"Barry Longyear - Dark Corners" - читать интересную книгу автора (Longyear Barry)

and watched in horror as the hair on the backs of his arms lengthened.

“What? Oh, god! No! It couldn’t—”

He shook his head as he thought at panic speed. That woman, Allyson, had bitten him, but she hadn’t
broken the skin. How—

He looked down at the hand that Allyson had bitten, hair already covering the spot, skin a darkening
purple in the dim alley light, the nails already beginning their metamorphosis to claws. She hadn’t broken
the skin, but he had sucked on his hand immediately afterward.

“The saliva! Omigod! The saliva!”

The sleeve seams split one after another and Lyle felt himself filled with savage power, physical strength
beyond anything he could have ever imagined, cravings and lusts that seemed to blot out portions of his
awareness. His chest expanded as his thighs and upper arms thickened. He lifted his clawed hands and
felt the shape of a muzzle erupting from his face.

“Hey, who’s that? Look here, Pauly.”

A young man with a blue printed bandanna covering his curly black hair stood in the alley entrance, his
face hidden by shadows cast by the street lights. Lyle saw him and felt an eerie heat fill his chest as his
heart pumped energy to his growing musculature.

“What you got here?” said the one called Pauly. He carried a wicked looking stiletto in his hand.

As the pair advanced on him, Lyle could see his immediate future very clearly. It would involve a lot of
late nights, demands, and sacrifices that would probably savage his grade point average, but there was
the excitement, the high, the incredible thrill waiting for him. Now he knew why Ralph had been drooling
as Allyson related her war stories at the meeting. It was, Lyle knew, the first step on a walk through hell.
It was a journey, however, that would not be denied.
Deep within his soul there remained a tiny human spark that spoke to him with fear. Perhaps there would
come a time when the pain of the night hunt would exceed the sick thrill and excitement. Possibly then,
when enough was enough, he would want help from those people at Lycanthropics Anonymous. He
nodded his shaggy head as he felt the drool fall on the backs of his bristly paws. As soon as he was
finished with Pauly and his friend, he’d have to go to Dr. Raeder’s home and get his copy of the meeting
list. He’d have to go to Dr. Raeder’s house in any event. He could already tell that the pair facing him in
the alley would never be enough.




Old Soldiers Never Die
As the tour bus rounded the circle and approached the Virginia end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge,
Mark glanced to his left. Johnny was sitting next to the window, looking through the winter grime toward
Roosevelt Island, seeing neither the island nor the fresh flakes of snow falling into the pale gray waters of
the Potomac. Johnny Nolan’s face was lined and hard set above a full beard salted with gray. The
maroon stocking cap on his head was jammed forward, almost covering his eyebrows. The narrowed
eyes beneath those brows were dark circled and a long way from the snow and slush of Washington,
DC. He was back in the jungle, decades in the past, trying hard to forget the things he refused to