"Night Lost" - читать интересную книгу автора (Viehl Lynn)

Pass through.

Nick held on to him anyway, her cheek against his heart, his hand stroking her curly hair.

The Green Man pushed her away as hot light filled her eyes, and the ground between them collapsed. Nick fell back, cringing as the earth vanished into two deep, rough trenches. Beetles and roaches began crawling out of the largest hole, swamping the ground until it seemed to writhe.

Always see.

The Green Man stared at Nick's hands.What have you done ?

A rat with a short white stick clamped between its long yellow teeth scampered toward her. Like a puppy, it laid the stick at Nick's feet. She reached down for it, her hand black now with soil and blood, her fingernails jagged and broken. She stopped only when she saw the plain band of gold gleaming just above the gnawed end.

Never remember.

Nick woke up, as she always did, weeping.

а

"Too weak to escape," a voice said in the darkness, "and too strong to die."

Awakened to his new room in hell, the prisoner did not move. Reaction, like emotion, had become meaningless as well as useless. He no longer bothered to brace himself or cringe; waiting for what would be done required all of his Self-control.

Much had been done to Gabriel Seran.

More would be done, yet he would endure. Skills acquired during seven centuries of existence had permitted him to survive what might have killed him a thousand times over during his brief human life. It had also helped him through these last two years as a captive of the Brethren. His talent had kept his body from weakening, but the soul his captors did not believe he possessed had done the rest.

As for his mind, he did not know. He had traded emotion for what he used to survive, and rarely did he feel anything beyond pain anymore. He had become a glacier encased in tortured flesh.

Perhaps he owed his life to a phantom. As he thought of her, that invention of his own desperate loneliness, her image came to him: a pale, fair-haired maiden, alone in the forest, searching. What she sought, Gabriel did not know; nor had he ever seen her beyond his dreams. But as imaginary as she was, having her come to him these last months had kept him from surrendering himself to the eternal comforts of oblivion. Thanks to her, he could live with knowing that no one else in the world cared for him or thought of him anymore.

"If you will not come to the light, I must bring it to you." A tiny scrape and a hiss of burning sulfur brought a small flare of flame into the airless, lightless chamber. The human holding the struck match touched it to the blackened wick of the kerosene lamp the old priest had left behind, and the circle of light spread. He lifted the lamp so that it shed its yellow glow over his face and Gabriel. "You see, vampire? Unlike you, I am no monster."

Someone out of sight grunted. A sack dropped with a weighty thud.

The human wore the garb of a monster: a black cassock with three crosses embroidered in bloodred silk over his left breast. One, Gabriel knew, for every Darkyn the human had personally killed. The Brethren wore them as modern soldiers would medals.

Gabriel wondered if he would earn the human a fourth, and why he did not care if he did.

"We haven't been properly introduced yet, have we?" Blunt, small teeth gleamed between ruddy lips. "I am Father Benait."

Benait posed as a Catholic priest, as did all the other members of the secret order ofLes Frшres de la Lumiшre , the Brethren of the Light. This human and his fellow zealots possessed the blind dedication of true fanatics, which fueled their belief that Gabriel and others like him were a curse upon humanity.

The Brethren did not care that Gabriel and his kind, the Darkyn, had learned to temper their need for human blood, their only nourishment, and no longer killed humans for it. During his first year in captivity Gabriel had drawn on all his powers of persuasion to negotiate peace with his captors, but nothing moved them. They cared only for the preservation of their own twisted faith, and the perversions it allowed them to practice. Such as capturingvrykolakas like Gabriel and torturing them until they betrayed other Kyn.

Gabriel no longer bothered with useless diplomacy. Whatever the Brethren did to him in this place, he would endure it. It was his duty to do so. Even if he had wished to die, his body's ability to heal spontaneously ensured that he would survive almost anything. The numbing void created by using his talent kept out everything else.

That was the Kyn's true curse: to live beyond the desire for life.

Am I dead inside, and my body does not yet know it? Gabriel could not say.