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

hopes, we caused a sensation. Soon there was talk of very little else among the frontier aristocracy of
Melbourne. All the while I pondered on my good luck. So many undead, and all in one place. I had spent
25 years searching since my last undead victim, and there had been a real risk that I would have died of
old age without finding another vampyre. Now this. Why were they all here? True, it was a remote and
unlikely place, but that was somehow not enough to explain it.
All that night I sat awake with the argentor in my hand, going over maps, addresses and diary entries.
Letitia would not let me out of her sight, and stayed awake altering her new dresses and coats to better
suit her figure. There was distant drunken singing and even the occasional gunshot from the streets
outside, but I had been in wilder, rougher places than this and was not worried. What set my hair on end
was the slight scratching and scrabbling outside the dormer window on the roof. Something was outside,
something that the argentor's aura kept at bay. Letitia sewed on, oblivious. An hour before dawn it
stopped, for it had to return all the way to Brighton.
***


At sunrise I hired a gig and took Letitia and her trunks to the wharf. There was a crowd of several
dozen gathered, some of them Letitia's friends, others merely curious to see the real-life happy ending
acted out before their eyes. We shed tears, called each other daughter and father, and said endearing and
forgiving things for the onlookers to hear. Twelve guests of Her Majesty and their guards who were also
going to Sydney cheered Letitia as she went aboard the Timbo, then everyone on the wharf cheered as
the schooner cast off.
Even before the vessel was out of sight I was riding for the punt to cross the river. As my gelding
cantered along the track to Brighton my mind was still a-whirl with what I had found. Six undead! Six
vampyres, all in one town. They were always solitary in Europe, so as not to attract the attention of us
raptors. Too many victims of anaemia in one place and one of us would be sure to investigate. I had only
come to Melbourne Town after learning that Lord Southern had invested in the place. Of course many
people invest overseas without ever leaving England, but I had no other clue and I was desperate-- I
certainly had no inkling of this whole community of six undead. There were no tales of dozens of victims
with fang-marks on their necks, it was as if Mother Newberry had--
I reined my gelding in so hard that he reared. That was it! Mother Newberry was in league with them.
She was probably a neophyte, her price for running a refuge where vampyres could feed with discretion.
When she died she would become immortal, then feed on mortals' blood in the safety of a haven of her
own creation. I was near the place where I had left Hooper's body, so I turned off the track and rode
until I came to the clearing. The pony was grazing quietly, still harnessed to the gig, but wild dogs had
gnawed Hooper's face. Within minutes I had exchanged clothing with the corpse, then I drove the gig
back onto the track, leaving my own horse to roam free.
***


As I neared Lord Southern's house in the Brighton bushland I drew back the hammer of my Colt and
left it loose under my coat. Something glinted at a window in the weak winter sunlight. Keep your nerve,
don't show alarm, I told myself. There was no gunshot, but as I drew up before the stone house the door
was flung open and Mother Newberry appeared, a Hall breechblock loader in one hand. I casually threw
the gig's brake.
"Where the hell have you been, Pete Hooper?" she demanded. "A raptor's in town, he held Lord
Southern off with an argentor all last night and-- you!!"
We fired almost together, but my aim was in less haste than hers. Fearful of who may have been
drawn by the shots, I pushed her body aside and closed the door. Beneath a Persian rug was a trapdoor
to a wine cellar the size of a small room, and I descended carrying a lamp and axe. After nine hundred
years of practice I had become an expert with locks and secret doorways, and I soon discovered that