"Karen Koehler - Slayer 02 - Dragon Blood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Koehler Karen)

тАЬYour will is, as always, my own,тАЭ Kage answered.

The Ryuujin narrowed his eyes. Again he sensed the untruth in KageтАЩs response, but this time he said
nothing more about it.

8


Her name was Robin Wright and she was a nineteen-year-old runaway from Lodi, New Jersey. She had
arrived in the city five years ago, but it seemed much longer, somehow. As if she had always been here,
doing this. The streets had a way of educating you in a hurry, and Robin took a crash course. She came
to escape a religiously fanatical father and the undying memories of a dead mother. Like most young
runaways, Robin found herself at a dead end, penniless, homeless, hopeless, with nothing to offer the city
for barter for her survival but her body. She slept in a churchyard the first night and sold herself the
second night in order to get up enough money for a loaf of bread, a bottle of whiskey to stay warm, and
a room in a dilapidated motel.

She wasnтАЩt stupid or oblivious to what she was doing. Her father had taught her all about the wages of
sin and all that. But how could she go home after what she had done? Her father had locked her in a
closet once for two whole days after she used a spew of profanity on him. She was afraid. He would
know she had ruined herself. He would check. And he would probably kill her.

All she had left was to tough things out, try to make a life for herself, so all this was a dark memory one
day. Anyway, she was used to her fatherтАЩs hands on her. This was no different. She would simply lie
back on a bed somewhere and pretend she was elsewhere until it was over. It wasnтАЩt so hard. Not
really. It was survival. Survival of the fittest. The only difference between the slag of degradation her
endless stream of faceless men inflicted on her body and her father was that she wasnтАЩt judged and
punished as a sinner afterward.

Well, most of the time she wasnтАЩt.

Some did try to punish her. Some got downright nasty and slapped her around or pulled out a knife and
threatened to cut her apart like the deserving whore she was. After one such encounter too many--she
still had the scars on her arms to prove it--she decided to get protection.

By then she had worked the streets long enough to become familiar with some of the other girls. They
told her she was crazy to work freelance, that it was too dangerous, that sooner or later she would wind
up dead. Not even the tough young transvestites on Tenth Avenue worked by themselves. They told her
sheтАЩd be wise to choose her own pimp, that something so sweet and young as herself wouldnтАЩt go
unnoticed for long and she could end up the slave of some sadistic freak. Not that all pimps werenтАЩt
sons-of-bitches who treated their women like shit, but some were decidedly worse than others. A girl
needed protection. Sure, sheтАЩd be another manтАЩs property, but the upside to that was that your owner
protected you. One of the older girls, a veteran of the streets at eighteen, generously offered to set her up
with the тАЬmasterтАЭ as she jokingly called her pimp.

Alek sipped the over strong college-coffeehouse espresso and linked his hands together atop the
Formica table separating him from the blonde. Robin had dreamy eyes for a prostitute. Eyes like the kids
sitting in this coffee house and chatting on emphatically about what college they would attend, what guy
they would marry. Robin should have been with this crowd, he thought, not out on the streets.