Blood Beast

Blood Beast
Original cover, showing the scorpion-like demon, Spine.
Author(s)	Darren Shan
Cover artist	Melvyn Grant
Country	Ireland
Language	English
Series	The Demonata series
Genre(s)	Horror, Fantasy novel
Publisher	HarperCollins
Publication date	4 June 2007
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	262 pp
ISBN	978-0007231324
OCLC Number	82671611
Preceded by	Bec
Followed by	Demon Apocalypse

Blood Beast is the fifth book in Darren Shan's The Demonata series and was released 4 June 2007. It is narrated by Grubbs Grady, the narrator of Lord Loss and Slawter. The plot is part of a two part story, along with book six. Though the previous four books have not been in chronological order, this book is the furthest book into the future. It mainly deals with whether or not Grubbs Grady will be struck with lycanthropy and how he will deal with this problem. This book has been nominated for several prizes.

The title was originally announced at the Edinburgh Book Festival. In 2007, Blood Beast was nominated for the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award in the UK, but lost to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling.

Plot summary

Written by Darren Shan Blood Beast is the sixth book in a series called the Demonta. Blood Beast is set about a year after Slawter. It begins back at Dervish's house where Grubbs begins to feel alarming symptoms in connection with the full moon. He is having dreadful nightmares full of Demons and his sister, Gret, who keeps coming close to killing him. Also, in these dreams he has changed to a werewolf, but Grubbs attempts to convince himself that these nightmares are only normal. On top of this, his magician's prowess is growing all the time. He makes water change direction as it goes down the plughole (defying gravity) and claims to have woken from his nightmares levitating.

Grubbs has got back to life as usual, and has got a crowd of friends, including a new best friend, Loch Gossel, who constantly bullies Grubbs' half brother, Bill-E. Grubbs also shows his usual like for Reni Gossel, Loch's sister. After Dervish has to go away for the weekend to say goodbye to Meera Flame, Grubbs throws a big house party. Reni, Loch, Bill-E and a few more stay for the night. They play spin the bottle and Grubbs kisses with Reni for the first time. He gets so into the kiss, that he doesn't realize when his powers have gotten the better of him and starts levitating the bottle. Soon after, the bottle explodes. He freezes the bottle in time and turns the shards into butterflies and flower petals. Half way through the night, Grubbs wakes up to a howling noise. He finds himself in the bathroom. He then realizes the howling noise is coming from himself. He looks in the mirror to find that he has become a werewolf, but somehow changes himself back to normal.

The next morning, Bill-E and Loch decide to go and look for Lord Sheftree's treasure, but Grubbs isn't feeling well and protests greatly, but eventually gives in. The three set about digging and just as Loch is about to go home, they find a spot that Grubbs remembers Dervish being before. They start digging, but there are big rocks in the way which are hard to move. The boys go home but make a pact to come back after school every day until they find the treasure. Dervish returns home, but was drunk the previous night and fell into a deep sleep, so Grubbs couldn't tell him about the nightmares and fear of lycanthropy.

Grubbs goes to sleep, but later wakes up and finds himself at the hole moving the heavy rocks, by himself. He runs back to the house and goes back to sleep. When Bill-E and Loch see the hole the next day, they are amazed and believe that Lord Sheftree planted bombs to kill those that tried to get his treasure, but they simply were old and detonated late. As they are digging, they begin to get very angry at each other and bicker, even try to kill each other. Grubbs feels magic in the air, and feels that it may be affecting the three, but tells the other two that it must be chemicals in the soil.

Loch and Grubbs climb out of the hole and start to talk to each other when they hear a scream. The floor has given way and Bill-E is hanging on for his life. They hoist him up, and look down. The rocks gave way to a deep tunnel, but one that might be able to climb down. After a debate, the three decide to go down. At the bottom, they find a cave full of stalactites and stalagmites with a large waterfall. They start looking for the treasure but find none.

Bill-E and Loch decide to climb a wall of the cave. At this point, Grubbs begins to feel very ill (possibly because of the full moon) and looks to the floor of the cavern. He sees a girls face in the rock similar to his sister's, yet it's the face of Bec, trapped in the rock; whispering in a strange language, but then she suddenly goes silent. Grubbs hears a scream from behind him and a thud. He turns around to find Loch's lifeless body lying on the floor, blood seeping out of his head. Grubbs attempts to heal the wounds while Bill-E leaves to get help. While Bill-E is gone, Grubbs needs to resuscitate Loch several times. The first two times it works, but then on the third, Loch stops breathing, his heart stops beating, and he dies. The whispering starts again and Grubbs starts to freak out. When he calms down he looks at Loch, and lifts up his head and notices something odd - all the blood is gone.

