Demon Heart (The Darkworld Series Book 3) Read Free Page B

her look like a child, but she was probably around the same age as me. Her dark hair spilled from a bun, and her gown, similar to the one in the painting, was crumpled and stained, as though she’d fallen in the mud outside.
    “Stay… out.”
    She looked right through me, and I gasped. They shone violet. A demon’s eyes.
    She doubled over, coughing. I tried to call to her to get out of the burning room, but it was like something had stapled my mouth shut.
Dreaming. I’m dreaming.
    “Stay… out!”
    Her eyes flashed again, turning grey-black, ordinary, human. I recognised it. She was fighting possession with everything she had.
    “Is this what you want?”
    The demon used her mouth to speak, but didn’t need to; its voice sounded in my mind, sliding through me like an ice-cold knife.
    “I’ll burn you,” she said, in a tremulous voice. “I’ll burn with you.”
    “Then burn.”
    A single tear fell from the girl’s eye before the demon’s replaced it again, and with a cry, she leapt across the room, towards the flames.
    Her skin ignited like paper, and her scream ripped through me. Darkness crowded my vision, and I awoke.
    “Are your dreams always this violent?”
    Crap.
I wriggled around, disorientated. I still couldn’t see. For a second I wondered why I lay on the floor, and then I remembered that Cara had commandeered my bed for the night, leaving me to sleep on the camp bed. Somehow I’d ended up underneath it, tangled in my covers―which explained why I couldn’t see anything but darkness. I hoped I hadn’t been shouting in my sleep.
    “Only when I’m sleeping on the floor.”
    I wiped away the tears as I clambered awkwardly back onto the camp bed. It attempted to tip me off again.
    “You sleep okay?” I asked her, groaning as my back protested against lying back on the collapsible bed.
    “Not great. You need to turn down your heater. It’s boiling in here.”
    So it was. No wonder I’d been dreaming about fire.
    I still felt thoroughly unsettled. Generally, when my dreams were that vivid, it was because of a demon. The fortune-teller had explained that demons had license to enter the dreams of anyone with a close connection to the Darkworld. Lucky me. They’d enjoyed giving me sleep paralysis, dreaming of being frozen, then awakening to find I’d unconsciously used magic in my sleep and couldn’t move a muscle. But fire? Not exactly a demon’s friend. I’d figure this one out later.
    Cara stretched, groaning like she’d been the one sleeping on a camp bed. “What’s the plan for today?”
    “Want to walk to Blackstone?”
    “Sure. I wanna take a look at the market.”
    Cara had arrived the night before, straight from Edinburgh. We’d got takeout from Bargain Burgers and watched movies until the early hours.
    “Sarah’s working this morning,” I said. “And Alex is out at one of her clubs. Archery, I think.”
    “You aren’t a member?”
    “God, no. I’d take my own eye out.”
    Cara laughed. “Fair point.”
    Mandeep had gone out, too, so Cara and I left the flat alone. We ran into Pete on the way out, on his way back from last night’s fifteen-hour bar crawl and looking decidedly worse for wear.
    “Are you new?” he asked Cara blearily. “You have the most beautiful walk.”
    “You look like shit,” Cara said, raising her eyebrows as he hugged the kitchen door.
    “Yeah,” I said. “We’d better get out before he vomits on one of us.”
    We hurried outside. Pete had most likely spent the night in pursuit of Danielle, the girl from the flat upstairs, on whom he’d nurtured a hopeless crush for the past six months.
    Flakes of snow drifted around us as we began the walk through the woods towards Blackstone village. The strong gale bent the spindly trees backwards, and the rain from the day before turned the leafy path to mush.
    “I should have brought hiking boots,” Cara muttered.
    I grinned at her. “Y’know, we could have signed up to this weekend’s hike