"Sara Douglass - Redemption 3 - Crusader" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglass Sara)

She was lying sprawled across the floor of the mausoleum, writhing in an agony of need and desire.
Her last feeding hour had been good, but not good enough.
There were other souls out there, and she wanted them.
She bared her teeth, and snarled.
Qeteb leaned down and grabbed her by the hair, hauling her to her feet. Sheol screamed, and then
roared, her shape flowing from humanoid to dog and back to humanoid again.
StarLaughter, sitting with her back against one of the black columns, turned her face aside in a
disgust she did not even bother to disguise. Nothing had gone well for her since her son had attained
his full potential.
Qeteb laughed, and dropped Sheol.
The female Demon crawled a few paces away and then rose to her feet, smoothing down the
pastel-coloured gown she'd chosen to assume and rearranging her facial features in an
expression that came close to obeisance.
"Great Father," she said, and dipped her head.
Qeteb grunted. For the moment he was prepared to put up with Sheol's impatience — had she not
fought through a hundred thousand years to resurrect him? — but he wasn't sure if his current good
nature would last much longer than dusk this evening.
There was going to be an irritating delay before they could consume the souls of the entire planet,
and Qeteb did not like to
be made to wait for anything, let alone total domination.
"For the moment we are confined to this wasteland," he said. "We must be, until we have finally
disposed of the ... StarSon."
The Enemy Reborn.
It had rattled all of the Demons more than they were prepared to admit out loud each
to the other. The damned, damned Enemy Reborn.
They thought they had been chasing the shadows cast by the fleet of the Ark., but instead the
shadow had been chasing them.
"Once the StarSon is dead — once and for all — then the eating will be beyond compare,"
Raspu whispered. He was standing with Mot and Barzula behind the stone tomb that sat in the centre
of the mausoleum. The three Demons were leaning with their elbows on the stone's flat surface and their
chins resting in their hands, staring at Qeteb as he paced to and fro.
Behind them, almost lost in the gloom of the columned recesses of the mausoleum, lay the
Niah-woman, limbs akimbo, blank-eyed head propped up at an uncomfortable yet unheeded angle
against a cold marble wall. Her white skin was blemished with small lesions. Qeteb had amused himself
well with her. His new body had needs to be sated, and her soulless one was useful only for the
services it could provide — but his black metal armour had not provided the kindest of caresses.
No-one among them cared, least of all Qeteb. As far as he was concerned, the Niah-body needed
to last only as long as it could provide a new flesh and blood form for Rox's lost soul. Qeteb was more
than irritated with Rox's foolhardy attempt to brave the bridge at Sigholt, and had considered leaving him
to float disembodied for eternity ... but this was a land and a time of resurrection, and Rox would be
more useful in bodily form than useless spirit.
They would need to meet the StarSon united. This time, Qeteb would let nothing stand in
the way of a total victory over the Enemy.
"What do you mean?" StarLaughter said, moving forward. "I thought you rammed your sword
through the StarSon in the Maze. What's this hold-up?"
Qeteb's impatience for power was nothing compared to StarLaughter's.
Qeteb turned slowly to look at the woman. He would have liked to destroy her, but at the
moment he was loath to kill anything that might provide information, or might prove useful. If there
was anything Qeteb had learned over the past hundred thousand years of imprisonment, it was
a modicum of prudence.