Exeunt Demon King Read Online Free PDF

lighted upon a technique of
granting immortality and decided that the great cost was acceptable
to him. In a real sense, after all, he wasn’t paying it himself.
Usually, the sorcerer wishing to use the Maw is dependent on having
reliable servants who will carry out the rituals and sacrifices
over an extended period to give him his second life. History has
shown that the servants are far more likely to take the money and
run rather than get involved in a drawn out series of murders. Very
wise of them, too. Maleficarus had undoubtedly shown great
ingenuity in dispensing with the servants in favour of a machine
placed in such a place that the sacrifices would willingly line up
to die on his behalf.
    I wasn’t
familiar with every nuance of the ritual he was using, but taking a
soul once every 2300 days seemed to increase its effectiveness. If
he’d decided to kill me a thousand days into the cycle, I doubt he
would have been so keen to use the Maw to finish me. As it was only
a few days, he didn’t seem to mind using it and then starting
again. Just my luck.
    I was
abruptly pulled into the air and hung windmilling ridiculously in
that silly costume for a moment before I was thrown headlong into
the star trap’s frame. I managed to twist so that I didn’t crack my
head against the supports and took the blow on my upper back
instead. There was a fierce pain and a sense that something had
given way; my scapula as it turned out. Pensey’s electric torch
fell from my hand – I’d utterly forgotten I was holding it – and
rolled across the platform. It was strange that, at the moment
before my utter extinction, even as I saw the safety case around
the trap’s lever swing open with no hand upon it, it was strange
that I should be thinking of Mr Pensey’s torch and its remarkably
rugged construction. As Maleficarus pulled the lever, I moved my
foot and kicked the torch so it rolled up against the support at
the edge of the platform. The catches disengaged and the platform
shot upwards.
    Very
nearly five inches it got before the torch hit the underside of the
lowest horizontal strut and the whole thing stopped
dead.
    I lay,
silent but for my laboured breath, bundled in the frame of the
trap. Maleficarus was silent, his fury scenting the air like ozone.
Above me I could hear the pattering of the actors’ feet, the
laughter of the crowd. Behind me, I could hear the faint buzzing of
the cue warning from my dressing room. Then, in front of me, from
the open door to the prop store, I heard knocking.
    It
shouldn’t have surprised me. This whole rigmarole – I almost said
pantomime – had been in the pursuit of immortality. Immortality as
a creature of flesh and blood, not a ghost. It made sense that he
was keeping his body somewhere near. I felt his presence fading
from the air as his wretched excuse for a soul condensed and
curdled back into the body he’d abandoned a generation before. I
suspect he’d been planning a more triumphant return to his mortal
coil than the hasty one I’d forced upon him, but needs must when
the devil – or at least a demon king – drives.
    I tried
to get to my feet but the pain from my shoulder was agonising and I
slumped back down while it stopped battering me. I had come close
to fainting from it and that – given an imminent visit from a mad
revenant – would have been inconvenient. In the prop store, the
knocking became a pounding. It only served to confirm my
suspicions, although I might have preferred a less threatening form
of endorsement. I determined to get up and out of there, injury or
not, and cautiously started to get out of the trap cage. I’d hardly
begun when the pounding terminated with the sound of, somewhere in
the darkest recesses of the store, a theatrical chest being thrown
upon. It seemed that Maleficarus had finally managed to get out of
bed. I redoubled my efforts to escape.
    I could
hear everything through that door: the clumsy staggering fall as he
clambered out,