The Darkest Night

Начало книги

The nights before Christmas were annoying enough to make even an angel swear.

Cyril Fane forgave himself as he cursed and swerved his Porsche around a minivan of suburbanites gawking at the holiday lights strung along the Magnificent Mile. Not yet rush hour and already Chicago’s downtown bustled with holiday crowds, filling the early darkness with their shopping bags, their good cheer, and their damnably low-horsepower vehicles. If they knew how the longer, darker nights provided ever-deeper shadows for the demonic tenebrae, they would all scuttle home.

Of course, not everyone had a home waiting for them.

Fane crushed the thought like a burned-out Christmas light bulb. Useless. But the warning from the afternoon visit with his only remaining friend in the sphericanum still scalded: “…Lost your abraxas to the djinn-man… Conspiring with the talyan… Exiled… Don’t come back, Fane, or we will slay you.”

Читать дальше →