Dark Calling

First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2009

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB

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DARK CALLING. Copyright © Darren Shan 2009. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Darren Shan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

EBook Edition © February 2011 ISBN: 9780007435388

Version: 2014-10-29

For:

Bas — you love it when I call!

OBEs (Order of the Bloody Entrails) to:

Sam “the snapper” White Rachel Wasdyke — demon mistress of New Orleans Tom Woodhead – in a word – Sligstatic!!!

Hallowed hollerer:

Stella Paskins

Greek chorus:

the Christopher Little choir

Title Page

Copyright

Turn Around, Bright Eyes

A Word in your Ear

Lying Low

Death Watch

Come…

Tripping the Light Fantastic

The Man from Atlantis

Under the Sea

Taking to the Skies

Going Universal

The Crux

New Face, Old Story

Picking up the Pieces

World of the Dead

The Reaper Unleashed

NOAH MK II

A Warning

Welcome Home

Restless Souls

Shades of the Fallen

The Carriage Held…

Swan Song

Casualties of War

Other Books by Darren Shan

About the Publisher

→ A small, wiry, scorpion-shaped demon with a semi-human face drives its stinger into my right eye. My eyeball pops and gooey streaks flood down my cheek. In complete agony, I scream helplessly, but worse is to come. The demon spits into the empty socket. At first I think it’s just phlegm, but then dozens of tiny things start to wriggle in the space where my eye once swam. As I fill with confused horror, teeth or claws dig into the bone around my ruined eye. Whatever the mini-monsters are, they’re trying to tunnel through to my brain.

Beranabus roars, “Kernel!” and tries to grab me, but I wheel away from him as insanity and pain claim me. I whip around, flailing, shrieking, wild. The demon strikes again and punctures my left eye. Darkness consumes me. I’m in hell.

→ A lifetime later, someone picks me up from where I’ve fallen and drags me forward. It might be Beranabus or Grubbs, or maybe it’s Lord Loss. I don’t know or care. All I can focus on is the blind, hellish pain.

I pull away from the person or demon and run from the madness, but crash into something hard. I fall, moaning and screaming, but not crying — I no longer have eyes to weep with. The creatures which were spat into my eyes are munching on my brain now. I try to scrape them out with my fingers, but that just adds to the torment.

Then magic sears through my ruined sockets. The things in my head burn and drop away. The pain lessens. I sigh blissfully and slump unconscious.

→ I dream of the end of the world. Everything comes apart and everyone perishes. The universe warps and twists upon itself. In my dream, I float as a spirit through panels of light. I don’t know how I see the lights without eyes, but I do. There are others — Grubbs, Beranabus, a girl. I slot the patches of light together and we sail from one window to another. Peaceful. No pain. I’m at ease. In my element. Master of the lights.

Maybe this is heaven. Constructing and passing through an endless series of windows. An eternal, beautiful, cosmic light show. I’ll settle for that. Anything’s better than torture, blindness and micro-demons feasting on my brain.

→ Heaven doesn’t last. I wasn’t dreaming. The destruction was real. The lights fade and I find myself back on Earth. Blind as ever. Pain muted by magic, but hovering, waiting for its chance to kick back in. Turns out the creatures in my eyes were maggots.

No time for panic or self-pity. Beranabus drops a bombshell — we’ve travelled through time. I’m part of a magical weapon, the Kah-Gash. Grubbs is another part. By linking with the third component, the ghost of a dead girl, we took our doomed world into the past to avert demonic conquest. Now we have to fight again or it will all have been for nothing.

→ In a cave. Blindly battling Spine, the scorpion demon. I have the horrible beast pinned to a stalagmite. I’m pounding him with my fists, over and over. Without warning he melts away and I’m left standing in a puddle of sticky blood, frowning sightlessly.

I later learn that I’ve been cheated out of my revenge by a girl called Bec who’s returned to life after sixteen hundred years. She drives Lord Loss back to his own foul realm. Job done.

→ We return to the universe of the Demonata. Grubbs comes with us, but Bec stays behind. I’m surprised Beranabus leaves her. She’s part of the Kah-Gash. By uniting us, he could wield the power of the ancient weapon and destroy the Demonata. But he’s afraid. The Kah-Gash made an independent decision to reverse time. Beranabus isn’t sure whether that was a conscious act of mercy or a random reaction. He doesn’t want to press ahead, worried the weapon might side with the demons next time and wipe out mankind.