"Tanya Huff - Victoria Nelson - 01 - Blood Price" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

Nine years on the force and she'd never used her gun. She wanted it now. In nine years on the force she'd
never heard a scream like that.

What the hell do you think you're doing? the more rational part of her brain shrieked. You don't have a
weapon! You don't have backup! You don't have any idea of what's going on down there! Eight months
off the force and you've forgotten everything they ever taught you! What the hell are you trying to
prove?

Vicki ignored the voice and kept moving. Maybe she was trying to prove something. So what.

When she exploded out onto the platform, she immediately realized she'd chosen the wrong side and for
just an instant, she was glad of it.

A great spray of blood arced up the orange tiles of the station wall, feathering out from a thick red
stream to a delicate pattern of crimson drops. On the floor below, his eyes and mouth open above the
mangled ruin of his throat, lay a young man. No: the body of a young man. The dinner she'd so recently
eaten rose to the back of Vicki's throat, but walls built during the investigations of other deaths slammed
into place and she forced it down.


The wind in the tunnel began to pick up and she could hear the northbound train approaching. It sounded
close.


Sweet Jesus, that's all we need. At 12:35 on a Sunday night it was entirely possible that the train would
be nearly empty, no one would get off, and no one would notice the corpse and the blood-spattered wall
down at the southernmost end of the northbound platform. Given the way of the world, however, it was
more likely that a group of children and a little old lady with a weak heart would pile out of the last
carriage and come face-to-face with the staring eyes and mutely screaming mouth of a fresh corpse.


Only one solution presented itself. The roar of the train filled the station as, heart pounding and
adrenaline singing in her ears, Vicki leapt down onto the southbound tracks. The wooden step over the
live rail was too far away, almost centered in the line of concrete pillars, so she jumped, trying not to
think of the however many million volts of electricity the thing carried turning her to charcoal. She
tottered for a moment on the edge of the divider, cursing her full-length coat and wishing she'd worn a
jacket, and then, although she knew it was the stupidest thing she could do, she looked toward the
oncoming train.


How did it get so close? The light was blinding, the roar deafening. She froze, caught in the glare, sure

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that if she continued she'd fall and the metal wheels of the beast would cut her to shreds.


Then something man-height flickered across the northbound tunnel. She didn't see much, just a
billowing shadow, black against the growing headlight, but it jerked her out of immobility and down