mistikomanka: переводы

→My jaw clenched when Ellis outlined in a dull voice how he’d been given very special instructions regarding my dispatch. It was to be a head shot only, a minimum of three bullets, and at a range no closer than a hundred yards. No car bombs, poison, physical confrontation, or any contact near my car or residence. Ellis didn’t know what I was, but whoever had hired him must have had a frigging good idea. These stipulations were too specific to be coincidental.

→Such a normal-sounding name, and it went with his appearance. Aside from his fresh bloody nose and bruises, he looked about as threatening as Mickey Mouse. Ellis had black hair neatly trimmed, a paunch, and round baby cheeks. The prick was obviously good with a rifle and a scope, though. I’d be missing several choice pieces of my brain now if it weren’t for Bones tackling me. How he’d known about the shots was still beyond me.

→“I’m a Master vampire. If a Master gets to be powerful enough and old enough, this is one of the perks. There are others, but we can get into those later,” Bones said as the man’s eyes fluttered open, focused on him, and then bulged. He was awake now, and he looked like I’d felt when Bones had catapulted us out of that window. Scared shitless.

→Cars screeched, either from the erratically driving van or the people who’d hit their brakes in disbelief at seeing a dark form streak above them. The van was speeding, but we were faster. Bones caught up to it in seconds and grasped the rear bumper, flipping the vehicle without even letting go of me with his other hand.

→Incredulous, I looked up to see if a parachute had miraculously appeared, but there was nothing beyond the lights of the building. Before I could even wrap my mind around that, however, I felt a whoosh, and then we weren’t falling anymore. We were sailing diagonally through the air toward a black van that had just sped into traffic. My screams died in my throat, choked off by astonishment.

→The thunderous noise of glass crashing outward drowned out my screams at suddenly free-falling from a twenty-story building. My legs flailed helplessly and my stomach lurched upward with a nauseating lift. Wind stung my eyes, which were fixed in horror at the rapidly approaching ground. The grip I had around his neck stiffened into the hold of the damned, and then an incredible thing happened. We started slowing down.

→I didn’t have time to digest the news. “Hold on to my neck and don’t let go,” Bones said next with seething ferocity. “We’re getting the sod.”

→The restaurant Bones took me to was called Skylines. It sat at the top of a twenty-story building overlooking the city. Glass made up the exterior walls for an unobstructed view, and our table was right up against the window. The red and white lights of the cars crawling along the street below us held my gaze, and idly I wondered which contained Don’s men. With all the noise of surrounding traffic and the building’s occupants, it was hard to tell. They were out there, though, I knew it. It was all I could do not to wave at them from my window perch.

→Bones climbed onto his bike, a snazzy new Ducati. He’d always liked motorcycles, even though they weren’t my favorite method of transportation. Still, the bike was the obvious choice for our plans to lose Don’s tail on us later. For one, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Don had ordered my car bugged while I met with him yesterday, and for another, nobody could catch a vampire on a motorcycle.

→“Um hmm.” Somehow I couldn’t come up with a more articulate response. God, I’d wanted nothing more than to spend the night in his arms for literally years now, and very soon I’d get my wish. So why was I so nervous all of a sudden? You’d think I’d somehow morphed into a teenager on prom night.

→“Not a chance,” Bones said without hesitation. “Ian wants you alive so he can add you to his collection. Be a bit hard to do that if your head was in pieces.”

→“Do you think Ian was behind the hit man?”

→Once we were safely inside the house and I could concentrate on more than “Eek, too high, too fast!” my mind spun with possibilities.

→Bones had left his laptop and other possible incriminating information back at the house he was renting, which is where we went. For another piece of luck, his cell phone was safely inside the leather coat he still wore. We wouldn’t go back to my house anymore, for obvious reasons. With how much of a rush the mysterious source behind the attempt on my life was in, there could be another hit man waiting for me. I’d have to send someone else over to feed my cat for the next day or so.

→CHAPTER 13

→CHAPTER 12

→“Oh, you were right,” I gasped. “There’s nothing here. No clues whatsoever. But you can rest your mind about Danny Milton. Believe me when I tell you, that man is dead.”

→“Do you mind telling me what’s so funny?”

→The sheer irony of it all made me laugh. That’s how Don found me, on the floor and chortling in mirthless laughter. He eyed me with caution but stayed near the door.

→I held the watch so hard, it cut into my skin. How Bones had heard about Danny or what happened I had no idea, but he’d been quick. After all these years, he’d reached out to me. I just hadn’t gotten the message in time.