The Stone Demon by Karen Mahoney Read Free Book Online Page B

because he’s pretty generous with his money.”
    Money was the answer to most of Charles Grayson’s problems. Xan just wished that his father didn’t see him as simply another problem to be solved in his busy life. Not that it should matter now, anyway—now that Xan was old enough to do what he wanted. If he even knew what that was.
    Filling the aching hole inside him would be a pretty good start. All he wanted was the chance to recover what he’d lost: the life he never had the chance to know. It was all gone, now, and the only thing he had left were the scars on his back.
    He said goodbye to Donna, knowing she was still unhappy with him for how secretive he was being. Xan couldn’t blame her for that.
    He just hoped that she’d forgive him.

    That night, Donna had another of the unsettling lucid dreams that were becoming a regular feature in her life. Ever since her powers had been unbound last fall, her dreams were becoming something she was witnessing rather than experiencing. And yet, at the same time, she knew it was herself in the dreams. She was a participant even as she watched herself, a shadow Donna, gliding through her mind like a ghost …
    She walks through hallways and more hallways. There is no end, just straight lines going on and on into the dark. No windows. No doors.
    No way out.
    She finally reaches a corner. She feels excited that something has finally changed in her surroundings—she knows that what she is about to see must be very important, something that might help her to solve the riddle of demons in this world.
    Demian whispers to her, a shadowy presence with impossible stony wings half-unfurled against his shoulders. They move and shimmer with a life of their own.
    “Look,” he says. “All the ghosts are dancing in the ballroom.”
    And she looks at where he’s pointing and sees that he’s right—there are indeed ghosts gliding across the polished obsidian floor. Strange shadows flicker around the edges of the room. Her father is there among the dancers, but he doesn’t see her, even when she calls out to him. Donna draws closer, trying to move around the revelers, but each time she takes a step somebody gets in her way. The sound of music and laughter fills her ears. She tries to get her father’s attention by screaming, waving her arms, anything to pull his gaze around. But he dances on by with a serene expression on his face. The woman in his arms is not her mother.
    The woman in his arms is not even human.
    Patrick Underwood hasn’t changed at all—he looks just the same as he did when she last saw him ten years ago. He wraps his arms more tightly around the monster he dances with, resting his head on her bony shoulder.
    The woman stares directly at Donna and smiles with a mouth full of blood-stained teeth. Her eyes are strange … in-human. The pupils are shaped like hourglasses, and sand is slipping through them like tears.
    “We all die,” the woman says. “That’s the secret of life.”
    “Wait,” Donna whispers, because her voice isn’t working right after all that screaming. “What do you mean?”
    But the monstrous woman just dances away, spinning Patrick around and around until Donna feels dizzy from watching.
    She tries to wake herself up, because she knows that she is dreaming.
    “We all die. That’s the secret of life.” The words seem to echo inside her head for a very long time and the sands keep falling, but even then she can’t wake up.
    She wonders if she ever will.

Five
    D onna sat up in bed, feeling her heart race and listening to the clatter of an early morning trash collection in the street. “Dustbin men,” as they called them over here. She tried to focus on the sound of ordinary life outside, tried to let it seep into her consciousness and bring her back from the bright terror of the nightmare. Words of death lingered on the edge of her memory. A warning.
    She rubbed her cold arms and looked across the bedroom that still didn’t feel