"Mercedes Lackey - Diana Tregarde - Killer Byte" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

someone a tenth his age. Why? Di had no idea—except that to survive as long as he
had, there was no choice but to be flexible enough to adapt to anything. And since
her energy usually gave out about 3 A.M., the boards and nets gave him people to
talk to, even at that late hour, people who he need never fear would learn his true
nature.
Not that Andre's “addiction” was without its benefits to her. He always checked the
“romance” topics on the various boards for her, and now and again there was
something flattering there about one of her books. And her literary agent Murray had
gotten modern enough to use electronic mail, which meant that even though her
schedule didn't overlap much with his, now he could always “reach” her. Andre's
hobby paid for itself in that alone.
She left him tapping away in the spare room she had converted to her office, and
went back to her laptop in the living room. Her favorite corduroy chair was more
comfortable than sitting at the desk, anyway; the light was better here, and the stereo
in the living room infinitely superior to the old one in the office. She lost herself in
the intricacies of plot for some time, and actually let out a yelp of surprise when
Andre tapped her shoulder.
"What?” she barked at him, irrationally annoyed because he'd frightened her. He
ignored the tone, his dark eyes shadowed with a vague worry.
"I'd like you to come look at something, if you would, cherie,” he said instead of
making an angry retort. “I—it might be important/but I do not trust my own
judgment on it."
With a sigh, she saved the chapter she had been working on, turned off the machine,
and followed him back into the office.
"I have a file I made of this topic from one of the bulletin boards,” he said, “It is a
local board, but it can be accessed from the Internet. Those posting to it are mostly
local.” He shrugged, with a hint of embarrassment. She wondered why, as she took
the chair.
"So what's the topic?” she asked as she took over the chair.
He looked even more embarrassed. “Vampires,” he replied shortly, then reached
over her shoulder and called up the file.
She raised an eyebrow. “What, looking for someone to double-date with?” Then, as
she scrolled through the messages posted to the board, she understood his
embarrassment. For the most part, the writers seemed to be young, many female,
and all so enraptured with what they supposed to be the vampiric lifestyle that she
could only think of them as “vampire groupies".
After one passionate paean that began with the vehement assertion that Anne Rice
was a goddess and ended with the longing for a boy who was presumably ignoring
the writer to come to his senses and whisk her away to New Orleans where they
would find someone to bite them and lead an idyllic nocturnal existence, she
chuckled. “Oh heavens. They're missing Anne Rice's points completely. I hope this
wasn't what you were worried about,” she told Andre as he leaned over her shoulder
to keep track of where she was in the file. “Next year she'll be into neo-hippies and
reading Tom Wolfe and Ken Kesey, wishing someone would drive up to her in a
paisley bus and whisk her away to baffle and befuddle Middle America with the
Merry Pranksters."
But Andre shook his head. “Not that,” he replied. “I simply wanted you to get the
flavor of the postings. There are many young ladies like this one, some few people
attempting a kind of episodic fiction which everyone knows is fiction, and many
recommending books or discussing vampirism, hotly defending one author's