"Allston, Aaron - Doc Sidhe 02 - Sidhe-Devil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Allston Aaron)

“Here you are.” Fergus peered closer. “Very interesting. See these numbers?”
Alastair leaned close. “Barely. Black ink on black rubber. What do they mean?”
“They’re a maker’s mark. And these numbers belong to Fairwings Tiring. Which is odd, as Fairwings went under just after the Fall. Six, seven years ago.”
“Who bought them out?”
“No one. Who could afford to? Their plant has stood closed all these years.” He looked up into Alastair’s face; when the doctor winced away, he shut off the lamp on his hat. “Sorry. And what’s especially interesting is that this rubber here is full of cracks of age. Whatever devisement has animated and given it a voice is preserving it; without that devisement, it would just come to pieces when stressed.”
“How do we get there?”
“It’s here on Long Island. Go east on Lancers’ Lane about four destads. Just past Trolton you’ll see the old Fairwings sign.”
“What will you charge when you’re a free eye?”
“A lib a day and expenses.”
Alastair flipped him a coin, which he caught. “There’s your first fee. Lady’s luck to you on your new business.”
“And to you on yours.”

Chapter Three
“My grandmother,” said Ish in a whisper, “had a special recipe for traitors like Fergus. She would boil them alive in lime juice, with cuts in their flesh so they would feel what was flavoring them-”
Alastair snorted. “First, I’ve met your grandmother, and she is a nice old lady who would never do something like that. Second, your people aren’t cannibals-”
“Oh, no, we would never eat such a stew . . .”
They sat in Noriko’s car with the lights out and stared at the Fairwings factory. It was a dark mound of brick, an irregular artificial hill whose windows had been replaced by brick of a lighter hue. Zeb couldn’t detect any straight lines in its walls; everything was curved, rounded. The wooden fence surrounding the property had fallen in places and the grounds were overgrown.
Noriko returned to the car where it sat on Lancers’ Lane a hundred yards away from the property. “I found fresh car tracks where one section of fence was down,” she said. “Many tracks; someone has been driving back and forth. The front and side doors are nailed to, but the rear door is new; it has merely been painted to look old.”
Harris said, “All the windows bricked up?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” Harris said. “Gaby, I want you at an angle to cover the front and side doors. Alastair, Ish, Noriko and I will go in the back. Zeb, you want to wait here?”
“And let you get into trouble all alone? Nope.”
“Then you stick close to me.”
The car’s trunk turned out to be a mobile armory; it was packed with cases and racks that yielded long arms, handguns, and ammunition. Alastair took what looked like a bronzed Thompson submachine gun and struggled into a barrel-like vest that Zeb assumed to be approximately bulletproof. Gaby selected a bolt-action rifle. Harris and Noriko took paired revolvers; Ixyail, a double-barreled shotgun.
Zeb, at Harris’s gesture of invitation, took up a rifle like Gaby’s and a large pistol shaped like an oversized Army-issue semiauto. He checked to see whether they were loaded and quickly familiarized himself with them.
Zeb saw Noriko whisper something to Harris. Harris nodded and murmured something about the Army. That rankled Zeb; Noriko was obviously checking to make sure he was fit to carry a weapon.
He decided to let it pass. He’d earned marksman’s qualification in the Army. But it was true that when it actually came down to a live fire situation-the kind these people obviously expected they might face-he’d never been put to the test. Harris had no proof to offer Noriko about Zeb’s reliability in such a situation.
Harris quietly closed the trunk. “Let’s move out.”
* * *
Noriko twisted the handful of picks inserted into the lock and was rewarded with a satisfying clunk. Quietly, she pocketed her tools and pulled the door open, sniffing.
She smelled old oil, aging rubber, freshly-spilled fuel, and something else: the faint odor of ozone, often given off by Doc’s electrical devices. There was also something her grimworld friends could probably not detect, the disquieting smell of rusting steel; the fairworlders would need to be careful within. She gestured to the others, took a thin pair of gloves from her belt, and put them on. Alastair and Ish followed suit. The dusky grimworlder looked confused; she saw Harris lean in and whisper to him, mentioning the fairworlders’ deadly allergy to ferrous metals.
Then, inside. She advanced cautiously into the darkness, letting her eyes adjust. But there was not even the faintest light for them to adjust to. She reluctantly brought out her torch and snapped it on, revealing her position to whomever might wait within.
The beam illuminated a huge open area; the light did not reach the far wall. The ceiling was supported by rusting steel framework. Everywhere were chains and hooks hanging from overhead winches, sagging conveyor belts, partially disassembled machinery lying in huge, collapsed piles. From the ceiling supports and their crossbeams hung tires and inner tubes ranging in size from those appropriate to cars to giant things suited to tractors.
Behind Noriko the others snapped on their torches and advanced. “Alastair with Noriko,” said Harris. “Zeb, with me. Ish, stay at the door.”
Ish grimaced. “I hate door duty.”
“It’s your turn.”
Alastair joined Noriko and they moved straight ahead, along the main corridor between piles and supports, while Harris and Zeb circled around clockwise.
Noriko saw Alastair close his left eye, peering only through his right-his Gifted eye. “There’s been devising hereabouts, recently,” he said. “And something straight ahead-”
Noriko’s torch beam fell on the massive table set up near the center of the factory-and on the pale figure atop it. A tingle of fear rose within her. She sprinted forward, knowing that Alastair would cover her advance.
On the table lay Doc. He stared straight up, unseeing, but moved a little as she reached him. His arms and legs were chained by links of bronze to the corners of the table. He was naked. “I have him!” she called. “Doc, are you well?”
“Noriko?” His eyes moved but he did not seem to be able to find her.
“Yes.” She examined the cuffs on his wrists. Heavy, well-machined restraints. Their chains were bolted to the hardwood table’s sides.
“Find Ish,” Doc said. “She’s here somewhere . . .”
“She’s at the door. She is well.”
Alastair joined her. “Good evening, Doc. I see you’ve been up to some fun.”

Harris and Zeb heard Noriko’s call. Harris shook his head and the two of them kept along their circular path, alert for other surprises the factory might have waiting for them. They moved along tight-packed aisles of junked machinery and piles of tires.
Zeb kept his voice low: “Was Ish serious about boiling Fergus?”
“No. She talks like a bomb-throwing anarchist, but it’s really just part of her act. She’s extremely recognizable the way you’ve seen her . . . but she can put on normal street clothes, drop that Castilian accent to zero, and when you run into her you’d never recognize her.”
“Protective coloration.”