"Charles L. Grant - Raven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Charles L)

They were watching him, he could feel them, but out here, the snow in dervishes around him, he couldn't see very
far and nearly tumbled into the creek when he reached it.
The man was gone.
Not this time, he thought angrily; not this time.
He shifted left, following the bank to a low walk-bridge of flat-topped stones he had laid down after he'd finished the
waterfall. He could hear it now, some twenty yards upstream, and could see the rocks already capped in white. He
hesitated. A slip, a slide, and he'd be ankle deep in freezing water. Frostbite. Pneumonia. He didn't care. His arms out
for balance, he shuffled across, kicking the snow away as he went, and ran back through the trees, ducking a branch
that dumped snow on him anyway, using the boles to keep him on his feet. Wind pelted him with what felt like ice. He
shook his head to clear his hair, and most of the snow dribbled down his collar, his neck, sluiced down his spine-He
came to the birch a few minutes later and stood there, one hand on the trunk, shading his eyes with the other arm while
he stared into the woods.
Nothing but hissing snow and dancing white.
"Bastard," he said, steam from his mouth temporarily blinding him. "Bastard!" he yelled, shaking a fist, then turning
abruptly when he remembered he had an audience. He swallowed. He shrugged at them. He looked down to see if
Holgate had left something behind.
He hadn't.
Not even a footprint.
Except for his own tracks, the snow was clear.
Which was, he thought as he headed back to the cross-ing, clearly impossible. But not so impossible if he
consid-ered how heavily the snow had begun to fall, and how long it had taken him to make up his mind to chase the
bastard off. With leaves and pine needles on the ground, the snow wouldn't have been very deep in the first placeтАФit
was only an inch, not much moreтАФand a few minutes blowing would cover everything up as if it had never been.
No big deal.
Nevertheless, he veered straight into the trees when he crossed the creek again, following a worn trail that led to
his house. Thankful that for once he hadn't been conscien-tious about locking up after he'd left earlier, he stumbled
inside and sagged back against the door. His ears burned, his lips felt chapped, and the warmth of the building felt
painfully tropical as he waited for the cold to leave his lungs and let him breathe properly again.
Once done, and remembering the others, he opened the coat closet, reached in, and pulled out a rifle carefully
wrapped in oilcloth. He tossed the cloth aside. A quick check to be sure the weapon wasn't loaded. A box of
ammunition from the shelf behind a hat he never wore. He hoped the damn thing worked. The last time he'd fired it
more than once was at a town-sponsored turkey shoot three Thanksgivings ago, the prize a free meal for ten in a
Hunter Lake restaurant. He wasn't a hunter; the rifle had been his father's. And the turkeys had been cardboard. He
hadn't won the meal.
As a matter of fact, he remembered with a grin, Nester had won that year, claiming he'd need all that food just to
feed his wife.
The other times he'd used it were essentially whenever he had thought about it, never more than a half-dozen times
a year; a cleaning, a shot or two into the air, a cleaning, a putting away until next time.
He'd look awfully stupid if he had to use it now and it blew up in his face.
After rewrapping the rifle to protect it from the weather, he left, didn't stop until he reached the parking lot, to check
one more time to see if Holgate had returned. When he couldn't find him, when the wind practically slammed him
against the wall, he hurried inside and gasped aloud as the storm shoved him over the threshold.
Brandt was there, his coat half on, dangling from one shoulder. "What the hell is that for? The goddamn raven's
long gone."
Neil shook his head, too cold to answer, and let his own coat fall to the floor, stamped his feet to get the feeling
back. Then he reached over the counter and propped the rifle against the wall, picked up the jacket and dropped it
into the near booth. "Next time the jackass shows up, I'm going to scare the hell out of him."
Brandt coughed, hard and long.
Voices in the restaurant; the music had stopped.
"Going home," Brandt announced, finishing putting on his coat. Sniffed. Wiped his nose with a sleeve. "She'll kill