The Stone Demon by Karen Mahoney Page A

suddenly nervous. She didn’t want to make another mistake—she knew what those could cost the alchemists. What it could cost many other people. “It’s nothing.”
    She looked away from all of the stares, wishing that the floor would swallow her up. She was confused. Wasn’t her original “sentence,” handed down at the tribunal in Ironbridge, to go to London as Miranda’s apprentice for one year—to help in the creation of a new Philosopher’s Stone? There hadn’t been much evidence of that so far, of course, but then again, she’d only been here a few weeks. She’d figured that her newly awakened power to open doors between realms was something the alchemists might draw upon, when working to replace the elixir she’d lost in her first skirmish with the Wood Queen.
    Simon’s face was set in rigid lines, his shoulders tense as he leaned back in his chair and glared at Demian. “We will never help you regain your strength, not when we were the ones to lock you away in the first place. You ask too much of us. You ask the impossible.”
    Demian raised his eyebrows. “I am not asking.”
    Simon muttered something, but he seemed surprisingly powerless. He glanced at Rachel who looked away, trying to hide her anger.
    Demian swept his black gaze across the table. “This debate is pointless when the matter is so simple. You will deliver a new Philosopher’s Stone to me, in the Ironwood, at a time of my choosing.”
    “Or what?” Simon asked, his voice filled with hate.
    “Or I will raze both your cities to the ground.” Demian smiled. “You may choose the first location to be destroyed: London or Ironbridge.”
    Donna tried to imagine a world without London, or without Ironbridge. What would happen? Would the world powers believe it was some sort of nuclear attack? What other option would there be? The governments of the U.K. and the U.S. surely weren’t aware of the existence of other realms, of demons and faeries and elves, of alchemists who were supposed to be the keepers of a magical Stone that could bestow all kinds of power and riches on ordinary humans.
    Miranda closed her eyes briefly. “What does that achieve, apart from mindless destruction and the death of innocents?”
    “On the contrary,” the demon replied, “it is very far from mindless. If I reduce both cities to rubble, we can be sure that you will take me seriously when I tell you that I will have the Stone. I am willing to destroy your world one city at a time until you agree to create a new one for me.”
    Donna’s heart beat so fast she imagined her ribs actually hurt. “How can we do that, Majesty, if we’re all dead?”
    “I will of course transport the alchemists I need to this realm, first. I need to protect my assets.” He leaned forward and pinned her with his gaze. “Perhaps I will even bring you to the Otherworld. You may find it more comfortable there with me.”
    Donna swallowed, wondering if it might be better to keep her mouth shut. Miranda answered for her.
    “A human being cannot enter the Otherworld without dying,” she said. “You’ll need Donna alive to create a new Philosopher’s Stone.”
    “Yes,” Demian said. “Because she alone holds a shard of the prima materia in her soul.”
    The first matter. One of the building blocks of reality—and something that Donna was finally beginning to understand. It seemed that her ability to open doors between worlds was just one of the things she could do when drawing on the power of the first matter.
    The Demon King smiled. “You will bring me the Stone before dawn on the festival of Imbolc.”
    Rachel’s face had gone paler than Donna had ever seen it. “Imbolc is less than two days from now.”
    Simon banged his fist down on the table. “Two days? That’s ridiculous. We can’t possibly gather all the ingredients in time. Do you realize how long it took to make the previous one?”
    “And you are well motivated to keep any such new Stone to yourself, are