The Demonata #10: Hell's Heroes Read Online Free PDF

victims, Bec casts her gaze around, and my virtual head swivels too. This is the part I hate the most. I try to look away or shut my eyes, but I’m locked in. I have to see what she sees, even though it sends a chill through my bones that will still be there when I wake.
    The people chained to the walls and torture devices are a varied mix. Men and women, boys and girls, of different races. No babies—Lord Loss likes to be able to hold discussions with his victims. With a single exception, I don’t recognize any of them, though I know by his magical aura that one—a thin, blond-haired man—is a Disciple.
    Bec studies the Disciple—he’s in the worst shape of all, kept alive only by magic—then moves on, her gaze sweeping over a girl my age. I didn’t notice her the first few times. To Bec she’s of no more interest than any of the others. It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it moment. It was only after the fourth or fifth time, when I was concentrating on details to keep boredom at bay, that I focused on the girl’s face and got a shock that echoes even now, twenty or so viewings later.
    The girl is pretty, but her face is covered with blood and scrunched up with terror. Her clothes hang from her in filthy rags, but I’m sure they originally came from the finest designer boutiques. And although her hair is a tangled mess and her nails are long and cracked, once they were as carefully tended as a model’s.
    Apart from the blood, the girl doesn’t seem to have been tortured, but many of Lord Loss’s victims look unmarked. He patches them up and lets them recover a little when he’s done, to make it all the more painful next time. Inside, I’m sure she’s been twisted and torn in more ways than most humans could imagine.
    As Bec’s eyes dart about, I snatch the same quick glimpse of the girl that I’ve been horrified by ever since I realized who she was. Back on Earth, in a quiet hospital room, my lips move as I mutter in my sleep.
“Bo Kooniart…”

EXECUTIVE BOARD

    B EC and Lord Loss move on eventually, up another set of stairs, to a different part of the demon master’s palace. Blood drips from his doughy flesh as he floats along, but it’s not his own. Bec is silent, head bowed, brooding.
    I’m thinking about Bo Kooniart. It seems like a lifetime since I last saw her, racing back into a demon-infested town in search of her horrible father and pain of a brother. Bo was one of the actresses in
Slawter,
a movie about demons made by a crazed director who decided to use real-life monsters in the name of art.
    I despised Bo. Her father, Tump Kooniart, was a powerful agent, which was the only reason she and her brother were cast in the film. He was working in league with the director and Lord Loss. He thought the Demonata would spare him and his children. He thought wrong.
    Bo was a spoiled, snobbish, sneering little brat. But when the demons ran riot and our lives hung in the balance, she acted selflessly, heroically. We might not have escaped without her help. Then, rather than follow us to freedom, she went back to try to rescue her father and brother.
    I assumed Bo had been killed along with the hundreds of others who died, but Lord Loss must have spared her and taken her to his own universe, where he could torture her at his leisure.
    When I realized Bo was still alive, trapped in that chamber of nightmares, I felt that I was directly to blame. Lord Loss authorized the attack on the film set in order to wreak revenge on Dervish and me. All those people died because of us. Bo is in torment because of
me.
I feel compelled to cross and break her out. But I don’t dare, not until I’ve decided what to do about Bec. I might get away with one sneak attack on Lord Loss’s kingdom, but never two.
    The tour continues. Bec is quiet for the most part and looks gloomy, but I’m sure I’d look a lot worse in her position. How can she walk alongside that beast so calmly? Unless she’s considering joining him…
    I