Pure Dead Frozen by Debi Gliori Read Free Book Online Page A

better to remove any trace of the small black cigar he was enjoying while the gorgon Passterre was otherwise occupied with matters obstetric. Some weeks previously, this man had been admitted to the hospital following an accident that had washed his broken body onto the shores of Lochnagargoyle. When he recovered consciousness, the nonappearance of any concerned relatives phoning on his behalf and his apparent ignorance of who he was, how he’d broken both his legs, or where he’d come from had led the medical staff to diagnose him as an amnesiac. This misdiagnosis was one that the man with the broken legs was keen to encourage. For one thing, he wasn’t a man—he was a demon—and for another, as his broken legs had mended, so too had his memory.
    Now, fully recovered, he knew that his name was Isagoth, and he also knew that he was in deep trouble. He’d been thinking about this, thinking dark and increasingly more desperate thoughts, when the Volvo had pulled up outside the hospital and events had taken a decidedly dramatic turn. To his astonishment, Isagoth discovered that he recognized the driver of the car: it was none other than dear Mr. Butler, the one he’d brainwiped several months ago and left for dead on the front steps of that ridiculous house—what was it called? Strega-something? How curious.
Ssso, Mr. Butler,
Isagoth thought, staring out of the window at Latch.
What brings
you
to this little hospital? Visiting?
Then the rear door of the Volvo had opened to disgorge a hugely pregnant woman and a thin, hysterical man.
    Yesssss,
Isagoth hissed. He recognized them too. They were the employers. Not only of Mr. Butler, but also of that
creature,
that Flora McLachlan woman, that infernal, interfering…Smoke hissed from between his teeth and coiled upward to wreathe his head in thin gray wisps. If that
woman
hadn’t got in his way, he’d not be in such trouble now. No…Isagoth sighed; now he’d be home in Hades, back in S’tan’s good books, not hiding out here in this backwoods hellhole, too terrified to let S’tan know that he, Isagoth, onetime Defense Minister of Hades, had been outwitted by a mere Scottish nanny….
    However, he reminded himself, all was not lost. A smile straight out of a horror film hovered around his mouth as he saw what fate had delivered straight into his hands. Cigar trembling in his grip, the demon Isagoth could hardly believe his luck. There, out in the parking lot, wailing its outrage at being born on the backseat of a middle-aged Volvo sports wagon, was Isagoth’s ticket back home to Hades. What was more, he realized, hugging himself with glee, was that with a newborn baby as leverage, he’d be able to upgrade his ticket to first class. Out in the parking lot, lights were going on, white-jacketed hospital personnel were appearing, a porter was trundling a wheelchair across the tarmac, and no one was paying any attention to the patient with the broken legs who was hobbling down the corridor as fast as his crutches could carry him in search of a telephone.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    â€œBaci,
cara mia
…” Luciano was barely able to speak, so blown away was he by the speed with which he’d become a dad for the fourth time. It was as much as he could do to stop himself bursting into tears at the sight of his wife being assisted into a wheelchair and gently rolled across the parking lot, their tiny newborn child wrapped in her arms.
    â€œMr. Borshter?” The Ward Sister stepped across his path, her deepening frown indicating exactly how affronted she felt by the Strega-Borgias’ decision to have their baby in the parking lot. “I’m going to have to insist that you take a seat in the waiting room, Mr. Borshter. Just while we get your wife and baby checked out. If everything appears to be…
normal
”—here she gave the sort of sniff that implied that this was a