"Van Lustbader, Eric - Linnear 03 - The White Ninja" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

He was left with this dream, like scoria upon the blackened side of a long
exhausted volcano. Senjin watch­ing while Haha-san is repeatedly raped. Senjin
feeling a kind of despicable satisfaction that borders on rapture, and which,
without any physical means, rapidly brings him to a powerful climax.
For a long time, Senjin watched the milky beads of his semen slide down the
wall. Perhaps he dreamed. Then he turned onto his back, and got up. In a moment,
he was dressed, moving as silently as a wraith. He did not bother to lock the
door behind him.
Late afternoon. In the street, the sky was the colour of zinc. It was as dense
as metal, as soft as putty. Industrial ash turned the air to syrup. White filter
masks were much in evidence, not only among the cyclists whining by, but also
over the mouths of pedestrians fearful of lung damage.
Daylight had torn the neon night down, but what had it replaced it with? A
colourless murk, aqueous and acrid, the bottom of a sunless sea.
He had many hours to kill, but that was all right. It was how he had planned it,
emerging from an anonymous lair, travelling solely by foot, also anonymously,
creating a path through the maze of the city only he could know or follow.
Despite his surroundings, he felt galvanized, ten feet tall, monstrously
powerful. He recognized the signs, as familiar and comfortable as a well-worn
shirt, and he smiled inwardly. He could feel the slender bits of metal lying
along his bare flesh beneath his clothes. Warmed by


his blood-heat, they seemed to pulse with a life of their own, as if his
burgeoning strength had infused them with a kind of sentience. He felt like a
god, a heroic avenging sword sweeping through Tokyo, about to excise a disease
that was rotting it from within.
Down narrow streets he went, a man of silence, a singular icon of brutality and
death. He crossed puddles of stagnant water from which arose like a miasma the
stench of fish innards. Like oil slicks, they threw back the rainbow colours of
the fluorescent dusk.
It was evening by the time he made his way towards the doorway of The Silk Road.
It was festooned with multi-coloured neon, garish plastic flowers and cheap
glitter tacked against faded crepe paper. Seen from a distance, the entire
entrance was made up to resemble the inner petals of an enormous orchid or, if
one's mind ran to such images, a woman's sexual organ.
Senjin passed through the glass doors into a space filled with reflected light.
It was like being inside a prism. Revolving disco lights refracted blindingly
off walls and ceiling, both covered in mirrored panels. The result was as
momentarily disorienting as had been Senjin's coffin-like hotel room. He felt at
home here.
American rock music was playing at such a volume that the speaker diaphragms
were taxed to their limit. The result was a thick, heavy sound, furry with bass
and electronic distortion.
Senjin walked across the black rubber floor, identical to that used in
children's playgrounds. He passed a bar consisting of columns of coloured water
bubbling through plastic tubes. The top was Plexiglas.
He caught the eye of the manager, who turned away from him, hurrying to the
sanctuary of his office deep in the back of the building. Senjin found an empty
table stageside and sat down. He waved away the waitress as she began to weave