"Simon Hawke - The Nine Lives of Catseye Gomez" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

The police had no idea what to do. This was way out of their league. But there was someone who could stop
the killer, three someones, to be precise, who flew in from New York when they heard what was going down.
And one of them was Merlin.
Merlin had taught Paulie everything he knew, but this wasn't quite the same Merlin that Paulie remembered.
That Merlin had died in a struggle with the Dark Ones, but his spirit had survived, to possess a flaky kid from
London by the name of Billy Slade. Then there was Kira, a sexy knockout from Lower Manhattan who had
made her living as a thief until she found a greater calling, and Wyrdrune, a dropout student of the
thaumaturgic arts who had the ability to shapechange into his alter ego, a cold and ruthless mercenary by
the name of Modred, the immortal spirit of King Arthur's son.
From the three of them, Paulie and I learned that there was once another race of beings on this Earth, not
unlike humans, with coppery-gold skin and bright red hair, and that they were magic users. It was from them
that humans got their legends of immortal gods and demons, vampires and witches. They were called the Old
Ones, and they used humans in their sacrificial rites, taking their life energies to empower their magic spells.
As the primitive humans started to evolve, many of the Old Ones came to feel that it was wrong to use them
in this way, and they started to practice what became white magic, thaumaturgy, a way of taking only some
of their life energy and allowing them to recuperate. But there were others, the Dark Ones, who would not give
up the old sorcery of death. They were the necromancers, and the rift between them and the others led to
war. In the end, the Dark Ones were defeated, and entombed forever in a hidden cavern deep beneath the
earth, while the surviving Old Ones scattered and lived out the remainder of their lives pretending to be
human, to avoid persecution by those who had once been their victims.
Over the years, they interbred with humans, until they no longer were immortal, but their abilities were
genetically passed on, though they became diluted over time. Humans with abilities like extrasensory
perception were people who were descended from the Old Ones, just like those who possessed the natural
ability to study thaumaturgy and become adepts. Merlin, himself, had been a half-breed, whose father was an
Old One, and when he brought back magic to the world, its power had awakened the imprisoned Dark Ones
and they had broken free. And the killer loose upon our streets was one of them.
Paulie and I helped stop the vicious necromancer, and, as a reward, Merlin had cast a spell upon my
turquoise eye before he left. He gave Betsy the ability to hurl bolts of thaumaturgic force, but this ability was
limited by the strength of my own life force. If I cut loose with Betsy, it would take a while for me to get back
enough strength to let 'er rip again, but that's because magic has its own laws of energy that cannot be
violated. You won't hear me complaining. I've got something no other thaumagene will ever get. My sweet and
trusty Betsy, my own version of Hammer's .45. Don't mess with me, Jack. My claw is quick.
After the necromancer was defeated, things settled down in Santa Fe. Paulie had been injured in that final
confrontation, and for a while, he was blind. It was only temporary, and everybody thought he would recover.
But it was more than just his vision that the necromancer had burned away. He had burned away a part of
Paulie, and what was left was not enough to keep him going. He got his vision back eventually, but he just
kept getting weaker. I stayed by him, and I watched him fade away, and it just tore my heart out, for Paulie
was as close a friend as I had ever had, but there was nothing anyone could do. One day, he simply closed
his eyes and never opened them again. And that was that. I was alone again. I'd been that way before, been
alone most of my life, but it just wasn't the same. I missed the man. I missed him with a gnawing in my gut
that made me want to take on the whole world and scratch its eyes out.
I left the house and took to the streets once more. I just couldn't go back there. It hurt too much. Every day,
I'd go to visit Paulie's grave, and I'd sit there and have a conversation with him. I talked, and I hoped that,
somewhere, he was listening. And then, one day, as I was laying on the grave a fresh rose I'd torn up out of
some old lady's garden, I heard a voice behind me call out my name.
"Gomez? Catseye Gomez?"
I turned around with a snarl at this unwarranted intrusion on my time with my old friend. "Yeah. I'm Gomez.
Who wants to know?"
"The name's Solo. Jay Solo. And Paul Ramirez was a friend of mine."
"Is that so? I never heard Paulie mention you."