"Karen Koehler - Slayer 03 - Immortal" - читать интересную книгу автора (Koehler Karen)

be sated while he was here. He wouldnтАЩt feel his normal self until he was halfway home and the stink of
the club was out of his clothes.

Erebus took the ballpoint pen out of his impressive canines. тАЬGotta talk to Sticks if you brought your
own.тАЭ

тАЬYeah, IтАЩve been bringing my own. WhereтАЩs he? Still in Heaven?тАЭ

Erebus gave him a slightly baleful look. тАЬSure. Where else?тАЭ

Brett nodded and waited. Heaven was a place no humans were allowed to go unless you were
scheduled to be there. Right now, Erebus was giving him the typical down-the-nose look, as if he was
thinking of what a piece of worthless shit the human race really was. Then again, he gave that look to
almost everyone. Pushing away from the terminal, he hit an intercom and said something into it, but it was
in a language Brett had never learned.

A few minutes later Sticks, another vampire lackey of Jean PaulтАЩs, stepped into the accounting office
holding a camcorder no larger than the palm of his hand, which was exceedingly small considering
SticksтАЩs size and seeming frailness. He had not gotten the name by accident.

With the camera safely tucked away inside his suit, Brett Edelman made his way out to the Porsche
parked in the lot of the Italian restaurant across the street from Club Bauhaus. Before he started the
motor he checked himself in the rearview mirror. He didnтАЩt look especially pale and Nadine was always
certain to keep the bites where his wife wouldnтАЩt notice them. Not that he was necessarily afraid of Laura
finding out--Laura knew better than to question him about anything--but he didnтАЩt need his coworkers
and clients seeing them. He also had to be careful around Wes these days. His nosy firstborn was just old
enough to start wondering where his father went after work and if he couldnтАЩt find out and blackmail his
old man for enough money for the blow he favored. Catching Wes stealing money from his safe last week
had been enough. Brett didnтАЩt keep anything of consequence at home anymore. If it was important and
private--like his tapes--he kept them at the office.

So his office was his first stop. He would stash this tape with the others before he even dared step foot
into his house up in the Pocono Mountains where life was as normal and dull as MomтАЩs apple pie. He
started the car and took River Drive since it was the least likely to be clotted with evening traffic, unlike
Madison or FDR. If he made good time heтАЩd get to the office in just under half an hour, change clothes,
dump the tape and camcorder and be up in the Poconos in less than three hours. Just in time to be
greeted by the family St. Bernard and hear Wes and his sister coming to blows over something or other
again. He sighed. The fights never amounted to much, but Brett didnтАЩt like the idea of his son hitting his
sister. He didnтАЩt like the idea of any violence in his household unless it was much-needed discipline, such
as in LauraтАЩs case, when she got suspicious and spoke out of line with him.

He passed a row of abandoned warehouses crouching in the night. The wharf had been home to the
fireboxes for more than two decades. How he would like to raze that piece of real estate to the ground
and put up a project, or maybe some row houses of the kind he remembered from growing up in San
Francisco. He could dig that, yeah. In fact, if he closed this big deal with J. Stephan Paul, his biggest
stabled author to date, he was sure to be able to afford that sweet piece of land. After thatтАжwell, heтАЩd
sell out the company to the smaller lingering publishing houses too stupid to give up in an industry that
was on its deathbed and get his ass into the real estate racket, where the big money was. It killed him to
imagine how the drunks and dustheads were wrecking the wharf as he dreamed about what it could do
for him.