"Lisa Tuttle - Sangre" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tuttle Lisa)

"Something to drink. A bottle of wine. I'm so thirsty."
"I don't think wine… well, I'll get you something."
And finally Debbie was gone. Glenda relaxed her stranglehold on a reality that had
become more strange and tenuous with every passing second. She fell.
She was on the street called Death, one of the narrow, cobbled streets bound on
each side by houses painted a blinding white. The name of the street was painted in
blue on a tile set into one of the houses: Muerte.
 The girl had been crying. She was dirty and her face was sticky with tears and
dirt. It was siesta and she was alone on the quiet street but she knew that she would
not be alone for long. And they must not find her. She knew that she must leave the
city for safety, but the thought of wandering alone through the countryside frightened
her as much as did the thought of remaining, and so she was at an impasse,
incapable of action.
If they found her, they would take their vengeance on her although she had done
nothing, was innocently involved. She thought of the past month, of the widespread
sickness throughout the town, of the deaths — bodies found in the street, pale and
dead with the unmistakable marks upon their necks — and of the fear, the growing
terror.
Her mother had taken to staying out all night, returning pale and exhausted at
dawn to fall into a heavy sleep. But as she slept she smiled, and the girl, standing by
the pillow and smoothing her mother's tangled hair, found the words of the
townspeople creeping, unwanted, into her mind. Was it true, what they said, that she
consorted with the devil? That her mother with her lover swooped through the night
in the form of bats, seeking out unwary night travellers, to waylay them and drink
their blood? She began to be frightened of her mother, while still loving her, and
watched through half-closed eyes as she crept out every night. And finally one night
had ended without bringing her mother home and the girl had been alone ever since.
She wandered, not knowing where to go, hungry and thirsty but too frightened to
knock on a door and ask for wine and shelter. It grew later, and as it grew dark
doors began to close and people went hurriedly in twos and threes. Once the streets
had been as filled with lanterns as a summer meadow is filled with fireflies, but now
there was a monster abroad.
The moon came up and gave her light and finally she came to a small plaza with a
fountain in the centre. But the fountain was dead and dry and she leaned against it,
crying with frustration until she was too tired to cry any more.
Something made her look up, some feeling of danger. The moon was high. A man
stood in one of the four entrances to the plaza, a man draped in the folds of an
all-encompassing cloak. The toes of his boots gleamed as did his eyes, two points
of light beneath his slouch hat.
She kept still, hoping he had not noticed her in the shadows.
"Daughter," he said, in a voice like dry leaves in the wind.
An involuntary twitch.
"My darling daughter." He took a step forward.
She was running, never looking back, sobbing deep in her throat and running
down one street and then another, perilously afraid that she would run a circle and
re-enter the plaza to find him there… She ran. Then down a street she should not
have taken, a cul-de-sac. She turned to escape and found him there, in her way.
She was rigid. The dry leaves rustled in his throat as he came towards her. He
raised his arms and his cloak as if they were joined, as if he were draped in huge
wings which he would fold around the two of them. His lips parted; she could hear