"C. S. Friedman - Coldfire 1 - Black Sun Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friedman C. S)

Incredible, he thought. He must have voiced that, for she murmured, “You
approve?”
He looked into her eyes and read the real question there, behind her words.
“The Church should be using this, not fighting it.” The ground was singing to
him, a deep, rumbling sound that he felt through his bones. “And I’ll see to it
they do,” he promised.
The tremors were increasing in violence, and the wards - fighting to establish
some sort of balance - filled the plaza with silver-blue light, as nearly bright as
Core-light. Some of them began to fire skyward, releasing their pent-up energy
in spurts of blue-white lightning, that leapt from rooftop to rooftop and then shot
heavenward, splitting the night into a thousand burning fragments. Nearby a
tree, unwarded, gave way to the tremors; a heavy branch crashed to the ground
beside them, barely missing several townspeople. It seemed second nature for
him to put his arm around Ciani, to protect her by drawing her against him. And
it likewise seemed wholly natural that she lean against him, wordlessly, until her
hip brushed against his groin and a fire took root there, every bit as intense as
the faeborn flame which surrounded them.
He ran his hand down over the curve of her hip and whispered in her ear, “Is
it safe to make love to a woman during an earthquake?”
She turned in his arms until she faced him, until he could feel the soft press
of her breasts against his chest, the lingering play of her fingers against the back
of his neck. Her heat against the ache in his loins.
“It’s never safe to make love to a woman,” she whispered.
She took him by the hand, and led him into the conflagration.
Senzei Reese thought: That was close.
Behind him, some precious bit of crystal that Allesha had collected - in
deliberate defiance of earthquakes, it seemed to him - shivered off its perch and
smashed noisily on the hardwood floor. One more treasured piece gone. He
wondered why she would never let him bind them in place, with the same sort of
Warding that reinforced their building. Wondered if her “mixed feelings” about
using the fae might not translate into “mixed feelings” about him.
Don’t think about that.
Power: He could feel it all about him. Power thick enough to drown in, power
like a raging fire that sucked the oxygen right out of his lungs, leaving him dizzy
- breathless - trembling with hunger. For a moment it had nearly been visible - a
sheer wall of earth-force, a tidal wave of liquid fire - but he had forced himself to
cut the vision short, and now he was as fae-blind as Allesha herself. Only Ciani
and her kind could maintain their fae-sight without a deliberate Working - and a
Working, under these circumstances, meant certain death.
But what a way to go!
He had almost done it this time. Even knowing the risk, he had almost
chanced it. Almost gritted his teeth against the bone-jarring pain of the warning
siren and continued with his Work as if nothing was happening. What a moment
that would have been, when the wild fae surged into Jaggonath - into him -
burning down all the barriers that kept him from sharing Ciani’s skill, Ciani’s
vision . . . the barriers that kept him human. Merely human.
Every few earthquakes some tormented soul took that chance, and added
his dying scream to the siren’s din. Ciani couldn’t understand why - but Senzei
could, all too well. He understood the hunger that consumed such people, the
need that coursed through them like blood, until every living cell was saturated