"Janrae Frank - Dark Brothers of the Light 04 - Blood Wraiths" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frank Janrae)

The Beast-she hunts where no one walks.

Anksha-demon of the wild.

No mercy there for those she stalks.

Akin to nonethough human seeming,

Beware her clawlest ye turn pale.

Though the Bitch of Brandrahoon's preening

Can never hide her furry tail.

All Sa'necari fear her well

She feeds alike on those, and man.

She'll rend and tear your skin to hell,

Or worseyour soul in mortgiefan!

Sad met this mistress in the dark.

Draw not close and don't be crude.

For an erring child out on a lark.

Shall meet their end as foul Anksha's food.
Lycan traditional teaching song


CHAPTER ONE: HOON

Hoon lay unmoving, unbreathing; his skin, cracked and desiccated, wrapped along his bones in papery
ribbons. The once black hair had turned gray and dry as the straw he lay upon, forgotten in one of the
king's dungeons. His spread-eagled limbs, spellcorded to the metal loops at the ends of pegs in the floor,
no longer ached there was not enough muscle tissue left in them to ache. He could not see. The fluid in his
eyes had dried and without it he was blind. The vampire hungered. He dreamed of blood and the taste of
death in his mouth. Hoon had no strength to move; his desire to struggle against his bonds had faded to
dim memory with the months of his imprisonment. At least his captors no longer came down to torture
and torment him. They had not even bothered to put the deadly seals on the cords that would have slain
him had he tried to remove them. They had not needed to. By the time they chained him here, the harsh
attentions they had paid him earlier had left Hoon too wasted and wounded to attempt anything. Now, he
was just a creature of dreams and memories.

Rats rustled through the straw, chittering along the edges of the dungeon. Several of them ran across him
and his wasted body managed a faint shudder as he wondered if they had come to gnaw upon him. Then
they were gone again or at least he no longer heard them and he slipped back into a dreaming state out of