highlights & comments

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  Lachlan Hardy highlighted

  The throne was only a throne by dint of its vast scale; otherwise it was simply a big stone chair on the end of a rocky peninsula that extended into the centre of a lake of boiling lava. All in all, it was less of an audience and more of a fireside chat.

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  Lachlan Hardy highlighted

  ‘Maleficarus. Self-styled warlock and Great Beast. Actually, rather a . . . what’s the term? Wanker.

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  Lachlan Hardy highlighted

  He put his cup down and proceeded to load a scone with cream. Barrow watched the precision of his hands, still in their black kid gloves, and thought he moved like a surgeon. For want of a conversational gambit, he expanded on this. ‘You don’t strike me as the carnival type, Mr Cabal.’ The cream knife hesitated for a heartbeat and then continued. ‘I’ve met a good few different types of people in my life and I think I’m pretty good at summing them up.’ ‘I understood that you’d retired from the police force, Mr Barrow,’ said Cabal. He made a curious motion with his wrist as he drew the knife along the side of the pot and every last vestige of cream was neatly wiped from the blade as if it had been freshly washed. He drove the tip into the jam, took a blob encasing a strawberry back to the scone and deposited it in the middle. The result was so precise it looked like the work of a machine. Cabal repeated the action with the knife and laid it, spotless, on his side plate. Cabal raised th

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  Lachlan Hardy highlighted

  ‘Why a mouse when it spins?

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• 
  Lachlan Hardy highlighted

  He stood at a desolate and lonely place where there would be no interruption, no prying eyes. The air smelled metallic with freshly spilled blood; the body of a decapitated virgin kid goat lay nearby. He had no alloyed metal about him but for a thin-bladed sword of fine steel he held in his right hand; that arm was naked, his shirt sleeve rolled up to the bicep. A silver coin wrapped in paper nestled in his waistcoat pocket. Before him burned a fire of white wood. His name was Johannes Cabal and he was summoning a demon.

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  Lachlan Hardy highlighted

  ‘I want to see Satan. Now.’ Cabal’s accent was clipped and faintly Teutonic. ‘I don’t have an appointment.’

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  Lachlan Hardy highlighted

  ‘Oh, he called us “gennlemen”, Dennis, didjya ’ear ’im?’ said the short one. ‘Hur, hur. “Gennlemen”. Hur,’ answered the tall one, Dennis, who seemed to be the straight man.

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  Lachlan Hardy highlighted

  For it is true, deer reader, I have cast off the shakles of maternal luv (uuurgh, pas the sik bag, matron) and flown off like a free bird. (Ha ha like a big fat gopping vulture ha ha, sa my brother victor who hav just red this over my shouldier. Like he would kno, he run skreaming from the interesting natural history progs on the telly, AND NOW WE SEE MOTHER NATURE RED IN TOOF AND CLAW nash, snarl, blood eveeriwhere, the dulcit tones of Victor sobbing in FEER in the kitchin. But I digres.)

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• 
  Lachlan Hardy highlighted

  ‘Threats, Mr Barrow, are the preserve of blowhards and cowards. I am neither.’ He approached Barrow until they were toe to toe. ‘I don’t even give warnings.’ He turned and left.

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