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it. HaHaa, A wise decision on their part.
He couldn't help noticing as he began to walk that physical movement was a lot
easier for him now than it had been a few days ago, before Carados picked him
up. Involuntary defensive powers, long dormant, had been mobilized. It would
seem that Carados had actually done him a favor. He paused before a darkened
plate glass window, to look at himself in the half-mirror inside its steel
grill. Yes, his figure was straighter than it had been for some time--for a
long time. His pants were zipped. Danger and abuse had served as tonics. It
puzzled him that he had been so terrified a few days ago, cowering away from
the hunters of helpless old men. He didn't have to take that kind of crap. Not
from the likes of them, at least.
No good answer suggested itself. Next question, obviously: Where did he go
from here? But he didn't want to try to think that through just now.
Hawk had walked on until he'd covered half a mile, then ducked into the mouth
of this alley, as if to take a leak. Actually he just wanted to be able to
close his eyes and concentrate for a minute or so. If he couldn't answer
questions at least maybe he could do something about his shirt. He figured
that the shirt was the clothing item most conspicuously identifiable as jail
issue; the shoes were plain, the pants could be any new workpants of medium
blue.
He spent a couple of minutes with eyes closed, leaning against the dirty brick
wall, mumbling. After a couple of tries (this kind of thing had never been his
specialty) Hawk's plain blue jail shirt was a muddy brown, crisscrossed by an
ugly pattern of thin pink stripes. Not quite what he'd been aiming for. But,
come to think of it, just the kind of inelegance that would fit in perfectly
on Skid Row.
Hawk left the alley and moved again along the midnight street, borne quickly
by his new, healthy walk.
The shirt was all right. Actually he felt a little proud of it; and anyway it
felt good just to have done something again. Maybe later, if he felt like it,
he could work on the colors a little more. Meanwhile&
Meanwhile what was he going to do now? He had been putting off making a
conscious decision, but the
Street, Skid Row, was drawing near. It appeared that by default he was going
back to his old haunts, but what was he going to do when he got there?
& anyway if he made the shirt look too good, somebody would try to roll him,
no, mug him was the proper word, now that he was standing up on his two feet
again. By bloody hell, he wished they'd try. He wished he had that vampire,
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the stalking butcher, in front of him for just five seconds now. He wished he
had that smirking, contemptuous kidnapper, Carados.
file:///G|/rah/Fred%20Saberhagen/Fred%20Sab...hagen%20-%20Dracula%2005%20-%20D
ominion.htm (122 of 186) [2/5/2004 12:21:16 AM]
Saberhagen, Fred - [Dracula 05] Dominion
Now if he were to go and collect Carados somehow, and deliver him to the cops,
that would get the cops off his own tail. But Hawk didn't really want to go
after Carados, because&
Because if he did&
Because, because. He just got a train of thought going, starting to make
sense, and then it stalled. Every time. There had to be, there had to be, a
damned good reason.
He had the feeling that his life was being steered, controlled, by some will
not his own, to some hostile purpose. It was not a good feeling to have.
At one o'clock in the morning, with his mental state increasingly perturbed,
the man who now called himself Hawk (and how long would that name be usable?)
was leaning against a streetlight not two blocks from where Carados had picked
him up. He craved wine, there was no doubt of that. But somehow while he was
off Skid Row the craving, like so much else, had altered. The animal urge to
drunken oblivion had become entangled with older and nobler things--wine as
symbol of elegance, wine as rare privilege, wine as a way to spiritual (no pun
intended here) enjoyment.
And even as Hawk thought of wine, and of how he might provide himself with
some, he was gazing at a half-dead wino stretched in the gutter just a few
paces away, and he knew in his heart without having to argue the point with [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]