Dark Calling
Copyright © 2009 by Darren Shan
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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First eBook Edition: October 2009
First published in Great Britain by Collins in 2009
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN: 978-0-316-07162-8
Contents
CHECK OUT A PREVIEW OF CIRQUE DU FREAK: THE MANGA
START HERE FOR A PEEK AT CIRQUE DU FREAK: THE MANGA!
Also in
THE DEMONATA
series:
Lord Loss
(Book 1)
Demon Thief
(Book 2)
Slawter
(Book 3)
Bec
(Book 4)
Blood Beast
(Book 5)
Demon Apocalypse
(Book 6)
Death’s Shadow
(Book 7)
Wolf Island
(Book 8)
For:
BAS—you love it when I call!
OBEs (Order of the Bloody Entrails) to:
Sam “the snapper” White
Rachel Wasdyke—demon mistress of New Orleans
Tom Woodhead—in a word—Sligstatic!!!
Hallowed hollerer:
Stella Paskins
Greek chorus:
the Christopher Little choir
A
SMALL,
wiry, scorpion-shaped demon with a semi-human face drives its stinger into my right eye. My eyeball pops and gooey streaks flood down my cheek. In complete agony, I scream helplessly, but worse is to come. The demon spits into the empty socket. At first I think it’s just phlegm, but then dozens of tiny
things
start to wriggle in the space where my eye once swam. As I fill with confused horror, teeth or claws dig into the bone around my ruined eye. Whatever the mini-monsters are, they’re trying to tunnel through to my brain.
Beranabus roars,
“Kernel!”
and tries to grab me, but I wheel away from him as insanity and pain claim me. I whip around, flailing, shrieking, wild. The demon strikes again and punctures my left eye. Darkness consumes me. I’m in hell.
A lifetime later, someone picks me up from where I’ve fallen and drags me forward. It might be Beranabus or Grubbs, or maybe it’s Lord Loss. I don’t know or care. All I can focus on is the blind, hellish pain.
I pull away from the person or demon and run from the madness, but crash into something hard. I fall, moaning and screaming, but not crying—I no longer have eyes to weep with. The creatures that were spat into my eyes are munching on my brain now. I try to scrape them out with my fingers, but that just adds to the torment.
Then magic sears through my ruined sockets. The things in my head burn and drop away. The pain lessens. I sigh blissfully and slump unconscious.
I dream of the end of the world. Everything comes apart and everyone perishes. The universe warps and twists upon itself. In my dream, I float as a spirit through panels of light. I don’t know how I see the lights without eyes, but I do. There are others—Grubbs, Beranabus, a girl. I slot the patches of light together and we sail from one window to another. Peaceful. No pain. I’m at ease. In my element. Master of the lights.
Maybe this is heaven. Constructing and passing through an endless series of windows. An eternal, beautiful, cosmic light show. I’ll settle for that. Anything’s better than torture, blindness, and micro-demons feasting on my brain.
Heaven doesn’t last. I wasn’t dreaming. The destruction was real. The lights fade and I find myself back on Earth. Blind as ever. Pain muted by magic, but hovering, waiting for its chance to kick back in. Turns out the creatures in my eyes were
maggots.
No time for panic or self-pity. Beranabus drops a bombshell—we’ve traveled through time. I’m part of a magical weapon, the Kah-Gash. Grubbs is another part. By linking with the third component, the ghost of a dead girl, we took our doomed world into the past to avert demonic conquest. Now we have to fight again or it will all have been for nothing.
In a cave. Blindly battling Spine, the scorpion demon. I have the horrible beast pinned to a stalagmite. I’m pounding him with my fists, over and over. Without warning he melts away and I’m left standing in a puddle of sticky blood, frowning sightlessly.
