The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [116]
“You have no imagination,” said Cal. “It could be bootlegger tunnels, or smugglers.…” He took another twitchy, excited step and jerked his head at me. “Just come! I want to see where this goes.”
“Cal, no,” I said. “All of Graystone is rigged to its clockwork. You don’t know what we could be walking into …”
Before I could finish, Cal’s foot depressed an iron plate concealed by a gap in the stone flags that made up the floor. A great hand rattled the ground under our feet, tired gears shrieked and at the far end of the tunnel, where shadows congregated, an iron gate rolled back.
“… down here,” I finished, half expecting iron teeth to flash from some hidden place and finish us off. My heartbeat redoubled.
“Neat,” Cal breathed. “Did you see that? It’s a secret tunnel!”
“It was aces,” I said, copying Dean’s most drawn-out drawl of boredom so Cal wouldn’t hear my voice shake. “You found a hole inside a bigger hole. You’re my hero.”
“You know, Aoife, that Dean has given you a regular snippy mouth,” Cal grumbled. “Time was you’d have thought this was fantastic.”
“Dean didn’t need to say a thing to make me not want to be crammed under the ground,” I snapped. “I don’t like it down here, Cal. It could be dangerous.”
“I’ll protect you,” he dismissed me, pulling back his lips so that his teeth gleamed in a bony smile. “Don’t be scared, Aoife.”
“Dean says—” I started, but before I could finish telling Cal that fear kept people alive, my shoulder began to throb anew. After my experience with the thing at the window I knew what was coming. From the dark of the newly opened tunnel, I heard the scrabble of clawed feet over rock. The snuffle of nostrils taking the air. The grind of teeth on bone.
“Cal?” My voice came out high and paper thin, with good reason I thought. Those sounds were from something alive. “Am I hearing things, or is there something in there?”
Cal’s expression had gone from delight to terror in the space of a candle flame flickering. “I think we should go,” he said finally, foot jostling foot as he tried to back away and succeeded only in stumbling. “Right now.”
I tried to move with him, but hot steam pain from the bite in my shoulder seared through all parts of me. This was worse than the owl. This was worse than anything.
Cal grabbed for my hand, and his touch was like plunging my fingers into liquid nitrogen. I screamed and doubled over, bruising my knees on the tunnel floor as I batted him away frantically, only wanting the pain to cease.
From my vantage I watched pieces of the darkness ahead break free from the tunnel mouth and crawl along the walls, growing limbs and teeth and tails. Hides gleamed like oil-stained water and high-pitched cackling like nails on glass filled the air.
I knew that sound. And nothing I knew about it was going to help us stay alive.
“Aoife!” Cal had me up and moving away from the shadow hounds, like a puppet on a string, and then his foot caught in a crack and we both went down again.
I landed hard on my wounded shoulder and screamed, and the cry that answered me ripped from no human throat. It echoed off the tunnel, a howl of hunger and delight.
The howling was younger than what Dean and I had heard on the roof, but the things coming for us were ghouls just the same. Pups, a flock of them, trapped and starved by Graystone’s defenses.
We weren’t getting out of the tunnel in less than a dozen pieces.
“I’m sorry,” Cal choked. “Aoife, I’m so sorry, I should have known.…”
Dizzy with agony, my skull pulsing like it would burst, all I could do was watch as the ghouls bounded toward us, clinging to the stones of the ceiling as easily as if it were the floor. They were the size of hunting dogs and bore whiplash tails, teeth like straight razors hanging over bloody cut lips, and blue tongues lolling with black spittle. Their eyes glowed yellow, like the Proctor’s ravens, but aether and gears wasn’t powering these devils.