The Demon Signet Read Online Free PDF Page B

the name he’d taken for himself just before the Brotherhood recruited him. He hasn’t heard his real name uttered by human lips since he was a child, since the night he’d killed his father and run away from home.
    He sits on the icy road, waiting. He knows it’s closer. He can feel it, sense it.
    Snowcapped mountains poke the skyline ahead, and he watches thick, gray clouds move toward them from the east. He taps his gloved fingers against the steering wheel. He closes his eyes, listens.
    The voices. They come to him and speak his name, not his real name or the name the Society knows him by, but his new name. The name given to him by the demons. The mere mention of this name transports him elsewhere, and everything around him vanishes. He is now in their embrace. They comfort him. They damn him. And what seems like mere seconds is actually hours, the mountains completely invisible beneath the closing curtain of ill weather when next he opens his eyes.
    He smiles, a twisted smirk that spreads his colorless lips and pulls at the scarred flesh surrounding them. He reaches over to the seat beside him and lifts mirrored sunglasses to his eyes. They are his shields, his defense against the Lookers, the agents of Light who wish a glimpse of his heart. He can feel them sometimes, peering through the veil and studying him, but he will not let them see into his soul. Where the theory of this particular precaution originated, he cannot recall, only that he has been adhering to it for years. He knows of no sacred text that instructs mirrors over the eyes as a means to divert an angel’s gaze, and yet he doesn’t question the practice. It has simply become part of his routine.
    He pulls the visor down and glimpses his reflection in the small mirror. He barely notices the scars anymore, but today he is more than aware of them.
    The Secret Society from which he was expelled had contacted him. How they found him is a mystery unimportant in light of the message delivered. The ring is missing . It is out in the world, free from the security that had kept him separated from it for so long. They need him because only he can find it. Of course, he is wise to their method, of the true plans they have for him once he has found it. But they underestimate him and the power the ring gives him, and telling him of its disappearance will be their undoing. Not that the demons wouldn’t have told him themselves. After all, it is they who wish him to have it. They tell him this now.
    His mirrored eyes still in the rearview, he continues to behold himself down the long corridor of endless reflection. He spends a moment pondering the different aspects of reality before turning his focus away from his replicants and to the tattoo now flickering above his collar. The red petals of a rose wave at him. They grow on a thorny vine, spreading out from his skin and brushing against his neck. The petals begin to bleed as the flower wraps itself around him, red droplets plunging onto his black trench coat and setting it on fire. The flames engulf the car as the rose continues to grow.
    The voices sing out in a loud chorus. He welcomes them, and he sees. Sees into the dancing flames, to the vague shape of an emerging car.
    He is getting closer.
    He blinks, and the fire is gone, the rose just a mark on his skin again. The voices are silent, the world beyond the windshield still. Snowflakes begin to flutter from the sky.
    Before flipping the visor back, he pinches the wide brim of his hat with leather fingers and pulls it down, covering his scarred face with its shadow.
    He turns the key. The engine comes to life with a roar and then lays down, purring in wait. He pushes a boot against the gas pedal, and his chariot growls, rocking on its wheels. He puts it in gear and pulls out from behind the rocks that conceal him. The wide tires smooth the grass as they roll off the road’s shoulder and back onto the asphalt. Once the car is on the two-lane road, he whispers