Read Online The Demon Hunter by Kevin Emerson - Free Book Online

there was the standard swine variety or the more expensive free-range organic. There was even blood from pigs whose diet included poison dart frogs, whose toxins were great for teeth whiteness and bacterial protection. This was the variety Phlox preferred.
    â€œAnything you’re in the mood for?” she asked.
    â€œPanda maybe,” Oliver replied.
    Phlox selected a few bags, then ran her hand under the light again. The bags slid out of sight, and the sport drinks returned to their usual position.
    She moved to the refrigerator case of beer and wine. A similar switch made the shelves morph, only this time the bags that slid forward were marked with silver writing. These were filled with human blood. Again, there were varieties that affected price: age of the victim, lifestyle, or specialty additives like cayenne, cocoa, or various venoms.
    â€œOliver, can you get some tapeworms?” Phlox asked. She continued shopping, topping off her basket with fine white flour, unrefined sugar, pure maple syrup, and a few tarantulas in suspension, which were hidden in the ice cream freezer.
    â€œSure.” Oliver drifted away, pausing as he passed the magazine racks. A vampire man was carefully pulling a copy of Bloodlust from its hidden location behind Newsweek . Oliver knelt and reached for a copy of Teen Fang! On the cover was Tryshia Twilight, flashing her fangs like she was the underworld’s greatest thing. Oliver didn’t care much for her, or any of the teen stars, but sometimes the articles about bands were good.
    He moved to the aisle of candy snacks, most of them made of disgusting artificial sweeteners and colors—humans really were so deprived—and reached back through the rack of Twizzlers packages. He selected the last package, which was actually full of gummified tapeworms. Again, you had to know where to look on the label. He was counting and rearranging the bags when he felt a presence nearby, like someone was watching him. And he smelled a familiar scent of lilacs …
    â€œThose have all the protein that a growing boy needs.”
    Oliver looked up across the tops of pretzel bags to find large, pale lavender eyes peering at him beneath bright magenta hair.
    Lythia LeRoux.
    Oliver tried to keep the surprise off his face.
    â€œOh,” Lythia murmured, leaning forward with a hand beside her mouth as if she were talking about someone else. “He’s shocked to see me.”
    Oliver thought he should reply— Say something, anything! —but as seemed to happen around Lythia, he couldn’t decide what he should say and so ended up standing there like he was broken.
    â€œPoor Oliver,” Lythia said, sucking air through her teeth. “Still having trouble with comebacks, I see.”
    She plucked a can of tuna from the shelf and added it to the shopping basket that hung from her elbow. Oliver noticed human blood and a bag of frozen Gila monster heads in the basket, but also strange objects: a steak, two more cans of tuna, a box of baking soda, and a bundle of fresh datura root.
    â€œNo. I—” Part of Oliver’s problem was that he was trying to think past what Lythia was saying and figure out what she might really be up to. She had a habit of saying one thing and being up to something else, like at the roulette table in Tartarus, when she’d talked with Oliver and Dean as if they were complete strangers, even though the whole time she’d been Dean’s master.
    Oliver also had trouble around Lythia because she had an intense presence: Though she looked about Oliver’s age, she had a demon. Not only that, he’d seen her perform complicated adult vampire skills such as Evanescence, which even most vampires Bane’s age couldn’t do. It was like she was some kind of prodigy. Combine that with her piercing lavender eyes and the way she talked to him like she always knew something he didn’t, and all Oliver could manage to do was