The Demon Road Trilogy: The Complete Collection: Demon Road; Desolation; American Monsters

“Well then, I had better be ready for him, hadn’t I?” said Shanks. “You are both going to accompany me into the school, if you please. Oh, and young lady, if you would do me the courtesy of changing from this beautiful red-skinned creature back to the dull little girl you really are, that would be simply marvellous.”

She didn’t want to. What she wanted to do was take her chances and dive at him. Maybe he’d shoot her, maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he’d miss. But she wouldn’t miss. She’d carve his face up. Rip out his eyes. Tear his throat out with her teeth.

The gun in his hand didn’t waver. Amber swallowed her anger, and reverted to normal.

“There,” said Shanks. “Isn’t that better?”

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THE ALARM WOULDN’T STOP WAILING. It howled through the high school’s wide corridors, an unrelenting assault on Amber’s eardrums, and escaped through the open door that led out into the night.

Glen sat with one hand cuffed to the radiator. Amber herself was on her knees, both hands cuffed behind her back. She watched as Shanks opened the glass cabinet, and trailed a long finger over the contours of the dollhouse within, the last surviving dollhouse that contained so many of his victims.

He looked back at her, and smiled.

“This is my life’s work,” he said, his voice barely audible over the alarm. “This is everything that has ever given my existence meaning. What is your meaning, Amber? What is your purpose?”

Amber didn’t say anything.

“Do you even know?” Shanks continued. “Do you have any idea? You probably don’t. Very few do. I didn’t – not when I was alive. I needed to die before I could see why I needed to live. The Shining Demon helped me. He granted me my new life, and he gave me the key that made everything so much easier. Do you have it, by the way? Did you bring it with you?”

“He wants you to help me,” Amber said.

“Sorry? What was that?”

“The Shining Demon,” she said, louder this time. “He wants you to help me.”

Shanks laughed. “I don’t think so, Amber. He plays games, as is his right as a Duke of Hell, but that is not a game he is interested in playing. He would rather we scurry about on our own, fumbling blindly in the dark. We arouse his curiosity only rarely, I’m afraid.”

She shook her head. “I’m special. He said it himself. If you hurt me, if you harm me or my friends, he’ll be—”

He hit her. It was a slap, an open palm, but it struck so fast and so suddenly that it rocked her, sent the world tilting and the floor rushing up to crack against her skull.

She lay on her side, the alarm in her head, tasting blood. Then she felt Shanks’s hands on her as he pulled her back to kneeling position.

“My apologies,” he said. “I don’t like it when people lie to me. I shouldn’t have lost my temper. That was rude. But try not to lie again, all right? It brings out my ugly side.”

“Every side is your ugly side,” Glen said.

“Do you really think it wise to taunt the man with the gun?”

“You think I’m scared of you?”

“Yes,” answered Shanks. “You said as much, not fifteen minutes ago.”

“That was then,” Glen said. “This is now. You know what I think? I think you’re the coward. You’re a big man with the gun and the knife, but take those away, and you’re a pathetic little loser.”

Shanks said, in a bored voice that the alarm nearly drowned out, “You do realise I don’t need you, yes? All I need is Amber here. You are quite disposable.”

Glen laughed. “Of course I’m disposable. I’ve got four days to live. I’m practically dead already. Four days or right now – what difference does it make? Shoot me, or take these cuffs off and we’ll settle this like men.”

Amber watched them, waiting for her moment.

“I think I’ll shoot you,” said Shanks. “It’ll be funnier.” He raised the gun.

There.

A brief wave of pain washed over Amber as she shifted into her demonic form, and she charged into him, her shoulder catching him in the middle of the back and one of her horns scraping his neck. Shanks went down and she fell on top of him. She tried to snap the handcuffs that bound her wrists behind her – she felt the links strain – but her demon strength wasn’t up to the task. Instead, she knelt on his hand and he let go of the gun, and she twisted and fell back, managing to kick the weapon. It skittered across the polished floor towards Glen. He reached for it with his free hand, but it stopped just short of his splayed fingers.

Shanks pushed her off. She got to her knees while he leaped to his feet. He darted for the gun and she threw herself at his legs. He fell sideways, smashing through the glass of the cabinet, narrowly avoiding the dollhouse inside.

Roaring, he clambered out, glass covering him in a thousand crystals. He grabbed Amber by the throat and threw her backwards, then reached down for the gun. In his fury, his clumsy attempt to snatch it up merely pushed it a few inches further away. Glen closed his hand around it, brought it up and fired three times, point-blank, into Shanks’s chest.

The alarm cut off.

Shanks straightened up and kept going, toppling over backwards. He landed in a bed of glass and didn’t move.

Amber stood up. Glen stared at the gun in his hand. The air carried a whine in the sudden silence.

“You okay?” Glen asked, his voice dull.

She nodded. “You did it.”

“I did,” said Glen. “I killed—”

Shanks sat up so suddenly it actually made Amber cry out in surprise. Glen tried to get another shot off, but Shanks tore the gun from his grip and pressed the barrel into his jaw.

Amber froze.

“You can’t kill what’s already dead,” said Shanks. “Haven’t you ever heard that?”

“I’ve always wanted to test that theory,” said Milo from the door.

Shanks leaped up, grabbed Amber and put the gun to her temple. She felt her scales harden, but she doubted they’d be able to stop a bullet.

Milo walked slowly into the school, holding his gun in both hands, his head cocked slightly, aiming down the sights.

“Take one more step and I’ll shoot,” said Shanks. “Amber won’t look so beautiful with half her face missing, now will she?”

Milo didn’t lower the gun and didn’t stop moving forward. “We’re not letting you leave.”

Shanks laughed. “Oh, Milo, I doubt that is your decision to make.”

“You and me aren’t on a first-name basis, Shanks. Let her go and I won’t blow your head off. You remember what that feels like, don’t you?”

Shanks’s grip tightened. “I do indeed. But you may have noticed the last person to do that is now lying on the sidewalk outside with his life leaking away along with all that blood.”

Milo gave a little smile. “I noticed, all right.”