Kill the Dead. Richard Kadrey. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Richard Kadrey
Издательство: HarperCollins
Серия:
Жанр произведения: Зарубежное фэнтези
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780007446018
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      Copyright

      HarperVoyager

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published by Voyager US 2010

      Published by HarperVoyager 2012

      Copyright © Richard Kadrey 2010

      Richard Kadrey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      Songs quoted: “Ballad of Thunder Road” by Don Raye and Robert Mitchum © 1958 Universal MCA Music, ASCAP. All rights reserved.

      “I’m Waiting for the Man” by Lou Reed © 1967 Oakfield Avenue Music, Ltd. (BMI). Rights for Oakfield Avenue Music, Ltd. (BMI) administered by Spirit One Music (BMI). All rights reserved.

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9780007446001

      Ebook Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9780007446018

      Version: 2017-09-08

       For G and K

       Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds

       Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things

       Abominable, unutterable, and worse …

      – PARADISE LOST, Book 2

       I don’t want to achieve immortality through my

       work. I want to achieve it through not dying.

      – WOODY ALLEN

      Table of Contents

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Epigraph

       Imagine shoving

       A Courier delivers

       I’m sitting in bed

       I get up

       Keep Reading

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       Also by Richard Kadrey

       About the Publisher

      IMAGINE SHOVING A cattle prod up a rhino’s ass, shouting “April fool!”, and hoping the rhino thinks it’s funny. That’s about how much fun it is hunting a vampire.

      Personally, I don’t have anything against shroud eaters. They’re just another kind of addict in a city of addicts. Since most of them started out as civilians, the percentage of decent vampires to complete bastards is about the same as regular people. Right now, though, I’m hunting one that’s trying for a Nobel Prize in getting completely up my ass. It isn’t fun work, but it pays the bills.

      The vampire’s name is Eleanor Vance. In the Xeroxed passport photo Marshal Wells gave me, she looks like she’s about seventeen. Probably because she is. A pretty blond cheerleader type with big eyes and the kind of smile that got Troy burned to the ground. Bad news for me. Young vampires are all assholes. It’s part of their job description.

      I love older vampires. A hundred and fifty, two hundred years old, they’re beautiful. The smart ones mostly stick to the El Hombre Invisible tricks that urban monsters have worked out over centuries. They only feed when they have to. When they’re not hunting, they’re boring, at least to outsiders. They come off like corporate middle management or the guy who runs the corner bodega. What I like best about old bloodsuckers is that when you’ve got one cornered and it knows it’s coffin fodder, they’re like noble cancer patients in TV movies. All they want is to die quietly and with a little dignity. Young vampires, not so much.

      The young ones have all grown up watching Slayer videos, Scarface, Halloween, and about a million hours of Japanese anime. They all think they’re Tony Montana with a lightsaber in one hand and a chain saw in the other. Eleanor, tonight’s undead dream date, is a good example. She’s got a homemade flamethrower. I know because when she blasted me back at the parking garage, she fried one of my eyebrows and the left sleeve of my new leather jacket. Ten to one she found the plans on the Web. Why can’t vampires just download porn like normal jailbait?

      It’s Sunday, about a quarter to six in the evening. We’re downtown. I follow her along South Hill Street toward Pershing Square. I’m about half a block behind her. Eleanor is wearing long sleeves and carrying an umbrella to keep the sun off. She strolls along happy, like she owns the air and everyone has to pay her royalties whenever they breathe. Only she’s not really relaxed. I can’t read a juicer’s heartbeat or breathing changes because they don’t have them. And she’s too far away to see if her eyes are dilated, but she keeps moving her head. Microscopic twitches left and right. She’s trying to look around without looking around. Hoping to catch my shadow or reflection. Eleanor knows she didn’t kill me back at the garage. Eleanor’s a smart girl. I hate smart dead girls.

      At the corner of Third Street, Eleanor shoulder-butts an old lady and what’s probably her grandkid into the street,