"Smith, Guy N - Sabat 02 - The Blood Merchants" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Guy N)

And as they moved off back the way they had come an owl was hooting repeatedly, urgently, as though it had become separated from its mate.










CHAPTER THREE



'IDEAL,' SABAT smiled as he surveyed the room to which Ilona had taken him.

Once it had been a cellar but renovations had turned it into an underground room that was dry and warm, two electric storage heaters giving off a gentle heat, strip lighting starkly showing the bare whitewashed walls; unfurnished except for several pairs of manacles and leg irons riveted to the brickwork, and in the far corner stood an assortment of whips and canes. Truly a torture chamber, but one to which the victims came willingly, paid handsomely for their bondage and chastisement.

Sabat lowered his burden, propped the sagging body against the wall with a knee implanted securely in its stomach while he deftly enclosed the limp wrists in manacles and snapped leg irons around the ankles. Held upright in this manner, the shaven head lolled forward and a low moan escaped the lips.

Sabat stood back and surveyed his captive. A youth, barely past his mid teens, cropped skinhead style hair, features that bespoke ignorance and cruelty, typical of the breed which mugged old people in darkened subways and knifed their victims on a crowded football ground terrace.

'A kid!' Sabat's voice was loaded with contempt, the hatred inside him coming to the boil again. 'The scum of an overcrowded country.' He lifted one of the eyelids and let it drop again. 'High on grass, too. Now, let's have a closer look at that weapon he was carrying.'

Ilona passed it over with relief, glad to be rid of the foul instrument which in all probability was responsible for the previous night's killings. Sabat held it aloft, saw a contraption which at first sight resembled a small garden syringe; instead of a spray-nozzle there was a tubular needle-shaped cylinder about 6 inches long, the muzzle tapering to a cone, the outer edges honed to razor sharpness. At the other end was a plastic bottle, of one litre capacity, incorporating a trigger.

'Diabolically ingenious,' he murmured, squeezed the trigger and Ilona winced at the sucking noise, the intake of air in the attached bottle. 'An oversize syringe, except that it works in reverse. The needle goes in, and out comes a litre of blood faster than even Dracula could suck it from one of his victims.'

'Ugh!' Ilona felt her legs go suddenly weak, had to clutch at one of the hanging manacles to support herself. 'And he was going to . . . '

'Yes,' Sabat laid the weapon down, turned back to his prisoner who was beginning to show signs of regaining consciousness, 'your fate would have been exactly the same as that of those four girls last night, Ilona. We were lucky, though, to come across one of them so quickly. In all probability very few prostitutes ventured out tonight which made it all easier for us. Now, we'll have this bastard stripped off in readiness for a little gentle persuasion if he isn't prepared to volunteer the information I want!'

There was a sound of tearing cloth as Sabat's slender but immensely strong fingers ripped the denim jacket and trousers to ribbons, the underwear receiving the same treatment until the material hung from the naked flesh like a plant that had flowered and withered. Glazed, hate filled eyes flickered open, stared into Sabat's which blazed mute defiance.

'Shit pig!' the youth mouthed. They'll make you pay for this, you fucker!'

'Who?' Sabat smiled but there was no humour in his expression, only a reciprocation of the other's hate. That's what I want to know. Who?

' The Disciples of Lilith!'

Sabat caught his breath. Lilith, that was one name he had not expected to hear uttered from those twisted lips. Chief of the demonesses, Lilith was a sexually insatiable goddess who spent the night hours seeking out her mortal lovers; similar in some respects to Erzulie, the Black Venus, except that Lilith never veered from the Left Hand Path. She seduced her partners in their sleep then sucked the blood from their exhausted bodies. Supposedly Adam's first mate before the coming of Eve, God had created her sensuous form out of filth and sent her forth as the ultimate evil. A vampire, mostly she preyed on young babies but was not averse to taking revenge on a female rival. Now her name, her very mode of killing, was evident in these latest terrible happenings of the dark hours!

'Where did you get this? Who gave it to you?' Sabat waved the deadly syringe before the skinhead's eyes.

Sullen silence. The prisoner tried to tug himself free, winced at the pain in his broken arm. The eyes clouded over, cleared again, but his lips remained tightly closed.

Sabat almost said 'I have ways of making you talk' but it sounded corny. Then he noticed a mark on the forearm of the youth's left arm, the unbroken one, peered at it closely. It was a tattoo; a swastika embedded in a red circle. On the top was a date, November 9, and below it the letters LF. November 9th - the date Hitler survived an assassination attempt. LF - Liberation Front.

'Nazi scum, eh!' Sabat's lips curled in a contemptuous sneer. 'And like Hitler you're trying to employ dark forces. My friend, you and your kind are walking blindfold through a minefield!'