The Demonists Read Online Free PDF Page A

woman was saying, her hand still firmly on his chest. “Do you remember anything about that?”
    At first he didn’t, but then the images rushed in: a flood of staccato moments that made his body thrash and the machines beside his bed protest with furious beeps and alarms.
    His team . . . his wife . . . He didn’t want to see this—he didn’t want to remember. Someone was screaming, a raw, ragged sound. It took him a while to realize it was him.
    There were more people in the room now, rushing around his bed, trying to keep him down. They were doing something to his RV—IV, and he felt himself begin to slip away again, the slide show of utter carnage growing less distinct, the corners of the nightmarish images growing darker, obscuring what he no longer wanted to see.
    He tried to remain conscious, fighting with everything he had so that his question might be answered.
    “My wife,” he managed. A thin man in a white lab coat turned his shaggy head to look him in the eye. “My . . . wife,” John croaked again, just as the world fell out from beneath him and a yawning oblivion drew him down.
    But not before he’d seen the look in the man’s eyes, and he took it with him on his journey to nothing.
    It was a look of sympathy.
    John Fogg sat in a chair by the window in his hospital room, refusing to look at the bed that had been his prison for the last six weeks.
    He was afraid that if he did look at it, the bed would draw him back into its embrace, whispering that it was not yet time for him to go, that there was still much more healing to be done.
    As if in solidarity, his broken ankle encased in a walking cast throbbed painfully.
    The doctors had told him that it was still too early for him to be mobile, but they had cut him some slack, considering his situation.
    His situation.
    John looked at his watch. Where is Stephan?
    “Ready?” Stephan asked from the doorway as if he’d heard John’s unspoken question.
    “I’ve been ready for quite some time,” John grumbled, pushing off from the chair. He winced in pain from multiple places all over his body.
    “Use the cane,” Stephan reminded him. “Remember what the doctor told you.”
    “I know what the doctor told me,” John snapped, grabbing for the cane that leaned against the windowsill. Instead his hand brushed it, sending the cane crashing to the floor. On reflex, he reached for it, and nearly lost his balance, managing to steady himself by grasping the windowsill with an agonized hiss as pain stabbed through his ankle.
    “Did you hurt yourself?” Stephan asked as he retrieved the cane.
    John attempted to snatch it from Stephan’s grasp, perhaps a bit too roughly, but Stephan held on. “I’m fine,” he said curtly.
    “No, you’re not,” Stephan replied, releasing the cane, causing John to stumble slightly. “And as soon as you recognize that, you’ll be in a much better place.”
    They glowered at each other for a moment, before John begrudgingly accepted that the man was right, but he was in no mood to admit it aloud.
    “Could you get my bag?” he asked instead, forcing calmness into his tone. “It’s over by the bed.”
    Stephan did what was asked of him, as he always had done. Barely thirty years old, Stephan Vasjak nearly single-handedly managed all the business affairs of Rising Fogg Productions, as well as the rather hectic schedules of John and Theodora’s personal lives. John wasn’t sure what he would have done without Stephan there to guide him, and he knew that Theodora would . . .
    The reality of the moment hit him like a sledgehammer and again, he nearly lost his balance.
    “John?” Stephan was in front of him, suitcase in hand. “Are you all right—do you need a minute?”
    John shook his head vehemently. “No, no more minutes. I have to do this now or . . .”
    Stephan gently took his arm and guided him toward the door. “We,” he corrected. “It’s we who have to do this. C’mon, I’m parked out back, not far