"Simon R. Green - Nightside 1 - Drinking Midnight Wine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Simon R)

like that. Leo moved on, giving the dead man a wide berth.


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Defensive spells formed on the air before him like static snowdrops, intricate and elegant,
shimmering with unearthly colours; magical anti-personnel mines. Invisible to ordinary eyes, there
were change spells and death spells, and a whole bunch of curses Leo didn't even recognise. He
slipped cautiously between them, bending at awkward angles to avoid touching and activating them.
He had no doubt that there were other, subtler defences too, so complex even he couldn't hope to
sense them in time, but he trusted to his dual nature to protect him, and pressed on. He'd come
too far to turn back now. Leo had few positive qualities, but stubbornness was definitely one of
them.
At last the dark trees fell away to reveal a great open clearing, with the farmhouse standing at
its centre, like the bait in a trap. It was a long two-storey building, in the old half-timbered
style, its mottled exterior filthy and corrupted, the victim of nature's relentless working and
long neglect. Leo crouched at the edge of the clearing, and just looking at the farmhouse made him
feel sick. There was a disturbing wrongness to it, as though it was both more and less than just a
house. The gaping black windows were like eyes, and the great front door a mouth with concealed
teeth. It wasn't a sane place, where sane and normal people might live. The angles were all wrong,
and the decaying features played tricks of perspective on him, as though parts were rushing
towards and retreating from him, at the same time. It was a structure from another time and
another place, where they did things differently. An alien place, perhaps neither real nor
magical, but something... worse.
The slumping rotten heart of Blackacre stood all alone, with no obvious defences. No dead men on
guard, no attack spells floating on the air, nobody watching from the empty windows. It had to be
a trap. Leo crouched where he was, considering his options, and then almost jumped out of his skin
as Reed walked out of the woods some ten feet away, and headed straight for the farmhouse. Leo
seized his chance. He padded quietly across the open clearing, keeping close behind Reed,
following in his footsteps. No one challenged him. Reed pushed open the front door and went in,
while Leo dropped to the ground beside it, struggling to control his breathing and his heartbeat.

He pressed his back against the wall, and the moist surface gave disturbingly under the pressure.
The dead woods were still and quiet. Leo swallowed hard. Now that he'd got this far, he wasn't
absolutely sure what to do next. Just walking in the front door like Reed did not strike him as a
good idea, and he didn't even know if there was a back door. A light suddenly appeared at one of
the downstairs windows; a calm, golden light quite at odds with the rest of the farmhouse. Leo
slid along the wall, as quiet as a mouse in carpet slippers, until he was right underneath the lit
window. All he had to do now was rise up and peek in, but somehow that didn't appeal to him at
all. For all his stubbornness and curiosity, that last step seemed so big as to be almost
overwhelming. He didn't want to look in, for fear of what might look back at him.
There were monsters in Mysterie. Things much nastier than a little half-breed like Leo Morn.
And then he thought of Reed, his friend Reed, his dead friend Reed, walking helplessly into this
house at the call of whoever or whatever had summoned him up out of his grave, and the chill in
Leo's veins was driven out by a hot flush of anger. It wasn't courage, but it would do to get him
moving. He sucked in a deep breath, held it, turned slowly and carefully rose up to look in at the
glowing window.
At first, the glass was so filthy he couldn't see a damn thing. But as his eyes adjusted to the
glare of the light and the smeared fog on the window, his preternaturally keen gaze was able to