"Guy N. Smith - Sabat 1 - The Graveyard Vultures" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Guy N)

threatening to close in on him at any second. Somehow he made it to his room, slammed the door
gratefully behind him and leaned against it. He saw the rolled up carpet, the pentagram chalked on the
bare boards. Everything as he had left it... Oh, merciful God, no!

The silver chalice lay on its side, dented as though some heavy object had knocked it over and crushed
it. A shaft of early morning sunlight streaming in through the small latticed window glinted on the buckled
shiny metal, reflecting a dazzling print that had tarnished where it had struck - a cloven hoof mark \

Sabat's horrified gaze followed the damp trail left by the spilled water, a meandering dried-up
watercourse on a parched landscape that crossed the chalk marks, broke the continuous lines that had
formed a complete star. The ultimate bastion had been breached!

'I shall live on.'

Whirling, recognising Quentin's voice, for one awful moment expecting to see his brother there in the
room; maybe as the aged woodcutter, more likely in another form. But there was no body. Just the
voice.

It was then that the full, awful realisation hit Mark Sabat. He heard the maniacal laughter again and this
time knew from whence it came ... from within himself!

He rushed to the cracked and dusty wall mirror, stared at his reflection. No outward change except
exhaustion stamped on his aquiline features, dirt-grimed, clothing dishevelled.

'You fiend!' he hissed. 'You foul monster, Quentin. I have killed you, sought to destroy you for the good
of Mankind. But instead your soul has possessed me. But not completely. D'you hear me, Quentin, not
completely. For I still have my own soul. A man with two souls, like Petraux, the French sorcerer.'

'And what happened to Petraux?' A mocking question asked within his own mind, taunting.

'He died . . . and rose again in another life,' Sabat muttered as he recalled the legend, the story of how
Petraux had fought a battle within himself and in the end took his own life so that when he was born again
the evil which had triumphed over him lived on. 'But it shall not happen to me, Quentin. You and I have
fought and hated for too long, in bygone lives, and still I live. I must take you with me where-ever I go,
but it will not be easy for you because I shall fight you all the way. The black powers may have an enemy
within my camp now, but I also have one within theirs. And maybe one day I shall destroy you totally.'

This time there was no answering jibe, just a silence that was disturbed by the rattle of crockery
somewhere down below as the hotel kitchen prepared for the start of another day.

Shoulders slumped, eyes already beginning to close with fatigue, Sabat lurched towards the bed which
stood in the centre of the pentagram. His dragging feet caught the chalice, and sent it rolling until it struck
the skirting board with a metallic clang. Fully dressed he flung himself on to the bed, felt sleep swamping
him like an incoming tide, the relentless rollers sweeping him along.

And he dreamed; a dream in which his astral body went forth with Quentin at his side. Not the Quentin
he had fought in that clearing, a revolting specimen of senility, but a young and handsome man who bore
his own looks. A desert landscape in which nothing grew except sparse cacti and even they were wilting
in the terrible heat. Water that loomed up ahead and then vanished as they approached ,it. But Quentin
seemed unperturbed striding along as though he felt no discomfort, Mark struggling along beside him and