Hunting in Hell Read Online Free PDF

on the body and smoke her cigarette.   Taking the last drag, she stubbed it out and shoved the butt into the hole through the man's back.
    "Got to keep the place clean.”   She winked at Alsvior, and he whickered.   She knew he hated the jokes, but they brought her mind to a ready place.
    She heard a scream, a loud primal screech like the twisting of metal.   A lump of flesh the size of a barrel exploded halfway through the soil.   The entire exposed end of it was a glistening mouth, armed with concentric rows of sharp teeth.
    Lamprey .   De la Roca tensed.   Fuck.
    The demon screamed again, and the earth resumed its dance.   With a crash, four more heads burst through the ground, all of them ending in the same tooth-covered orifice.
    The lamprey’s garnet skin shone slick with slime.   All five heads turned skyward and rose toward the ceiling, as the serpentine lengths of its body streamed out of the earth.   When it had finally finished unburying itself, the demon turned its five mouths toward De La Roca and screamed again.   Next to the creature, Alsvior was a gnat.
    She could feel its psychic influence pushing in on her mind, willing her to let it feed.
    She tensed, and as the first head swung at her, she leapt into the air, landing on the other side of its gaping mouth.    The head lunged up further from the ground, soil showering down onto Alsvior below.   Patient as always, he merely waited, motionless.
    The air warmed, and heat-waves rippled in front of her eyes.   Seconds later, the lamprey groaned and spit a tower of flame.   She jumped again, arcing toward another head, narrowly passing by the mountain range of gleaming teeth.   The two heads lunged for her, but by the time they met in the center, she was gone, scaling again up the windows and walls toward the ceiling rafters.
    Alsvior screamed, a shrill wail that cut through the fog of the lamprey's influence.  
    Seconds had passed; she had been dreaming, somehow.   She leapt again, barely avoiding a third head that slammed down into the wood and threw up a thick cloud of dust and splinters.  
    JOIN ME.
    The call was stronger than before, forcing its way through the boundaries of her body and mind.   The pulse of its thoughts drilled into her.   YOU WILL NEVER WANT ANYTHING ELSE .
    Her senses clouded over with its spell, and she was dreaming again, swimming through flashing fragments of thought that she couldn't follow.   The creature slithered into her mind, his giant body flowing through the outer rooms and into its deepest reaches.   It coiled against the back wall, pausing for only a moment before it combed the room.   Then, it turned into the next room, and then the next, rummaging through boxes and corners.   If it came to a locked door, it would push , an odd reverberation that made her stomach hurt, and she could feel her defenses topple like sandcastles in a tide.   He is looking for something, she realized.   Perhaps he has been waiting for me all along.  
    In the most hidden part of her mind, she saw Alsvior far below her.   He screamed again— what does he want —and then threw himself at the lamprey.    One of the giant heads swooped down and smashed into him, flinging him up against the wall and onto the floor.   Brick and concrete crumbled with the impact, and when the cloud had cleared, he lay still upon the ground.   And then she felt the lamprey slide even further into her mind, and the image of her horse disappeared.
    Through their link, she could feel the demon's quivering anticipation, and she knew it had located the object of its search.   It was a grey box, a thought long-sealed, lined in a patina of dust.  
    The lamprey tried the lid, and she could feel the slimy flesh scraping along its outer surface.   She sensed a sort of dull frustration, a warm beat that must have been the lamprey’s thoughts.    She watched as it knocked the box along its outer lengths, the taps reverberating in her mind as