Eventually Dervish and Bill-E turn up at the cave, however there is nothing that can be done to save Loch's life and Grubbs soon realises that there is no ambulance. Dervish says that they cannot let an ambulance come to the cave. The boys protest, but he says that he will explain to them later. The three of them move the body of Loch to a nearby quarry and throw it over a cliff edge.

Dervish explains later to Grubbs why this is necessary - the cave is one where demons can create a strong doorway into the human world (presumably the same cave from Bec). Dervish has been given the duty to protect the cave and make sure nobody else can unleash the Demonata. Although hard to accept at first, Grubbs and Bill-E play along after being investigated by the police.

One week later Grubbs returns to school. The psychologist has left the school, and a new one has come as a replacement. Grubbs is sent to meet her and finds out it is Juni Swan, a psychologist that Grubbs and Dervish met on the set of Slawter were she helped them get through their troubles and fight with the demons. Juni helps Grubbs, Bill-E, and their friends to cope with Loch's death, and soon everyone seems to be dealing fine. However tensions increase as Juni meets up with Dervish and both become romantically involved, eventually moving in with Dervish. Juni tells Grubbs and Dervish that since Slawter, her magic has advanced tremendously. This encourages Dervish, and he teaches her more spells and continues to see her more and more.

In the following days Grubbs becomes more aware of the impending doom of his curse. Not only that, but he begins to notice a tramp coincidentally appearing around Carcery Vale. The tramp has an appearance nearly identical to Beranabus from Demon Thief, and is in fact, him. This is supported by the fact that Dervish attempts to contact Beranabus slightly before the tramp appears. On one of his late night jogs, Grubbs notices the tramp near the cave, the tramp tells him, "It won't be long." This immediately leads to Grubbs suspecting that Dervish called the Lambs. Grubbs gets Juni to ask Dervish about this for him, and she claims that Dervish did call them, but also goes on to tell him that she'll do whatever it takes to stop Grubbs from being killed, and that she sees him as her own son.

For several nights around the time of the full moon, Grubbs has what he describes as a battle between his human and werewolf sides. During these times, he is in extreme pain while Juni and Dervish need to hold him down. Grubbs suggests that they put him in a cage that Dervish owns for the next night. During that evening, while in the cage, Juni suggests that Dervish leaves while she performs a dangerous spell to help Grubbs. Once Dervish is gone, she frees Grubbs from the cage, then passionately makes out with Grubbs when he shows his desire to die at the hands of the Lambs, claiming that she will not let him be killed while there may be hope. She says that they should go to meet up at the cave. he then breaks out of the cage, and battles 3 of what he believes are Lambs, dispatching them easily. It is not known whether Dervish did actually call the Lambs or if the people Grubbs attacks while escaping the cellar are actually Lambs, as Juni may very likely have lied to Grubbs about Dervish's call.

Grubbs runs to the cave, where he loses control again and turns into a werewolf. When he returns to his normal state, Grubbs finds that he has killed Ma & Pa Spleen, Bill-E's grandparents and legal guardians. Not wanting to kill again, Juni says that the two of them need to run away from Dervish and the Lambs to protect Grubbs, both from his own death and the deaths of others.

The two of them go to an airport, and board a plane, all of which is very distant to Grubbs. He falls asleep while on the plane. When he awakes, the plane is shaking, apparently due to turbulence. However, soon the cockpit opens and demons appear on the plane, Artery first and then the scorpion like creature from the front of the book. They both begin killing the passengers on the plane along with another rabbit-like demon. Finally, Lord Loss appears in the plane, stunning the passengers. Juni appears next to him and reveals that she summoned him and is actually a familiar of Lord Loss. The book ends with her declaring, "He's all yours now- master." The book then ends on a to be continued, with the words "Hell is revealed" underneath the title Book Six...

Footnotes

External links

• Official Darren Shan Site
• Demonata website
• Blood Beast at Amazon