Читать онлайн «Stolen»
Автор Келли Армстронг
PROLOGUE
He hated the forest. Hated its eternal pockets of damp
and darkness. Hated its endless tangle of trees and bushes.
Hated its smell of decay-dead vegetation, dead animals,
everything dying, even the living creatures incessantly
pursuing their next meal, one failure away from the slow
descent into death. Soon his body would be one more
stink fouling the air, maybe buried, maybe left for the
carrion feeders, his death postponing theirs for another
day. He would die. He knew that, not with the single-
minded intent of the suicidal or the hopeless despair of the
doomed, but with the simple acceptance of a man who
knows he is only hours from passing out of this world into
the next. Here in this stinking, dark, damp hell of a place,
he would die.
He didn't seek death. If he could, he'd avoid it. But he
couldn't. He'd tried, planning his breakout for days,
conserving his energy, forcing himself to eat, to sleep.
Then he'd escaped, surprising himself really. He'd never
truly believed it would work. Of course, it hadn't actually
worked, just appeared to, like a mirage shimmering in the
desert, only the oasis hadn't turned to sand and sun, but
damp and dark. He'd escaped the compound to find
himself in the forest. Still hopeful, he'd run. And run. And
gone nowhere. They were coming now. Hunting him.
He could hear the hound baying, fast on his trail. There
must be ways to trick it, but he had no idea how. Born and
raised in the city, he knew how to avoid detection there,
how to become invisible in plain sight, how to effect an
appearance so mediocre that people could stare right at
him and see no one.
He knew how to greet neighbors inhis apartment building, eyes lowered, a brief nod, no
words, so if anyone asked about the occupants of 412, no
one really knew who lived there: Was that the elderly
couple? The young family? The blind girl? Never rude or
friendly enough to attract attention, disappearing in a sea
of people too intent on their own lives to notice his. There
he was a master of invisibility. But here, in the forest? He
hadn't set foot in one since he was ten, when his parents
finally despaired of ever making an outdoorsman out of
him and let him stay with his grandmother while his
siblings went hiking and camping. He was lost here.
Completely lost. The hound would find him and the
hunters would kill him.
"You won't help me, will you?" he said, speaking the
words in his mind.
For a long moment, Qiona didn't reply. He could sense
her, the spirit who guided him, in the back corner of his
mind, the farthest she ever went from him since she'd first
made herself known when he was a child too young to
speak.
"Do you want me to?" she asked finally.
"You won't. Even if I want it. This is what you want. For
me to join you. You won't stop that. "
The hound started to sing, joy infusing its voice with
melody as it closed in on its target. Someone shouted.
Qiona sighed, the sound fluttering like a breeze through
his mind. "What do you want me to do?"
"Which way is out?" he asked.
More silence. More shouts.
"That way," she said.
