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

"He has had time! He has had his freedom. I want him back now."
"He won't come."
"Oh, this time he will. Do you know where he is?" His tone was too urgent.
Ilona tilted her head, looked at him. "No."
"I shall find him. And you will help me draw him here, Ilona."
She leapt to her feet in a burst of anger, her hair and clothes a swirl of coloured flames. "Oh, no I won't! Why don't you do your own dirty work? Every vampire in this damned world is subject to you! Can't you bear to let even a single one go his own way?" She released a breath and said thinly, "No. Of course you can't. That's just the point, isn't it? Not a single one."
Kristian glared at her, anger blowing through him like a steady cold wind. "Now that is blasphemy, beloved. Karl wronged me. He cannot escape vengeance. You hate him! In your heart, I know you want to help me punish him. So why are you fighting me?"
She looked away from him. Her eyes narrowed and moisture gathered on her lower lashes. "Because I don't want him to come back to you. I never want to see him again. Never, ever. You know that. I don't know how you can even ask this of me!"
Kristian felt the coil of ice tightening within him. Her objections were an irritation; they meant nothing. "You'll help meЕ because you love me, and hate him."
Ilona turned on him, feverish with rage. "I hate you both, at this moment. If he comes back here, I shall leave! You think you can control everyone, but you can't have it both ways!"
Kristian clasped her arm. His large hand went right round the slender limb, an iron shackle. The more she protested, the less he cared; his heart felt black, a swollen thundercloud of justified wrath. "It will be as I want it. You'll bring him back to me."
"What am I now, bait?" She drew back her lips in scorn. "You don't imagine my presence could lure him back? My God, such optimism."
"You are very slow, my beloved." Kristian let her go so suddenly that she almost went over the balcony. "It is what will happen to you if he ignores my invitation that will lure him."
She laughed, hard and angry. "Kristian, how can you have lived so long and still be so stupid? He hates me as much as I hate him. He knows you love me; he'll just laugh."
"Ah, there you are wrong. There you misjudge him completely. You hate him, but he still loves you. He adores you completely."
Her expression changed. It might have been his voice, or his eyes, the ruthless passion that radiated from him. Cruelty, humans called it; but Kristian knew nothing of cruelty, only of righteousness.
"What on earth could you threaten to do to me?" she whispered, staring at him. But she knew the answer. She knew Kristian's ruthlessness.
"Karl is stubborn; he does not respond to threats. The only way to reach him is to do the deed. He'll be informed of your fate and told that if he wants to save you, he had better come and talk to me."
"No! You can't do it!" Her anger and fear made her look enticing. Kristian felt a dark excitement thread through him. She was fire and blood. He reached for her.
Ilona reacted swiftly, almost too fast for him. The instant she realised the danger, she arched backwards over the balcony rail and vanished.
Not quite fast enough, though. Kristian was after her in a split-second. He caught her even as she flashed into the Crystal Ring, and they fell together through the unseen dimension that only immortals could enter.
She fought him violently, but their bodies were rarified in this realm and her struggles only bound her to him. While the world below them turned flat and dark, the sky became a tiered landscape of light and colour. A soft golden ridge arrested their fall. Kristian clutched Ilona to himself and began to climb relentlessly.
The warm lower layers of the air condensed into a chain of hills, gleaming bronze, rising and falling continually like the slow waves of an ocean. Like clouds the hills sailed on air, yet their substance was like honey; dense enough to bear weight, but treacherous, forever changing. They flowed on as far as the eye could see, but there were shifting gaps where they frayed into an indigo void. Although they were in continuous motion, dissolving and reforming, there was a permanence in their fluidity like the ocean tides.
Against the shimmering dappled slopes, the two vampires were delicate ink sketches; almost bird-like, almost human, too strange to be either. Dragonflies spun from black crystal.
Ilona's struggles hindered Kristian, but she couldn't stop him. He carried her up towards a ridge from which a wisp of vapour formed a pathway towards the higher levels. Guiding lines of light threaded through everything; a magnetic field made visible, some said, but Kristian scorned scientific rationale.
