"Brian Lumley - Necroscope 2 - Wamphyri!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

going to faint.


Krakovitch calmed down. He could hardly blame him. 'It's all right,' he said. 'It's all right. Now
listen: we'll burn the head up here. We'll do that first, right now. Go quickly, fetch Avgas.'


Staggering a little, Gulharov went.


He was back in record time, carrying a jerrycan. They slid the shelving over the drawer open a
crack, poured Avgas. There was no movement from inside the drawer. 'Enough!' said Krakovitch.
'Any more and there'll be one hell of an explosion. Now then, help me drag the cabinet through into
the other room.' In a moment they were back, and Krakovitch tipped out the drawers of Borowitz's
desk. He found what he was looking for: a small ball of string. He snapped off a ten foot length,
soaked it in Avgas, carefully dangled one end through the crack into the drawer. Then he laid the
string out on the floor in a straight line towards the door and took out Gulharov's matches. They
shielded their eyes as he lit the fuse.


Blue fire raced across the floor, leaped into the drawer. There was a dull thump and shelving,
ledgers and all hit the ceiling, then fell back to the floor. The metal drawer was an inferno, in which
the flat snake-head danced and skittered - but not for long. As the drawer began to buckle under
the heat and the carpet about it blackened and burst into flames, so the thing in the drawer puffed
up, and split open and quickly became liquescent. And then it, too, burned. But Krakovitch and
Gulharov waited a full minute more before they put out the fire.


Krakovitch gave a curt nod. 'Well, at least we know the thing burns!' he said. 'It was probably
dead anyway, but by my books when a thing's dead it lies still!'


They bumped the cabinet downstairs, two flights to the ground floor, then out through the
battle-torn building into the grounds. Krakovitch stood guard on it while Gulharov went back for the
Avgas. When he returned, Krakovitch said, 'This will be the tricky bit. First we pour some of this
stuff around the cabinet. That way, when we open it, if what's inside is - active - we just jump back
out of range and toss a match. Until it's quiet. And so on.'


Gulharov seemed uncertain, but he was far more alert now.


They poured Avgas on to and around the cabinet, and then Gulharov got well back out of it.
Krakovitch slid back the bolt, threw the door clangingly open. Inside, Dragosani stared into the sky.
His chest stirred a little, but that was all. As Krakovitch began to pour Avgas carefully into the
cabinet near Dragosani's feet, Gulharov came forward. 'Don't use too much,' it was the Sergeant's
turn to caution. 'Or it will go off like a bomb!' When the fuel swirled almost an inch deep around
Dragosani's prone form, evaporating furiously, the dead man's chest gave another sudden lurch.
Krakovitch stopped pouring, stared, backed off a little. Outside the circle of danger, Gulharov
stood with a match ready to strike. A slickly shining, grey-green tendril sprouted upwards from