"Brian Lumley - Necroscope 14 - Necroscope and Other Weird Heroes!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

With hope renewed he plunged on across the last deserted street lying
parallel to the river, found the high stone wall he knew would be there,
followed it north for fifty yards to where spiked iron palings guarded its
topmost tier against unwary climbers. For immediately beyond that wall
at this spot the river flowed sluggish and deep and the wall was sheer, so
that a man might easily drown if he should slip and fall. But the fugitive
did not intend to fall; he was still as agile as the boy he'd once been, except
that now he also had a grown man's strength.
Without pause he jumped, easily caught the top of the wall, at once
transferred his grip to the ironwork. He drew himself up, in a moment
straddled the treacherous spikes, swung over and slid down the palings on
the other side. And now—now, dear God—only keep the pursuer at bay;
only let him stay back there in the mist, out of sight, and not come surging
forward with his rotten eyes aglow and his crumbling nose sniffing like
that of some great dead nightmare hound!
And now too let memory stay sharp and serve the fugitive well, let it
not fail him for a single moment, and let everything continue to be as it
had been. For if anything had changed beyond that ancient, slimy wall...
. . . But it had not!
For here, remembered of old, was his marker—the base of a lone paling,
bent to one side, like a single idle soldier in a perfect rank—where if he
swung his feet a little to the left, in empty space above the darkly gurgling
river—
—His left foot made contact with a stone sill, at which he couldn't
suppress the smallest cry of relief. Then, clinging to the railings with one
hand, he tremblingly reached down the other to find and grip an arch of
 HARRY KEOGH: NECROSCOPE AND OTHER WEIRD HEROES!

stone; and releasing his grip on the railings entirely, he drew himself down
and into the hidden embrasure in the river's wall. For this was the entrance
to his sanctuary.
But no time to pause and thank whichever lucky stars still shone on
him; no, for back there in the roiling mist the pursuer was following still,
unerringly tracking him, he was sure. Or tracking the Elixir?
Today, for the first time, that idea had dawned on him. It had come as
he walked the chill December streets, when patting his overcoat's inside
pocket, for a moment he had thought the vial lost. Oh, and how he'd
panicked then! But in a shop doorway where his hands trembled violently,
finally he'd found the tiny glass bottle where it had fallen through a hole
into the lining of his coat, and then in the gray light of wintry, war-
depleted London streets, he had gazed at it—and at its contents.
The Elixir—which might as well be water! A few drops of crystal-clear
water, yes, that was how it appeared. But if you held it up to the light in
a certain way . . .
The fugitive started, held his breath, stilled his thoughts and brought
his fleeting mind back to the present, the Now. Was that a sound from
the street above? The faintest echo of a footfall on the cobbles three or
four feet overhead?
He crouched there in the dark embrasure, waited, listened with terror-
sensitized ears—heard only the pounding of his own heart, his own blood