"Simon R. Green - Drinking Midnight Wine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Simon R)

him. They'd pressed themselves into a tightly packed crowd before the narrow exit gate, and
were all but fighting each other in their need to get away. A few had made it out into the car
park, and were running wildly in all directions. Hob lost his temper.
He took his ancient aspect upon him, glorious and terrible, and glowed; bright as the sun,
brilliant and blinding. A wave of impossible heat blazed out from him, boiling along the
platform, and engulfed all the refugees in one moment, even those running in the car park.
Men and women burned alive and were gone, their bodies utterly consumed by an unbearable
heat. They didn't even have time to scream before they were nothing more than a few ashes
drifting on the night air.
Hob yelled to Angel, and she reluctantly turned away from the stunned thunder god, and
vaulted back across the tracks to join her partner. They both disappeared into the car park,
and a slow, sullen silence fell across what was left of the deserted railway station.
Jimmy Thunder kicked his way through the rubble of what had once been a waiting room,
emerged out onto the platform and looked about him. The Reality Express was gone, returned
to whatever place or state it called home. There was nothing left of the refugees but a few
dark scorch marks on the station-house walls. For a moment it had been as though the sun
itself had reached out and touched the earth, but it was Hob's power, and it touched only what
he chose to touch.
Jimmy looked back at the building he and Angel had destroyed during their fight, and swore
briefly in Old Norse. Early hour of the morning or not, someone had to have heard the noise.
He'd better leave before someone official turned up to investigate. Doubtless they'd come up
with some real-world explanation; a gas explosion, probably. He stared up the empty tracks,
still and silent now. He doubted there'd be any more runs on the Reality Express for the time
being. No one would accept Hob's promises of a new and better life in Veritie any more; not
after he'd roasted his last lot of customers.
Jimmy wondered briefly how he was going to explain all this to the Waking Beauty. It
really hadn't been one of his better showings. He sighed, and started searching through the
rubble of the destroyed waiting room for his lost hammer, calling to it as to a deaf and rather
dim dog.
THREE
DEAD MAN WALKING




Leo Morn was having a quiet drink in the Dandy Lion when the dead man walked in. Leo put
down his glass and glanced quickly about him, but no one else seemed to have noticed. This
was Veritie, after all, and in the real world there was no magic, no enchantments, and
definitely no walking dead men.
It was ten thirty on a Saturday, a quiet morning in a quiet country town. Bradford-on-
Avon's narrow streets and lanes were full of shoppers and tourists and running children,
making the most of a warm summer's day. Steady traffic rolled up and down the steep hill of
Market Street, while harried motorists fought savagely over the limited parking space in
adjoining Church Street. Just another Saturday morning, really, and Leo Morn was taking his
ease at his favourite watering hole. The Dandy Lion was a very pleasant public house right in
the centre of town, in an old, old building that had been many things in its time, and known
many names, but these days it was a warm and cosy resting place, with wood-panelled walls,
raftered ceilings, good booze and better food, where the lighting was kept just dim enough to
be easy on the eyes. It was a good place to put your feet up, quench your thirst and soothe the
inner man.