Shadow's Claim Read Online Free PDF Page A

human’s!
    Can’t go to him, can’t watch over him.
    Hastening inside, she called out, “Salem! Come here!” Nothing.
    With great reluctance, she grabbed that copper bell—one that would summon Salem to her. A medallion controls me; a bell controls him.
    She was well aware of how demeaning this could be, but seeing no other choice, she rang it.
    A moment later, the grandfather clock spoke in a deep baritone voice: “You booted me out, and now you’re ringing me back in? Somebody needs to make up her bloody mind!”
    “Salem, I want you to guard Caspion tonight.”
    “What’s doing wiv the demon?” he asked with his thick accent—exactly how a grown-up Oliver Twist would sound, Bettina often thought.
    “Will you just follow my order for once?”
    “Let me guess,” Salem began in a surly tone, “he’s hacked off the wrong sort yet again. Went cherry-picking wiv a lord’s daughter? Played slip the pickle wiv a warrior’s wife?”
    “Aren’t you supposed to follow my every command?” Salem’s services had been a get-well-soon gift from Raum after the incident. Clearly, Raum had no idea that Salem was a rogue whose hobbies included spying on her bathing.
    “Fiiine,” Salem said begrudgingly. “Caspion’ll be at his usual haunts?”
    “Yes. Meeting with friends.”
    “Then by all means, I go to the closest cat-house forthwith,” he said, the last word sounding like forfwif . The air around the clock seemed to ripple, and then Salem was gone.
    Alone, she paced. If anything happened to Caspion . . . No, no, Salem would watch over him. Not that Caspion even needed watching over, she reminded herself.
    And what foreign assassin would dare target a Deathly One in Abaddon?
    Thirty minutes passed.
    An hour.
    She gnawed her fingernails, but they kept growing back, her immortal regeneration finally at its peak. The grandfather clock ticked ominously.
    Oh, why wouldn’t Cas return? To remind him that she awaited, she hung a lantern in her window. No, she couldn’t see the town, but Cas could see her spire. A lingering light might beckon him.
    Suddenly, a wave of vertigo hit Bettina. Her vision blurred.
    Realization dawned. “Oh, no,” she whispered, her tongue heavy in her mouth.
    The demon brew had just caught up with her.
    She shook her head against its effects, needing tothink. I’ve been so despairing about Cas’s safety . . . that I forgot my mission to seduce him failed.
    One of two outcomes. Tomorrow, I am doomed.
    She rocked on her feet as more dizziness followed. Light-headed, she blundered into her bedroom, crawling past the curtains of her canopy bed. Falling back atop the silken sheets, she closed her eyes as the room spun.
    Perhaps Cas might come back this night. If she could just get one more shot at him, she wouldn’t let him out of her clutches so easily. Bettina wasn’t exactly known as a fiery fighter. But desperate times . . .
    She would strike fast and hard.
    Her last thought before she passed out: Please come back to me, Caspion.

S o this is where the demon hides . . . .
    Sword at his hip, cloaked in a mist of his own making, Trehan surveyed an imposing castle and surrounding town. Both had been built on a plateau inundated with fog. On three sides lay swampy jungle with small rivers forking out. Gargantuan trees twenty feet in diameter soared from murky waters.
    Though Trehan had never seen such a jungle, he turned without interest, crossing an ancient-looking drawbridge into the town. A weathered sign read: Welcome to Rune, Royal Seat of Abaddon. Might Maketh Right. The words had been carved between two dragon heads.
    Abaddon. He vaguely remembered hearing of it, knew it to be a demonic, backwater plane, closed off from most of the Lore. Yet Rune was bustling this eve. Merchants hawked their wares along winding cobblestonestreets. Banners hung in shop windows. Many in the crowd peered around with the open curiosity of tourists.
    As Trehan moved unseen through the