Ruby Shadows Read Online Free Page A

I
screamed, kicking out at the thing. Which didn’t help a damn bit—it
just tightened its hold on me and pulled harder. Clearly it had
just been toying with me before but now playtime was over and I was
about to be lunch. Or a midnight snack—whichever.
    Your mind goes through weird thoughts at a time like this and
all mine came up with was this: I can’t go now, not like this. I can’t…I can’t. I
don’t want to die a virgin!
    The minute the
thought popped into my head I knew exactly what I had to do—who I
had to call. I had sworn never to see him again but this was
definitely an extenuating circumstance. I just hoped he wasn’t too
pissed at me to answer.
    “ Laish!” I gasped aloud, still kicking at the ever tightening
tongue-tacle. “Laish, please—I know I said to leave me alone but
please—I’m in trouble. Please, hellllll…”
    The last word
was a scream because the thing below me gave one last mighty yank
on my ankle and I lost my tenuous grip on the lip of the hole. With
a shriek, I went plummeting down into the hole, heading straight
into its gaping mouth.

Chapter Three
    Laish

    I stared in
irritation out of the window of the mansion I kept as a place to
stay in the Mortal Realm. It was a vast stone structure located on
Siesta Key, just outside of Sarasota, Florida. There was a view of
my private beach with its pristine white sands. They were some of
the most beautiful this realm had to offer and I ought to know—I’d
been sitting here for hours, staring at them. The sunset had been
particularly breathtaking that evening—all purples and oranges and
golds with a fair bit of fiery red at the end which reminded me of
my other, more permanent residence.
    Which is where I ought to be now, I thought, drumming my fingers on the
windowsill. I
should sever all ties from this place and attend to other
business. And yet,
here I still was.
    The question was why? The little witch had banished me from her presence
over a month ago—so why was I still here?
    I stood and
began to pace, my fine leather shoes whispering quietly over the
rare oriental carpet. It was over five hundred years old and the
humans thought it quite an antique. To someone like me, a being
older than time itself, the idea was laughable.
    Almost as
laughable as the idea that a little witch with creamy brown skin
and vivid green eyes could have caught my interest and held it.
Held it so strongly that though she refused all my advances and
sent me away, I still wasn’t able to go.
    I
should leave. I have business to attend to beyond the Great
Barrier. But still
I stayed.
    I sighed and
thought back to the first time I’d laid eyes on
Gwendolyn.
    It
had been a slow day in Hell. The legions under my command were at rest and Lucifer,
the ruler of the Infernal Realm, was away. In short, there was
nothing to do. So when an imp had come scampering up to inform me
that a call was coming over from the other side beseeching demonic
help, I was just bored enough to answer it myself rather than
delegating it to an underling.
    I don’t know
what I was expecting to see. It had been years—no, centuries—since
I’d bothered to come over to the Mortal Realm. The humans were
uncouth savages, hardly worth bothering with, though Lucifer and
his ilk were constantly after their souls.
    I prefer my
own residence in the relatively quiet corner of Hell the ancient
Greeks had termed Hades. There I was able to command my legions and
tend to business with a minimum of interruption and
bother.
    The last time I had been to Earth it had been to attend to the tiresome
business of the Salem Witch Trials which were badly managed by a
lesser demon. Mainly I remembered frantic, hysterical humans
dressed in dull homespun clothes shouting and accusing each other.
Just thinking about it made me tired.
    Everything about the Mortal Realm made me tired—until I saw
Gwendolyn.
    The sight of
the little witch earnestly working her spell had captured me at
once. Her creamy