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

him the arty set began getting to their feet and making noises like Well, look at the time, and /
really must be going. Leo didn't notice. His anger had escalated from hot to boiling to ice cold
in just a few seconds. Someone was going to pay for what had been done to Reed. No one
messed with a friend of Leo Morn and lived to boast of it.
Reed used to drink here, at the Dandy Lion. If he stood around long enough, people would
be forced to notice him. And some might even recognise him, and that was when the
screaming would start. Real people might like to titillate themselves with ghost stories and
crop circles and the like, but when faced with the unreal thing, they couldn't cope at all. It
destroyed their ideas about how the universe worked.
Leo decided it was time he talked with his Brother Under The Hill.
'Brother,' he said, in his mind. 'I have a problem. The shit is in the air, and it's right on course for
the fan.'
It's your own fault, said the other voice in his mind. / told you she was never sixteen. Tell me you
used a condom at least.
'Get your mind out of the gutter. I'm sitting in the Dandy Lion . . .'
Now there's a surprise.
'Looking at a dead man walking.'
All right, you've got my attention. Go to Red Alert and buckle yourself in. What the hell is a dead
man doing in Veritie?
'I was going to ask you that.'
What's it doing, right now7
'For the moment, just standing around, looking confused '
Oh good For one horrible moment I thought you 'd wandered into a Lucio Fulci movie.
'Zombie Flesh-Eaters is a classic of the genre, and I won't hear a word said against it Any ideas as
to what I should do nexP'
Leo had no idea who or what his Brother actually was. He admitted to being extremely old
and not entirely human, and lived, if that was the right word, buried deep under one of the
hills surrounding the town The last time he saw light, the Roman Empire was busy declining
and falling. Leo inherited his Brother Under The Hill on his father's demise, and from that
moment on he and the Brother could talk to each other, mind to mind, no matter how great
the distance separating them Whoever or whatever the Brother was, he'd been doing it for
centuries. He liked to say he was raising Morns, and would keep at it till he got it right The
Brother saw, heard and knew everything that happened in the town below him, in Ventie and
Mystene, although he only existed now m the magical world The Morns were his only means
of communicating with the two worlds Leo was the first Morn who had chosen to live in the
real world, which had been the cause of a certain amount of friction between them.
But Leo was determined to be nothing like his father.
Keeping a dead man up and walking in the real world isn 't something your average necromancer
or dabbler in the dark arts could manage, mused the Brother. This has to be the work of one of the
major players.
'I had managed to work that out for myself,' said Leo, just a little testily 'I've been running through
the usual suspects, but Jackie Schadenfreude is out of town at the moment, the Lord of Thorns is still
sulking in his tent after getting his fingers burned in the Cup of Tears fiasco, and Jessica Sorrow the
Unbeliever wouldn't bother herself with anything this trivial Damn, that woman scares me '
I told you not to sleep with her.
'She didn 't exactly give me a choice Look what do you think we should do about my dead friend?'
I love the 'we' bit Stuck as I am beneath this bloody hill, it s up to you to do something And do it
pretty damned quickly, before the mortals are forced to notice what's come visiting their fragile little
world The last thing we need is a panic in the town and intrusive media people.
'Can't you see who's behind this? I thought you were supposed to be all-knowing.'