"Tanya Huff - Victoria Nelson - 05 - Blood Debt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

expression of unquestionable docility.

The setting sun brushed molten gold over the waves of English Bay, gilded a pair of joggers on Sunset
Beach Park, traced currents of gleaming amber between the shores of False Creek, shone through the
tinted glass on the fourteenth floor of the Pacific Place condominium tower and into the eyes of a young
man who sighed as he watched it set. Nestled between the mountains and the Strait of Georgia,
Vancouver, British Columbia, enjoyed some of the most beautiful sunsets in the worldтАФbut that had
nothing to do with the young man's sigh.
Lifting a hand to shade his face, Tony Foster stared out the window and counted down the minutes. At
7:22 P.M., his watch alarm began to buzz. Pale blue eyes still locked on the horizon, he shut it off and
cocked his head back toward the interior of the condominium, listening for the sounds that would tell
him the night had truly begun.
Lying in a darkness so complete it could only be deliberate, Henry Fitzroy shook off the bindings of
the sun. The soft sound of the cotton sheet moving against the rise and fall of his chest told him he had
safely survived another day. As he listened, the rhythmic whisper became lost in the heartbeat waiting in
the room beyond his bolted door and then in the myriad noises of the city beyond the walls of his
sanctuary.
He hated the way he woke, hated the extended vulnerability of his slow return to full consciousness.
Every evening he tried to shorten the time he spent lying helpless and semiaware. It didn't seem to do
any good, but the effort made him feel less impotent.
He could feel the sheet lying against his skin, the utter stillness of the air. . . .
And a sudden chill.
Which was impossible.
He'd had the air conditioner disconnected in this, the smallest of the three bedrooms. The window had
been blocked with plywood, caulked, and curtained. The door had flexible rubber seals around all four
sidesтАФnot air-tight by any means, but the cracks were far too small to allow such a rapid change in
temperature.
Then he realized that he wasn't alone.
Someone was in the room with him. Someone with no scent. No heartbeat. Fleshless. Bloodless.
Demonic? Possibly. It wouldn't be the first time he'd faced one of the Lords of Hell.
Forcing a sluggish arm to move, Henry reached over and switched on a lamp.
Sensitive eyes half closedтАФeven forty-watt bulbs threw enough light to temporarily blindтАФhe caught
one quick glimpse of a young man standing at the foot of his bed before the faint, translucent image
disappeared.

"A ghost?" Tony propped one leg on the wide arm of the green leather couch and shook his head.
"You're kidding, right?"
"Wrong."
"Cool. I wonder what he wants. They always want something," he added in answer to the question
implicit in Henry's lifted red-gold brow. "Everyone knows that."
"Do they?"
"Come on, Henry. Don't tell me in four-hundred-and-ninety-five odd years you've never seen a ghost?"
One hand flat against the cool glass of the window, the other hooked in the pocket of his jeans, Henry

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Fitzroy, bastard son of Henry VIII, once Duke of Richmond and Somerset, remembered a night in the
late 1800s when he'd watched the specter of a terrified young queen run screaming down the hall to beg