Esther Friesner - Demon 01 - Here Be Demons by Here Be Demons(v1.0)

Author:Here Be Demons(v1.0)
Language: eng
Format: epub

In a secret hiding place, the terrible book lay wrapped in spells, keyed to be broken by a blue hand aad none other. On the flyleaf was the owner's name and address, the address later scratched out and rewritten as a cheap Bloomsbury hotel in London that catered to foreign students. The name was also scratched out and rewritten, probably at the moment when the proud owner realized that any Englishman finding the precious book would be unable to read the owner's name in Cyrillic.

It was Yuri's copy of Das Kapital, in English, bought originally to help him over the pitfalls of that unpredictable tongue. He had lost it on his first dig at this site, not that many years ago. He had not missed it.

Gerial undid the spells and took out the book. Reverently he raised it in the direction of the rising sun, then hunkered down with it, hunched over like a buzzard with a tasty scrag of meat.

He really believed that he had nothing to lose but his chains.

"Good book?" a deep voice inquired from above.

Gerial stiffened and screwed his eyes shut, cringing from the blow about to fall. "Gimme a break, Horgist, I can explain why I still have the book. I figured if the Russians ever came back again I could, y'know, plant it near where they'd dig, give 'em something they could recognize, get their attention so they wouldn't call it quits quite so quick, the way they did last—''

"You don't have to explain yourself to me, Gerial. I'm not Horgist."

Gerial opened his eyes a slit's worth. Steve grinned. The blue demon immediately sealed his gaze, groaned, and tried to escape, but something snapped around his ankle and wouldn't let go. It was Steve's hand.

"I can't force you to give me your hand," the boy said, "but there's nothing in the rules says I can't grab you elsewhere. See what a rotten influence you are? Hang around demons too much and you start finding loopholes in everything."

Gerial tried to shake Steve loose and had the usual luck. An attempt at dematerialization came to naught. He detected the faint aura of supernal power about the boy. A lot of Americans had it, Murakh said. It came from descent from the old New England witches. It wasn't much magic, but it was close enough for jazz.

"You are one weird mortal, you know?"

"We are surrounded by weird mortals—which I think is a redundancy, by the way."

"Yeah, but you're the weirdest of the bunch. You know what I am—"

"It is rather obvious."

"—and here you latch onto me like a bear trap. Most mortals'd take one look at me au nature I and run screaming. What is it with you? You play Satanist at school to impress the chicks or see too many reruns of 'Thriller' or what?" He got back into a crouch—an uncomfortable one, attached as he was—and glared.

Steve laughed at the blue demon's indignant questions. "You're angry because your appearance doesn't make the desired impression on me.

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