Maxie’s Demon Read Online Free PDF

I was going to turnright back and walk down between the little houses, not even warm myself at the inn but keep on straight back to the junction and take my chances there.
    Warmmyself? I hadn’t been that cold. I’d crashed into a field of ripe grain, being harvested – a bit early in the year, maybe. It had been a warm evening, with masses of fleecy cloud; it couldn’t have turned to this, not so quickly. This wasthe bleak midwinter, like the carol said, and if frost wasn’t making moan it was just drawing a deep breath. I was plain terrified; I wasn’t going to walk back, I was going to run like hell. Only before I could turn, I heard it.
    It was from the field next to me, a little way behind. It wasn’t a human cry, that much I was sure of and no more. If it wasn’t human it had to be animal – didn’t it?But there I wasn’t so sure. High-pitched and hungry, it turned me to an animal myself, hunched and frozen like a rabbit caught in the headlamp beam. But I shook off the paralysis with a single convulsive shudder; then, bruises or no, I was over the further fence in a vault and pumping legs across the barren soil with my breath sobbing in my ears.
    A vixen’s cry is a shocking thing. I’d heard one,late at night, on a moonless country lane. It had made me jump; it didn’t make me run. This wasn’t it. This one left me no choice; it gave me a sharp jab right in the basic instincts. And it was somewhere down the slope, between me and the village.
    The boot slapped into the sewer; the rat leaped and ran like – well, like me. My ruined jacket squeaked with the effort as my elbows pumped, closeto my sides, keeping my balance, wasting no energy, my knees lifting high. I’d been on the school team, but as a distance runner, and this was a sprint, a merciless thing with God knew what on my traces any second. At least I was light-footed enough so my shoes didn’t break the frozen crust. I’d been running for a good few minutes before I registered where. I was heading for that light, because itwas the only thing to head for; it looked a lot nearer now, but not that much more reassuring, still pallid, still greenish.
    I ranheadlong into the shadow of the trees, and hung crucified on a hawthorn bush. This is about as comfortable as bonking on barbed wire, but all I could do was hang there and gasp. Then I heard that cry again, only much, much closer. Flailing and panting, I tore myselffree, ripping more off my jacket and my hide. Blood ran down my face, twigs tangled irremovably in my hair. Then I was past, pushing through the trees and heading for the house they half concealed.
    In good repair and a good light it might have looked better – well, quaint, maybe. But even in the starlight you could see the mangy-looking gaps in the thatch, the flaking half-timbering and the crumblingwalls with the wattles standing out like bones in a corpse. It had me peering around for the gingerbread oven.
    There were no lights at all in the lower windows; they were heavily shuttered, and the door tight shut. It had an old-fashioned garden-gate type of latch, the kind you can open with a penknife, or a reasonably stiff potato chip for that matter. I tested it gingerly, but it didn’t lift.The light came from the upper floor, from a smallish window just below the eaves. It was escaping through a half-closed shutter, it wavered as if people were passing and repassing before it. Somehow it didn’t occur to me to knock, at least not at first; but I had to get off the ground, and fast. So, up and let’s have a look, then maybe I might risk introducing myself.
    There were no drainpipes,but there was a low, shingle-roofed outhouse with a water butt to one side, and I could reach the sill from there. The butt moaned and creaked under me, and something parted with a little flurry of dust, but I was on the roof in seconds, and inching along towards the window. I couldn’t see through the casement, though; I’d have to get on to the