The Stone Demon - By Karen Mahoney Page 0,3

enough to travel, but now that he was back in London, his recovery had been faster than ever. Once Donna knew he was out of the woods (so to speak), her relief had been overwhelming. Robert had helped her when they’d faced down the demon shadows, after all.

Lying on her bed, Donna wanted to cry, but she found herself unable to squeeze out a single drop of emotion. She was so frustrated it made her jaw ache, and she realized that she’d been grinding her teeth.

This was pathetic. She had to do something.

Deciding to take some sort of action calmed her down, at least enough for her to sit up and swing her feet off the bed. She sat down at her computer and jiggled the mouse, waiting for the screensaver to clear.

If she was responsible for letting all the horrors of mankind out of Pandora’s Box, well then … maybe she could find a way to put them back where they belonged—deep beneath the earth, in their Underworld home. Maybe there was a magical method of locking Demian up again. The alchemists had said it was impossible, now that he was free to roam once more, and that it had taken too much power when they’d done it two hundred years ago. But they didn’t know everything. And they didn’t have Donna’s ability to open doors to other realms, or teleport to anywhere in the world.

Of course, she needed to be able to control her new-found powers to be able to use them effectively. And she was learning how, thanks to guidance from Maker back home and intense “training” sessions with Robert. As a new alchemical initiate, Donna had hoped to be casting spells by now or at the very least mixing a few potions, but she’d spent much of her time in London either reading dusty old books with Miranda or locked in martial arts combat with Robert—which involved sweating a lot and falling over at the end of lessons because she was so exhausted. Robert seemed to be on a Mr. Miyagi–style mission to prove that plain old self-defense techniques were somehow going to help her with the wacked-out “Iron Witch” abilities that everybody seemed so afraid of.

Well then, maybe she could learn more about the demons. There were books on demonology in Miranda’s library, although she’d had been forbidden access to the darkest texts.

Donna smiled to herself, remembering the way Miranda had kept her out of the conference earlier. Fine. Let them keep her out of the loop. It seemed they still didn’t trust her, which wasn’t really surprising, considering what she’d done. And of course she’d grown up in the Order of the Dragon, which had been compromised, in the other Orders’ eyes, by Simon Gaunt’s machinations.

So, perhaps if she could get some insight into the nature of demons, she might be able to figure out a way to stop Demian and his hordes. She needed to look for weaknesses … or maybe even something that she could use to negotiate with the demons. It wasn’t like she didn’t have experience making deals with otherworldly creatures, after all.

And if she couldn’t put Demian back in his box, maybe she could figure out a way to kill him.

Donna wanted to be surprised by how easily she was even contemplating such extreme possibilities. She should at least be shocked at herself for wanting to end another being’s life. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t manage to feel guilty. Not when it came to protecting the people she loved. And the Demon King wouldn’t blink when it came to destroying human cities filled with millions of people. Among those people were Rachel Underwood, Navin Sharma, and Alexander Grayson—three lives she would do almost anything to protect.

She focused again on the computer screen in front of her. Another news update was the first thing she saw when she refreshed the BBC page. The fire was finally under control, but it was far too late to save the main buildings of the British Museum. Nobody could understand how the fire had spread so quickly and so totally. There were wild speculations about this in various comment threads and on Twitter, including talk of an “apocalypse,” but mostly people seemed pretty sure it was a terrorist attack. Which, Donna thought, it is. Only carried out by a vengeful Demon King rather than religious fundamentalists or political extremists.

According to the reports, there had definitely been some kind of explosion,