The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [150]
I heard Cal’s tongue flick out, tasting the blood on his lips. I tried to ignore his small, starved groan. “There’s a sewer main under the cell block,” he said. “Old main. Before the Army Corps dug the new underground. I used to hunt there … with my brothers.”
“Boss,” Dean said. “And we’re locked above it in a concrete cell with an iron door and two hundred Proctors who want us fried on the other side.”
“Give me meat,” Cal harshed, “and I can get us out.”
Dean looked at me. “You really want to help this critter get stronger?”
“He knows he’s just cannon fodder to Draven,” I insisted. “And he has as much to lose as we do staying here.”
Dean whistled through his teeth. “I just hope this plan is better than your last one.”
I gave him a dirty look even though he couldn’t see it. “Why don’t you find him something to eat?” I could tell by sound that there were many more living things in the cell than Dean, Cal and me. I held Cal’s head cradled in my lap, stroking the few strands of hair left on his lumpy skull to keep him awake, trying not to pull away from the feel of his clammy new skin. Dean felt along the floor of the cell and came up with a squealing, thrashing rat. “Just what the doctor ordered.”
I shied away. “Don’t make me touch that.”
Dean crouched next to Cal. “Fresh meat, buddy. Open your trap.”
Cal reached up feebly and grabbed for the rat. It screeched, and disappeared into his gullet in two bites. I had thought my gag reflex was exhausted, but it clamped again at the sight of the wriggling tail between Cal’s lips.
After a moment of chewing, Cal sat up shakily. He opened his mouth, unhinging his jaw by degrees, and dug his clawed hands into the floor. “You feel it, Erlkin?” he growled at Dean. “Below our feet?”
Dean’s brow quirked, and he placed his hand against the cell block floor. “He’s right. Something’s down there.”
Cal lay down, his cheek against the floor. He let out a low wail, notes spiraling and twisting. The dirge changed, lilting and high, then moaning and low. Cal sang, and my shoulder began to hurt, a twinge I was beginning to recognize as the shoggoth venom responding to its fellow monsters.
It was a beautiful song, the ghoul’s song, full of pain and loss and hope.
When Cal finished, my eyes were hot with tears. Dean coughed once. “That helps us how, exactly?”
“Just wait …,” Cal cooed. “My blood will answer me.…”
A rumble came from below, a thud, and the drain in the floor lifted out of its seat. Cal scrabbled at it with his claws. “Help me!”
A ghoul paw burst from below, and Cal grabbed it.
“Carver.” The throaty voice was like Tanner’s back in the crypt, but lacked the cruel edge of starvation. “Is that really you?”
“Me, Toby,” Cal said, as the floor around the drain collapsed with a rumble of stone and mortar, splashing into the water below where an old sewer main laid bare. “It’s really me.”
Outside the cell, a guard shouted.
“Go,” Cal rasped at Dean and me, gesturing to the hole. “Run for your lives.”
I snatched at his bare arm. His skin was loose now, papery like that of a man decades older, and his face was hollow-eyed and grim. A rictus grin showed off his teeth. Not the Cal I knew. Except in the eyes. His eyes were still Cal’s.
“You’re coming with us. You have to.”
“Get your cute little rear down that hole!” Dean shouted. “More Proctors are coming!”
Cal stared back at the door. It rattled as the guard struggled to cycle the hatch. “He smells like fear.”
“If you kill him,” I said, “Draven will be right. You’ll just be an animal on his leash. Come with us, Cal. Forget Draven.”
The longest seconds of my life went by while Cal crouched at the