"Sizemore,.Susan.-.Forever.Knight.1.-.A.Stirring.of.Dust.e-txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sizemore Susan)
"I doubt the local peasants see it that way," Nicholas countered.
"Their duty is to die, Nicholas, not to offer their opinions." LaCroix's expression held the stern pride of the Roman general he once had been.
Nicholas stood stiffly by the side of the rutted road. The forest at his back was full of life. Some of it was human. He was hungry, and though he fought the urge to hunt, the excitement of the coming chase pulsed through his blood. He hated to admit that LaCroix was sometimes right.
It was true that he had not wanted to come. He had wanted to settle for a while in Paris, to study the new science and philosophy the mortals were so excited about. He had never been to this land of rugged mountains, not even in his Crusader days when holy armies had pillaged their way through this part of Europe. He'd taken another route. If he hadn't, he might still be alive.
He smiled at the incongruity of that thought, letting his fangs show. He let his senses drink in the echoes of the life and death that surrounded him. LaCroix laughed at the sight of him like this. Janette smiled. They both showed fangs. Neither of them had any qualms about what they were. Nicholas allowed himself to forget his own as he turned and ran into the forest. Tonight he would hunt alone.
He moved silently through woods that were darker than the night above the ancient trees. Clouds and thick
branches obscured the stars, but his vision required very little light. He could see life by the heat it gave off, catch the scent of emotions on the wind. Some were sentient, some were not.
He vowed that tonight he would feast on whatever creature first crossed his path, and his conscience could go to hell. He'd let fate decide whether it was a deer, a boar, some adulterer coming home late from a forest tryst, or perhaps a midwife rushing to attend a birth. Good, evil, indifferentЧtonight he would pretend that all mortal blood was the same.
He ran for miles and miles. He dodged giant trees and tumbled boulders. He leapt over wide, rushing streams and raced a waterfall down the side of a cliff. When he came within a hundred yards of a village, he stopped dead to sense the life within the locked and shuttered houses. Nicholas flew above the treetops. He hung suspended on the air by an act of will, and floated forward on the breeze.
But he did not go far before he hit an invisible wall. There was garlic hung over every mantel and door frame of every house. The reek of it burned his nostrils even from high over the squat buildings. It made him cough. He flew back to the ground, where he snatched up handfuls of earth. He held the soft, wet mass to his face and took deep, ragged breaths. It filled his lungs with the scent of pine needles, of moss and earthworms and the sweet rot of the earth renewing itself. Anything was better than the assault of garlic on his senses.
When the reaction from the garlic had faded, Nicholas moved away from the village as quickly as he could. Once safe in the depths of the forest, he couldn't help but lean back against a tree and laugh.
He looked up at the arc of stars visible through the
branches. LaCroix was wrong for once. The local peasants didn't think it was their duty to die for them. They knew who the enemy was, and how to protect themselves from it.
Nicholas was growing tired. He'd used up a great deal of energy, first playing games with the night, then in flight. Blood hunger gnawed out from his heart. Soon the need would control him. He had no time to linger in solitude any longer, or to think about the vampire-protected houses. Nicholas had to make his kill and get back to the coach while darkness lasted.
When he stepped away from the tree, a stench hit him that was far worse than the clean burn the garlic had been in his lungs. The smell crept out of the forest to his right, like invisible ground fog. He realized that the stench followed a worn path that led back toward the village.
He was used to the smell of death, but this foulness reminded him of the charnel pits in the days of the Black Death. This was a concentrated rot tainted with evil. Tainted with obscene magic.
There was a vein of energy mixed with the stench. Energy that reminded Nicholas of his own kind, but other. Worse, somehow. This was the trail of some hideous entity that moved through the forest. It was a dead thing walking. It frightened him, and he'd been dead for hundreds of years.
His fear turned into terror when he stepped onto the path, looked to his right, and saw the glowing eyes of the monster that watched him.
Nick blinked away the memory, but cold dread remained in the pit of his stomach.
He needed a drink.
He would have smiled reassuringly at Natalie, but he
felt his fangs pressing into his lower lip. She had no idea how inviting her throat was right now as he drew back from that long ago night of shock and unsatisfied hunger. He had no intention of letting her know. He avoided her worried gaze as he got up and went to the refrigerator. He drank the chilled cow's blood straight out of the bottle.
"See, you are becoming human," she said as he finished taking a long gulp. She'd followed him across the room.
He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, then glanced at her in confusion. The substitute for human blood had calmed him enough to keep him from perceiving his best friend as prey, but he was still shaken.
She crossed her arms. "Human males always drink straight out of the milk carton. That's what you reminded me of just now."
"It's a guy thing," he told her, trying to match her light tone. "Vampire, mortal, doesn't matter. All men are pigs." He put the bottle back in the fridge, and closed the door with more force than he intended. He leaned his head against the cool enamel surface.
Natalie didn't know what was disturbing Nick, but she had a feeling she wasn't going tease him out of it. She looked at her watch. "How about that walk? It's nearly midnight."
Nick rubbed the back of his neck. "I've lost the mood for moonlight."
She had the feeling he'd been speaking more to himself than to her. In fact, she thought it might be best if she left him to whatever memory he'd obviously conjured up from his past. He usually told her just what it was he recalled, but in his own good time.
She faked a yawn. "I think it's time I went to bed."
He gave a perfunctory nod. "See you tomorrow."
Natalie wasn't surprised when he didn't walk her to the door. In fact, he was halfway up the stairs to his bedroom by the time she'd gathered up her things and stepped onto the elevator.
"Get some rest," she called, and got only a brief wave in reply.
She leaned her head back against the elevator wall as it slowly descended and closed her eyes for a moment. "Oh, Nick. You need eight hundred years worth of rest."
For some perverse reason she tuned the radio to the Nightcrawler when she got in the car. His voice filled the car as she drove along the empty streets.
"The moon's my constant mistress," LaCroix recited.
"I know that poem" a young woman's voice responded. "Tom O'Bedlam's Song. It's lovely."
LaCroix had obviously finished his preliminary rant-ings and was on to the call-in portion of the show. Why would anyone want to talk to him? Natalie wondered. Even when he was disguised as a mortal, contact with LaCroix seemed like an invitation to suicide. What a pity he hadn't stayed dead after Nick staked and burned him a couple of years ago.
"Can't keep a bad man down, eh, LaCroix?"
Though she could joke at the radio presence, she hoped she never had another actual encounter with the old vampire. Just dealing with Janette occasionally had been quite enough for her very steady but not made-of-titanium nerves, thank you.
"That poem was written by a madman, Tammy. Bedlam, my dear, was not a luxury resort. Or perhaps you would think it was. Are you mad? Of course you are."
"Why?"
"Because you 've phoned in at least three times this week."
"I enjoy talking to you. "
"Tammy, do you think of me as, perhaps, yourЧ friend? "
Natalie switched off the radio before Tammy's answer.
"Nobody is that monster's friend, honey," she said as she stopped at a red light. There was no traffic. There was no one around this area of small, closed shops. Natalie was tempted to ease through the intersection and continue on her way home. Hardly a proper way for a coroner for the Province to behave, however.
She was glad she didn't give in to temptation when a naked man ran across the street in front of her just as the light changed. He moved fast, gave a swift glance her way, and disappeared into the shadows before she could get a good look at him. Her headlights caught a glimpse of pale skin, long dark hair, lots of hair. Was that a sword in his hand? His faceЧ
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