"Lackey, Mercedes - Born To Run" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

He remained frozen for a moment, then the true nature of the attack penetrated. It can't hurt me, no matter what it looks like. After a deep breath to steady his heart, Sam simply folded his arms across his chest and sighed.
“Is this supposed to impress me?” he asked mildly. A snide comment like that might have been a stupid thing to say, but it was the only attitude Sam could think to take. Tannim had warned him about lying to the Sidhe, or otherwise trying to deceive them. It couldn't be done, he'd said, at least not by someone with Sam's lack of experience with magic. And good or evil, both sorts took being lied to very badly. So—brazen it out. Act boldly, as if he saw this sort of thing every day and wasn't intimidated by it.
The Sidhe's face twisted with rage. “Damn you, mortal!” he cried. And this time he did gesture.
A sword appeared in his hand; a blue-black, shiny blade like no metal Sam had ever seen. A small part of him wondered what it was, as the rest of him shrieked, and backpedaled, coming up against the wall.
“Not so impudent now, are you?” the Sidhe crowed, kicking aside fallen books and moving in for the kill, sword glittering with a life of its own.
Sam could only stare, paralyzed with fear, as his hands scrabbled on the varnished wood behind him—

Tannim cursed the traffic as he waited at the end of Sam's driveway for it to clear, peering into the darkness. Something must have just let out for the night, for there was a steady stream of headlights passing in the eastbound lane—when he wanted westbound, of course—with no break in sight. And there was no reason for that many cars out here at this time of night. It looked for all the world like the scene at the end of Field of Dreams, where every car in the world seemed lined up on that back country road.
“So if he built the stupid ballfield out here, why didn't somebody tell me?” he griped aloud. “If I'd known the Heavenly All-stars were playing tonight—”
He never finished the sentence, for energies hit the shields he'd placed on Sam—which were also tied to his shields.
The protections about Sam locked into place, as the power that had been flung at the old man flared in a mock-conflagration of bael-fire.
Mock? Only in one sense. If Sam hadn't been shielded, he'd have gone up in real flames, although nothing around him would have even been scorched. Another Fortean case of so-called “spontaneous human combustion.”
But Sam was protected—the quick but effective shielding woven earlier caught and held. Tannim had not expected those protections to be needed so soon.
He knew what the attacker was, if not who. Only the Folk could produce bael-fire. And the hate-rage-lust pulse that came with the strike had never originated from one of Keighvin's Folk. That spelled “Unseleighe Court” in Tannim's book.
All this Tannim analyzed as he acted. He jammed the car into “reverse” and smoked the tires. The Mustang lurched as he yanked the wheel, spinning the car into a sideways drift to stop it barely within the confines of Sam's driveway. He bailed out, grabbing his weapon-of-choice from under the seat and didn't stop moving even as he reached the door; he managed to force his stiff legs into a running kick and kept going as the door crashed open, slamming against the wall behind it.
He pelted down the hall, his bespelled, bright red crowbar clenched in his right hand, and burst into Sam's study. Sam had plastered himself against the wall nearest the door; Tannim flung himself between his friend and the creature that menaced him, taking a defensive stand with the crowbar in both hands, without getting a really good look at the enemy first.
He never did get a really good look. He saw only a tall, fair-haired man, a glittering sword, a scowl of surprised rage—
Then—nothing.
Only the sharp tingle of energies along his skin that told him a Gate had been opened and closed.
The enemy had fled. Leaving, presumably, the way he had arrived, by way of Underhill.
It's gonna be the last time he can do that, Tannim thought grimly, framing another shield-spell within his mind, setting it with a few chanted syllables. He dropped it in place over the body of the house, allowing the physical form of the house itself—and, more particularly, the electrical wiring—to give it shape and substance.
It was a powerful spell, and one of Tannim's best. Now no one would he able to pop in here from Underhill without Sam's express permission, nor would they be able to work magics against the house itself.
But it was draining, and Tannim sagged back against the wall when he was done, letting the crowbar slip to the floor from nerveless fingers. It fell on the carpet with a dull thud, and Tannim kept himself from following it only by supreme effort.
He looked up, right into Sam's face.
The metallurgist was reaching for his shoulder to help hold him up, such a mixture of expressions on his face that none of them were readable.
“I . . . don't suppose you have any Gatorade . . . ?” Tannim asked, weakly.

