Demon (GAIA) Read Online Free Page B

Even after this long she hated to look at it.
    It was a dedicated book, in that all the characters were named and could not be changed by the purchaser. Most of Conal’s books had provision to punch in one’s own name for the hero.
    The characters were familiar. There were Cirocco Jones, and Gene, and Bill, and Calvin, and the Polo Sisters, and Hornpipe the Younger, and Meistersinger.
    And, of course, someone else.
    Cirocco closed the book and swallowed to get rid of the heat at the back of her throat. Then she sprawled in the hammock and started to go through it.
    “Are you really going to read that thing?” Hornpipe asked.
    “You can’t read it. There are no words.” Cirocco had never actually seen a book like “The Wizard of Gaea,” but she understood the principle. The colors glowed, or strobed, or glistened and felt wet to the touch. Buried in the ink were microscopic balloonchips. When you touched a panel the characters in it delivered their lines. Sound effects had replaced the old printed tzings, ker-pows, braka-braka’s and screeches.
    The dialogue was even worse than Conal’s in
La Gata
, so she simply looked at the pictures. The story was easy enough to follow.
    It was even accurate, in its broad outlines.
    She saw her ship approaching Saturn. There was the discovery of Gaea, a thirteen-hundred-kilometer black wheel in orbit. Her ship was destroyed, and all the crew emerged inside after a period of weird dreams. They took a ride on a blimp, built a boat and sailed down the river Ophion, met the Titanides. Cirocco was mysteriously able to sing the Titanide language. The group got embroiled in the war with the Angels.
    The characters screwed a lot more than she remembered. There were very steamy scenes between Cirocco and Gaby Plauget, and more between Cirocco and Gene Springfield. The last was an utter fabrication, and the first was out of sequence.
    Everyone was armed to the teeth. They carried more weapons than a battalion of mercenaries. All the men bulged with muscles, worse than Conal Ray, and all the women had tits the size of watermelons that kept bursting free of the skimpy leather hammocks supporting them. They encountered monsters Cirocco had never heard of, and left behind nothing but bloody gobbets of flesh.
    Then it got interesting.
    She saw Gaby, Gene, and herself climbing one of the huge cables that led to the hub of Gaea, six hundred kilometers above. The three of them made camp, and the shenanigans started. It appeared to be a love triangle, with Cirocco involved with both her companions. She and Gaby plotted by the campfire, exchanging words of undying love, things like “Oh, God, Gaby, I love your hands on my hot, wet pussy.”
    The next morning—though Cirocco remembered the trip as having taken a lot longer than that—at their audience with the great Goddess Gaea, Gene was offered the position of Wizard. He lowered his head humbly to accept, and Cirocco grabbed him by the hair, pulled his head back, and slit his throat from ear to ear. Blood spilled down the page, and she kicked his head contemptuously out of the way. Gaea—who was a lot more chickenshit than Cirocco remembered her—made Cirocco Wizard, with Gaby as her wicked assistant.
    There was a lot more. Cirocco sighed and closed the book.
    “You know what?” she said. “He may be telling the truth.”
    “I thought so.”
    “He could be just a fool.”
    “Well, you know the penalty for foolishness.”
    “Yeah.” She tossed the comic away, picked up one of the wooden pails, and threw two gallons of ice water into Conal’s face.
    ***
    He awoke gradually. He was being pushed and pinched, but it all seemed far away. He didn’t even know who he was.
    Finally he knew he was naked, bound beyond any hope of escape. His legs were spread wide and he couldn’t move them. He couldn’t see anything until Jones pried one of his blood-crusted eyes open. That hurt. There was a strap immobilizing his head, and that hurt, too. In