"P. N. Elrod - Vampire Files 05 - Fire In The Blood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elrod P N)

Fire in the Blood by PN Elrod

Chapter One

I WAS IN the process of tearing away the top half of Olivia Vandemore's silver-spangled evening gown
when Escott abruptly opened the basement door and called my name.

"Are you down there?" His voice was necessarily pitched to carry through a brick wall.

"In a minute," I growled back.

The last fragile strap gave way under feverish, brutal hands. A terrible shriek of pure horror rushed from
her perfect coral lips and echoed throughout the dank stone passages.

"Jack?" He was coming down the basement steps.

Her warm, white body writhed helplessly on the carved stone altar—an altar stained black with the
Wood of uncounted victims hideously sacrificed to slake the unholy thirst of…

"Jack?" He rapped a knuckle experimentally against the wall of my inner sanctum.

… Sabajajji, the Spider God.

I hit the period and debated whether to turn it into an exclamation point. A quick look through the other
pages confirmed that I hadn't used one for some time now, and it seemed appropriate for the scene. The
reader was going to be far more concerned with the upcoming description of Olivia's writhing body than
my punctuation. I backspaced, tapped the apostrophe key, and rolled out the sheet, adding it to the
stack of deathless prose next to my portable. Further excitement would have to wait until after I found
out what the hell Escott wanted.

"I was working, you know," I told him, emerging wraithlike from the basement wall and solidifying. It'd
taken a couple of months, but he'd finally gotten used to such stunts from me—at least on those
occasions when he expected it. This time he'd expected me to be behind a bricked-up alcove in his
basement, so it was hardly worth his notice.

"Sorry," he said, his nervous fingers absently jingling his key ring. He was wearing his hat and coat.

"Something up?" I asked, tying my bathrobe. I'd started writing as soon as I'd woken up and hadn't
bothered to dress.

"I believe so. I may have a job for us and thought you'd like to come along and meet our prospective
client."

This wasn't his usual method of work, which was being a private detective, though he preferred to be
called a private agent. Most of the time he'd have some job already in progress and only asked me in if
he needed extra help. I always tried to keep a low profile and rarely saw the client. The fewer people
who knew about me, the better.

"I'm kind of in the, middle of something," I hedged, reluctant to be dragged away from Olivia's
impending sacrifice and last-second rescue. "Or are you getting a fishy smell off this one?" Sometimes