Read Online Dark Calling by Darren Shan - Free Book Online Page B

it flickers between the two colors,
     waves of fire lashing across the surface and bubbling over without pause.
    The sun-like ball terrifies me. It’s not just the heat. Being here is wrong. I feel like I’m breaking a sacred law by looking
     at this wild globe of wondrous fire.
    “We’ve broken more laws than you could imagine by bringing you here,” Art says. “But we cannot always be prisoners of the
     laws we live by. Sometimes we have to transcend them.”
    We press closer to the orb. We’re almost upon it. My mouth is dry. My skin feels like it’s burning. My eyes seem to be roasting
     in their sockets. I want to turn and get as far away from here as possible. But before I can beg Art to stop, we hit the outer
     rim and are swallowed by a billion licks of ravenous flame.
      It takes several minutes to cut through the outer ring. I’ve fought demons made of fire, so a realm of flames is nothing
     new. But this fire is hotter than any I’ve experienced. It roars about us like a living, furious sea. But Art holds firm and
     guides me through the billowing walls of the furnace.
    Finally we break through the flames and enter a realm of bewitching marvels. It’s a vast, oval, grey space, illuminated by
     constant bolts of lightning. There’s debris everywhere, asteroids, pebbles, and dust swirling around. The lightning regularly
     splits rocks and splinters them, but the pieces join with other shards to form new, larger rocks, which in turn are split
     again.
    The space is dominated by a series of enormous square panels. Half are black, half white. The panels revolve slowly around
     the sphere, never meeting. Anything that hits the panels—lightning forks, rocks, flickers of flame—is absorbed, then spat
     out moments later.
    Balls of multicolored light—Old Creatures—float around the black panels. Hundreds of demons cluster around the white squares.
     My insides tense when I spot the Demonata, but Art speaks quickly to calm me.
    “They Will Not Harm Us,” he says. “This Place Is Sacred To Both Sides. We Do Not Kill Here.”
    “You could have warned me earlier,” I growl, then frown. “What happened to your voice? It’s deeper than before, and echoey.”
    “We Are All Speaking To You Now,” Art says stiffly. “We Do Not Experience Individuality When We Are Together.”
    I glance around at the various balls of light. They were pulsing in unison as Art spoke. It’s too confusing to think of them
     all speaking at the same time, so I focus on Art and pretend I’m talking to a single entity.
    “What’s the story?” I ask, shivering as a bolt of lightning strikes the film of light around me and is deflected. “Why are
     we here? What are the big secrets?”
    “The Panels Are The Key,” Art says. “You Remember The Chessboard We Saw On The Earlier World?”
    “Yes, but what does…” I stop and cast an eye over the panels again, doing a quick count. There are thirty-two black squares
     and an equal number of white.
    “The Original Universe Was Shaped Like A Chessboard,” Art explains. “There Were Sixty-Four Zones, Half Black, Half White.
     Each Zone Was Limitless In Size. Time Did Not Exist. The Universe Had Existed And Would Exist Forever. It Was The Same For
     Us And The Demonata.”
    “I don’t understand,” I interrupt. “Everything has to begin somewhere.”
    “Only If Time Exists,” Art corrects me.
    “How can time
not
exist?” I huff.
    “Time As You Know It Began With The Big Bang.”
    “I told you I don’t know what that means.”
    “Peace,” Art calms me. “We Will Come To That. First, Accept That This Was The State Of The Universe. Sixty-Four Zones, Equal
     In All Respects, Black Separated From White By A Force We Called The Kah-Gash.”
    I focus intently when he mentions the Kah-Gash, ignoring the things I don’t understand. I can try to make sense of the bewildering
     bits later.
    “Demons Existed In The White Zones,” Art continues. “Vile, Violent Monsters,