"Wen Spencer - Wolf Who Rules" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spencer Wen)

On the bank of a creek, frozen solid where it overlapped the affected area, they found a dead black
willow tree, lying on its side, and wide track of churned dirt were another willow had stalked northward.
Pony scanned the dim elfin woods for the carnivorous tree. "We must take care. It is probably still
nearby; they don't move fast."
"I wonder what killed it." Tinker poked at the splayed root legs still partly inside the discontinuity. Frost
like freezer burn dusted the wide, sturdy trunk. Otherwise it seemed undamaged; the soft mud and thick
brush of the creek bank had cushioned its fall so none of its branches or tangle arms had been broken.
"Lain would love an intact tree." The xenobiologist often complained that the only specimens she ever
could examine were the non-ambulatory seedlings or mature trees blown to pieces to render it harmless.
"I wish I could get it to her somehow."
The tracks of both trees, Tinker noticed, started in the Ghostlands. Had the willow been clear of the
discontinuity at the time of the explosion тАУ or had the tree died after reaching stable ground?
"Let me borrow one of your knives." Tinker used the knife Pony handed her to score an ironwood
sapling. "I want to be able to track the rate of decay. Maybe there's a way I could accelerate it."
"A slash for every one of your feet the sapling stands from the ghost lands?" Pony guessed her system.
"Yeah." She was going to move on to the next tree but he held out his hand for his knife. "What?"
"I would rather you stay back as much as possible from the edge." He waited with the grinding power of
glaciers for her to hand back his knife. "How do you feel, domi?"
Ah, the source of his sudden protectiveness. It was going to be a while before she could live down
overestimating herself the night of the fighting. Instead of going quietly to the hospice, she'd roamed
about, made love, and did all sorts of sillinessтАФand of course, fell flat on her face later. It probably
occurred to him that if she nose-dived again, she would end up in the Ghostlands.
"I'm fine," she reassured him.
"You look tired." He slashed the next sapling, and she had to admit he actually made cleaner, easier to
see marks than she did, robbing her of all chance to quibble with him.
She made a rude noise. Actually, she was exhausted тАУ nightmares had disrupted her sleep for the last
two days. But she didn't want to admit that; the sekasha might gang up on her and drag her back to the
hospice. That was the problem with bringing five of them тАУ it was much harder to bully them en masse тАУ
especially since they were all a foot taller than her. Sometimes she really hated being five foot nothing.


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 - Chapter 1

Standing with them was like being surrounded by heavily armed trees. Even now Stormsong was eyeing
her closely.
"I'm just тАУ thinking." She mimed what she hoped looked like deep thought. "This is very perplexing."
Pony bought it, but he trusted her, perhaps more than he should. Stormsong seemed unconvinced, but
said nothing. They moved on, marking saplings.
***
With an unknown number of oni scattered through the forest and hidden disguised among the human
population of Pittsburgh, Wolf did not want to be dealing with the invasion of his domi's privacy, but it
had to be stopped before the Queen's representative arrived in Pittsburgh. Since all requests through
human channels failed, it was time to take the matter into his own hands.
Wolf stalked through the broken front door of the photographer's house, his annoyance growing into
anger. Unfortunately, the photographer тАУ paparazzi was the correct English word for him, but Wolf was
not sure how to decline the word outтАФin question was determined to make things as difficult as
possible.
Over the last two weeks, Wolf's people had worked through a series of false names and addresses to
arrive at a narrow row house close to the Rim in Oakland. The houses to either side had been converted