"Gregg Keizer - I am the Burning Bush" - читать интересную книгу автора (Keizer Gregg)

She looked up at me. "Why did you stop? You goddamned DeadMan, why did you stop when it was so close?"
I wanted to ask her whether she had seen the merest of shifting colors, the briefest freeze-framing of the room. But I couldn't overcome my disgust.
"Because I hate you, lifer. I hate you." I knew it was true as I said it. I knew that I depended on them for the feel of skin on skin, the taste of sweetmeats, the sound of the wind through my clothes.
But I felt contaminated, soiled by the girl's obscene use of me. Perhaps I had always known that the lifers consumed me, as they consumed their gray drug, but I had refused to acknowledge it. Lynx's use of my death, once so exquisite, had made me see the lifers for what they were.
They used me as I used them. But I could still feel without them, while they could not live forever without the DeadMan and his disease. I was more necessary.
"I hate you all," I said. I wanted to shout it, but my control had returned and a DeadMan doesn't shout to lifers. He talks. They listen. I turned and strode out of the room. I didn't even stop to collect my fee from Hansa. She would send it to me.
The night air was clean and smelled of a storm coming
over the mountains. I pulled a silvered flask from my tunic pocket and drank deeply of the burning liquor. I heard a scream in the distance. It seemed to be coming from the other side of the towering building, where Hansa's apartment was. Perhaps they were already throwing themselves from her windows.
When the scream ended, I knew how to get back at them. The silence told me how.
The lifers wanted to die I would make them live, as I lived. Maybe I could nail every window shut. Maybe I could dull every knife in the city. Maybe I could buy all the rope and matches in all the shops.
I've died nearly four hundred times for them. I will save four hundred of them to get even. Or maybe save one, four hundred times. I could follow Lynx, protect her from herself. Every time she'd try to plunge a blade into herself or fuse her body with a blaster, I would be there. I would stop her.
I will miss the shifting colors and the feeling of warmth in my belly I get from dying in front of them. I will not quit dying; I don't think I could do that. But I will stop dying for them. I know I can do it this time. I have the image of Lynx's smile to keep me away from that kind of death forever.
I drank the last drop from the flask and put it back in my pocket. I thought I heard another scream from around the corner of the building. I hurried back inside and began to take the stairs two at a time.