Hunting in Hell Read Online Free PDF Page B

the creature investigated.   Yet the box remained sealed.
    With a wail, the lamprey picked it up in one of its giant mouths and rattled it vigorously, like a child probing a Christmas present.   When that didn't work either, it whipped its head around and threw the box onto the ground.   The crash shook her to her core, yet the box's integrity remained uncompromised.
    The demon leapt at it hard, pushing with all of its force.   De La Roca could feel her insides quivering, and she was knocked to her knees by the blow.   Still, the box did not open.
    She could feel the lamprey thinking, and she knew it was considering its next move.   With a hiss, it resumed slithering through her mind.   It turned corners and alleys, investigated dark hallways, and searched under the errant thoughts that had accumulated after centuries of a hunter's life.
    It was looking for clues.   One by one, it opened up other promising boxes, and like flashes of light on a movie screen, memories poured into her consciousness.   She could see herself for the last three hundred years, riding on Alsvior, Bluot in her hand.   There were hundreds, thousands of kills, demon ichor staining walls and ceilings and skin.
    But there was nothing from earlier.   Frustrated, the demon flipped the boxes open faster, and she was overwhelmed with the velocity of the memories.   The kills ran together, an endless series of bullets and near escapes, until finally, there was a different one, one without blood, and the demon seized it, pulling it to the forefront of her consciousness, and expanded it.
    It was her first memory, of being dumped in the desert.   She watched as the Angel choked her and bestowed her akras upon her.   And then, in her mind, as he had in life, he placed Bluot in her hand, and a grey box appeared in her mind.
    The lamprey screamed.   No matter how powerful its kevra, it would never be able to unlock something that had been sealed by an Angel.   It hammered all five of its heads against the box in blind fury.
    The demon's hold upon her mind shattered like a pane of glass.   Her head reeling, she looked down.   She squinted hard, trying to make out the shape below her, sensing that something significant had happened.
    It was Alsvior.   Somehow, he had risen from his impact with the wall.   Tears sprang to her eyes as she saw his leg.   It hung at an awkward angle, with pieces of bone sticking through the flesh.   Dark blood traced rivulets across its surface.  
    And what was the black sludge on his mouth—
    The answer drifted to her through the fog in her mind.   Oh, God, he bit the lamprey!
    He had been her only friend and constant companion for three hundred years.   Three centuries, fifteen generations of humankind, and he had been the only one to share her campfire.   He had seen her kill countless times and escaped death with her almost as many.  
    Her breath caught in her throat.
    Two of the demon's heads, working in unison, swept down toward Alsvior and paused inches from his body.   He stared back, his gaze proud and his nostrils flaring and snorting fire.   The lamprey laughed in response, a coughing whoop that blew currents of air through the room.   Springing like a whip, a third head cracked out and then slowed to touch him delicately on his broken leg.
    Alsvior screamed.  
    No!    De la Roca felt his suffering with every cell of her body.   I can't . . . I have to—
    The lamprey's hold broken over her mind, she held up the gun of many names.   In a swift motion, she spun the cylinder and the bullets fell to the ground, clinking like tiny bells.   She reloaded it with a single bullet from her belt and spun the chamber shut.   Although the ritual was of her own devising, she could feel the blessing of luck upon her.
    " Bluot, I call you."   The gun hummed in response as the red mist descended over her vision.  
    It was the Death-Bringer, the Death-Seeker.   It was Kali and the Morrigan.  
    It was