Free The Demon Conspiracy by R. L. Gemmill

thick as a
telephone pole, the top end sharpened to a ghastly point. The beast
stood on two enormously muscled, deep-red legs with long ebony
claws in place of toes. Its belly was covered in grayish scales.
Its massive, ugly head had one long horn growing out of the
center.
    I fought to keep my shaking to a
minimum.
    The Boss stopped in the
middle of the stage. He looked out across the screaming, cheering
hoard and raised the staff, which he pounded on the stone floor
three times. Boom! Boom! Boom! The creatures before the stage grew quiet. The
Boss spoke.
    “Affkd gkdnki!! Gityyhlls
asinfoihen!!” His voice was powerful, like the diesel engine on a
tractor-trailer truck, but much deeper. And he wasn’t speaking any language I’d
ever heard. In fact, the words were so garbled that it hardly
sounded like language at all. But it must have made sense, because
every time the Boss paused, the other creatures cheered. Then the
Boss waved a hand as if presenting something on the right side of
the stage. It seemed like an introduction.
    Travis sent a mental
message to me. What are they
thinking?
    I don’t
know , we’re too
far away. Either that or I can’t read them .
    Next came the greatest shock of all. A man—a
human!—walked out on the stage. He was tall with dark hair, wearing
a dark blue suit with a red necktie, and really handsome, like a
movie star. The Man carried a white clipboard in one hand and a
strange-looking object, like a silver fire hydrant, in the other.
He stopped in the middle of the stage beside the Demon Boss. He set
the silver thing down, turned and faced the grisly audience.
    The demons in the audience glared at him,
like deer staring at the headlights of a car. I wasn’t sure if they
were surprised to see a human among them, or if they just didn’t
know what he was. Next, they traded disbelieving looks. Some shook
their heads. Others scowled. They waved their long claws in the air
or shook angry, scaly fists at the Man.
    A six-legged demon with two ugly,
spine-covered heads climbed onstage. It rushed toward the man with
claws and teeth bared. The other demons cheered it on.
    He’s going to be
sacrificed! I cried inside Travis’ head. I
didn’t want to see the poor guy be torn to shreds by the monsters,
but I’m human, and when there’s going to be blood, humans just
watch. I stayed out of his head, too. No need to get caught up in
the middle of somebody’s gory death.
    Remarkably, the man watched the charging
beast with nerves of cold steel. He never flinched. It was going to
be a bloody massacre. I mean, what were the options?
    Quick as a snake the Demon Boss swung the
heavy staff. It cracked the charging beast in one of its skulls.
The beast fell off to the side, away from the Man. Then the Boss
kicked it offstage like a soccer ball, out into the audience. It
crashed into several other creatures and lay on the floor, rubbing
its head with one of its feet.
    The Boss pounded the staff
on the floor three more times. Boom! Boom!
Boom! “Knnsylk!!” The place went
completely quiet.
    “Knnsylk,” I repeated. “That must mean shut
up.” Jon shook his head at me. He knew I had a fascination with
languages, though the only one I’d ever taken was intro French last
year in the seventh grade.
    The man stepped forward to the edge of the
stage. From his coat pocket he withdrew a small device, which could
have been a tiny microphone. He attached the device to his coat
lapel and smiled with perfect, white teeth. He cleared his throat
and jerked his head from right to left, cracking his neck. When he
spoke, his voice echoed throughout the cavern in a proper British
accent.
    “I know you can all understand me, so to
make it easier for me to understand you, I want you to eat the
sugar cube you were given when you came in. Each cube has inside it
an XB7 universal translating chip. Now don’t wreck it by chewing
it. Let the cube melt in your mouth. It’s quite tasty.”
    The demons on the floor