"Simmons,.Wm.Mark.-.3.-.Habeas.Corpses.v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons William Mark)

Rhonda (Help, Help Me Rhonda) Eudaly for editorial service above and beyond . . .
Finally special thanks to:
Marla (The Dog Ate Your Homework?) Ainspan
And the Rest of the Folks at Baen for their patience on my long recovery on the medical and technological fronts.

This is a work of fiction.
As always, any resemblance to people living,
dead, undead, or some stage in-between,
is purely coincidental.
Chapter One
At first glance Deirdre looked human.
Of course, Deirdre always got more than just a glance—even back when she was human.
Once upon a time she had been a stunning beauty with pale skin, blue eyes, and auburn hair. That was before she died last year.
In death she was transformed by the twinned viruses the undead carry in their blood and saliva. As a vampire she had gone from "stunning" to "unearthly" on the beauty meter. Her auburn hair turned the color of arterial blood; her sapphire eyes replaced by haunted rubies and her skin a whiter shade of pale and as luminous as the moon.
The fangs, of course, went without saying.
But she had undergone another extreme makeover in drinking my mutated blood a few months ago. Now her sharp, pointy teeth were all but gone. More obviously, her skin was approaching the mocha and cream shade that came from a daily regimen of sunbathing—something you rarely see in a redhead and never in a vampire. Which was the point, I suppose, as Deirdre was no longer technically undead.
My unique hemoglobin didn't make her human, again, you understand. The crimson eyes were an obvious clue that she was no longer the girl next door. That and the fact that she could still bench-press a small truck. But while I couldn't give her back everything that she had lost in her original transformation, she seemed content: being "un-undead" suited her just fine.
If only Deirdre's situation suited Lupй, as well.
My significant other understood, of course, that I needed a security chief and bodyguard who was conversant with the unique nature of my enemies, could stop a bullet without flinching, and could—well—bench-press a small truck. She also understood the unique obligations involved as (technically speaking) I was the one who had brought Deirdre "over" and (literally speaking) I was the one who had brought her "back." Lupй knew something about blood-bonds and curses and debts-that-do-not-die even when we do the mortal coil shuffle.
Still, Deirdre was major eye candy. Worse, she had made it clear that, when it came to swapping body fluids, we needn't limit ourselves (as we had on the two previous occasions) to blood alone.
It required frequent reminders to all and sundry that my heart belonged to Lupй.
Deirdre, it seemed, had someone else's heart right now.
She was holding it in the palm of her hand.
And it was convulsing as if it were still alive.
"Where did you get that?" I asked, sensing light gathering at the dark edges of my vision.
She held the squirming cardiac muscle toward me, oily red fluids drooling between her fingers and sheeting down her arm. "Don't you recognize it?" She smiled demurely. "It's yours."
I looked down at the gaping dark hole in my chest . . .
And awoke in a tangle of sweat-soaked sheets.
* * *
The upside to having daymares on a regular basis is that you stop going through that whole disorientation phase and learn to wake up real quick. The downside was that they were lasting well past sunset and I still woke up feeling exhausted.
I groaned out of bed, hoping I hadn't murmured Deirdre's name while Lupй was in earshot. Even when she's in human form, Lupй doesn't have to be in the room to be within earshot.
In the bathroom I found a note taped to the medicine cabinet mirror.

Gone for groceries and DVDs.
Movie night tonight . . .
L~

I reached through the shower curtains and wrenched the cold water handle. Tonight was the Big Night: I had a lot to do and I couldn't waste time trying to put a Freudian spin on today's bad dream.
Even if there was a good chance I would get my heart ripped out before the sun came back up.
* * *
T.S. Eliot's "Little Gidding" begins with: "Midwinter spring is its own season / Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown, / Suspended in time, between pole and tropic . . ."
The dead of winter in Louisiana is something like that: short sleeves one day, a sweater the next. Tonight, the weather hadn't made up its mind. I buckled my shoulder holster over a sleeveless tee and shrugged into a flannel shirt but left it unbuttoned so I could reach the Glock-20 loaded with silver frag-ammo under my left armpit. Opening the screen door, I stepped down and walked barefoot through the January chrysalis of my new back yard. The brown, withered grass sighed beneath my feet, not quite dead, not quite alive.
Like me, in a sense.
Except that, come true spring—mid to late February—the lawn would burst forth with new life while I would be . . . well . . . what?
All flesh is grass but, where most folks end up succumbing to the Lawnmower of Life, some of us cheat the mulching process and come back as ghastly perennials. Considering the last eighteen months of my so-called half-life, there was probably a fertilizer analogy I could come up with . . . but I didn't want to go there.
I stepped on a mushroom and felt it dissolve between my toes. Forget the green stuff; a pale, nocturnal parasite was probably a better analogy for my condition. That's me: a real "fun guy."
Buh-dump-bum.
By now you'd think there would be a clear-cut diagnosis of my actual condition. But, no: I was left with two starting presumptions.
One, that I actually died in the automobile accident that killed my family and was "reborn" in the hospital morgue . . .
Or, two, that I was only presumed dead while "Virus A" from Bassarab's blood put me in a healing trance. Lacking the combinant factors of "Virus B" that resided in the old vampire's saliva, the infection started converting my body into something new—neither fully human nor technically undead.