krispo: переводы

→After a moment, Damon retreated back into the persona of the
imperturbable master and said, “For all our sakes, we ought to be strict
about these things. The slum lords and nobility who run this abominable
mess they call the Dark Dimension know that it’s only two days away
from revolution at any time, and if we add anything to the balance
they’re going to Make a Public Example of Us.”

→Elena did so, wearing the gold side out. It fell to her heels. She
fingered her veil, already able to see the flirtatious possibilities in it, as
well as the dismissive ones. If only she could get this damned rope off
her wrists…

→“Oh, I did research in bars and other places. I found a few people
who’d been here and had managed to get out again—or who had gotten
kicked out.” Damon’s wild grin grew even wilder. “At night while you
were asleep. At a little hidden store, I got those.” He nodded at her veil,
and added, “You don’t have to wear that over your face or anything.
Press it to your hair and it will cling to it.”

→“How did you know you’d need all this stuff?” Elena asked, with
bruising practicality. “You didn’t know everything, but you seemed to
know enough.”

→He had deep depressions where his eyes should be, a shallow
hollow for a mouth, and a triangular hole where his nose should have protruded. The uncanny horror of it, on top of the stink from the depot pens, was simply too much for Bonnie, and she slumped sideways, limp against Meredith, in a faint.

→Strangely, it was horror that saved her from this morass of terror.
Just as she lifted her head, perhaps to scream, the dim figure of the ferryman turned from his duties briefly as if to look back over the passengers. Elena heard Bonnie’s shriek. Meredith, shaking, was frantically and illogically reaching for the bag in which her gun was stowed. Even Damon didn’t seem to be able to move.

→There’s no coming back from this journey! she thought suddenly
and violently. No escape! They might as well be truly dead….

→For a moment she was lost in the memory of being very
young—only three or so, she must have been—and sitting on her
father’s lap while he read to her from a wonderfully illustrated book about the Greek myths. It told about the ferryman, Charon, who took spirits of the deceased over the river Styx to the land of the dead. And her father telling her that the Greeks put coins on the eyes of those who died so they could pay the ferryman….

→On board, Elena watched Damon wordlessly offer six pieces of
gold to the ferryman—two for each human who presumably wouldn’t be coming back, she thought.

→“Now listen,” he added, looking at Elena with an expression she
had gotten to know. It meant: I’m not joking around; I’m talking to you
as an equal; I’m serious.

→There was nothing else to see except Damon with his paper bags
on the seat beside him, driving the Prius. Out the windows, where an
arid Arizona dawn should be blinding its way across the horizon, was
nothing but fog.