"Mercedes Lackey - Tregarde 2 - Burning Water" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

When next she could think, she was hemmed in on all sides by concrete and debris, trapped in the
darkтАФa darkness so absolute that there was nothing she could compare it to.
The reinforced staircase had protected her; kept her from dying beneath the crumbling hotel.
She knew at once what had happened; Mexico City had suffered earthquakes before. But she had
never been caught inside a building by one; never known anyone who had been buried alive like this.
Lupe had survived the quake. Now as she stared into the darkness, she realized slowly that she
faced death in another, more painful form: suffocation, starvation, thirstтАФ
Madre de Dios, she prayed wildly, I'm only seventeen! I have always been goodтАФI can't dieтАФ
The air in her tiny, sheltered pocket was already growing stale. She panted in fear, and the air
seemed to grow thicker and fouler with each breath. The sound of her breathing was a rasping in her own
ears, for the silence was as absolute as the darkness. She rested her forehead on the wall in front of her,
feeling her chest constrict and ache. How long before the air became unbreathable?
That fear was enough to make her tremble in every limb. But worse than the rock that hemmed
her in, worse than the thickening air, worse than any of it was the terrible, menacing darkness all around
her.
Lupe was afraid of the dark; she had been afraid of the dark for as long as she could remember. It
was a vague fear she couldn't even define, just a feeling that there was somethingтАФwaiting for her.
Watching. A something that lived in the darkтАФno, it was the dark.
And it wanted Lupe.
But it was rarely "dark" in Mexico City, even in the early hours of the morning. Certainly it was
never dark in the two-room apartment she shared with her sisters; the neon signs of the nightclubs across
the street saw to that. Her night-fears had been easy to laugh at until this moment.
Now she was caught in the very heart of darkness; thick, hot darkness that seemed to flow
sluggishly around her, seemed to be oozing into her very pores and trying to force itself down her throat
until she choked on it.
She could feel it nowтАФ
She gasped, coughed, and frantically scrabbled again at the wreckage hemming her in;
whimpering and hardly realizing she was doing so. She had barely enough room to crouch; impenetrable
rubble formed a tiny pocket around herтАФlike the pocket holding the larvae of a tourist's "jumping bean."
But the larvae would grow wings and escapeтАФ
She never would. She would die here, and the dark would eat her bones.
She wailed, and pounded at the wall before her with aching hands. TrappedтАФtrappedтАФ
Lupe's mother had had no patience with her child's phobias. The census said they were MestizoтАФ
but Paloma had told all her children that they were truly Azteca, and descended from priests. "Look for
yourself, if you don't believeтАФ" she had told them all, and more than once. "Go to the museum and see for
yourself." And so, dutifully, they had goneтАФto see their own high-cheekboned, beaky profiles (so unlike
most of their schoolfriends' round faces and snubbed noses) echoed at them from pots, from paintings,
from bas-relief. "You are of noble blood, the blood of warriors," she had scolded Lupe when the girl
confessed her nightmares. "How can you be so afraid?"
Mamacita, she cried out in her mind, what good is noble blood when the earth shakes? What good
is descent from priests when the dark comes to steal my breath!
She sobbed, the thick air tasting of her own fear. The smell of her own sweat was rank, thickening
the dark further. Her eyes were burning with tears as she continued to beat at the unyielding wall before
her. She knew it was uselessтАФbut what else was there to do? It was either that, or curl into a ball of
misery and die or go mad.
Maybe the Virgin would grant a miracle, and someone would hear.
She forced herself to pound on the wall, while her arms grew weary, and fists numb. PoundтАФ
poundтАФpoundтАФ
Then the wall moved.
She started back, hugging her bruised fists to her chest with an involuntary intake of breath, afraid