“. . . and he set fire to me,” Sam continued, after another sip of good Irish. After all the wine tonight, he was only going to permit himself one small glass—but by Holy Mary, he needed that one. His nerves were so jangled that he wasn't going to be able to sleep without it, and he didn't trust sleeping-pills. “He did, I swear it. Only the flames didn't burn. Scared the bejeezus out of poor Thoreau, though.”
He reached down and fondled the spaniel's ears. Thoreau had emerged from the closet only after much coaxing, and remained half-hidden at Sam's feet, completely unashamed of his cowardice. Sam had praised the little dog to the sky for doing the right thing, though he doubted that Thoreau understood much of what he was saying; probably all Thoreau knew was that Daddy said he was a Good Boy, and Daddy was going to comfort him after the terrible fright he'd taken. Sam was quite glad that Thoreau had deserted him. One small spaniel was not going to make more than an indentation in a Sidhe's ankle—assuming the animal got that far before being blasted. He'd lost enough pets in his lifetime to old age and illness. He didn't want Thoreau turned to ash by a Sidhe with a temper.
“That was bael-fire, Sam,” Tannim replied, refilling his cup from the bottle of Gatorade on the kitchen table. He'd already polished off one bottle, and Sam wondered where he was putting it all. “If you hadn't been protected, you'd have burned up like a match, but nothing around you would have been touched. Charles Fort had a lot of those cases in his books of unexplained phenomena. He called it 'spontaneous human combustion,' and thought it might have something to do with astral travel.” The young man shook his head, much wearier than Sam had ever seen him. There were dark circles of exhaustion beneath his eyes, and his hair was limp and flattened-looking. “Nobody ever told Fort that going up in heatless flames is what happens when you get the Folk pissed off at you.”
“But I was protected,” Sam protested, sensing a flaw somewhere. “You said I had shields, and you said other mages would know that.”
Tannim nodded, and rubbed his eyes. “Exactly. He knew bael-fire wasn't going to touch you. He'd have to be blind not to know those shields were there. I don't think he intended you to be hurt directly, Sam.”
“What, then?” Sam asked in fatigue-dulled apprehension. What worse could the Sidhe have had in mind? “Or was that just intended as a warning? A bit extreme for a warning, seems to me.”
“Heh. The Sidhe are always extreme.” Tannim cocked his head sideways. “I think he was trying to scare you to death. I think he wanted it to look like you died naturally.”
Sam took another sip of Irish, thinking about that for a moment before replying. “He did then, did he?” His apprehension turned to a slow, burning anger. “Sure, and that's a coward's way, if ever I saw one.”
“Attacking a human with bael-fire is just as cowardly, Sam,” the young man pointed out. “Or going after a human with elf-shot. In either case, it's like using grenades against rabbits. The target hasn't got a chance. I think he must have assumed that since you're retired, you're frail, and he was going to use that.”
“Can I assume the blackguard was Unseleighe Court?” Sam asked, the anger within him burning with the same slow heat as a banked peat-fire.
Tannim nodded, and finished the last of his Gatorade. “That's their way, Sam. They never take on an opponent of equal strength if they can help it. I assume they came after you because you're hooked in with Fairgrove and Keighvin. I told you before that if you wanted to back out of this, you could.” He capped the bottle and slowly tightened the lid down. “You're still welcome to. Nobody is—”
“Back out?” Sam exclaimed. “Bite your tongue! If the blackguards want a fight, they've come to the right place, let me tell you! Sam Kelly never started a fight, but he always finished them.” He bared his teeth in a fierce smile. “I don't intend to let that change, no matter how old I might be.”
Tannim's tired face lit up in a smile, and he clapped Sam on the shoulder. “That's the spirit! I was hoping we could count on you!”
Sam let the grin soften to something more wry than fierce. “They should have known better than to try and frighten an Irishman. We're stubborn bastards, and we don't take to being driven off. But come to think of it—what the devil did you do to frighten him off? You just popped in the room, and he ran like a scalded cat.”
“It wasn't what I did,” Tannim replied, tapping the glass bottle on the crowbar that sat on the table between them. “It was what I had. This.”
“Cold Iron?” Sam hazarded.
“Twenty pounds' worth, enchanted to a fare-thee-well,” the young man told him, one hand still on the red-painted iron bar, a finger trailing along the gooseneck at one end, apparently remembering past uses. “One strong shot with this, and I don't care how powerful a mage he is, he'd have felt like he'd been hit by a semi. Eh heh . . . pureed by Peterbilt.”
Sam snorted, then gazed at the bar with speculation. “Can anyone use one of those things? I used to be a fair hand with singlestick not long ago.”
Tannim's eyes widened for a moment, then narrowed with speculation. “Huh. I never thought about that, but I don't know why not. I'll tell you what; I can't give you this one, but I can make one for you. And until I finish it, just remember that any crowbar is going to cause one of the Folk a lot of distress. If you'd had one in here tonight, it might even have disrupted the bael-fire spell.”
Sam made a mental note to visit an auto-parts store tomorrow. He'd have one under his car seat and in every room in the house. “I'll get the one out of my car before you leave, and I'll pick up a few more tomorrow. You're sure nobody is going to be able to get back in here tonight?”
“Positive.” Tannim took a deep breath, and held Sam's eyes with his own. “Absolutely positive. And as soon as I get back to Fairgrove and tie Keighvin's protections into yours, if the sorry sonuvabitch even tries, the Fairgrove Folk will know. If he brings in enough firepower to crack those shields, he'll touch off a war—”
“Not on my account!” Sam exclaimed with dismay. That was far more than he'd bargained on . . . and something he did not want to have on his conscience.
Tannim grimaced, and now Sam realized that the young man had been a lot more shaken by the attack than he wanted to admit. “No—no, don't worry, they won't even try. They aren't any readier for open warfare than you and I are. But—you really can quit, Sam, and no one will hold it against you. . . .”