Yulian Bodescu, contaminated with vampirism by Thibor Ferenczy – the same centuries-dead vampire who infected Dragosani – threatened both Harry’s life and the life of his baby son. But this time it was Harry Jr who turned the tables and made possible Bodescu’s destruction; for he too was born a Necroscope, with talents the same as (or greater than?) those possessed by his father.
Following the Bodescu affair, Harry Jr vanished (apparently from the face of the Earth) and took his poor demented mother with him. Harry Sr, searching far and wide for his wife and infant son, despaired of ever finding them: in the Möbius Continuum their life-threads disappeared mysteriously into some otherworldly place where even he could not follow.
Harry quit British E-Branch and devoted himself to his search, which soon became an obsession. Years passed and the Necroscope turned recluse, living in a rambling, ramshackle house some miles outside Edinburgh.
Then . . . E-Branch contacted him again. They were badly in need of Harry’s help and guessed he’d be reluctant, but there was also a carrot. The Branch had a similar case on its hands: a Secret Service agent had gone missing, not presumed dead. Just like Harry Jr and his mother, so now a young spy had disappeared into thin air. The mindspies had reason to believe he was alive, but still they couldn’t find him. Harry checked it out with the Great Majority, who denied that the missing man had joined their ranks. And yet E-Branch swore that he wasn’t ‘here’ on Earth. So … where was he?
Could it be he was in the same place as the Necroscope’s wife and child?
Eventually Harry’s inquiries led him to the Perchorsk Projekt, a Russian experiment buried deep in a ravine under the Ural Mountains. In an attempt to create a force-field barrier as a counter to the USA’s Star Wars scenario, the Soviets had accidentally blasted a ‘wormhole’ out of this space-time dimension into a parallel plane of existence. And in so doing they had also discovered the ancient source of all vampiric infestation of Earth! Things were coming through the Perchorsk Gate into our world. Unbelievable things – unbelievable except to the Necroscope and certain members of the British and Soviet E-Branches.
Through his contacts with the dead, and especially with the assistance of August Ferdinand Möbius, Harry discovered a second Gate and used it to venture into the world of the Wamphyri, whose skyscraper aeries gloomed gaunt and nightmarish over all Starside, the world where the vampire Lords held sway. There he discovered his son, grown now to a young man, but, alas, infected with vampirism!
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 . . .