Lord Loss
Copyright © 2005 by Darren Shan
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group USA
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at
www.lb-teens.com
First eBook Edition: May 2006
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN: 978-0-316-04178-2
Contents
SPIRAL TO THE HEART OF NOWHERE
I was born in London in 1972 and moved to Ireland when I was six years old, where I've lived ever since. I always wanted to be a writer—I've loved telling stories since I was a child. I started out writing books for adults and managed to get a couple published. One day, on a whim, I decided to try a book for young readers. The result was
Cirque Du Freak
. Much to my surprise, it took off, and I became a
de facto
children's author! Since then I've used my ill-gotten gains to buy lots of comic-strip art and travel the world. When I'm not working or traveling, I like watching movies. And I've even been known to read the odd book or two.
THE AUTHOR'S WEB SITE IS
Readers are howling the praises of Darren Shan's DEMONATA series:
“Readers who devour Shan's
Cirque Du Freak
books will be snapping like werewolves themselves to get this book.”
—
VOYA
“Guaranteed to gross out anyone.”
—
School Library Journal
“The pace is non-stop, keeping the reader turning pages at a breathtaking rate.”
—
Kirkus
“Older fans of Shan's gory, gripping Cirque Du Freak series will welcome … the Demonata series, which features the same horrific spin, dark humor, and graphic detail.”
—
Booklist
“Gross as well as engrossing. … Horror fans will eat it up.”
—
KLIATT
Also in
THE DEMONATA
series:
Demon Thief
(Book 2)
Slawter
(Book 3)
Bec
(Book 4)
Blood Beast
(Book 5)
For:
Bas — my demon lover
OBEs (Order of the Bloody Entrails) to:
Caroline “pie chart” Paul
D.O.M.I.N.I.C. Kingston
Nicola “schumacher” Blacoe
Editorial Evilness:
Stellasaurus Paskins
Agents of Chaos:
the Christopher Little crew
LORD LOSS
Lord Loss sows all the sorrows of the world
Lord Loss seeds the grief-starched trees
In the center of the web, lowly Lord Loss bows his head
Mangled hands, naked eyes
Fanged snakes his soul line
Curled inside like textured sin
Bloody, curdled sheets for skin
In the center of the web, vile Lord Loss torments the dead
Over strands of red, Lord Loss crawls
Dispensing pain, despising all
Shuns friends, nurtures foes
Ravages hope, breeds woe
Drinks moons, devours suns
Twirls his thumbs till the reaper comes
In the center of the web, lush Lord Loss is all that's left
RAT GUTS
D
OUBLE
history on a Wednesday afternoon — total nightmare! A few minutes ago, I would have said I couldn't imagine anything worse. But when there's a knock at the door, and it opens, and I spot my Mom outside, I realize — life can always get worse.
When a parent turns up at school, unexpected, it means one of two things. Either somebody close to you has been seriously injured or has died, or you're in trouble.
My immediate reaction: Please don't let anybody be dead! I think of Dad, Gret, uncles, aunts, cousins. It could be any of them. Alive and kicking this morning. Now stiff and cold, tongue sticking out, a slab of dead meat just waiting to be buried. I remember Grandma's funeral. The open coffin. Her shining flesh, having to kiss her forehead, the pain, the tears. Please don't let anyone be dead! Please. Please. Please. Ple —
Then I see Mom's face, white with rage, and I know she's here to punish, not comfort.
I groan, roll my eyes, and mutter under my breath, “Bring on the corpses!”
The principal's office. Me, Mom, and Mr. Donnellan. Mom's ranting and raving about cigarettes. I've been seen smoking behind the bike shed (the oldest cliche in the book). She wants to know if the head's aware of this, of what the pupils in his school are getting up to.
I feel a bit sorry for Mr. Donnellan. He has to sit there, looking like a schoolboy himself, shuffling his feet and saying he didn't know this was going on and he'll launch an investigation and put a quick end to it. Liar! Of course he knew. Every school has a smoking area. That's life. Teachers don't approve, but they turn a blind eye most of the time. Certain kids smoke — fact. Safer to have them smoking at school than sneaking off the grounds during breaks and at lunch.
Mom knows that too. She must! She was young once, like she's always reminding me. Kids were no different in Mom's time. If she stopped for a minute and thought back, she'd see what an embarrassment she's being. I wouldn't mind her harassing me at home, but you don't march into school and start laying down the law in the principal's office. She's out of order — big time.
But it's not like I can tell her, is it? I can't pipe up with, “Hey! Mother! You're disgracing us both, so shut yer trap!”
I smirk at the thought, and of course that's when Mom pauses for the briefest of moments and catches me. “What are you grinning at?” she roars, and then she's off again — I'm smoking myself into an early grave, the school's responsible, what sort of a freak show is Mr. Donnellan running, la-di-la-di-la-di-bloody-la!
BAW
ring
.
Her rant at school's nothing compared to the one I get at home. Screaming at the top of her lungs, blue bloody murder. She's going to send me off to boarding school — no, military school! See how I like that, having to get up at dawn each morning and do a hundred push-ups before breakfast. How does
that
sound?
