Free How To Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend (Necon Modern Horror Book 9) by Linda Addison Page A

Vibrations increased violently, bouncing her and the large
parfleche bag against the hard cold walls of the hole. The cold cut through the
layers of animal pelt shirt and pants.
    The usual constant screeching and
cracking sounds rose to a roar, making her ears ring. The acrid air burned
through the moss filled mask she wore. Rising Wind fought building panic that
urged her to jump out of the hole and fling herself onto any sharp edge to end
the sounds trying to shatter her soul. Coughing and gagging, she pressed her
eyes closed and held images of her teepee and village in her mind. Red Man had
taught Rising Wind that was the best way to not lose her reason.
    He’d been a good teacher. The
first time she saw him in the Beast’s belly, with his pale skin and long, red
beard and tangled hair, she thought he was another devil. He saved her from
being consumed, dragged her to the cavern in the Beast’s skin and taught her
how to survive.
    Curled in a tight ball to protect
her small rounded stomach, a quick flutter inside reminded her why she had to
continue, even in this place of madness. Her son. She carried him without a
sunrise or sunset to tell her how long she had lived as a mite in the Beast.
Her stomach hadn’t grown bigger, but she felt him quiver every now and then. As
long as he was inside, he was safe from this horrible dream.
    A violent shudder went through
the Beast and the vibration stopped. She peeked out of the hole. The high
ceiling and walls of the cavern glowed with veins of bright green. Red Man
popped his head out of his hole and pointed up. Cracks in the outer skin of the
Beast were opening, dark light poured down. Rising Wind thought she could see
the stars. Tying the parfleche on her back, she wrapped the climbing claws on
her hands and pulled herself out of the hole and started running.
    More than twenty other runners
moved at the same time, each with a large bag on their backs. They scrabbled
over the grey boulder-sized bumps of the Beast’s inner skin. Each took a
different path up towards the opening cracks. Rising Wind concentrated on
choosing her next foot and hand hold. The inner skin alternated with rock hard
edges and wet soft crevasses. She slapped her climbing claws to the crevasses
and pulled herself up towards the widening cracks. Stronger scents of decay
wafted from the crevasses. Horrible screeches and inhuman screams rang around
her as small flesh devils scuttled underfoot, snapping at her ankles with their
claws.
    Rising Wind reached the edge of
one of the openings, pulled herself up and onto the outer skin. Above her a
planet filled space, speckled with dark craters, and laced with ridges and
grooves. Other runners popped out of fissures along the endless undulations of
the Beast’s body. The Beast’s tubular arms, wider than rivers, twisted and
grey, reached towards the planet. Runners quickly filled their bags with the
white fungi growing in the fissures on the Beast’s skin. In the distance, a
maw, bigger than the moon, was being filled with chunks of the planet.
    Rising Wind ran towards the
mouth, searching for anything different, something that could be a weakness.
The closer she got, the bigger the debris in the air grew, until she had to
retreat.
    She scrambled around the opening
to the chasm, filling her bag with fungus. Wind began to pound down on her
signaling time to return to the under-skin. The Beast was finished feeding.
Rising Wind and others raced to the opening. She vaulted over the edge, a spike
cutting through her left calve as the crevasse began to close. Sliding down the
moving walls using the claws to slow her descent was faster than climbing with
her wounded leg. She looked behind her and saw the blood path being consumed by
tiny devils no bigger than the tip of her finger. She kept moving or they would
enter her wound and eat her from the inside out. Trying to stand and stumbling,
she almost fell into Red Man’s arms at the bottom.
    He wrapped his arm around