"Kim Newman - Andy Warhol's Dracula" - читать интересную книгу автора (Newman Kim)

change in this century was far more rapid than the glacial shifts of the
long years the Father had in his Carpathian fastness. Johnny would have to
surpass the Father to keep ahead, but bloodline would tell. Though of an
ancient line, he was a twentieth-century creature, turned only thirty-five
years earlier, taken into the dark before he was formed as a living man.
In Europe, he had been a boy, hiding in the shadows, waiting. Here, in
this bright America, he could fulfil his potential. People took him for a
young man, not a child.
Johnny Pop had arrived.
He knew he had been noticed. He was working hard to fit in, but recognized
how gauche he had been a few short weeks ago. On his first nights in New
York, he had made mistakes. Blood in the water excited the sharks.
Someone stood on the corner, watching him. Two black men, in long leather
coats. One wore dark glasses despite the hour, the other had a
slim-brimmed hat with a tiny feather in the band. Not vampires, there was
something of the predator about them. They were well-armed. Silver
shoe-buckles and buttons, coats loose over guns. And their bodies were
weapons, a finished blade, an arrow shaft. From inside his coat, the black
man in sunglasses produced a dark knife. Not silver, but polished
hardwood.
Johnny tensed, ready to fight and kill. He had just fed. He was at his
strongest.
The knifeman smiled. He balanced his weapon by its point, and tapped his
forehead with its hilt, a warrior salute. He would not attack yet. His
presence was an announcement, a warning. He was showing himself. This man
had seen Johnny before he was seen. His night-skills were sharp.
Then, the knifeman and his partner were gone. They had seemed to
disappear, to step into a shadow even Johnny's night eyes could not
penetrate.
He suppressed a shudder. This city was not yet his jungle, and he was
exposed here Ч out on the street in a white suit that shone like a beacon
Ч as he had not been in the Old Country.
The black men should have destroyed him now. When they had a chance.
Johnny would do his best to see they did not get another.
It was time to move on, to join the crowd.
A mustard-yellow taxi cruised along the street, emerging like a dragon
from an orange-pink groundswell of steam. Johnny hailed the cab, and slid
into its cage-like interior. The seat was crisscrossed with duct tape,
battlefield dressings on a fatal wound. The driver, a gaunt white man with
a baggy military jacket, looked instinctively at the rearview mirror,
expecting to lock eyes with his fare. Johnny saw surprise in the young
man's face as he took in the reflection of an empty hack. He twisted to
look into the dark behind him and saw Johnny there, understanding at once
what he had picked up.
"You have a problem?" Johnny asked.
After a moment, the taxi driver shrugged.
"Hell, no. A lot of guys won't even take spooks, but I'll take anyone.
They all come out at night."
Behind the driver's gunsight eyes, Johnny saw jungle twilight, purpled by
napalm blossoms. He heard the reports of shots fired years ago. His