"Nightworld 5 - The Chosen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Lisa J)

She could cry now; it would be okay, but she didn't seem to have any tears.
The police were no good. There were two officers, a man and a woman. The woman believed Rashel a little. But every time her eyes would start to believe, she'd shake her head and say, "But what was the man really doing to Timmy? Baby-doll, sweetie, I know it's awful, but just try to remember."
The man didn't believe even a little. Rashel would have traded them both for the Marine back at the carnival.
All they'd found in the tent was her mother with a broken neck. No Timmy. Rashel wasn't sure but she thought the man had probably taken him.
She didn't want to think about why.
Eventually the police drove her to her Aunt Corinne's, who was the only family she had left now. Aunt Corinne was old and her bony hands hurt Rashel's arms when she clutched her and cried.
She put Rashel in a bedroom full of strange smells and tried to give her medicine to make her sleep. It was like cough syrup, but it made her tongue numb. Rashel waited until Aunt Corinne was gone, then she spat it into her hand and wiped her hand on the sheets, way down at the foot of the bed where the blankets tucked in.
And then she put her arms around her hunched-up knees and sat staring into the darkness.
She was too little, too helpless. That was the problem. She wasn't going to be able to do anything against him when he came back.
Because of course he was coming back.
She knew what the man was, even if the adults didn't believe her. He was a vampire, just like on TV. A monster that drank blood. And he knew she knew.
That was why he'd promised to see her later.
At last, when Aunt Corinne's house was quiet, Rashel tiptoed to the closet and slid it open. She climbed the shoe rack and squirmed and kicked until she was on the top shelf above the clothes. It was narrow, but wide enough for her. That was one good thing about being little.
She had to use every advantage she had.
With her toe, she slid the closet door back shut. Then she piled sweaters and other folded things from the shelf on top of herself, covering even her head. And finally she curled up on the hard bare wood and shut her eyes.
Sometime in the night she smelled smoke. She got down from the shelf-falling more than climbing-and saw flames in her bedroom.
She never knew exactly how she managed to run through them and get out of the house. The whole night was like one long blurred nightmare.
Because Aunt Corinne didn't get out. When the fire trucks came with their sirens and their flashing lights, it was already too late. And even though Rashel knew that he had set the fire-the vampire-the police didn't believe her. They didn't understand why he had to kill her.
In the morning they took her to a foster home, which would be the first of many. The people there were nice, but Rashel wouldn't let them hold her or comfort her.
She already knew what she had to do.
If she was going to survive, she had to make herself hard and strong. She couldn't care about anybody else, or trust anybody, or rely on anybody. Nobody could protect her. Not even Mommy had been able to do that.
She had to protect herself. She had to learn to fight.
CHAPTER
God, it stank.
Rashel Jordan had seen a lot of vampire lairs in her seventeen years, but this was probably the most disgusting. She held her breath as she stirred the nest of tattered cloth with the toe of one boot. She could read the story of this collection of garbage as easily as if the inhabitant had written out a full confession, signed it, and posted it on the wall.
One vampire. A rogue, an outcast who lived on the fringe of both the human world and the Night World. He probably moved to a new city every few weeks to avoid getting caught. And he undoubtedly looked like any other homeless guy, except that none of the human homeless would be hanging around a Boston dock on a Tuesday night in early March.
He brings his victims here, Rashel thought. The pier's deserted, it's private, he can take his time with them. And of course he can't resist keeping a few trophies.
Her foot stirred them gently. A pink-and-blue knit baby jacket, a plaid sash from a school uniform, a Spiderman tennis shoe. All bloodstained. All very small.
There had been a rash of missing children lately. The Boston police would never discover where they had gone-but now Rashel knew. She felt her lips draw back slightly from her teeth in something that wasn't really a smile.
She was aware of everything around her: the soft plash of water against the wooden pier, the rank coppery smell that was almost a taste, the darkness of a night lit only by a half moon. Even the light moisture of the cold breeze against her skin. She was aware of all of it without being preoccupied with any of it-and when the tiny scratch sounded behind her, she moved as smoothly and gracefully as if she were taking her turn in a dance.
She pivoted on her left foot, drawing her bokken in the same motion, and without a break in the movement, she stabbed straight to the vampire's chest. She drove the blow from her hips, exhaling in a hiss as she did it, putting all her strength behind it.
"Gotta be faster than that," she said.
The vampire, skewered like a hot dog, waved his arms and gibbered. He was dressed in filthy clothing and his hair was a bushy tangle. His eyes were wide, full of surprise and hatred, shining as silver as an
animal's in the faint light. His teeth weren't so much fangs as tusks: fully extended, they reached almost to his chin.
"I know," Rashel said. "You really, really wanted to kill me. Life's tough, isn't it?"
The vampire snarled one more time and then the silver went out of his eyes, leaving only the look of astonishment. His body stiffened and slumped backward. It lay still on the ground.
Grimacing, Rashel pulled her wooden sword out of the chest. She started to wipe the blade on the vampire's pants, then hesitated, peering at them more closely. Yes, those were definitely little crawly things. And the blankets were just as repulsive.
Oh, well. Use your own jeans. It won't be the first time.
She carefully wiped the bokken clean. It was two and a half feet long and just slightly, gracefully curved, with a narrow, sharp, angled tip. Designed to penetrate a body as efficiently as possible-if that body was susceptible to wood.
The sword slipped back into its sheath with a papery whisper. Then Rashel glanced at the body again.
Mr. Vampire was already going mummified. His skin was now yellow and tough; his staring eyes were dried up, his lips shrunken, his tusks collapsed. Rashel bent over him, reaching into her back pocket. What she pulled out looked like the snapped-off end of a bamboo backscratcher-which was exactly what it was. She'd had it for years.
Very precisely, Rashel drew the five lacquered fingers of the scratcher down the vampire's forehead. On the yellow skin five brown marks appeared, like the marks of a cat's claws. Vampire skin was easy to mark tight after death.
"This kitten has claws," she murmured. It was a ritual sentence; she'd repeated it ever since the night she'd killed her first vampire at the age of twelve. In memory of her mother, who'd always called her kitten. In memory of herself at age five, and all the innocence she'd lost. She'd never be a helpless kitten again.
Besides, it was a little joke. Vampires . . . bats. Herself ... a cat. Anybody who'd grown up with Batman and Catwoman would get it.
Well. All done. Whistling softly, she rolled the body over and over with her foot to the end of the pier. She didn't feel like carting the mummy all the way out to the fens, the salt marshes where bodies were traditionally left in Boston. With a mental apology to everybody who was trying to clean up the harbor, she gave the corpse a final push and listened for the splash.
She was still whistling as she emerged from the pier onto the street. Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work we go------
She was in a very good mood.
The only disappointment was the constant one, that it hadn't been the vampire, the one she'd been looking for ever since she'd been five years old. It had been a rogue, all right-a depraved monster
who killed human kids foolishly close to human habitations. But it hadn't been the rogue.
Rashel would never forget his face. And she knew that someday she would see it again. Meanwhile, there was nothing to do but shish-kebab as many of the parasites as possible.