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

make out two distinct figures sitting at their ease in what had once been a parlour. Nicholas 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.


file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Sim...side%201%20-%20Drinking%20Midnight%20Wine.txt (20 of 118) [10/16/2004 5:28:20 PM]
 file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Simon%20R.%20Green%20-%20Nightside%201%20-%20Drinking%20Midnight%20Wine.txt

'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. I 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 hideously 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