"William Mark Simmons - Undead 2 - Dead on My Feet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons William Mark)

left. Engulfed, actually. The index finger of her right hand moved across my palm like a doodlebug on
acid. "My, but you have de most interesting lifeline, Mr. Haim."
"I'll bet you say that to all the marks."
She shook her head and the white turban did a ghostly hootchy-cootchy. "No, ch├иre, I not be funnin'
wit you. According to dese lines, you already died."
"Really." My mouth loosened into a smile.
"Truly. More dan once, in fact."
"Is that so?"
She sighed. "You are about to tell me dat you have no idea as to what I am talking about. Dat you do
not believe in fortune-telling."
My smile grew, showing teeth. "Maybe you really are psychic."
She closed her right hand over her left, trapping mine in-between. She squeezed. I felt a tingle, like a
low-voltage electric shock, and Mama Samm's head snapped back. The turban wobbled but held.
She moaned and her eyes rolled back in her head. The electric tingle intensified, crawled up my arm.
"What are you doing?" I asked. Her only response was another moan as the tingle crawled across
my shoulder and up into my head. I tried to pull my hand back but it was enclosed in a grip of
velvet-sheathed iron.
The current slammed home in my brain, knocking me out of the room and down a dark corridor, a
tunnel not unlike the one I had traversed when I had nearly died the year before. Memories fragmented
and unfolded, waltzing across my eyelids like an acid-edged kaleidoscope.
The Barn . . .
Vlad Drakul Bassarab . . .
The transfusion . . .
The crash . . .
The morgue . . .
I cried out at the memory of two mangled bodies on the stainless-steel tables, and wrenched my hand
free.
"My apologies, Mr. Cs├йjthe . . ."
It felt as though the temperature in the room had dropped a full ten degrees: She not only knew my
real name, she had nailed the Hungarian pronunciation, "Chey-tay."
" . . . I did not know you were oungan for the G├йd├й." Her voice sounded strange, distant.
"What?"
"Tonight you will meet Je Rouge. It will hunt you for the Ogou Bhathalah. The shadow of Ogou is
long here. . . ." Her eyes had rolled back in her head, showing a disturbing amount of white. "You must
seek the grail, she will be the key. The Witch of Cachtice has helped them open the fifth seal."
"What?" I gripped her two hands with my left as the fine hairs suddenly lifted on my neck and arms.
"Who did you say?"
"Unless it is closed," she continued, oblivious to my question, "the sun will turn black and the moon to
blood." A shudder went through her. "Stars will fall like rain and the end will come before the Appointed
Time!"
"You said the Witch of Cachtice!" I stammered. "Tell me what you mean!"
"Find the Grail before the Ogou sows the wind. Find Marinette Bois-Ch├иche and unmask the whore
of Babylon before she puts her red dress on!" She moaned and her eyes fluttered.
I stared at her, waging an internal war over which was more upsetting: revisiting the deaths of my wife
and daughter or a chance reference to a monstrous ancestor nearly four hundred years in her grave.
"Save the gibberish for the gullible," I said, my voice harsh with the rawness of fresh memory.
Her eyes snapped open. Refocused. Her brow furrowed. "You are angry, Mr. Haim. What did I
say?"
I snorted, feeling some control of the situation pass back to me. "Some fortune-teller; you want me to
do your divination for you."