Absolute Midnight. Clive Barker

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СКАЧАТЬ Jollo. No more talk of death.”

      “Easy to say when it’s not your life that’s . . . fading away.” His face became a tragic mask. “I want my mama.”

      “She’ll come as soon as she can,” Covenantis said, only this time much more quietly, his voice filled with sorrow as though he knew, however fast she came it would never be fast enough.

      “Don’t look up!” Mrs. Munn yelled over another round of shattering air. “Just be ready!”

      “What do you mean?”

      “You wanted the snake. Get ready to use it!”

      Candy felt stupid and angry and confused all at once. She’d never imagined letting Boa go would escalate into such chaos: the Princess nearly killing Mrs. Munn, her firstborn, and Candy, and now breaking through Mrs. Munn’s defenses, still no doubt wearing the Sepulcaphs. The mere thought of them was enough to stir up nausea, so Candy concentrated on the snake.

      Its body was too thick for her to get her hand around, but it didn’t seem to want to escape her grip. Quite the reverse. It slid the cool, dry length of its tail twice around one of her arms and then, raising up its large head so that it could look down imperiously at Candy it said, “I think myself a very fine snake. Do you not agree?”

      Its speech, which was as elegant and smooth as its motion, came as no great surprise to Candy. It had been the greatest disappointment of growing up—far more wounding than finding out that there was neither an Oz nor a Santa Claus—to discover that though animals talked often and wisely in the stories she loved, few of them did so in life. It made perfect sense then that a creature she had fashioned in a moment of blind instinct would possess the power of speech.

      “Are you the one who called me into being?” the serpent inquired.

      “Yes, I’m the one.”

      “Lovely work, if one may be so bold,” the snake said, admiring his gleaming coils. “I would have done nothing different. Not a scale. One finds oneself . . . perfect.” He looked a little embarrassed. “Oh dear, I think I’m in love,” he said, kissing his own coils.

      “Aren’t you poisonous?” Candy said.

      “Indeed. I can taste the bitterness of my own poison. One is of course immune to one’s own toxins, but if a single drop fell on your tongue—”

      “Dead?”

      “Guaranteed.”

      “Quick?”

      “Of course not! What’s a poison worth if it’s quick?”

      “Painless?”

      “No! What’s a—”

      “Poison worth if it’s painless?”

      “Precisely. My bite may be quite swift, but the consequence? I assure you, it’s the very worst. It feels like a fire is cooking your brains and your muscles are rotting on your bones.”

      “Lordy Lou.”

      Hearing the animal speak so lovingly of the agonies it could cause made Candy think of Christopher Carrion. Much like the snake’s poison, Carrion’s soup of nightmares had been lethal to others. But to Carrion, they’d been companions, trusted and loved. The similarity was too strong to be a coincidence. Candy had laced her invented snake with a little of Carrion’s essence.

      The chat with the snake, along with Candy’s recollection of Carrion, had taken but a few seconds, during which time the sound of Boa battering on the last plate of air had grown steadily louder.

      “Does your snake know what to do when Boa gets in?” Mrs. Munn yelled over the noise. “Because she’s a vehement one. She’s going to be through very soon, and you’d better be ready.”

      “Oh, I think my snake knows his business,” Candy yelled back.

      “Your snake, am I?”

      “As long as you don’t object,” she said, doing her best to reproduce the snake’s imitation of high birth.

      “Why would one mind?” the snake replied. “In truth, lady, one is both honored and moved.”

      It raised its finely formed snout a little way, in order to deepen the bow that followed. Candy did her best to conceal her impatience (what part of her, conceiving of a snake, had created one with such humorless formality?) but it was difficult. The only thing that kept her from losing her composure was the serpent’s genuine commitment to her.

      “You’ve won me over entirely,” it said to her. “I would kill the world for you, I swear I would.”

      “Candy . . .” Mrs. Munn said. “Be quick or it’s ended.”

      “I hear you,” Candy replied. “We’re ready.”

      “Is it to be the world then?” the snake said.

      “Thanks for the offer, but no, I just need you to stop one person.”

      “And who’s that? The fat woman?”

      “I heard that, snake!” Mrs. Munn yelled.

      “No, snake,” Candy said. “Absolutely not. That’s our friend.”

      “It’s not the world and it’s not the fat one. So who?”

      “The one on the other side of the air,” Candy said.

      “Why her?”

      “Because she’s a bad piece of work,” Candy said. “Trust me. Her name’s Boa. Princess Boa.”

      “Oh, now wait,” the serpent said. “This one’s royalty? No. No no. One has one’s limits. She’s one of my own!”

      “Look at her! She’s no snake.”

      “I don’t care to.”

      “You were ready to kill the world for me just a minute ago!”

      “The world, yes. Her? No.”

      Mrs. Munn had not heard a single word of this. She’d been too busy using her strengths—mental, physical and magical—to keep the final plate of air, which was already badly cracked, from shattering completely.

      It was a struggle she was going to lose very soon, Candy feared. Boa’s power was now so formidable that despite all the incantatrix’s years of wieldings, she had run out of energies to oppose her. In desperation she had reached into her very soul for strength. But even that had not been sufficient. Its fuel had been almost entirely burned through in seconds. When it was gone, her life would be over.

      “I’m sorry, Candy . . .” The thundering of Boa’s forces beating against the final plate of air almost drowned her out. She drew a deep breath and tried again one last time. “I can’t hold her back. I’ve used everything I have. There’s no life left in me.”

      “No! СКАЧАТЬ