"David J. Wright - Payment Due" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wright David J)

and looked into monstrous, madman's eyes. "I really don't know," he repeated,
feeling a twinge of fear.
Astogoroth stared back, then convulsed in wild, racking, shrieking laughter. He
shook with the laughter grotesquely, the horrid noise echoing and amplifying
around the Coven Hall like a song of the damned. A yellow round-bottomed bottle,
the ruined Crystal Cage, slipped from Astogoroth's fingers and shattered for the
last time on the floor.
Dixon drew back from the screaming wizard and looked at Jig. "What's happening?
What does this mean?"
Jig, his hand still on Astogoroth's shoulder, said, "I guess this means that I
pay."



Amil came awake with a start, blinking in the darkness, confused and frightened.
She gestured with one hand, and a candle beside her cot ignited. While she
listened, she rubbed her other hand across the seared, puckered skin of her
forehead, her cheeks.
Yes, there it was again, the booming, the awful crashing she had mistaken for
thunder when it first jarred her out of sleep. Now she knew it was hammering at
her cottage door. She rose, slowly, tentatively, moving with the care of the
elderly or the infirm. Already she felt the skin tearing and seeping about her
joints, around her neck, wherever she turned or flexed. Sludgy flares of pain
burst in her body, but she gritted her teeth against them and took the candle,
hobbled to the door.
The hammering continued, its desperation, its intensity growing with each
passing moment. She threw the bolt and pulled the door open, and stared out into
the murky night. The tangy stench of the surrounding bog crept into her cottage
like green fog.
"What it is?" she asked in her leathery voice.
A boy stood there, twelve or thirteen years, no older. His thick blond hair was
matted to his head by the moisture in the air, and his blue eyes were huge and
terrified. A deep gash zigged over his right eye, and bled in intermittent
droplets down his face. His entire body shook, from chill or fear, probably
both.
"Are you," he began, then lost his words in gulps of the heavy air. "Are you
Amil ul-Natalia?"
Amil frowned suspiciously at the boy. "I ... was," she said reluctantly.
"Please," he said. "I need your help. The demon ... Gantegor ..." Then he
collapsed before her, his eyes rolling back in his head.



Day 124, 241 days left
The Coven Hall was silent but for the soft gurgling from the sheet of water
hanging over the council table. Jig sat in the throne at the head of the table,
one leg over the arm, his chin in his palm. He had removed the twenty-nine
statues of the Coven members, their staring presence disturbing him to the point
of paranoia. His time was running out, he could feel it vanishing.
"And you," Jig said to his companion in the room. "What should I do with you?"