Fear's Touch: A Darkworld Novella (The Darkworld Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

shield, it might make the evil beasties stay away. But I wasn’t about to go chasing after her now. Plus, that was probably what she’d been asking Jude about.
    My skin crawled at the thought. Ugh.
    Back at the student village, I found Berenice just inside our building, looking at something on the wall. All the student houses had a noticeboard on the ground floor where people could pin announcements and information on whatever was happening that week. I had no clue what had interested Berenice so much, but at least it gave me the chance to catch up to her.
    Then I saw what had caught her attention. A handwritten note was pinned in the corner, and it said: “Don’t talk to the blue-coats. If you want a history lesson, come to the Coach & Horses at 6:00 p.m. tonight.”
    “What the hell does that mean?” I said. “Blue-coats? It can’t mean…”
    The venators,
I couldn’t help thinking.
    I glanced at Berenice. “What d’you think?”
    “I have no idea.” Her shoulders were tensed, and she glanced behind as though worried someone was eavesdropping.
    “You don’t think is has something to do with…?”
    “I said, I don’t know,” she said.
    I raised my hands. “Okay, chill out.”
    There were all sorts of other messages pinned to the board, from student society notices to love letters (seriously). I probably wouldn’t have spotted this one if Berenice hadn’t been staring right at it. And if I hadn’t been so on edge, I wouldn’t have made the jump to think it had anything to do with the crazy. But the urgent tone grabbed my attention. Who had written it? Someone like us—someone who wasn’t affiliated with the Venantium?
    Did it matter? I’d wanted to
avoid
this crap. But Berenice was staring at the note like it was a lifeline. And if it stopped her associating with creepy Jude…
    “A history lesson?” she muttered to herself.
    I didn’t say anything in case she snapped at me again, but that was the other part of the note that set my crazy-sense ringing. Blackstone had a hell of a history, from what my parents had implied. I mean, it was the center of the Barrier, the place the Venantium had formed, and they guarded their own history jealously. Even my parents didn’t know much, other than there’d been a demonic war here a hundred and fifty years ago.
    In all honesty, it wasn’t something I liked to think about. Yeah, old English towns were spooky, and we were probably walking over a bunch of buried corpses, but so what? Even if demons had killed them, the past was done.
    Someone else came into the building, and Berenice jumped. I moved away from the board to let the girl pass by into the downstairs flat. Berenice reached up and took down the note.
    “Are you going?”
    She shrugged. “Might as well check it out.”
    Her attempt at a casual tone didn’t fool me for an instant.
    “Sure,” I said, playing along. “I don’t suppose it means 6:00 p.m.
tonight?
Was it definitely put there today?”
    “I didn’t see it yesterday,” she said, still not making eye contact. Re-adjusting her backpack, she started to climb the stairs to our flat.
    I followed.
    Four hours to kill. Then we’d find out what was going on. Despite my instinct to stay away from the crazy, part of me was intrigued. What the hell, maybe there was some sorcerer out there who didn’t want to force us to sign a register that would give the Venantium a claim on our lives. Fighting demons wasn’t on my life plan. I wanted to live a long and happy life without being attacked by creepy-ass supernatural creatures that could suck the life out of you. No freaking way.

    Berenice and I caught the bus to town, even though in theory we could have walked it. But I didn’t much fancy the woodland trail in the middle of the night, and besides, it was raining. We didn’t talk as we rode in the back of the bus, hanging on for dear life as it hurtled downhill. Crazy country driving. Kind of fun, except when I thwacked my head on the