"Gilman,.Laura.Anne.-.Overrush.(A.Wren.and.Sergei.Story)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gilman Laura Anne)frowned. "What the hell?"
"You feel it?" Sergei nodded, astonished. He was reasonably sensitive to the natural flow of magicЧthat was how they'd first metЧbut this was different somehow. "I feel . . . something. What is it?" "Overrush." Sergei pulled his hand away, wiping it on his slacks as though that would erase the taint of death. "Which is ... ?" "Current. Only, more than that. There's current residue in him that's impossibly high. This guy'sЧGod, I don't know how to explain it. I don't even know what it is! But it feels right. That's what you're feeling. It's the only thing that could explainЧ" "Genevieve!" He hated shouting at her, but it seemed to do the trick; she pulled herself together. "Right. It looks like he got caught up in current, major mondo current, pulled it inЧand got ungrounded. Which is impossible. I mean, any lonejack worth their skin knows how to ground. You don't make it past puberty if you can't." "So this fellow should have been able to ground and dispel any current he couldn't use." "Unless," Wren said, even slower than before, "unless somehow, he was stopped ..." Sergei stared at the body. "How? By whom?" Wren shrugged, hugging herself. "Damned if I know. I didn't think it was possible. Grounding's as much mental as physicalЧlike Sergei sat down heavily on a velvet-covered stool and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You couldn't have just left him there?" She didn't even bother glaring at him, looking at her watch instead. "Almost seven," she told him. "You'd better get upstairs and meet our new client. I'll see about finding the old boy a more final resting place." Sergei caught her by the arm. "Be careful," he told her. "I don't like this." She put her hand over his. "That makes two of us, partner." Sergei never asked what she'd done with the body. She never offered to tell him. He told her, instead, about the new client. "It's something a little different," he said. Different was good. Different required planning, plotting. That was what they did best, the different ones. The difficult ones. That was why they were the best Retrievers in the business, on either side of the law. And different distracted her from the memory of a man torn apart from the inside by too much of the stuff she depended on to exist. Lonejackers were all current junkies. Didn't matter that you were Mage or freelancer; it got in your blood, your bones, and if you could jack, you did. And if you jacked too much . . . Her mentor had gone crazy from current. She had always thought that was the worst thing that could happen. Maybe it wasn't. Sergei's hand touched her waist, his breath warm in her ear. "Stop thinking. We're on." |
|
|