The two Enforcers found the dead man in the street, long after curfew. The city’s night hung around them, tainted with a clammy mist caught between the tall and dark buildings. The smell of fresh blood and the sweat of close-pressed bodies drifted upward into the air.

The slain man was naked, spread-eagled inside a geometrically perfect pentagram drawn in blood. At each of the five corners of the pentagram, candles of black paraffin burned, made to look archaic with artificially molded runnels of wax along the sides. A wide knife wound hung cleanly open in the center of the victim’s chest, like an appalled extra mouth.

With a throb of its rear jets, the Enforcer’s armored hovercar descended to the flagstones. As the engine purred its way into silence, Enforcer Jones, a tall and thin black man, emerged from the craft. He hung back uneasily, remaining near the hovercar. “Neo-Satanists again!” he muttered under his breath.

The other Enforcer, Frampton, agreed. “Yeah, they give me the creeps.” But he went eagerly forward, amused and confident.

Weapons bristled from pockets and holsters on the Enforcers’ body armor; a tough helmet with a laser-proof black visor covered their faces. In the mercifully brief four weeks Frampton had been assigned to him, Jones had never seen Frampton’s face, but somehow he imagined it would wear a stupid boyish grin, maybe some scattered pimples, maybe curly hair. Frampton thought all this was fun, a game. It didn’t matter—they weren’t friends, nor would they be. Other Enforcers had a real camaraderie, a team spirit. But this would be Jones’s last night patrol anyway.

“Think I should put out the candles?” Frampton asked.

Jones moved away from the hovercar, shaking his revulsion of the pentagram, the blood sacrifice. “No, I’ll do it. You see to his ID.”

1 2 3 4 Вперед

Кевин Андерсон – Resurrection Inc. (страница 1)

Dedication

Contents

1