"Child Of The Stones" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

УIt has nothing of the kind.Ф

УI believe your parents would disagree.Ф

УThey are in no position to disagree.Ф

They had been dead for more than a hundred and seventy years, but it still hurt me to speak about them to a stranger.

УYou will soon be at the same disadvantage. Four pieces of wood, young woman. Do it now, or Mr Halliwell will shoot you dead and IТll feed your ghost to my pet.Ф

Miranda looked at him from beneath the bill of her baseball cap. She was slight and so very young, but was stiffened by a core of irreducible defiance. УI know youТre gonna do that anyway,Ф she said, Уso donТt expect me to do your work for you.Ф

Cagliostro shrugged, and told Donny Halliwell to deal with her. As the big man stepped towards Miranda, I used the connection I still had with the imp in her mobile phone, and made the little machine ring. Cagliostro pinched the imp out, as I knew he would, and I used the momentary distraction to loose the imps that I had saved from the trap at Rainer SueТs house. I had pinched them as small as a full stop and swallowed them. Now I coughed them up and threw them as hard as I could.

Not at Cagliostro - he would have dismissed them in an instant - but at Donny Halliwell.

They slammed into the big man and clung, covering him with crackling sparks of panic and disgust that burnt away the calm of his trance in an instant. His face cleared and he turned to Cagliostro and raised the little black pistol and shot him, shot him again as he pitched forward, blood all over his face. As the two gunshots echoed off the brick wall on the other side of the canal, CagliostroТs prone body blurred, like a double-exposed photographic image. But even as the ghost, shocked from him by the violent moment of his death, began to get to its feet, a smooth white snake whipped up from the canal and opened its jaws wide and snapped it down. Miranda screamed, and something as massive and fast as an express train blasted over my head and smashed into the ancient revenant. It blew apart like a snowman hit square by a howitzer round. For an instant, a thousand fragments skittered away in every direction across the calm black water of the canal, and then they smoked into the air and were gone.

Miranda had fallen to her knees. The red blood that ran from her nose was shockingly bright against her white skin. She dabbed at it with the back of her hand, saw me looking at her, and said, УIt took him. I saw it. I saw it eat his soul.Ф

УIt took the ghost he created at the moment of dying. If there are such things as souls, I have never seen one.Ф

Donny Halliwell said, УI donТt know what you two are talking about. I donТt want to know. Just tell me he was going to kill you.Ф

УSomething of the sort,Ф I said. My leg was hurting quite badly now, a swelling, bone-deep ache. My trouser leg was soaked with blood. My shoe was filled with blood.

Donny Halliwell stuck the pistol in his jacket pocket. His hand was shaking so badly that it took him three tries. УHe made me shoot you,Ф he said.

УI know.Ф

УIt wasnТt my idea. None of this was my idea. I donТt even know where I am. Last thing I remember properly is opening the door to him. And then everything sort of fell away. It was like I was in the back of my head, watching things happen on a very small TV.Ф

УHe hypnotized you,Ф I said.

УWhereТs Rainer?Ф

УHe helped me, and then I sent him home.Ф

УHe was so excited when this bloke wrote to him - something about those stupid books of his. He trusts people too much. Are you sure heТs okay? At some point I think I gave him some kind of drug.Ф

УI gave him the name of a man who can help him,Ф I said.

УI better go and see how he is,Ф Donny Halliwell said. УHe isnТt too good on his own.Ф

УOf course,Ф I said, and was relieved when the big man crashed away through the belt of scrubby trees.

Miranda shuddered once, all over, and said, УI thought he was going to finish us off.Ф

УSo did I. Is your mobile phone working?Ф