"Banks, L A - Vampire Huntress 5 - 2005 - Forbidden" - читать интересную книгу автора (Banks L. A)

He felt hysteria rising in him. Carlos chuckled, but he kept his eyes closed.
The sound was hollow even to his own ears. Rider. That's right. Hombre was human
and had brass balls… had been chained to the ground as bait while the harpies
pulled out his guts. Crazy white dude yelling at Hell's worst nightmare, talking
trash with no weapon in his hand, trying to divert the predators away to give
him a chance to beat the rising sun. Very cool of Rider… he wouldn't forget the
debt. "You drink Jack Daniel's, right? Add a little color in it for me and I'll
buy you a drink, man. After what we just went through on the docks—you buy; I'll
fly. Cool?"
Silence in the vehicle surrounded him. No one but him was laughing. He could
feel the vehicle slowing down.
"Get him inside, Father Pat," an older woman said from somewhere within the
Jeep. "He's delirious."

A pair of strong arms threaded around his back and nearly lifted him off his
feet. What seemed like a battalion of clerics wearing long black robes and white
collars accosted him with phalanges of holy water, striking at him in the sign
of the cross, making him cringe, as he turned his face away to protect it from
the assault, to no avail. Relentless, they swung heavy brass pots filled with
smoking frankincense at him as the burly brother hoisted him over his shoulder
and advanced up the cathedral steps.
He could feel several hands dressing him… someone was anointing his head with
oil. Then he was being moved again, up what seemed like an endless spiral of
stairs. Footsteps, many, many footfalls, rushing like a military SWAT unit,
followed him. The sound of choppers in the air, bright sunlight filled his eyes
and touched his face, but like the incense and holy water, it didn't burn. Why?
he dimly wondered.
Confusion tore at his brain. Blurred white birds of metal with a crest on the
side… blue, a crown of thorns, a sword, a bleeding heart—just like Father Pat's
medallion—opened at the side, filling its belly with humans that eagerly climbed
in and dragged him with them.
This was a vampire's true Hell. The chairman had indeed had the last laugh. The
choppers were flying toward the sun! Carlos braced himself against the pain once
again. How long would the chairman continue to torture him?
Pilots wearing dark aviator sunglasses never turned around as he begged them to
release him from the Sea of Perpetual Agony. He suddenly feared Damali's touch;
what beast would she turn into? An Amanthra? He squeezed his eyes shut, refusing
to watch her gorgeous brown eyes change into slanted, glowing orbs while her
beautiful body transformed into a serpentine menace. Or maybe the chairman would
be particularly cruel and she would become a were-demon. It would be a painful
taunt to remind him of his brush with that entity in the Amazon; Hell always
beat your ass down with past mistakes in the place where there was no such thing
as forgiveness.
Carlos's thoughts scrambled, trying to figure out an escape, a way to negotiate
a shorter sentence. Hell was eternal, so peace and the lack of acute pain had to
be measured in milliseconds. For every minute that passed where no direct pain
was being inflicted, he had a chance to rest, maybe regenerate, just enough to
be able to withstand the next assault that was destined to come. If he wasn't in
pain, he could think. If he could think, he could bargain. But what aces did he
hold? What could he barter with at this juncture?