Darren Shan - Lord Loss

I take hold of the huge gold ring. Tug firmly. The door creaks open. I enter.

A large room, at least the size of the wine cellar. Sturdy wooden beams support the ceiling. Burning torches set in the walls—no electrical lights. A foul stench.

I leave the door open as I step into the room and study my surroundings. A steel cage dominates the room, set close to the wall on my right. Almost the height of the ceiling, thin bars set close together, bolted to the floor in all four corners.

Inside the cage—the deer. Still bound and struggling weakly. Lying in a pool of its own waste. Which explains the smell.

Advancing, giving the cage a wide berth. There are three small tables in this subterranean room. Legs carved to resemble human forms. Surfaces overflowing with books. A chess set half hangs off of one of them. Pens. Writing pads. Candles waiting to be lit.

Ropes and chains in one corner. No weapons. I thought there’d be axes and swords, like inside the house, but there isn’t even a stick.

A chest— treasure! I snap it open in a rush, treasure-lust momentarily getting the better of my other senses. Is this Lord Sheftree’s legendary hoard?

Bitter disappointment—the chest’s filled with old books and rolled-up parchment. I scrape the paper aside and explore the bottom of the chest, in search of even a single gold nugget or coin, but come up empty-handed.

Circling the room. Get close to the cage this time. Note a bowl set in the floor—for water, I assume. A door with two locks, neither currently bolted. No hatch for pushing food through.

I consider dragging out the deer and setting it free, but that would reveal my having been here. I don’t want Dervish knowing I’m wise to this set-up. Not sure what he’d do to me if he found out.

Examining the tables. On two of them the books are layered with dust, the candles have never been used, and the chairs are shoved in tight. On the other there are less books, a few are open, the two large candles on the table are both half burnt down, and the chair’s been pulled out.

I focus on the third table. Walk around it twice without touching it. Wary of magic spells and what might happen if I disturb anything.

I wish Bill-E was here. I should have phoned him and cooked up some story to get him to stay the night. But I didn’t want to drag him into this until I was sure—which I’m still not. So far I’ve seen nothing to suggest that Dervish is a werewolf, or that he uses this cell for anything more sinister than holding captured deer.

I have to take a chance with the spells. I pull the chair back a bit more, then sit and cautiously lay my hands on top of the table.

Nothing happens.

The light’s poor here. There are matches on the table but I daren’t light a candle—Dervish might smell it when he returns, or notice that it’s burnt down more than when he left.

I study one of the open books but I can’t make sense of the words. If it’s in English, it’s protected by reading spells, like the books in Dervish’s study.

I flick forward a few pages, keeping a finger on the page it was originally opened to. No pictures, though there are a few mathematical or magical diagrams. I turn the pages back and pick up one of the other books.

A wolf’s bared jaws flash at me! I gasp—raise my hands to protect myself—almost topple out of my chair—

Then laugh hysterically as I realise it’s just the cover of a book under the one I picked up. I need to get a grip. Freaking out over a picture—seriously uncool!

Laying the upper book aside, I open the one with the picture of a wolf on it. The words in this are also indecipherable, but there are many pictures and drawings—most of creatures which are half-human, half-wolf.

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 humour. This book has the look and feel of an ancient tome—though some of the snaps are in colour, the colours 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 recognise 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.

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—Mum, 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.