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The Demonata 1-5
Darren Shan
The first five books in the demonic masterpiece from the No.1 Master of Horror - Darren Shan.When Grubbs Grady first encounters Lord Loss and his evil minions, he learns three things:The world is vicious.Magic is possible.Demons are real.He thinks that he will never again witness such a terrible night of death and darkness.…He is wrong.Enter the terrifying world of the Demonata and get ready for a whole new dimension of fear.Includes: LORD LOSS, DEMON THIEF, SLAWTER, BEC and BLOOD BEAST.
DARREN SHAN
THE DEMONATA BOOKS 1-5
Lord Loss
Demon Thief
Slawter
Bec
and
Blood Beast
Copyright (#uff28fec7-0334-59e4-82e6-4e69625a0e9a)
HarperCollins Children's Books A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith London, W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Lord Loss: Text copyright © Darren Shan, 2005 Demon Thief: Text copyright © Darren Shan, 2005 Slawter: Text copyright © Darren Shan, 2005 Bec: Text copyright © Darren Shan, 2005 Blood Beast: Text copyright © Darren Shan, 2007 Cover illustrations © Dominic Harman
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Darren Shan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Source ISBNs: 9780007435456, 9780007435449, 9780007435432, 9780007435425, 9780007435418
Ebook edition © December 2014 ISBN: 9780008125998
Version: 2014-12-09
Contents
Cover (#ue15b4aac-010d-5471-b70a-1c777989e865)
Title Page (#u9c076ff7-dca3-52d1-b55f-86080d1dd1df)
Copyright (#u4a0f312d-42a3-5293-9824-400954df5740)
Lord Loss
Demon Thief
Slawter
Bec
Blood Beast
Back ads (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
(#uff28fec7-0334-59e4-82e6-4e69625a0e9a)
For:
Bas — my demon lover
OBEs (Order of the Bloody Entrails) to:
Caroline “pie chart” Paul
D.O.M.I.N.I.C. Kingston
Nicola “schumacher” Blacoe
Editorial Evilness:
Stellasaurus Paskins
Agents of Chaos:
the Christopher Little crew
LORD LOSS
Lord Loss sows all the sorrows of the world
Lord Loss seeds the grief-starched trees
In the centre of the web, lowly Lord Loss bows his head
Mangled hands, naked eyes
Fanged snakes his soul line
Curled inside like textured sin
Bloody, curdled sheets for skin
In the centre of the web, vile Lord Loss torments the dead
Over strands of red, Lord Loss crawls
Dispensing pain, despising all
Shuns friends, nurtures foes
Ravages hope, breeds woe
Drinks moons, devours suns
Twirls his thumbs till the reaper comes
In the centre of the web, lush Lord Loss is all that’s left
Contents
Rat Guts
Demons
Dervish
The Grand Tour
Portraits
Spleen
Carnage in the Forest
A Theory
The Cellar
The Longest Day
Arooooo!
Family Ties
The Curse
The Challenge
The Choice
The Summoning
The Battle
A Change of Plan
Spiral to the Heart of Nowhere
The Change
RAT GUTS
→ Double history on a Wednesday afternoon — total nightmare! A few minutes ago, I would have said I couldn’t imagine anything worse. But when there’s a knock at the door, and it opens, and I spot my mum outside, I realise — life can always get worse.
When a parent turns up at school, unexpected, it means one of two things. Either somebody close to you has been seriously injured or died, or you’re in trouble.
My immediate reaction — please don’t let anybody be dead! I think of Dad, Gret, uncles, aunts, cousins. It could be any of them. Alive and kicking this morning. Now stiff and cold, tongue sticking out, a slab of dead meat just waiting to be buried. I remember Gran’s funeral. The open coffin. Her shining flesh, having to kiss her forehead, the pain, the tears. Please don’t let anyone be dead! Please! Please! Please! Ple–
Then I see Mum’s face, white with rage, and I know she’s here to punish, not comfort.
I groan, roll my eyes and mutter under my breath, “Bring on the corpses!”
→ The head’s office. Me, Mum and Mr Donnellan. Mum’s ranting and raving about cigarettes. I’ve been seen smoking behind the bike shed (the oldest cliché in the book!). She wants to know if the head’s aware of this, of what the pupils in his school are getting up to.
I feel a bit sorry for Mr Donnellan. He has to sit there, looking like a schoolboy himself, shuffling his feet and saying he didn’t know this was going on and he’ll launch an investigation and put a quick end to it. Liar! Of course he knew. Every school has a smoking area. That’s life. Teachers don’t approve, but they turn a blind eye most of the time. Certain kids smoke — fact. Safer to have them smoking at school than sneaking off the grounds during breaks and at lunch.
Mum knows that too. She must! She was young once, like she’s always reminding me. Kids were no different in Mum’s time. If she stopped for a minute and thought back, she’d see what a bloody embarrassment she’s being. I wouldn’t mind her having a go at me at home, but you don’t march into school and start laying down the law in the headmaster’s office. She’s out of order — big time.
But it’s not like I can tell her, is it? I can’t pipe up with, “Oi! Mother! You’re disgracing us both, so shut yer trap!”
I smirk at the thought, and of course that’s when Mum pauses for the briefest of moments and catches me. “What are you grinning at?” she roars, and then she’s off again — I’m smoking myself into an early grave, the school’s responsible, what sort of a freak show is Mr Donnellan running, la-di-la-di-la-di-bloody-la!
BAWring!
→ Her rant at school’s nothing compared to the one I get at home. Screaming at the top of her lungs, blue bloody murder. She’s going to send me off to boarding school — no, military school! See how I like that, having to get up at dawn each morning and do a hundred press-ups before breakfast. How does that sound?
“Is breakfast a fry-up or some cereally, yoghurty crap?” is my response, and I know the second it’s out of my mouth that it’s the wrong thing to say. This isn’t the time for the famed Grubbs Grady brand of cutting-edge humour.
Cue the enraged Mum fireworks. Who do I think I am? Do I know how much they spend on me? What if I get kicked out of school? Then the clincher, the one mums all over the world love pulling out of the hat — “Just wait till your father gets home!”
→ Dad’s not as freaked out as Mum, but he’s not happy. He tells me how disappointed he is. They’ve warned me so many times about the dangers of smoking, how it destroys people’s lungs and gives them cancer.
“Smoking’s dumb,” he says. We’re in the kitchen (I haven’t been out of it since Mum dragged me home from school early, except to go to the toilet). “It’s disgusting, antisocial and lethal. Why do it, Grubbs? I thought you had more sense.”
I shrug wordlessly. What’s there to say? They’re being unfair. Of course smoking’s dumb. Of course it gives you cancer. Of course I shouldn’t be doing it. But my friends smoke. It’s cool. You get to hang out with cool people at lunch and talk about cool things. But only if you smoke. You can’t be in if you’re out. And they know that. Yet here they stand, acting all Gestapo, asking me to account for my actions.
“How long has he been smoking? That’s what I want to know!” Mum’s started referring to me in the third person since Dad arrived. I’m beneath direct mention.
“Yes,” Dad says. “How long, Grubbs?”
“I dunno.”
“Weeks? Months? Longer?”
