Ariel Read Online Free PDF Page B

the brain size—the harder it is to get its attention, but the easier it is to keep it. It has no will to fight back."
    "But the guy who set the spell told me it was impossible to break," he persisted. "That's why buddies are so loyal. Asmodeus has been with me for two years now and she's never obeyed anyone but me. Saved my ass a few times."
    "And she's still loyal to you. What I did was to change her focus of attention momentarily from you to me."
    "She didn't come when I called," he protested, finishing off a can of Vienna sausages and wiping his fingers on his pants.
    "I hadn't released her yet."
    "So, if you'd wanted to, you could have kept her as your buddy."
    "As long as I could make myself her center of attention, yes."
    "Who taught you all this?"
    "Nobody. It comes naturally. But it'll work for anybody who uses it correctly. Ask Pete."
    I shifted uncomfortably. I knew she'd bring it up. Russ was looking at me expectantly, so I told him about it. "One night I tried something stupid," I said. "I found a book of spells in a library in central Florida. It was an old book; the pages were yellowed and the cover was made out of real leather. It had a 'Special Collection' label on the bottom of the spine and on the flyleaf. The spells were in Latin, mostly, though there were some other languages I didn't recognize."
    "You read Latin?"
    "No, I just knew what it was. I didn't know what the words meant. Ariel read over my shoulder and stopped me on one of the pages. She told me to try one out. It had instructions, and the incantation was beneath it in boldface print.
    "We went to a shopping plaza. It was a small town and I hadn't seen anybody around, though there were probably a few scavengers here and there. I'd bagged a deer that day with the crossbow because I needed food, and I used the drained blood to draw a pentagram on the concrete in the center of the plaza."
    "To draw a what?"
    "A pentagram," supplied Ariel. "A five-pointed star with a circle around it, used in incantations. Supernatural forces can't break into or out of one."
    "Anyway, I got five candles from a looted pharmacy and placed one on each point of the star. Ariel watched while I lit the candles and picked up the book. I began reading out loud. It was Latin, I think, but the words sounded ugly. A lot of hard consonants. It hurt to pronounce them." I shrugged. "I don't know. They sounded just plain ugly . Once I looked back at Ariel. She was still watching. There wasn't a moon that night and she was a shadow. She didn't look real." I stared into the candle flame, remembering. It was still vivid. "I finished the conjuration and shut the book. Things started happening right away; the air was shimmering inside the circle I'd drawn in blood."
    The candle flame undulated as my breath reached it. It made Chaffney's face look waxen, highlighting the seams at the corners of his eyes and mouth. Ariel was a pale, ever-changing orange and yellow.
    "Something stared forming inside the pentagram, like  .  .  . like a tea bag in hot water. There was a sound like thunder rumbling. The shape in the circle was darker than the night. I watched it form."
    I paused for a minute, looking at the flame. A bead of wax dripped down to the base of the candle. "I only got fleeting impressions of what it looked like. It was  .  .  . huge. Muscular. Black. Sharp claws, and eyes like a fireplace. I could feel it hating me. It dripped hate the way a tree oozes sap. All this hit me in flashes, like it was revealed by lightning. I started to feel that I was losing control, that if I didn't stop it would break out of the pentagram and snatch me in its teeth like a cat shaking a mouse. But I couldn't move.
    "Ariel bolted forward and touched her horn to the blood circle. There was a scream like tearing metal and she flinched, but she didn't draw back. The thing in the circle threw something. It wasn't a fireball, it was the opposite; it was some kind of black sponge that would drink her