"Van Lustbader, Eric - Dark Homecoming(eng)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

Lights blazed. Garner, caught like a deer in headlights, looked up, blinking into the glare. Four metal-shell photographer's floods, clipped to shelves, drenched the bloody scene in light so bright it was obscene.
"бAy, fantastica!" It was Heitor Bonita's voice, crowing. "бQue duke!" How sweet! Now that the initial shock had dissipated, Garner was certain.
"Se?or, por favor, this way."
Garner felt a powerful tug on his elbow from Antonio Bonita. They knew everything, Garner thought. How had they found out? Who had given him away?
But there was no time to pursue these deeply disturbing thoughts. He saw that the homey ex-dressing room had been tricked out in frightening fashion. The walls on either side of him contained markings drawn in blood-the handler's blood, Garner had no doubt. These symbols seemed vaguely familiar to Garner: a triangle within a circle; a single spot, red and ominous, within a square; a cross within three concentric circles. Though he could not place them, they sent a certain thrill of dread through the core of him. Some primitive part of his brain instinctively recognized a mortal enemy.
And there, on either side of him, were the Bonita twins. Long and lean, their amber eyes reflecting the awful glare, they stood in a concentration of energy Garner felt in a frisson along his exposed flesh.
"You tricked us," Heitor said in a hearty gust of disillusionment.
"Traduced us," Antonio echoed, his grip like an iron band.
"I haven't traduced you," Garner said, feeling a foolish and clearly hopeless desire to defend himself.
Garner's gaze was drawn by light coruscating off the blade of a scalpel Heitor held in one hand.
"I've made no false statements against you." This was not a court of law Garner had entered, but an execution chamber.
"No?" Heitor grinned wolfishly. "What were you going to tell your handler in your debriefing?"
Antonio spun him roughly around, struck him again and again in strategic parts of his body until the damning floppy disk was exhumed from his person.
Garner, crumpled on the slick floor, tasted his own blood. His head lolled uncontrollably with his pain. He sucked in a ragged breath and gasped. The heat of the lamps caused the reek of human offal to rise from the floor like spirits from the grave.
Antonio raised the stolen floppy disk on high. "This contains all the answers, names, dates, et cetera, et cetera," he said in the ring- ing vengeful tones of a hanging judge hell-bent for blood. "Are your eyes blind that you cannot see?"
"We know what you were going to do with this highly inflammatory information," Heitor said. The scalpel moved, and having moved, pointed to the disembodied head of Garner's handler. "We were provided with confirmation."
Briefly, absurdly, Garner wondered where the rest of him was,
"Without cross-checking," Antonio admonished with considerable irony. "Without independent corroboration."
"We were to be condemned out of hand." Heitor crouched down in Garner's face. Antonio hunkered down beside him.
"Like common criminals," Antonio, pitched forward on the toes of his Keds, whispered in Garner's ear.
Heitor must have heard this because he said, "Listen to me. There is nothing common about us."
Garner had begun to sweat, and sweating, he prayed.
"Oye, Heitor," Antonio said, "he's beginning to stink."
Heitor pushed his head forward and sniffed. "Madre de mentiras, it is not a good stink."
"Not like blood," Antonio affirmed. "Not like the dying."
Now Heitor said something in a singsong kind of voice. It was not a language immediately known to Garner, whose fascination with arcane dialects had led him to become a linguistics expert. But, as Heitor continued, impressions came: of poverty-stricken hovels and packed-dirt streets, of roosters crowing and mangy dogs prowling the edges of an emerald jungle beyond which rose a modern industrial skyline. This was a Paraguayan Indian dialect, Garner thought. Guarani.
And, suddenly, the dripping designs on the walls came into sharp focus, and Garner felt a sick, panicky feeling in the pit of his stomach. He knew something of this obscure dialect. Linking it up to the bloody symbols, he understood what the twins had been trying to tell him: death was the least of what was to come.
