Daemon Gates Trilogy Read Online Free

when all behaviour was excused as a reaction to the spirits, and so you could do anything and get away with it. Others had felt the same, and he had seen people cavort­ing and carousing, and generally behaving like savages and lechers, acting in ways they would not dare at any other time, secure in the knowledge that no one would blame them for their actions on that one day.
    In Middenheim, the attitude had been even more wide­spread, and Alaric had seen groups of people celebrating
    all around the city during Geheimnistag, without a care for the consequences tomorrow.
    Here in Altdorf such behaviour was apparently the norm. It looked as if the entire city had turned out for the celebration. Everywhere he turned he saw masks, cos­tumes, banners and sculptures. The street was insane with people and motion, and colour and shape, and he could barely focus his eyes or think straight amid the mad, pounding tumult.
    Over there, for instance, a man cavorted beside a pair of women, his head masked by a pig's visage. An appropriate image, surely, for he was leering openly at both his scant­ily clad companions, but the pig's features seemed almost real, albeit distorted.
    The snout was massive, the eyes flaring to a ruby bril­liance, and the ears were swivelling to catch the women's laughing replies. The creature's wide mouth opened, revealing the sharp teeth of a predator, and drool spilled out past the fangs, dripping to the pavement below and sizzling where droplets struck the paving stones. The pig- man reached for one of the women with a clawed hand, the sticky pink of new flesh beneath an open wound.
    Alaric looked away, gasping for breath and blinking rapidly to clear his vision. What had that been about? Was he simply tired and anxious? He was feeling light-headed - was he growing ill? Had that man's costume really been that elaborate, that... convincing? Its flesh had seemed real, even from here.
    'You all right?' Dietz asked, reaching out to steady him, and Alaric nodded.
    'Fine, fine,' he replied. 'Let's keep moving.'
    Which way?'
    Alaric glanced around again, frowning. That was the question, after all. The cultists had come here, he was sure of it, but where had they gone once they'd entered the city? They had probably reached Altdorf well before the
    Geheimnistag festivities had begun this morning, which meant the crowd would have obliterated any traces of them. Except...
    A splash of colour caught his eye, and his gaze narrowed. 'There,' he said, pointing towards a smear of brilliantly crimson blood decorating one of the city's wrought-iron lampposts. They went that way.'
    Dietz glanced in that direction. 'How can you tell?' the older man's long face showed concern, though his voice was as level as ever.
    'That splotch of blood, there on the lamppost,' Alaric answered, pointing it out again. 'Don't you see it?'
    His friend shook his head. 'I can't see anything through this crowd.' He frowned. 'Are you sure? Sure it's from them?'
    'Yes.' And he was, though he wasn't entirely sure why. 'It's exactly the same shade as the marks I saw in Middenheim,' he explained, which was true enough, but that wasn't all of it. There was just something about the mark, something in the way it had caught his eye, in its shape, in its placement; he couldn't put it into words, but he knew it had come for the cultists.
    Dietz studied him for a second, then shrugged. 'Only clue we've got,' he admitted tersely. 'Might as well.'
    He pulled back on his horse, and Alaric kicked his for­ward in response, taking the lead. He led them slowly into the throng of revellers, glancing this way and that, trying to see any more marks that might appear.
    He wasn't sure why Dietz couldn't see them. Back in Middenheim he'd simply thought his friend was dis­tracted by worry - he and Hralif had been friends in their youth, and now Hralif was engaged to Dagmar, who Dietz doted upon - but on the road, Dietz had still missed every sign, while they had stood out