"Freda Warrington - A Taste of Blood Wine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Warrington Freda)

the air! Not the air, nor God, nor myself. We are all immanent, part
of everything. You should not be here, my beloved. I am your
master, and I want you back."
A loud explosion shook the air and the being looked up, distracted
for a moment. Shocked, even. His profile was Grecian against the
red glow of the horizon.
The vampire Karl waited for the concussion to roll away. Then he
said, "It's four years since we last had this argument. I almost hoped
you had let me go. Why confront me here, now?"
"I'm trying to save you from yourself." Kristian squatted down,
eyeing the corpse that lay between them with a mixture of distaste
and curiosity. "Did he die fast, or slowly?" Kristian said softly. "Did
he suffer?"
Karl, repulsed by his morbid interest, did not answer. Kristian

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A Taste


looked up and spoke in a harder tone. "There's no need for you to be
here. There are cities far away, where the lights glitter and people
throng the streets, the War no more to them than words in a
newspaper. You could feed among them and return to the comfort
of Schloss Holdenstein, as do the rest of my flock. Why immerse
yourself in this horror?"
"Why not?" said the vampire Karl.
"Because it's nothing to do with us, this human mess!" Kristian
struck the ground. "We are above it!"
"Are we?" said Karl. He feared Kristian, but he would never let the
fear win. "Why shy away from evil, when we are evil ourselves?
You shun it nowтАФbut later you will want every detail, vicarious
experience from a safe distance. Perhaps you are too horrified to
face it because it has proved your equalтАФor worse than you."
"Do not speak of evil, Karl." Kristian's dark eyes gleamed. "The
only Devil is man. Man is the Devil! This is the folly for which they
must be punished. What should I do but watch from a distance and
laugh as they destroy each other? Yet you are too horrified not to
face it. You may justify it to yourself, but you are like a boy poking
a dead rat with a stick to see if it moves. Do you think you are doing
any good here?"
Karl stood up slowly. His clothes and hands were caked with earth,
but the chill was nothing to him. He was divorced from the squalor.
They both were; two spectral figures in the desolation, ghosts
glimpsed only by the dying. "No," he said quietly. "What I do is
wrong, no more and no less so than the War itself. But some of
themтАж they're children."

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A Taste