"Bischoff, David - Night World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bischoff David)

The dragon jerked. Spasming, it unhooked its claws from the van. The tail whipped out of control, like a wriggling serpent Freed, the van rapidly backed well away from the dragon, now contorting its broken body insanely.

Oliver sprinted away and called to the soldiers.

"Closer! Continue your fire!"

The rear doors of the van split open and Turner's obese form tumbled out, shaken. He wobbled toward the soldiers, all the while staring at the twitching form of the defeated dragon. "Close," he muttered. "Very close." He stepped forward, and cupped his hands to his mouth. "So much for your spanking new monsters, Satan," he cried. "So much for your incredible power!"

Flames now spouted from various apertures in the beast's body armor. It should have been finished. And yet, incredibly, the body stilled its thrashings, save for its head, which swiveled about to regard Turner with its sne good eye. "Your soul shall yet be mine, fat fool," Satan's voice crackled. "And your body I shall spit with wire. I shall sizzle the fat from it in the depths"

An explosion burst the dragon, throwing fiery bits into the night sky. The head tumbled and lay still on the blackened ground.

The people, still stunned, milled about, astonished.

Members of the other Field Feast sites watched from the roads, open-mouthed.

Oliver approached his father, who bugged him. "Had I not hit the beast properly," said Lord Dolan, tears still in his eyes. "Had I not fired into its mouth" The familiar, homey smell about the Viscount soothed Oliver's nerves.

"You caused the mouth to malfunction. Father?"

"I thought bullets would not harm it, but I was wrong," said the tall man. "Thank God, I directed rifles be obtained anyway. And thank Him that He directed the aim of my rifle, or you would be as dead as your mother, Oliver."

"My mother?" said Oliver, disbelievingly.

"Yes," said the Viscount, in a choking voice. "She was killed in the beast's first fire-blast."




The mountain itself seemed to quake with Satan's fury.

The satyr mechanic was wakened from its rest, and dragged by two apprentice demons to the depths of the steel-walled Hell, to stand before the creature who called itself Satan. Fearful, the satyr trembled at the terrible countenance of its Master.

"I have just severed the radio link with my dragon, furry one. Do you know what happened?" the man-thing asked from its murmuring vat.

"A successful mission, I trust. Great One," squealed the goat-man, shaking with terror.

"No. It was not successful!" bellowed the voice. "It was humiliating and should not have been. The dragon should have been indestructible."

"But Master, it would have been, if I had had sufficient time to work."

"Silence! I will not countenance impudence. I see I have placed too much self-awareness in your model.

That will be corrected in your fellows. The fire-breathing mechanism, furry one, was to have been shielded.

Measures were to have been taken to prevent an explosion of the gases, should a malfunction occur. And the shielding along the body? What about that? it was to be my most terrible nightcreature, a prototype of many such beasts to spread horror amongst the sequestered humans in their wretched, stone-walled shelters."

"But Satan, I did mention . . ."