"03 - Circus of the Damned 4.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Laurell K)

day.
Ruebens's hands were making their endless dance for the fourth time. Four was my
limit.
I wanted to go around the desk, grab his hands, and yell, "Stop that!" But I
figured that was a little rude, even for me. "I don't remember you being this
twitchy, Ruebens," I said.
He glanced at me. "Twitchy?"
I motioned at his hands, making their endless circuit. He frowned and placed his
hands on top of his thighs. They remained there, motionless. Self-control at its
best.
"I am not twitchy, Miss Blake."
"It's Ms. Blake. And why are you so nervous, Mr. Ruebens?" I sipped my coffee.
"I am not accustomed to asking help from people like you."
"People like me?" I made it a question.
He cleared his throat sharply. "You know what I mean."
"No, Mr. Ruebens, I don't."
"Well, a zombie queen . . ." He stopped in mid-sentence. I was getting pissed,
and it must have shown on my face. "No offense," he said softly.
"If you came here to call me names, get the hell out of my office. If you have
real business, state it, then get the hell out of my office."
Ruebens stood up. "I told you she wouldn't help us."
"Help you do what? You haven't told me a damn thing," I said.
"Perhaps we should just tell her why we have come," Inger said. His voice was a
deep, rumbling bass, pleasant.
Ruebens drew a deep breath and let it out through his nose. "Very well." He sat
back down in his chair. "The last time we met, I was a member of Humans Against
Vampires."
I nodded encouragingly and sipped my coffee.
"I have since started a new group, Humans First. We have the same goals as HAV,
but our methods are more direct."
I stared at him. HAV's main goal was to make vampires illegal again, so they
could be hunted down like animals. It worked for me. I used to be a vampire
slayer, hunter, whatever. Now I was a vampire executioner. I had to have a death
warrant to kill a specific vampire, or it was murder. To get a warrant, you had
to prove the vampire was a danger to society, which meant you had to wait for
the vampire to kill people. The lowest kill was five humans, the highest was
twenty-three. That was a lot of dead bodies. In the good ol' days you could just
kill a vampire on sight.
"What exactly does 'more direct methods' mean?"
"You know what it means," Ruebens said.
"No," I said, "I don't." I thought I did, but he was going to have to say it out
loud.
"HAV has failed to discredit vampires through the media or the political
machine. Humans First will settle for destroying them all."
I smiled over my coffee mug. "You mean kill every last vampire in the United
States?"
"That is the goal," he said.
"It's murder."
"You have slain vampires. Do you really believe it is murder?"
It was my turn to take a deep breath. A few months ago I would have said no. But