Some vampiresЧunbelievers, like KarlЧsaid it was impossible to explain the Crystal Ring. Why should immortals be privileged to step into another dimension, weird beyond human dreams? When they entered it they vanished from the world of mortals, yet its geography corresponded to that of Earth, enabling them to travel unseen from place to place. Like the sky, it enveloped the world in a vast circle of crystal. Its beauty was ineffable. Moving through itЧhalf-swimming, half-flyingЧwas a dizzying rapture. Yet it was far more than a convenience or a delight. Unable to sleep on Earth, vampires must come here to rest. The Crystal Ring held dangers, too, but in some unfathomable occult way it was essential to their existence.
Kristian, however, knew precisely what the Crystal Ring was. It was the mind of God. And God, of course, allowed only His chosen dark messengers to enter His mind; this savage heaven.
Leaving the bronze hills far below, he climbed the path to a colder, wilder region. Overhead a vast range of mountains soared upwards, purple-black and glossy; a paradox, solid yet insubstantial as thunder-heads. A rich deep glow spilled down between them, turning their walls to fire. Kristian ascended a floorless canyon, light flowing violet and amber around him. The climb was not easy. The substance of the Crystal Ring was viscous and treacherous to his rarified limbs, now holding him like a fly in treacle, now giving way beneath him so that he slid back. Ilona was beating his shoulders and cursing him all the way.
At last he gained a mountain peak, and went dizzy at the sight of the depthless void flowing away all around him. The atmosphere was dense and cold, heaving like a sea. Even as he paused, the peak was beginning to turn over on itself, threatening to carry him back down to a valley. The next layer, a sapphire plain, seemed miles above them; but through the semifluid air he could swim upwards, guided by the glittering lines of magnetism.
"Damn you. Take me back," said Ilona. Her voice was faint and she was no longer fighting but clinging to him.
As he forged upwards, he began to shiver. The Crystal Ring exacted a toll of fatigue and cold from those who climbed too high. Even Kristian was not immune to its danger.
He needed warmth. Although their bodies were different in this realm there was still blood within them. He could feel the swell of Ilona's veins as he pressed her to him. As they reached the plain, he slid his fangs into her throat and sucked until the sluggish fluid turned into a thin stream of fire on his tongue.
The strength it gave would be short-lived but it was fierce, almost intoxicating. He drank to strengthen himself and weaken her.
When he finally lifted his head, he looked at her for the first time since he had seized her. Her face was like a painting on dark glass but her features, the personality burning behind the eyes, were unchanged. Her eyes were fixed on his in disbelief, full of pain and betrayal.
"Let me go." Desperation almost stole her voice. "No, you can't do this to me."
Kristian felt a pang of pity. "It is only for a little while, my lamb, I promise," he said. "Just until he comes back."
"You know he won't come back!"
"He will."
"You bastard. You will be sorry."
"I think not, my love." He stroked her head. "This is why I said you would need your courage."
She was silent, weak from loss of blood, as he drew her upwards through haloes of semi-solid indigo light. The Crystal Ring was utterly silent, a sweeping realm of unbearable beauty. As Kristian climbed towards its upper limits he felt warm for a time. Euphoric. Still it took all his strength to carry Ilona upwards to his destination.
The light paled. A silver-blue sea rippled above him, mysterious and delicate. As he broke through its surface, sudden iciness bit through to his bones.
Ice crystals made a swirling staircase by which he ascended to his destination; a vast plateau forty miles about the Earth's surface, lonelier and wilder than the flank of Mount Everest, hurtling endlessly through nothingness. The Weisskalt. The cold sang through him. Even the beauty was painfully knife-edged, the sunlight thin and raw, everything dazzling white. He could see the rich blue curve of the Earth and the blackness of space, scattered with stars and galaxies like tiny whorls of fire. Still Earth, and yetЕ somewhere else entirely. The world as it existed in the mind of the Almighty.
How could Karl not believe in God?
The blood he had taken from Ilona would sustain him long enough for his purpose and he only had to hold her a little while, until she fell asleepЕ
He drank again. She moaned faintly and he stroked her hair. God, how she loved him, this one. He would make it up to her.
She lay rigid in his arms and he thought she was beyond speech, but as he looked at her he saw the faintest scintillation of anger in her eyes. Her lips parted stiffly and she said, "Ask Pierre."
He had to lean close to hear her. "Ask him what?"
Her expression was etched clearly on her shadowed face; vindictiveness, the sour pleasure of a small triumph in defeat. "Ask Pierre where Karl is. He's known all this time." She gave a painful laugh, then the smile froze on her face.
"No, that's impossible. He would have told me. Ilona!"