"Sean McMullen - Slow Famine" - читать интересную книгу автора (McMullen Sean)

While she was turned away I thumbed out a little spike in the argentor's handle, and the point sank into
the flesh of my palm as I gripped the handle tightly. I knelt beside the body, opposite Letitia
"What do you mean to do?" she gasped as I raised the dagger. "He's dead, there's a bullet through his
head, he's up there explainin' his sins to the Almighty-- "
I stabbed down with all my strength. Letitia shrieked as the corpse gave a hissing yowl. The surviving
eye bulged and dead hands tore at my fist as I pressed the argentor down. A warm tingle spread through
my fist and up my arm, then Hooper's body became truly still.
"He were alive!" babbled Letitia. "Lord in Heaven, but he were alive with a hole shot through his eye."
"Not alive, undead," I said as the tingling continued. "Do you have a needle and cotton in your bag?"
She nodded. The body's flesh seemed to sag as the tingling stopped, and I withdrew the blade and
wiped it on the wet grass. Letitia was speechless as I removed my coat, and then she fainted at the sight
of the shirt beneath all soaked in blood. While she lay senseless I rummaged in her bag. I found cheap
perfume, a knife, and a folder of sheepgut sheaths before I came upon her sewing kit and began patching
the hole in my coat. Presently she groaned and sat up.
"It really happened," I said before she could speak.
"Who-- what was he?"
"Do you know the word vampyre?"
"Vam-- vampyre? Can't say as I have, but it has a bad sound."
I explained about vampyres, about how they were transformed humans, neither dead nor alive who
were sustained by the blood of living people. Should a mortal taste a vampyre's blood, then upon dying
he-- or she-- also becomes a vampyre in turn.
"They are paralysed by day but invincible by night and as strong as ten men. Only argentor daggers
deter them, daggers made of nickel and iron that has fallen from the sky and been inlaid with silver. Only
something from beyond this world can kill something not of this world."
"I don't rightly follow all that."
"Look... the man you know as Mr. Salter is Lord Southern, a vampyre that I that have stalked for
many years. The late Mr. Hooper guarded him by day and served him by night. In return he was given a
drop or two of the vampyre's blood so that upon dying, he too would become a vampyre. Live mortals
who are destined to become undead are called neophytes."
"You're jokin'!" she squealed. "You mean Pete wanted to be, uh, like that?"
"It has its attractions. Vampyres draw the vitality from the living, as well as their blood. It restores their
youth, sustains them through centuries of existence, and even heals wounds. They are also said to get
sensual pleasure from the act of biting."
"Get aht!" she said, giving me a playful push. "Dead folk doin' it, I never heard such a thing. Give that
coat here, I've patched many a hole like that in Melbourne Town."
Her fingers were deft and nimble, and the rent slowly dissolved back into the cloth.
"Pete and his guv'ner kept asking me about raptors," she said as she worked.
"That is the vampyres' term for my kind. In Latin it means thief or plunderer."
"So you rob the vampyres, then?"
"I-- ah, yes, of their immortality." And more besides, much more.
"I was wonderin'... I mean, like his lordship used my services, if you get my meaning. Am I a
neo-thing, I mean will I become-- "
"Describe your liaisons," I said curtly.
"Once a month Pete would take me out to the Brighton house in the gig. Mr.-- his lordship was
respectable, like always well dressed and groomed, you know? Sort of regal, I mean I'm not surprised
he's a nobleman. We drank a bit-- "
"Did you ever see him drink?"
"No, come to think of it. I'd go to his bedchamber and undress in the dark, then he'd come in and
mount up. He rode hard, like, and I always wore out and dozed off. Pete would take me back in the
morning, they were kind and all."