Read Online Conquer the Dark by L. A. Banks - Free Book Online

Salim was about to take a step forward to challenge him, something grabbed him from behind. A hand covered his mouth; whatever held him had a viselike grip. Twisting and turning, he struggled to break free. A burning cigarette lay on the floor, his pack strewn, matches scattered, and still the foreigner smoked, regarding him with a smile.
    “You have a choice—you always have a choice. Touch the contents of the crate of your own free will or have a supervisor find out you’ve been smoking back here with all this hay.”
    Another, deeper voice said from behind him, “How much antiquity is in this museum? I heard that if a person were to spend one minute looking at each piece that was housed here, it would take them a full year.”
    The blond before him smiled wider, revealing eerily long teeth. “There’s more in the British Museum, and in France and in Italy, than here, but I think if your supervisor came and saw this smoldering on the floor, you’d lose your job.”
    “Touch it,” the deep voice whispered, giving Salim gooseflesh from fear.
    He nodded quickly, not sure of the odd game the European tourists were playing with him, but they frightened him and he just wanted to get away from their sick folly.
    The force released him and he spun to see who had held him. A tall man with deeply tanned skin, brown hair,and strangely dark eyes smiled, then nodded toward the crate beside them.
    “I will touch this, then you go,” the guard said, summoning courage to speak. “This is not for tourists.”
    “When you’re done, we will go,” the darker of the two men said.
    Salim reached out and placed his hand on the crystal top of what had to be a coffin. But as soon as he did, a black charge that looked like a dark current welded his hand to the surface. When he tried to draw away, it yanked him in hard, slamming his cheek against the top of the crate. The current was coming from the blond foreigner’s hands.
    “It was his free will,” the blond said calmly as Salim struggled and fought against the building pressure.
    “Indeed it was,” the other foreigner replied with a smirk as Salim’s ears and nose began to bleed. “A human sacrifice does the trick every time.”
    Soon the guard could taste the warm, salty ooze of his own blood in his mouth as he heaved and thrashed against the crystal surface, unable to scream. Then with a loud crack, the blond snapped his fingers and the pressure suddenly stopped. Salim sank to the floor, exhausted, but to his horror, what seemed like hundreds of tiny gargoyles scuttled between the shelving and crates toward him. Razor-sharp claws extended and mouths filled with twisted, yellow fangs, the gray, little beasts dashed in his direction as he began screaming and pushed himself up to run.
    In seconds they were on him. His wails went unnoticed as the demons dragged his body up onto the sarcophagus, biting, scratching, goring him, sloshing his bloodeverywhere until it covered the crystal case. Soon everything went quiet. His screams were no more. His body lay desecrated, a bloody mass on top of the ancient coffin.
    “Leave the guard. He has served his purpose. Now that the Light’s booby trap has been properly dispelled, bring this to Giza where no one can see,” Asmodeus said, then he walked down the aisle and disappeared.

    In the distance, the skyline of Cairo wavered in the desert heat, a mirage like a thin charm bracelet sparkling against the sun. Three enormous pyramids now seemed smaller than a man’s hand from where they stood. Demons dropped a crate and instantly began tearing away its wood frame. As soon as they’d cleared the debris, Asmodeus summoned a black serpent from the depths of the sand and used its body to draw a pentagram around a blood-drenched crystal case.
    Without the sacred tablet, he faced a necromancer’s nightmare. To raise the fallen, he’d have to call up each of the slain by name—a tedious task that would require time and knowledge that he