Daemon Gates Trilogy Read Online Free Page A

to Alaric as if limned in fire. Here, amid this insanity, how could he see them at all?
    But see them he did. A second smear appeared against a tethering pole, leading Alaric to detour off the main street and onto a smaller side road. A third mark caught his eye from a striped awning, and part of him wondered how the cultists had reached that high, and what sort of wound would continue to bleed, and in such quantities, after so much time? Shouldn't the cultist have bled out long since at this rate? Another part of him simply rejoiced to know they were still on the right track.
    It was the only part of Alaric that rejoiced at all. The rest of him was either too exhausted to care, too concerned to be pleased, or too worried to be happy. The last emotion was gaining more and more dominance with every foot they travelled into the city. Everyone seemed to be cele­brating Geheimnistag, and all with a fervour that Alaric had never seen before. The costumes were more elaborate, the masks more realistic, and the imagery more disturbing than any he had encountered in previous years. It was less a celebration than a true unleashing of the city's darkest impulses, and it seemed to be spreading.
    They passed a building whose door was closed tightly against the mayhem, but blood spilled out beneath the heavy barrier, seeping across the cobblestones and spread­ing in a slow, sticky pool across the street. Alaric watched with horror as it approached his horse's hooves. The cop­pery smell assaulted his senses, and his horse whickered with concern, its eyes rolling, but it did not react as the blood lapped against its hooves, and when it raised each hoof Alaric saw they bore only dirt and mud.
    In another spot, they passed a narrow alleyway, and Alaric made the mistake of glancing down it. There were figures there, though he hesitated to call them people. For an instant, their limbs seemed oddly jointed and too long, more like insects' than men's. Their heads swivelled strangely on long necks, and their hands seemed narrow and pointed, like blades of flesh. The strange scene faded,
    though the cluster of people remained. There was a woman with them, and her screams echoed along the walls, as did the smack of flesh against flesh, but there was laughter as well, and his throbbing head could not tell if those peals came from her or from the men with her. Alaric glanced back at Dietz, who shook his head, although his jaw was tight.
    'Not our concern,' the older man warned, though from the look he directed back towards the alley, Alaric sus­pected he would happily intercede.
    Dietz was right. They were after the cultists, and the mask. Whatever was going on in the alley, even if it were as horrible as it seemed to him, it was as nothing compared to the horrors the mask could unleash in the wrong hands. They had to retrieve it. That had to come first. Alaric steeled himself and rode on, until he could no longer hear the screams or the accompanying shouts and cheers.
    A man darted out in front of his horse a moment later, forcing Alaric to rein in sharply to avoid trampling him.
    He shouted something incoherent up at them as Dietz pulled up alongside. He was a short, fat man with an unkempt beard and a thick head of hair sticking out every­where. His clothes looked slept in, as did his grimy skin, and he held a thick jug in one hand. 'Drink?' The man proffered the jug, and Alaric saw it uncoil slowly," its scales rustling as they slid past each other; it was no earthenware vessel, but a large, buff-coloured snake, its tiny eyes a glit­tering black, its fangs the same midnight shade.
    'N-no, thank you,' Alaric managed to stutter, kicking his horse back into motion, and leaving the man behind them, still holding the writhing serpent high. Alaric heard a hiss as he pulled away, and realised with a start that it had come from the man. Glancing back, he saw strange slit pupils reflecting the nearby lamplight, and a thin forked tongue emerge to lick