Lord Loss (The Demonata 1)

I study the photos and illustrations in troubled silence. The paintings are wilder — men with perfectly normal upper halves, but the lower body of a wolf; women with ordinary bodies and twisted wolfen heads; babies covered in hair, with ripped lips and jagged fangs. But the photos are more disturbing, even though they're less grisly than the paintings. Most simply depict malformed humans, with lots of hair, distorted faces, sharp teeth, and slit eyes.

The reason they're so unsettling — they're real.

The paintings could be the work of an artist's vivid imagination, but the photos are genuine. Of course I'm aware that it's a simple matter in this day and age to forge photographs and warp reality, but I don't think these are the result of some lab developer's sick sense of humor. This book has the look and feel of an ancient tome — though some of the snaps are in color, the colors are dull and splotchy, like in very old photos. I don't think the people who put this together had the technical know-how to produce digitally enhanced images.

The creatures in the book don't look familiar, though I study their faces at length. If there are Gradys or Garadexes in there, I don't recognize them.

Closing the book, I pick up another lying to the right. This one's modern. Glossy photos, mostly of dead human-wolf beasts, showing them cut open, their insides scooped out. I can't read it, but I know what it is — an autopsy manual. Somebody's undertaken a study of these wolfen humans and published their findings.

I grin shakily as I imagine what would happen if I went into a library and asked if they had any books on werewolf autopsies!

As I lay the autopsy book aside, my eyes fall on a thin volume. Loose sheets, held together by a wrinkled brown leather folder. Opening it, I find myself staring into the red eyes of the demon master — Lord Loss.

My fingers freeze. My throat pinches shut. It's not the picture Dervish showed me when he came to visit me in the institute. This one's more detailed. It shows only the demon's head. With terrified fascination I study the folds of lumpy red skin, its bald crown, small mouth, sharp grey teeth. Its eyes are especially strange — as I noted before, it seems to have only a dark red iris and pupil.

Trembling, I start to turn the drawing over, to check on the other papers in the folder —

— then stop dead at a terrible whisper.

“Hello … Grubitssssssssssch …”

The demon's voice! I release the paper and stare at the painted face — which, impossibly, nightmarishly — stares back.

“Release me,” the demon on the page whispers, its thin lips moving ever so slightly, its eyes narrowing fractionally. “I hunger for … your pain.”

The painting grins.

I scream, slam the folder shut, and race, sobbing, for safety, imagining the demon master breathing down my neck every frantic step of the way.

THE LONGEST DAY

MY bed. Curled into a ball on top of it. Weeping. Shaking. Fingers over my eyes. Peeping through them at fitful intervals, waiting for the demon master and his cohorts to come.

Hours later. Footsteps on the stairs. My heart almost stops.

Panting. Eyes wide. Remembering the carnage — Mom, Dad, Gret. Praying it's quick. I don't want to suffer. Maybe I should take the blade of the axe to my throat before the demons …

Whistling — Dervish!

I moan with relief. The footsteps stop, then start towards my room. I scurry underneath the covers and draw them up around my chin.

Dervish opens the door and sticks his head in. “You OK, Grubbs?” he asks.

“Yes,” I answer weakly. “Just a bad dream.”

“I can sit with you if you want.”

“No. I'm fine. Really.”

“See you in the morning then.”

“'Night.”

He only half-closes the door when he leaves. I want to rush to it and slam it all the way shut, but I don't dare step off the bed — afraid Vein or Artery might be lying beneath, waiting to snap at my ankles and drag me off into their world.

Dawn takes an age to come, but eventually the sun rises and burns my fears away with its cleansing rays.

As the sun clears the horizon and chases the shadows of night westward, I crawl out of bed, over to the window, and throw it open. The morning air is chilly but welcome. I gulp it down like water, my head clearing, my shakes subsiding.