“Is breakfast bacon and eggs or some cereally, yogurty crap?” is my response, and I know the second it's out of my mouth that it's the wrong thing to say. This isn't the time for the famed Grubbs Grady brand of cutting-edge humor.
Cue the enraged Mom fireworks. Who do I think I am? Do I
know
how much they spend on me? What if I get kicked out of school? Then the clincher, the one Moms all over the world love pulling out of the hat — “Just wait till your father gets home!”
Dad's not as freaked out as Mom, but he's not happy. He tells me how disappointed he is. They've warned me so many times about the dangers of smoking, how it destroys people's lungs and gives them cancer.
“Smoking's dumb,” he says. We're in the kitchen (I haven't been out of it since Mom dragged me home from school early, except to go to the toilet). “It's disgusting, antisocial, and lethal. Why do it, Grubbs? I thought you had more sense.”
I shrug wordlessly. What's there to say? They're being unfair.
Of course
smoking's dumb.
Of course
it gives you cancer.
Of course
I shouldn't be doing it. But my friends smoke. It's cool. You get to hang out with cool people at lunch and talk about cool things. But only if you smoke. You can't be
in
if you're
out
. And they know that. Yet here they stand, acting all Gestapo, asking me to account for my actions.
“How long has he been smoking? That's what I want to know!” Mom's started referring to me in the third person since Dad arrived. I'm beneath direct mention.
“Yes,” Dad says. “How long, Grubbs?”
“I dunno.”
“Weeks? Months? Longer?”
“A few months maybe. But only a couple a day.”
“If he says a couple, he means at least five or six,” Mom snorts.
“No, I don't!” I shout. “I mean a couple!”
“Don't raise your voice to me!” Mom roars back.
“Easy,” Dad begins, but Mom goes on as if he isn't there.
“Do you think it's clever? Filling your lungs with rubbish, killing yourself? We didn't bring you up to watch you give yourself cancer! We don't need this, certainly not at this time, not when —”
“Enough!” Dad shouts, and we both jump. Dad almost never shouts. He usually gets very quiet when he's angry. Now his face is red and he's glaring — but at both of us, not just me.
Mom coughs, as if she's ashamed of herself. She sits, brushes her hair back off her face, and looks at me with wounded eyes. I hate when she pulls a face like this. It's impossible to look at her straight or argue.
“I want you to stop, Grubbs,” Dad says, back in control now. “We're not going to punish you —” Mom starts to object, but Dad silences her with a curt wave of his hand “— but I want your word that you'll stop. I know it won't be easy. I know your friends will give you a hard time. But this is important. Some things matter more than looking cool. Will you promise, Grubbs?” He pauses. “Of course, that's if you're
able
to quit …”
“Of course I'm able,” I mutter. “I'm not addicted or anything.”
“Then will you? For
your
sake — not ours?”
I shrug, trying to act like it's no big thing, like I was planning to stop anyway. “Sure, if you're going to make that much of a fuss about it.” I yawn.
Dad smiles. Mom smiles. I smile.
Then Gret walks in the back door and she's smiling too — but it's an evil, big-sister-superior smile. “Have we sorted all our little problems out yet?” she asks, voice high and fake-innocent.
And I know instantly — Gret told on me to Mom. She found out that I was smoking and she told. The pig!
As she swishes past, beaming like an angel, I burn fiery holes in the back of her head with my eyes, and a single word echoes through my head like the sound of ungodly thunder …
Revenge!
I love garbage dumps. You can find all sorts of disgusting stuff there. The perfect place to go browsing if you want to get even with your annoying traitor of a sister. I climb over mounds of garbage and root through black bags and soggy cardboard boxes. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to use, or in what fashion, so I wait for inspiration to strike. Then, in a small plastic bag, I find six dead rats, necks broken, just starting to rot.
Excellent
.
Look out, Gret — here I come!
Eating breakfast at the kitchen table. Radio turned down low. Listening to the noises upstairs. Trying not to chuckle. Waiting for the outburst.
Gret's in her shower. She showers at least twice a day, before she goes to school and when she gets back. Sometimes she has one before going to bed too. I don't know why anybody would bother to keep themselves so clean. I figure it's a form of madness.
Because she's so obsessed with showering, Mom and Dad gave her the
en suite
bedroom. They figured I wouldn't mind. And I don't. In fact, it's perfect. I wouldn't have been able to pull my trick if Gret didn't have her own shower, with its very own towel rack.
The shower goes off. Splatters, then drips, then silence. I tense with excitement. I know Gret's routines inside out. She always pulls her towel down off its rack
after
she's showered, not before. I can't hear her footsteps, but I imagine her taking the three or four steps to the towel rack. Reaching up. Pulling it down. Aaaaaaaaannnddd …
On cue — screams galore. A shocked single scream to start. Then a volley of them, one running into another. I push my bowl of soggy cornflakes aside and prepare myself for the biggest laugh of the year.
Mom and Dad are by the sink, discussing the day ahead. They go stiff when they hear the screams, then dash towards the stairs, which I can see from where I'm sitting.
Gret appears before they reach the stairs. Crashes out of her room, screaming, slapping bloody shreds from her arms, tearing them from her hair. She's covered in red. Towel clutched with one hand over her front — even terrified out of her wits, there's no way she's going to come down naked!