos had made these provisions against an uncertain future.
When Harry saw what he was up against with Janos, and after the vampire had taken Harry's woman for his own, then he knew he must somehow regain his deadspeak and his command over the mysterious Möbius Continuum. Without these powers… he just wouldn't stand a chance.
The ghost of Faéthor Ferenczy, whose place was the crumbling, deserted, overgrown ruins of a house close to Ploiesti in Romania, contacted Harry and offered to help. The damage done to Harry's mind was the work of The Dweller, Harry Jr, a vampire with hugely enhanced mentalist powers. If Harry would now allow Faéthor's spirit into his mind, perhaps that 'father' of vampires could remove the blockage and unlock the closed-off regions. Harry did not like the idea (to allow a vampire, this vampire, into his mind?) and knew it was an experiment fraught with the most terrifying dangers. But beggars can't be choosers.
As to why Faéthor should want to help: he could not bear the thought of his bloodson, Janos, up and about in the world while he was nothing but a fading memory, shunned even by the dead. He wanted Janos put down again, indeed he actively desired to be the instrument of that termination. And Harry Keogh was the only one who could do it. At least, this was the explanation which Faéthor offered to Harry…
In Romania, Harry slept overnight in the ruins of Faéthor's last refuge, and while he slept the father of vampires entered his mind and reopened certain mental 'doors' which Harry Jr had closed there. Waking up, Harry discovered his deadspeak returned to him. Now he could contact the long-dead mathematician Möbius and have him enter his mind and, he hoped, give him back his numeracy and mastery of the so-called Möbius Continuum. But Faéthor had lied: once inside Harry's mind the vampire would not leave it — the Necroscope now had an unwelcome tenant.
Finally, at Janos's castle in the Zarandului Mountains of Transylvania, Harry recovered his powers in full, returned Janos to dust and committed the spirit of Faéthor to an eternity of emptiness and utter loneliness in the infinite future time-streams of the Möbius Continuum.
But his victory was not without cost.
Strange urges are part of Harry now, and stranger hungers. His life-thread unwinds as before into the unending future of Möbius time. Except… where once that life-thread was pure blue, as are the threads of all entirely human beings, now it is tinged with red!