Read Online Death's Shadow by Darren Shan - Free Book Online

with a few practicalities. There’s no water or food. We can go without food for a day, but we need water for Dervish. I try finding a spring in the ground below us. There isn’t one, but I sense a pipe running overhead, carrying water to the house. Extending my magic, I pierce a hole in the pipe and draw a jet of water through the ceiling. We fill vases and a few of the larger, ornately designed candlestick holders. Then I plug the hole with dirt and a shield of small pebbles. It should hold for a few days. It’s a plumber’s problem after that.
    We can’t improvise a drip, so I use magic to ease water down Dervish’s throat. Meera feeds it to him from a vase and I make sure he doesn’t choke or swallow the wrong way.
    “I always hate it when a young person has a heart attack,” Meera says. I don’t think of Dervish as young, but I guess in this world he isn’t old. “It seems so unfair, especially if they’re in good shape and have taken care of themselves. Dervish never had the healthiest diet, but he exercised regularly. This shouldn’t have happened.”
    She looks almost as drawn and tired as Dervish. This is hurting her. She still loves him. I know from her memories that nobody ever touched her heart the way Dervish did, even if he was unaware of it.
    “Who did you call?” I ask, to distract her.
    “Shark and Sharmila,” she says. “I tried a few others but they were the only pair who could come.”
    “Will two be enough?”
    “They’re two of the best. Do you know them?”
    “Sort of. Bill-E met them in a dream once.”
    She stares at me oddly, so I explain about the movie set of Slawter and a dream Bill-E, Grubbs, and Dervish shared when they thought they were on a mission with Shark and Sharmila. It’s a complicated story. Meera knows bits of it, but not all the details. I fill her in, glad to have something to discuss, not wanting to think about Dervish and what he’s going through.
    A thought grows while I’m talking, and when I finish explaining about Slawter, I make a suggestion to Meera. “I can open a window to the Demonata’s universe. We can take Dervish through and find Beranabus. I’ll be stronger there. I can do more to help. Beranabus could help too.”
    “From what I know of Beranabus, he’s not the helping kind,” Meera mutters, considering the plan. “Could you find him immediately? Take us straight to him?”
    “No. We’d have to go through a couple of realms, maybe more.”
    She shakes her head. “We should stay. Dervish can’t fight and we don’t know what we’d find. There could be demons waiting for us there.”
    “I doubt it.”
    “There might be,” she insists. “We don’t know who was behind this attack. Maybe it was Lord Loss.”
    “I don’t think so. I touched one of the werewolves. I . . . I have a gift. I can learn things about people when I touch them.”
    “What sort of things?” Meera frowns.
    “I read their minds. Access their secrets. Absorb their memories. I’ve been able to do it since I came back to life.”
    “Have you read
my
mind?” she asks sharply, and I nod shamefully. “How much did you learn?”
    “A lot. But I’d never reveal what I know. I wouldn’t even have taken it, except I’ve no choice. Every time I touch someone, I steal from them. I can’t stop it.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me?” Meera asks, looking more confused than angry.
    “I would have eventually, but there was so much else to deal with. . . .” I shrug it off. “Anyway, I touched one of the werewolves and saw into its mind. It was a jumble, shards of memory all mixed up. I couldn’t make sense of most of what I saw. But I learned his name, who he was before he changed, and who he was passed on to.”
    “Well, come on,” Meera says when I hesitate.
    “His name was Caspar,” I tell her. “He was a Grady. He turned into a werewolf when he was fourteen. His parents did what many of their kin do and turned him over to the family executioners —