Bec

Bec
Darren Shan

Darren Shan’s Demonata series continues with more shocks, demons and thrilling twists in the chilling Bec.As a baby, Bec fought for her life. As a trainee priestess, she fights to fit in to a tribe that needs her skills but fears her powers. And when the demons come, the fight becomes a war.Bec's magic is weak and untrained, until she meets the druid Drust. Under his leadership, Bec and a small band of warriors embark on a long journey through hostile lands to confront the Demonata at their source.But the final conflict demands a sacrifice too horrific to contemplate…

Scream in the dark on the web at

www.darrenshan.com

For:

Bas, the priestess of Shanville

OBEs (Order of the Bloody Entrails) to:

Emma “Morrigan” Bradshaw

Geraldine “sarsaparilla” Stroud

Mary “Macha” Byrne

Hewn into shape by:

Stella “seanachaidh” Paskins

Fellow questers:

the Christopher McLittle clan

Contents

Beginning

Casualties

Refugees

The Boy

The River

The Stones

The Crannog

Drust

Potential

An Uninvited Guest

Children of the Dark

Family

The Source

The Emigrants

The Geis

Old Creatures

Taming the Wild

The Final Day

The World Beneath

The Sacrifice

Escape

Full Circle

Celtic Terms and Phrases

Other Books by Darren Shan

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

BEGINNING

→ Screams in the dark.

Mother pushes and after a long fight I slip out of her body on to a bed of blood-soaked grass. I cry from the shock of cold air as I take my first breath. Mother laughs weakly, picks me up, holds me tight and feeds me. I drink hungrily, lips fastened to her breast, my tiny hands and feet shivering madly. Rain pelts us, washing blood from my wrinkled, warm skin. Once I’m clean, mother shields me as best she can. She’s weary but she can’t rest. Must move on. Kissing my forehead, she sighs and struggles to her feet. Stumbles through the rain, tripping often and falling, but protecting me always.

→ Banba never believed I could remember my birth. She said it was impossible, even for a powerful priestess or druid. She thought I was imagining it.

But I wasn’t. I remember it perfectly, like everything in my life. Coming into this world roughly, in the wilderness, my mother alone and exhausted. Clinging to her as she pushed on through the rain, over unfamiliar land, singing to me, trying to keep me warm.

My thoughts were a jumble. I experienced the world in bewildering fragments and flashes. But even in my newborn state of confusion I could sense my mother’s desperation. Her fear was infectious, and though I was too young to truly know terror, I felt it in my heart and trembled.

After endless, pain-filled hours, she collapsed at the gate of a ringed, wooden fort — the rath where I live now. She didn’t have the strength to call for help. So she lay there, in the water and mud, holding my head up, smiling at me while I scowled and burped. She kissed me one last time, then clutched me to her breast. I drank greedily until the milk stopped. Then, still hungry, I wailed for more. In the damp, gloomy dawn, Goll heard me and investigated. The old warrior found me struggling feebly, crying in the arms of my cold, stiff, lifeless mother.

“If you remember so much, you must remember what she called you,” Banba often teased me. “Surely she named her little girl.”