Read Spook's: The Dark Army (The Starblade Chronicles) for Free Online Page B

irresponsibly, I tried to remain calm and spoke slowly.
    ‘We’re in a foreign land now, not back in the County where we have generations of experience on how the dark manifests itself. Things are different here. We shouldn’t take risks with the unknown. That was probably the most stupid thing you’ve done in your entire life!’ I told her. ‘There are worse things than death. Some of the entities from the dark can do more than just put an end to your body. They can snuff out your soul – as if you’d never existed.’
    ‘I’ll never be so stupid again. I’ve learned my lesson!’ Jenny exclaimed. ‘It’ll be good to leave the practice and get back to the theory!’
    She was trying to put on a brave face, but she was still shaking with fear. I had to be cruel to be kind, to impress on her how serious her actions had been.
    ‘It’s not something to joke about, Jenny!’ I snapped. ‘Yes, it was a lesson – one that I hope you’ll never forget! We have a duty to others. In some situations we might have to sacrifice our own lives. You stupidly put others at risk!’
    ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks.
    ‘But you’re right about one thing. We do need to get back to the theory. That’s exactly what we need to do,’ I told her firmly. ‘We need to find out a lot more about that attic before we go back there together.’
    ‘We’re going back to face that?’
    ‘Of course we are. I told you that being a spook was dangerous. And when we start a job, we finish it. You might have awakened something really dangerous – something that might be able to break out of that attic. We have to make it safe.’
    ‘How can we find out more about it?’ Jenny asked, brushing away her tears.
    ‘I’ll talk to Prince Stanislaw tomorrow. I should have asked more questions when I spoke to him previously. That was no ghost – though the prince called it that. He speaks our language far better than I speak Losta, but—’
    ‘That’s not too difficult for him,’ Jenny interrupted sarcastically.
    I stifled an angry response. One minute Jenny was in floods of tears, I reflected; the next she was being cheeky again. I would never have spoken to my master John Gregory in that manner, I thought wryly. But Jenny had a natural impudence and she’d just survived a very stressful situation. We both had.
    ‘True,’ I told her, ‘but the prince’s vocabulary is limited. I should have realized that we might not be talking about the same thing. At least that’s something you can learn from my mistake. When dealing with something unknown, gather as many facts as possible before you get anywhere near it.’
    In my weakened condition, I hadn’t been looking forward to going into the attics, but I’d still expected it to be a routine training exercise. Now I realized that even if Jenny and I had gone together, the encounter with the entity from the well would have been very dangerous. I’d been assuming we’d meet the ghost of some Polyznian nobleman or perhaps a guard – which would have given me some serious communication problems. I wasn’t sure what the entity in the attic was, but it was clearly something extremely powerful.
    ‘
Was
it some sort of daemon?’ Jenny asked.
    I shrugged. ‘It certainly doesn’t sound like anything I’ve come up against before. It might have been a daemon or even something unknown; something that we County spooks have no record of.’
    I didn’t divulge my true fears regarding what she’d encountered. Her account had shaken me to the core. I was far from home and the threat was way outside my experience. I had enough problems without this. Jenny had probably awakened something that might threaten the whole castle and beyond.
    It had to be dealt with.
    The following morning I checked the rooms below the turret and found no sign of any type of chimney leading down. The well that Jenny described didn’t pass through the kitchens or the throne room