The Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer Read Free Book Online Page A

Hybras.
    “I know this all sounds very cloak-and-dagger, and I know you think I’m making an anaconda out of a stink worm. But believe me, somewhere on that island there is an unsuspecting demon who is about to take a reluctant visit to Earth and make life very difficult for us.”
    Holly stepped close to the screen. Where was that reluctant demon? she wondered. And did he have any idea that he was about to be snatched from his own dimension and propelled into another?
    As it happened, Holly’s questions were inaccurate on two counts. Firstly, the demon in question was not actually a demon, he was just an imp. And secondly, the imp in question was anything but reluctant. In fact, visiting Earth was his dearest wish.

CHAPTER 3
FIRST IMPRESSION
The Island of Hybras, Limbo
    One night, Imp N o 1 dreamed he was a demon. He dreamed his horns were curved and pointed. His hide was coarse and armored, and his talons were sharp enough to rip the hide from a wild boar’s back. He dreamed the other demons cowered before him, then scurried away lest he injure them while in the throes of his battle spasms.
    That night he dreamed this magnificent dream, then awoke to find he was still merely an imp. Of course, technically he did not have this dream at night. The sky over Hybras is forever tinged with the red glow of dawn. But N o 1 thought of his rest period as night, even though he’d never seen one.
    Imp N o 1 dressed quickly and rushed into the hallway to check his reflection in the lodge mirror, just in case he had warped in his sleep. But there was no change. Still the same unimpressive figure as usual. One hundred percent imp.
    “ Grrr ,” he said to his image, but even the N o 1 in the mirror was unconvinced. And if he couldn’t scare himself, then he was not a scary creature and might as well get a job changing baby imps’ diapers.
    There was some potential in the mirror. Imp N o 1 had the general skeletal structure of a proper demon. He was about the same height as a sheep sitting on its rear. His skin was gray as moon dust and pebbled with armored plating. Spiraling red runes wound their way around his chest, up along his neck, and across his forehead. His eyes had striking orange irises, and his jaw had a noble jut about it, or so he liked to think, though others had called it protruding. He had two arms, slightly longer than an average human ten-year-old, and two legs, slightly shorter. Fingers and toes, eight of each. So nothing weird there. One tail, more of a stump, actually, but excellent for burrowing holes if you’re hunting for grubs. All in all, your typical imp. But at fourteen years old, N o 1 was the oldest imp in Hybras. Roughly fourteen years old, that is. It was hard to be exact when it was always dawn. “The hour of power,” as the warlocks used to call it before they got sucked into the depths of cold space. The hour of power . Very catchy.
    Hadley Shrivelington Basset, a demon who was actually six months N o 1’s junior, but already fully fledged, strolled down the tiled corridor on his way to the washroom. His horns corkscrewed impressively and his ears had at least four points. Hadley enjoyed parading his new demon self in front of the imps. Generally, demons shouldn’t even bunk in the imp lodge, but Basset seemed in no hurry to move out.
    “Hey, imp,” he said, snapping his towel at N o 1’s behind. It connected with a sharp crack. “Are you going to warp any time soon? Maybe if I get you angry enough.”
    The towel stung, but N o 1 didn’t get angry. Just nervous. Everything made him nervous. That was his problem.
    Time for a quick subject change. “Morning, Basset. Nice ears.”
    “I know,” said Hadley, tipping the points one after another. “Four points already, and I think there’s a fifth coming up. Abbot himself only has six points.”
    Leon Abbot, the hero of Hybras. The demons’ self-proclaimed savior.
    Hadley snapped N o 1 again with the towel.
    “Don’t you get a pain in