The Demon Collector by Jon Mayhew Read Free Book Online

sense.’
    Janus led Edgy further into the hall and stopped at a huge fireplace. No fire burned here but a portrait of an unsmiling man hung above it. His eyes fixed Edgy with a sombre glare. In one hand he held a skull, in the other a crown. He was sitting on a golden chair draped with an ermine cloak. Piles of books towered behind him.
    ‘King James I of England,’ Janus said, ‘founder of the Royal Society of Daemonologie. He gave it the Royal Charter in 1605.’ Janus waved his hands around the hall. ‘We collect and study demons of all kinds, their habits, their history, their biology, everything about them.’
    ‘What for?’ Edgy muttered, glancing sidelong at a leering ossified demon.
    ‘Knowledge, Edgy,’ Janus said, raising his eyebrows. ‘Knowledge is power. King James realised that. To defeat your enemy, you have to know him. James I was a great scholar and was keen to defeat the powers of dark­ness.’
    ‘So you fight demons?’ Edgy murmured. ‘Then how come there are so many wanderin’ around the building?’
    ‘Not any more.’ Janus smiled and shook his head. ‘Ours is a scientific cause now. We study, observe and sometimes collect them.’
    ‘Like you did with Talon?’ Edgy grimaced as he remembered Talon’s twisted, ossified face.
    ‘That was regrettable,’ Janus said, sighing. ‘More often we encourage demons to join us and become “associates”. That way we can work with them to understand their nature.’
    ‘What about the demons who don’t want to be collected or join up?’ Edgy asked.
    Janus shrugged. ‘There was a time when it was all-out war. Demons didn’t like the Society at first. And the early fellows saw themselves as the last crusaders. They could afford to – the Society was stronger then. These days, we can usually reach a compromise.’
    They wandered among the display cases and statues. Janus stopped every now and then, pointing out an artefact or a specimen.
    ‘The more we find out, the more questions there are,’ Janus murmured, his eyes shining. ‘Riddles and complexity, Edgy. Riddles and complexity.’ He traced his finger across the handle of an ornate dagger. ‘Demons love riddles. Life is a game to them, dangerous – often fatal – to mortals, but that doesn’t bother them.’ He lifted the dagger, its blade flashing red in the hellfire light. ‘In fact, they envy our mortality sometimes.’
    ‘Righto,’ Edgy said, unsure what to say.
    His head began to spin as Janus showed him skulls and spears, enchanted talismans and fragments of bone, telling the story behind each one. Edgy forgot about the demons waiting for him outside, his need to leave or the last boy.
    ‘Can’t demons die then?’ Edgy asked at last.
    ‘They can be turned to stone with our ossifiers. The ball they fire is a combination of salts and pure elements of the earth, whereas demons are creatures of fire and light. We don’t know how ossifying works and we don’t know if it truly kills. In theory, you could chop demons into a million pieces and then put them back together again and they would come back to life.’
    ‘And what about this?’ Edgy murmured, touching a demon skeleton on a stand. It looked human apart from the skull, which displayed razor teeth and long spiral horns. The chin came to a sharp point too. There was a hole in the top of the skull. A perfect triangle.
    ‘Oh, that.’ Janus waved a dismissive hand. ‘Just the bones of Aldorath. Nothing much . . .’
    Edgy looked more closely at the skull. Something bothered him but he couldn’t think what. Janus’s voice lowered and he spat his next words out, making Edgy jump.
    ‘My illustrious brother found them. Such a fuss over nothing. They made him chancellor on the strength of those mouldy old bones. Chancellor!’
    ‘Your brother?’ Edgy muttered, raising his eyebrows.
    ‘Yes, Lord Mauldeth.’ Janus spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Not happy with just our family title, being the eldest and all that.