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

Hob, the Serpent's Son, was having coffee with the woman Angel. Now that he saw them,
Leo couldn't say he was totally surprised. Shocked, scared and in urgent need of a toilet, but
not actually surprised. If Hob had returned, then raising the dead was just the kind of
unpleasantness you'd expect from the Serpent's Son. He was a Power and a Domination, and
more besides. Nicholas Scratch. Hob. Old names for the Devil, the Enemy of Man. And Hob
was all that.
Angel was more of an enigma. You couldn't really use terms like good and bad with her;
they were just too limiting. Brutal and vicious certainly, and capable of anything . . . but
applying morality to Angel was like ascribing motives to a force of nature. Angel was new to
the material plane, and couldn't be expected to understand minor concepts like right and
wrong. She was probably still working on life and death. Angel was dangerous precisely
because she was so unpredictable. If she had fallen under Hob's influence . . .


Now would be a really good time to leave.
'I told you to shut up!' said Leo, in the mental equivalent of a shocked cry. 'That's Hob and
Angel in there!'
They can't hear us. I 've been probing their defences for some time, and they haven't even noticed.
 'Now he tells me.'
You run for the trees. I'll cover you.
'Hell with that. I didn't nearly wet myself getting this far to turn back without finding out what the
hell is going on here. I didn 't know Hob was back. Did you know Hob was back?'
No. 1 can't see him. Or Angel. Usually. They're just too . . . different. Veritie and Mysterie mean
nothing to such as they.
'I really should have stayed in bed this morning, or maybe under it. Now shut up and let me
concentrate on what's going on in there.'
He pushed his face as close to the filthy window as he dared, straining his more than
natural senses to their limit. Hob and Angel were sitting on opposite sides of an ornate and
decorative coffee table, antique by the look of it, polished and gleaming and no doubt hid-
eously expensive. The delicate china coffee set they were using was practically a work of art,
but Hob treated it quite casually as he refilled Angel's cup. All around them, the parlour was
filthy and squalid and utterly vile. It was more than a century since anyone had actually lived
in the Blackacre farmhouse, and it showed. The bare walls were cracked and bulging and
pock-marked with huge craters, running with slow viscous damp like pus from leaking sores.
Thick clumps of bulbous white fungi filled the angles where the walls met floor and ceiling.
Leo could almost taste the stench of corruption that filled the room, even through the closed
window. The room was full of a golden light, but from no obvious source, as though the
parlour itself glowed with the unclean light of underground phosphorescence. No one with
human sensibilities could have lived in such a room, or even tolerated it for more than a few
moments, but then, Hob and Angel only looked human. They drank their coffee and talked
together, quite undisturbed by their surroundings, while outside Leo fought hard not to vomit.
He had come to a bad place, and just its proximity was enough to sicken him to his soul.
In the room, Angel looked at the steaming hot coffee in her cup, added four spoonfuls of
sugar, and then stirred the boiling-hot liquid with the tip of her finger, with no obvious
distress. Hob's aristocratic mouth moved briefly in a faint moue of distaste, but he had enough
sense not to say anything. Leo pressed his ear against the window pane, though his cheek
crawled and jumped at the contact, and listened as they spoke.
'I understood you were banished from this town,' said Angel. 'Where have you been all
these years?'
'Travelling the world, and walking up and down in it,' Hob said easily. 'Dabbling in politics