"Wildcards - 07 - Dead Mans Hand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

Crystal Palace. Chrysalis lived on the third floor, her chambers crowded with
expensive Victoriana.
Elmo, her dwarf bouncer, lived on the second floor. So did Sascha, the eyeless
telepath who tended bar for her. All the public rooms were on the first floor.
So was her office. Jay decided to start there.
The office was in the back of the building under the stairs. It had a wooden
door, ornately carved, with a crystal doorknob. Jay took a rumpled handkerchief
out of his pocket and turned the knob carefully with two fingers. The door swung
open.
The room was windowless and black, but Jay didn't need eyes to know what he'd
find inside. Death has a smell all its own. The hard coppery scent of blood, the
sweaty stench of fear, the stink of shit. He'd smelled it before. The familiar
miasma was there, waiting for him, and under it all was her perfume.
"Goddamn you," Jay said quietly to no one in particular. He reached over,
handkerchief still in hand, and found the light switch.
Once, this room had had charm. Polished hardwood floors, a gorgeous Oriental
rug, floor-to-ceiling bookcases full of leather-bound first editions, a solid
oak desk older than he was, big leather armchairs that looked as though they
might have come from the world's oldest men's club.
The chairs were shattered, wooden legs cracked and splintered, soft leather
upholstery ripped and torn. Three of the high wooden bookcases had been toppled;
one had been snapped in two. Splinters as long and pale as knives sprang from
where the two halves clung together. Books were scattered everywhere.
Chrysalis lay sprawled on her back across the shattered remains of an armchair,
the leather cushions and broken legs a jumble beneath her. The huge oak desk had
been tipped over across the upper part of her body, hiding her face. She'd been
wearing blue jeans and a plain white blouse. The front of the blouse was
spattered with tiny droplets of blood. Her left leg bent the wrong way at the
knee, and a jagged red piece of shinbone poked through the denim. Jay squatted
by her left hand. He could see her finger bones through the ghostly outlines of
tendons and the smooth, clear skin. All five fingers were shattered, the ring
finger in two places; her crystalline flesh was suffused with the rosy glow of
burst capillaries. Jay took her broken fingers in his own. A faint warmth still
clung to her body, but she was cooling even as he held her.
After a moment, he released her hand and tried to lift the desk off her. It was
heavy. He grimaced, shoved harder, and righted it with a grunt. Only when the
desk was back against the wall did he look back down at Chrysalis.
Her face was gone.
Her skull hadn't been crushed as much it had been obliterated. The back cushion
of her chair was sticky with dried blood. Bits of mashed brain oozed out between
fragments of bone. Everything was red and wet. A small pool of blood had
gathered under what was left of the chair, soaking into the Oriental rug. Jay
looked up and saw more blood, a faint spray of it across the front of the desk
and low on the walls, around the light socket. The patterned antique wallpaper
was a gloomy purple color, very Victorian; it was hard to see the blood
spatters, but they were there when you looked.
Jay stood up and tried not to feel anything. He'd seen bodies before, more than
he cared to think about, and Chrysalis has been playing dangerous games for a
long, long time. She knew too many secrets. Sooner or later, something like this
was bound to happen.