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

magical defences snapping on and off around him, trying to get a fix on him, confused by his
hybrid nature. His Brother Under The Hill spoke urgently in his mind, giving him directions.
Dead men came lurching out from between the dead trees, looking for him with their cold
unblinking eyes, but he was too fast for them, racing through Blackacre Wood with puffs of
ashes flying up every time his feet hit the ground. One of the dead might have been Reed -he
didn't stop to look. More figures appeared ahead of him, closing together to block his way.
His Brother roared, filling the ether with mental static, and the corpses driven by Hob's will
were suddenly blind and uncertain. Leo raced right through them, and they couldn't even
touch him.
Leo grinned as he ran, moving quickly and confidently through the last of the dead trees.
Hob couldn't find him now, and the stalking dead men were too far behind to give him any
trouble. Just let him reach the open countryside beyond the woods, and cross back into
Veritie, and he'd defy Hob or anyone else to bring him down. And then there was thunder on
the air, high above him, and despite himself he looked back. Angel was coming for him,
walking on the air.
Some twenty feet above the ground, higher than some of the trees,
Angel strode across the sky, and the air shuddered like thunderclaps where her feet trod. She
was coming faster than her stride could carry her, sweeping through the air like a hawk with
fiery eyes. Leo ran at full pelt through the dead trees, dodging back and forth, heart and lungs
straining, and Angel closed remorselessly in on him, like an owl hunting a mouse. Leo
pushed himself to his limits, while his Brother yelled for him to make the change, and with
anyone else he might have, but even in his changed state he doubted he would have lasted
long against Angel. Veritie was his only hope.
He pushed himself even harder, crying out at the pain now as he forced his body past its
human limits, and then suddenly he was out of the trees, out of Blackacre, and reality crashed
down around him. Leo threw himself to the warm and living ground and lay there, panting for
breath. His muscles were trembling with the strain he'd put on them. After a while, he turned
slowly and looked back at the border of Blackacre, where Mysterie butted up against Veritie.
And there was Angel, standing quite normally on the ground, in Blackacre. They looked at
each other for a long while, Angel's face completely expressionless, and then she turned and
walked back into the dead woods, and Leo's heart started beating again. He lay on his back on
the good warm grass, looking up at the blue sky, and waited for his breathing to return to
something like normal.
'Brother,' he said finally.
Yes?
'We're going to have to talk to someone about this.'
FOUR
SOME THINGS ARE MEANT
TO BE




Toby Dexter woke up comparatively early on Saturday morning, without knowing why. He
rolled slowly over in bed and looked resentfully at the alarm clock on the bedside table.
Mickey Mouse's hands pointed unfeelingly at nine o'clock. The alarm was still silent. Toby
liked to lie in on a Saturday morning, preferably till ten or eleven or even later. One of the
joys of Saturday morning was knowing he wasn't going to be driven from his nice warm bed
by Mickey's shrill clamour at seven o'bloody clock. Toby lay back in his bed, vaguely
contemplating the ceiling. Something had woken him up. Almost as though someone had