Demon Thief by Darren Shan Read Free Book Online Page B

Feels like a few hours. I’m wet, cold, miserable, alone. Trying hard not to think about Logan and the kids killed by the demon. Flinching every time my brain recycles an image of the bloodshed. I force myself to focus on other memories. There’s no time to deal with the massacre. I have to concentrate on finding Art.
    Some small orange patches of light are flashing several feet ahead of me. They began pulsing soon after I got here. They move with me as I wander the watery forest, keeping me company.
    I come to a semiclearing. The trees don’t grow so thickly together here. I can see the sky, gloomy and purplish. The sun shines dimly on my left-hand side — and a second sun shines weakly to my right!
    I rub my eyes and look again. The suns are still there. Not strong like the sun I’m used to. Smaller, duller. I’m not as amazed by the twin suns as I should be — the water and howling trees tipped me off to the fact that I wasn’t in my own world anymore. I wonder how day and night work here, or if there even is a night.
    As I’m staring upwards, several patches of pulsing light pass by. Different colors, shapes and sizes, slowly gliding along in the same direction. I look around and notice other patches floating through the trees, converging on a point far off to my left. Without any kind of trail, I’ve been walking aimlessly. Now I decide to follow the moving lights.
    Maybe an hour later I spot the four humans who came through the window after the demon. They’re standing in a clearing, the old bearded man slightly apart from the others. I think he’s muttering a spell, hands wriggling by his sides. He’s the focus for the moving, pulsing lights. They’re gathering in the space ahead of him, slotting together, forming a window like the one in the village field.
    I creep up without them seeing me.
    “. . . still say we should have killed him,” the Indian woman is saying. “It was not right, letting him murder the children and take one of them. We are supposed to protect people. That is our duty.”
    “The master knows what he is doing,” the black man says. “He would not have let the demon go without good cause.”
    “You’ll get used to people dying,” the young blonde woman says. “Beranabus isn’t interested in saving the lives of a few individuals. He doesn’t have time for trivialities.”
    “Trivialities?”
the Indian woman explodes. “You call the loss of human life a trivi —”
    “No,” the younger woman interrupts. “That’s what Be-ranabus calls it. He says we serve a greater purpose, that our mission is nothing less than the protection of mankind itself. He says we can’t worry about every human killed by demons, or waste time chasing strays. He doesn’t mind you all doing it, but we —”
    “I’m trying to work!” the elderly man — Beranabus —barks, turning angrily. “If you’d stop chattering like monkeys, maybe I could . . .” He sees me and stops. “Who the hell is that?”
    The others whirl around defensively. They pause when they see me.
    “He doesn’t look like a demon,” the black man says.
    “Some don’t,” the young woman growls. “A few can take human form. You have to be careful.” She raises her right hand. I sense power in her fingertips. Power directed at
me.
    “No!” I cry. “Don’t hurt me! I’m not a demon! I’m Kernel Fleck!”
    The young woman’s fingers curl inward, holding back the magical power which she was about to unleash. She frowns. “He doesn’t sound like a demon.”
    “It is the boy from the village,” the Indian woman says. “He was with the child Cadaver kidnapped.” She smiles at me. “Hello.”
    “Hi,” I squeak nervously.
    “What’s he doing here?” Beranabus huffs.
    “I imagine he came through the window after us,” the In-dian woman says. “In search of his brother, perhaps?” She arches an eyebrow questioningly at me.
    “Yes. The monster — demon — stole my brother, Art. I came to get him