"Simon R. Green - Nightside 5 - Paths Not Taken" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Simon R)

Paths Not Taken



Nightside 05



Simon R. Green




My name is John Taylor. You can frighten people with that name, in certain places. I operate as a
private eye, though I've never held a license or owned a gun. I wear a white trench coat, if that's any
help. I'm tall, dark of eye, and handsome enough to get by. I have a gift for finding things, whether they
want to be found or not. I help people, when I can. I like to think I'm one of the Good Guys.

I operate in the Nightside, that sick magical city within a city, London's best-kept secret. It's always
night in the Nightside, always three o'clock in the morning, the hour of the wolf, when most people die
and most babies are born. That part of the night where it's always darkest just before the dawn, and the
dawn never comes. Gods and monsters walk openly along rain-slick streets, basking in the sleazy glow
of hot neon, and every temptation you ever lusted after

in the darkest reaches of your heart is right there to be found, for a price. Most often your soul, or
someone else's. You can find joy and horror in the Nightside, salvation and damnation, and the answer to
every question you ever had. If the Nightside doesn't kill you first.

I have something of a reputation on those dark streets, and not in a good way. My father drank himself
to death after finding out my mother wasn't human after all. A mysterious group of Enemies have been
trying to kill me ever since I was a small child. There are those in the Nightside who see me as a King in
waiting, and others who have named me Abomination. To the Authorities, that faceless group who like to
think they run things, I'm just a rogue agent and an unrepentant pain in the arse.

Only recently I found out my mother was a Biblical myth: Lilith, Adam's first wife, driven out of Eden for
refusing to accept any authority other than her own. She created the Nightside, thousands of years ago,
to be the one place on Earth free from the eternal battle between Heaven and Hell. She's been away; but
now she's back. And everyone's waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I once saw a possible future for the Nightside. In it everyone was dead, the whole world a wasteland.
And all of it was my fault, because I went looking for my mother. I swore an oath to die rather than let
that happen.

But, of course, nothing's ever that simple-in the Nightside.
one

There Are Reasons Why I Never Go to My Office

There's never enough time in the Nightside, which is odd, because you can buy everything else. I had
much to do and enemies on my trail, so I went walking through the streets of the Nightside, and was