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

one of the wine racks hinged outwards and sideways. My lamp illuminated an alcove lined with gold and
red velvet, with a marble casket at the centre. The lid was heavier than I could lift, but I had been
expecting that. I smashed the marble lid into manageable pieces with the axe, and was rewarded by the
sight of Lord Southern himself. Now in a frenzy I drew the argentor, thumbed out the spur and stabbed
down. For perhaps half an hour I absorbed his vitality, feeling the aches and pains of aging being burned
out of my body until Lord Southern was no more than dust within fine clothing.
I sealed the alcove and climbed out of the cellar to where Mother Newberry lay dead by the door.
The skin of my hands was now smoother, and my pocket mirror showed a face of mere early middle
age. Mother Newberry would be undead now, so I rolled her over, unbuttoned her blouse and stabbed.
Nothing. No blaze of undead vitality, nothing. I might as well have stabbed another mortal or... another
raptor!
There was no way to tell from her body alone. Raptors are mortal without their undead prey, but there
was one item that we are never far from. I felt beneath her skirts, and strapped to her thigh was a lead
sheath containing an argentor. The heraldic crest on the pommel was French. Ang├йlique! She had
supposedly died in the French Revolution, yet some had said that she was merely in hiding. Neither
vampyres nor raptors wait fifty years between incarnations, however, so I had assumed her to be truly
dead. At some stage she had obviously moved to the other side of the world, pretended to be a
neophyte, and begun cultivating a flock of gullible undead. A raptor cultivating undead! It was
unthinkable, the very idea revolted me. Raptors existed to keep the scourge of vampyrism in check, not
to foster it for their own advantage. That was the basis of our entire theology and morality... yet perhaps
what Ang├йlique/Mother Newberry had done was understandable. We raptors had been very successful
during the Eighteenth Century, so much so that there were very few vampyres left to sustain us. Our
numbers were dwindling as we grew old and died. How many other raptors besides Ang├йlique had
decided that immortality was our right, rather than a reward for controlling the undead, that the famine of
our own creation need not be killing us?
I looted a cache of banknotes from the house, then-- still dressed as Pete Hooper-- I hid Ang├йlique's
body in the gig's tray and drove back to the clearing. Hooper's body was dressed as me, and thanks to
the wild dogs his face was bloody pulp. When the bodies were found, a double murder would be
suspected: myself and Mother Newberry shot by Hooper, no doubt over Letitia's honour.
***


All through that Sunday of August 28th, 1842 I toured a list of houses in bushland settings, shooting
down neophyte guards and stabbing their torpid masters, gorging on vitality. By the late afternoon I had
the face and body of a girl of no more than seventeen. I drove the gig into Melbourne Town with my cap
low and collar high, my face rubbed with dirt. It was time for rebirth.
At the Albion Hotel I entered as Hooper, dashed upstairs and let myself into my room. Some of
Letitia's discarded clothing was still there, and I hurriedly scrubbed my face and dressed in her skirts,
then stuffed my disguise into the bag of gold and banknotes collected during my day of carnage. I slipped
out by the stables, then came back in through the front door. Mr. Dobson, the licensee, was speaking
with two constables about Hooper being on the premises and acting suspiciously.
"Pardon me, but do you have any rooms vacant?" I declared. Girlish timidity was not easy to feign
after going about as a man for as long as I have.
Dobson hurried over to me and directed me into his office as the constables climbed the stairs.
"Please, do not be alarmed," he said urgently. "A ruffian has burst in here uninvited, but the constables
will soon have him packing. Have you just arrived in Melbourne Town?"
"Yes, on the Black Swan. I was looking at land around Western Port Bay."
He nodded and opened his register. "Now then, you wanted a room for your self and, ah..."
"Just myself."
Dobson gasped and looked up. "You're travelling without a chaperone?" he exclaimed in disbelief.