Read Online The Infernals by John Connolly - Free Book Online

those teeth would have made short work of any real cats that made the mistake of falling asleep within snapping distance, but it was a start, just like the curtains, and the doormat that read “Please Wipe Your Cloven Hooves!,” and the jar of potpourri made from the husks of poisonous beetles and scented with stagnant water.
    What Mrs. Abernathy had discovered, even if she refused to admit it to herself, was that if you go to a place intent upon changing it, then sometimes that place may end up changing you instead. She had returned to Hell, but she had brought back a little of the human world with her, and now she was being altered in ways she did not fully understand.
    Mind you, she still hated Samuel Johnson, and his dog. Just because she wanted to make her lair a bit prettier, and maybe spent a few minutes longer than before on making sure her hair was just right before she went out, didn’t mean that she wouldn’t tear them both limb from limb at the first opportunity. Thus it was that she watched them through the fragment of glass as they trudged from the house, the boy’s head low, the dog intent upon his master. Samuel looked unhappy, she thought. That was good. She liked it when he was unhappy. She willed him to look up, to catch a quick sight of her in one of the windows as he was passing. It always gave her pleasure to see him reactwith fear when she appeared, even if she couldn’t do him any real harm, not yet, but he seemed intent upon not noticing her.
    She stretched out a pale hand and stared at her fingers. The nails were red, and slightly chipped. She would have to paint them again, once she managed to get a decent supply of suitable blood.
    From above her head came the sound of wings flapping. The chamber narrowed into a steeplelike structure at its center that protruded high above the surrounding plains. At its peak was an opening that now darkened as a figure entered and began to descend. Her Watcher had returned.
    When Mrs. Abernathy had fallen out of favor with the Great Malevolence, many of those demons who had previously been loyal to her had sought new masters. After all, if someone had failed the Great Malevolence so dreadfully that he had cut her off entirely, refusing even to stare upon her face, it could only be a matter of time before he decided that ignoring her was insufficient punishment, and something more imaginative might be called for. In that case, he might decide that he wanted to stare upon her face again after all, but only if the face had been removed first and nailed to a wall, with the other parts of her body arranged alongside it in an interesting if unconventional manner. When that happened, as most of the cleverer demons seemed to think was increasingly probable, then any of those who had remained close to her were likely to end up in a similar position, albeit slightly lower down the wall.
    In a sense, demons were the embodiment of the law of conservation of matter, which states that matter cannot be createdor destroyed, but only transformed from one state to another. 18 When applied to demons, this meant that they could not die, but could still be transformed into various alternative painful versions of existence, and their torments could be made to last an eternity. Nobody wants to spend eternity with his face pinned to a wall and his severed legs crossed underneath his chin, like some ghastly coat of arms, so the general wisdom in Hell was that it was unwise to be involved with Mrs. Abernathy, because Mrs. Abernathy was doomed and would, in turn, doom all those around her.
    But there were creatures that had remained loyal to her: some because they were too stupid to know better, some because theyhoped that Mrs. Abernathy might discover a way to improve her situation, and some because they were as cruel and vicious and intelligent as she was, and couldn’t find a better employer, even in Hell. The Watcher appeared to be one of those. It was strong, and tireless, and