"Christopher Pike - The Last Vampire 01 - The Last Vampire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pike Christopher)

well, warm and dripping, when I am thirsty. And I am often thirsty.

My name, at present, is Alisa Perne--just two words, something to last for a couple of decades. I am
no more attached to them than to the sound of the wind. My hair is blond and silklike, my eyes like
sapphires that have stared long at a volcanic fissure. My stature is slight by modern standards, five two in
sandals, but my arms and legs are muscled, although not unattractively so. Before I speak I appear to be
only eighteen years of age, but something in my voice--the coolness of my expressions, the echo of
endless experience--makes people think I am much older. But even I seldom think about when I was
born, long before the pyramids were erected beneath the pale moon. I was there, in that desert in those
days, even though I am not originally from that part of the world.

Do I need blood to survive? Am I immortal? After all this time, I still don't know. I drink blood because
I crave it. But I can eat normal food as well, and digest it. I need food as much as any other man or
woman. I am a living, breathing creature. My heart beats--I can hear it now, like thunder in my ears. My
hearing is very sensitive, as is my sight. I can hear a dry leaf break off a branch a mile away, and I can
clearly see the craters on the moon without a telescope. Both senses have grown more acute as I get
older.

My immune system is impregnable, my regenera-tive system miraculous, if you believe in miracles--
which I don't. I can be stabbed in the arm with a knife and heal within minutes without scarring. But if I
were to be stabbed in the heart, say with the currently fashionable wooden stake, then maybe I would
die, It is difficult for even a vampire's flesh to heal around art implanted blade. But it is not something I
have experimented with.

But who would stab me? Who would get the chance? I have the strength of five men, the reflexes of the
mother of all cats. There is not a system of physical attack and defense of which I am not a master. A
dozen black belts could corner me in a dark alley, and I could make a dress fit for a vampire out of the
sashes that hold their fighting jackets closed. And I do love to fight, it is true, almost as much as I love to
kill. Yet I kill less and less as the years go by because the need is not there, and the ramifications of
murder in modern society are complex and a waste of my precious but endless time. Some loves have to
be given up, others have to be forgotten. Strange as it may sound, if you think of me as a monster, but I
can love most passionately. I do not think of myself as evil.

Why am I talking about all this? Who am I talking to? I send out these words, these thoughts, simply
because it is time. Time for what, I do not know, and; it does not matter because it is what I want and
that is always reason enough for me. My wants--how few they are, and yet how deep they burn. I will
not tell you, at present, who I am talking to.

The moment is pregnant with mystery, even for me. I stand outside the door of Detective Michael Riley's
office. The hour is late; he is in his private office in the

back, the light down low--I know this without see-ing. The good Mr. Riley called me three hours ago to
tell me I had to come to his office to have a little talk about some things I might find of interest. There was
a note of threat in his voice, and more. I can sense emotions, although I cannot read minds. I am curious
as I stand in this cramped and stale hallway. I am also annoyed, and that doesn't bode well for Mr. Riley.
I knock lightly on the door to his outer office and open it before he can respond.

"Hello," I say. I do not sound dangerous--I am, after all, supposed to be a teenager. I stand beside the
secretary's unhappy desk, imagining that her last few paychecks have been promised to her as
"practically in the mail." Mr. Riley is at his desk, inside his office, and stands as he notices me. He has on