Lord Loss (The Demonata 1)

“Why would I be under observation?” I enquire. “I'm not a werewolf.” I pause as a horrible thought strikes. “Am I?”

Dervish doesn't look at me. “I don't know,” he answers softly. “The gene surfaces at random. Sometimes it strikes every member of a family branch, wiping them out. Other times it lies dormant for two or three generations. You're one of three children. Gret and Billy both succumbed to the disease. I wish I could say that makes you more or less likely to turn, but there's no way of guessing.

“The change strikes — if it strikes — anywhere between the ages of ten and eighteen. There have been a handful of cases involving younger children, but nobody past their teens has ever turned.”

“That's why there are so many young faces in the hall of portraits!” I exclaim. “Those kids all turned into werewolves!”

Dervish nods glumly. “There's no known cure. Those who catch it are doomed to live as deranged animals for the rest of their days. They normally don't last long — twenty years at most, if allowed to live.”

“What do you mean?”

Dervish taps the side of his can with his fingernails, a distant expression in his eyes. “It's a terrible curse,” he says softly. “To see one you love change into an animal, to chain them up and endure their

pain. … Many choose not to put themselves through the anguish. A lot of parents …” He stops tapping and his expression hardens. “They put them out of their misery.”

I gulp dreadfully. “They kill them?”

He nods. “They're beasts,” he says quickly before I can express my horror. “If they get loose, they kill. There are people in the family, a group called the Lambs, who handle the details if the parents can't. Family executioners, to be blunt.”

“But you said there was a way to reverse it,” I remind him, trying not to dwell on all those faces from the hall of portraits, the gruesome ends they must have endured.

“I'm coming to that,” Dervish sighs. “Though be warned — when I tell you, you may wish that I hadn't.”

A long pause. Then a groan from the cage — Bill-E stirring.

“When will he wake?” I ask, eyeing him nervously.

“Soon,” Dervish says. “Let's go to my study — it won't be pretty when he starts bellowing.”

“No,” I mutter, gripping the edge of the table. “I want to be here for him.”

Dervish nods understandingly, then returns to his story.

“Our scientists haven't been able to crack the wolfen gene and find a cure. But science isn't the only way to fight a disease. Magic works too.”

Dervish reaches across the desk, roots through the books stacked to his left, and finds a thick tome. Opening it, he passes it to me, and I find myself gazing into the eyes of the family magician, Bartholomew Garadex.

“Old Bart devoted a large chunk of his life to trying to rid the family of its curse,” Dervish says. “He believed it had its origins in magic. For decades he cast spells, experimented, and sought a cure in arcane volumes. But nothing worked. He could change a normal human's shape but could do nothing with a transformed werewolf. He was powerless, like everybody else.

“And then he met a creature who wasn't.”

Dervish's face darkens. Taking the book from me, he closes it, then reaches for the folder where I found the drawing of Lord Loss.

“Stop!” I gasp. He looks at me questioningly. “I found that when I was here before,” I tell him, eyeing the folder fearfully. “The drawing of Lord Loss spoke to me. Its lips and eyes moved.”

“If I'd known you were so close to the truth,” Dervish murmurs, “I would have warned you about that.” He cocks a thumb at the door leading to the wine cellar.” As I told you, the house is safe. The land around is safe too. But I leave this cellar unprotected. There are times when I have to deal with entities not of this realm, and I need a base from which I can make contact.”

Dervish runs a couple of fingers over the leather cover, contemplating it with an expression of equal parts respect, sadness, and fear. “Lord Loss can't cross the divide between his realm and ours uninvited,” he says. “An ordinary person could look at that picture for decades without seeing anything untoward.

“But you aren't ordinary. You've faced demons and tapped into your magic potential — when you escaped through the dog flap. He was able to use your power to speak to you. He couldn't have harmed you through the book, but he might have been able to trick you into summoning him.”

“But who — what! — is he?” I cry.

“Lord Loss is a demon master,” Dervish says. “One of many supernatural beings who exist on the edges of our reality, in magical realms of their own. We call them the Demonata. Some meddle in the ways of humans, most have nothing to do with us, while a few — like Lord Loss — feed upon us.”

My hands are trembling. I grip them tightly between my knees.

“Lord Loss is a sentinel of sorrow,” Dervish says. “He feeds on human pain and suffering. A funeral is a three-course meal to him. A lonely, suicidal person's a tasty snack. He delights in our fear and grief, encourages it when possible, then drains it and grows strong on humanity's weakness.”