Read Online Devdan Manor by Auden D. Johnson - Free Book Online Page A

be dangerous. Cyl wanted to touch it. He needed to touch it.
    His collar choked him. It pulled him backwards. The smoke reached out thin limbs shaped like vines. The arms twist and swirled. They slowly rose then floated down. A sheet of it with rippled edges leapt across the floor.
    Cyl’s collar pulled him away from the darkness. He needed to see more. He needed to stay. His body wouldn’t fight the hand pulling him back.
    The darkness was wrong.
    No, it was beautiful.
    It was dangerous. He shouldn’t touch.
    He needed to feel it wrap around his hand. How soft would it be? Would it finally give him peace?”
    He was out of the room. The door slammed shut.
    They were outside—in a garden. It must have been beautiful at one point. Everything was dead. Pale white plants surrounded them. The bushes and trees were naked. The dry trunks contorted into grotesque shapes. Some trees crawled across the ground as though chasing something even in death. The branches were thin arms with blades for fingers.
    The sky was impossibly black. It bore down on them. Cyl felt like he was still in a cage. The sky—it wasn’t vast. It wasn’t filled with possibilities. It was empty. Lonely. It wanted everything under it to feel as it felt.
    Sitting between the white trees were old thick stones with faces on them. No matter which direction the stones sat, the eyes were on them. The mouth of theses faces stretched so far the jaw had to have been broken. The faces were made of stone. Why did they still look real, as if something ripped the faces of demons and chiseled them on rock? The faces could see the world. See people walk by but never be a part of them.
    “Damn,” Uryl spat. “I was hoping we had more time. Ryse get to work.” He created the blade. “Carve a symbol here, quickly. I need the house to scream.”
    Ryse sliced opened Cyl’s palm. She drew in the hard dirt.
    Uryl, Nuall and Ozais stood around them.
    “Ozais?” Nuall said. “The demons here are only prisoners. They can’t be controlled?”
    Ozais chuckled. “Why would you think that?”
    “You aren’t being controlled,” she snapped.
    “The wardens don’t find me useful.”
    “Can they control you?” Uryl asked.
    Good question. Why hadn’t they thought of that sooner?
    “Don’t know. Doesn’t matter. You are stronger than I am. I can’t get through your shields and you haven’t been forthcoming about your powers. I have no useful information to give it.”
    Cyl doubted that.
    The garden roared. The ground rumbled.
    “Still below us,” Uryl said.
    Ryse finished the symbol. She closed his wound. His entire hand was one throbbing sore.
    He had to deal with it.
    “Hold hands,” Uryl ordered.
    The wind picked up. The trees creaked. The mouths of the stone faces closed. Their eyes stretched open. Thin strings dropped from a tree limb. Slowly, they braided together forming a thick rope. The braiding stopped. A head made of darkness appeared at the end. The body followed. White eyes stared at them from the black bodies. Dozens of shadow figures hung from the trees. Their white eyes glowed. They raised their arms and dug their fingers in the rope around their necks.
    Nuall and Ryse grabbed his hand.
    “I need your help, Nuall,” Uryl said. “I’ve never traveled with more than one person.”
    Nuall nodded.
    Cyl didn’t like this.
    The ground swallowed them. He couldn’t see or hear anything. Darkness and dead silence was his world. All he had was the warm connection from Ryse and Nuall’s hand to let him know he wasn’t alone.
    They slammed into a hard surface. It knocked the air out of his lungs. He added an ache in his muscles to the one living in his hand.
    The world returned.
    He forced his weak arms under him and pushed himself off the floor. They had landed on carpet. It smelled like it hadn’t been cleaned in centuries.
    He could smell.
    A deep voice groaned beside him.
    Ozais pushed himself into a sitting position.
    “What happened?” Ozais