"I want you to understand this," Heitor said with the touch of his amber gaze heavy and knowing on Garner. "The stones. You have heard of the dark stones, haven't you?"
"We can see the answer in your eyes," Antonio said. "The dark stones know."
His hand snaked out, gripping Garner's bicep like a pincer. Without seeming effort he shot to his feet, dragging Garner with him. Now he moved very fast, hauling Garner across the room like a sack of wheat. The toe of Garner's shoe caught in a glistening fold of intestine, dragging it with him like an unwilling pup.
Antonio spun Garner, slamming him so hard against the back wall that all the breath went out of him, and Antonio was obliged to hold him upright. Garner was surrounded by the largest of the three concentric circles of blood. He imagined the bloody cross converged between his shoulder blades. He shook his head to try to clear it.
Looking past the Bonita twins, he saw the bloody symbol on the fourth wall. It had not been visible before because it had been behind him. He saw two curving lines that met to form what appeared to be the outline of an eye. But it was unlike any Garner had seen before because it had two pupils. It was eerie, like the orb of God, imagined but forbidden to look upon.
Heitor, moving slowly as a crocodile in the full heat of the day, fingered the shining scalpel. "This is pure instinct now. You've left reason outside in the night."
"Here's the meat of it." Antonio's glistening teeth clacked beside Garner's ear. "We will reveal to you the sole Law of the Universe: the further a creature gets from pure instinct, the more flaws it possesses."
"Take man, for instance," Heitor said. "бMadre de mentiras!"
"Flatulent with flaws," Antonio whispered. "His capacity to reason-his obsession with it-has wiped out the instinct that made him what he was."
"Once," Heitor said, advancing.
"No more," Antonio said.
"Comprende, se?or." Heitor stood squarely in front of Garner. "For us, this is the game."
Antonio, up on his toes, the backs of his legs taut, wedged Garner in. "The only game in existence."
Heitor smiled. "The one thing that means something to us," he said in the peculiar dialect of the Guarani.
"The rest," Antonio said, "does not exist."
Now Heitor's lambent gaze pinioned him, and Garner screamed. He didn't want to, but he couldn't help himself. The stifling air in the tiny room seemed to have gained a charge of electricity as the symbols on the walls came to life. They appeared to pulse and shine, eclipsing even the fierce glare of the photo floods. Was it hypnosis or magic? Garner, raised and trained in the world of man's technological marvels, was inclined toward skepticism. He had discovered in the course of previous investigations that Haitians died of voodoo curses simply because they believed in them. There was no more mystery to it than that.
As if Heitor could read Garner's thoughts, he put two fingers on the side of Garner's neck where his carotid artery pulsed, and Garner felt an involuntary shudder go through him. It was as if an enormous boa constrictor had settled on his shoulders, and a certain fear he could neither understand nor control began to pulse like a drumbeat in his lower belly.
Heitor was summoning the dark stones.
Garner began to fight, but it was far too late. Antonio's grip held him fast even though he twisted and struck out with fisted hands and scrabbling feet. Strangely, frighteningly, it dawned on him that the harder he fought, the longer he held on, the better they loved it.
His heart seemed to freeze in his chest. What was happening to him? It was as if something he felt but could not define was boring through the backs of his eyes into his brain. He felt as if he were on fire, and involuntarily, his body began to dance a manic jig. He tried to pull his gaze away but he couldn't. Horrified, he stared into those amber eyes and found himself being subsumed by another presence. He felt himself plummeting down like a parachutist through layers of ever thickening cloud. And it was as if the airplane he left behind was his own body, dwindling in size, grown dim and indistinct until it was thoroughly obscured by those clouds. Still, Garner fought with every ounce of strength left him.
They could have kissed him for his heroic efforts. It was hours and hours later that Heitor used the scalpel. Before that-for a long and ecstatic time-there was simply no need.
DAY ONE
1