"Nyx Smith - Fade to Black" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Nyx)

hopping up onto two wheels.
That was Peerless ADH antishock stabilizers for you. Nice. Very nice.
"Shank."
What was that? Somebody saying his name? He didn't know who or why and he didn't really care,
anyway. He ignored it. "Shank!"
"Dammit, Shank, wake up!" Somebody grabbed his shoulder and started shaking it hard. He couldn't
just ignore it. He guessed who was probably doing the shaking and realized that ignoring her would be
useless. Evonne was usually okay, chill enough to live with. But when she got something stuck up her butt,
bad enough to risk waking him up, she could get him so mad that beating her brains out, or worse, almost
seemed like a good idea.
Luckily for her, he had nothing to prove. Evonne needed what little brains she had.
The cursing got louder. Hands gripped his arms and began pulling him up, making him sit up. Water
splashed into his face, maybe half a liter. It was kind of refreshing, really. He rubbed his eyes, stretched his
arms and yawned, and looked around.
The amber-tinted lamp by the bedside cast a glow through the room that showed Shank all he needed
to see. He was in his bedroom, which was simply furnished, sheathed in synthfurs and deeply carpeted.
Evonne and her sister Kefee stood beside the bed. Evonne looked angry, Kefee upset. None of that was so
unusual that Shank paid more than passing notice.
What he really noticed, and not for the first time, was what a hot-looking biff Evonne was-built to last,
right down to her girlish set of fangs. A real turn-on, especially when she got sleazy, and even more so
when she got mad. Her sister Kefee looked kind of frail, more like a human biff, not very enticing. "They're
back!" Evonne growled. Shank ran a hand back over his hair, scratched behind his right ear. "Who?"
"The bangers?' Evonne growled, more forcefully than before, staring at him like he should just
automatically know what she was talking about. "They're stuffing Chak! Right in the alley!"
Stuffing Chak ...?
Evonne thrust a hand up and out to her left, toward the alley. Kefee just looked scared and said,
"Shank, please!"
Right.
Shank shook himself awake. Everybody had obviously decided that the problem, Chak getting stuffed,
beaten, or whatever, was something Shank ought to handle. It was probably Evonne's idea. No point in
arguing. She was probably right. Shank had kind of inherited Kefee and her kids when Kefee's man got
wasted in a Bronx firefight. Chak, her oldest kid, was still pretty young, only nine or ten, and, ork or not, that
didn't make him much of a fighter. Not even against ordinary humans. Maybe one-on-one, but not against a
whole gang. A gang would call for some serious head-banging.
Shank heaved himself to his feet and headed for the door. The women stepped quickly out of his
way-and good thing, too. It looked like he had a fight coming on. This soon after being woken up, he had no
trouble getting into the mood.
The passageway outside was jammed, mostly with kids and more women. This week most of. the
adult males from Shank's hall, the ones any good in a fight, were in the Roselle Park jail, off Raritan Road.
Something to do with stuffing a bunch of mafiosi. The maf shoulda learned by now to keep their butts the
hell outta Port Sector.
"Coming through," Shank grumbled.
People got outta his way, and those who didn't got bumped. They were all jamming up toward the end
of the hall to peer around the corner and up the stairs toward the alley. A helluva lot of good that did. Shank
waded through the final meter of bodies, then turned the corner and plodded up the stairs two at a time. The
steel trap door at alley-level stood open. Shank trod right on through.
The group was right there, barely three meters away, clearly visible against the dusky gray of a
moonless night. Chak looked to be the one on the ground taking all the punches and kicks. None of the
gangers seemed to notice as Shank stepped up behind them. That made things pretty fragging easy. He
reached out for the nearest two and banged their heads together. They dropped bonelessly to the ground.