The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [151]
Then he jumped into the hole next to me, and Dean followed him. “Move, Aoife! That guard will shoot you in one more second!”
“Wait!” I cried, realizing that I was missing something. “The book! The witch’s alphabet and the tools are still back there with Draven!”
“No time!” Dean jerked me farther into the sewer. I thrashed, fighting in earnest against him.
“I have to get the book!”
Dean met my eyes. “It’s too late, Aoife. We have to run. Now.”
Sick at my failure, I followed him down the tunnel. Wood and brick dust dropped into the slowly trickling water below.
Behind us a Proctor bellowed for us to halt, in the name of reason. Dean squeezed my hand. “I’m right behind you.”
I ran into the dark without looking back.
The City Under the World
THE SEWER MAIN was ancient and close, cold running water up to my shins. Dean caught me and held me up when I turned my ankle on the jagged bricks that hid beneath the fetid water.
Cal and the other ghoul loped ahead of us, panting. “This way,” Cal growled. “Two lefts, then a right.”
I followed his bobbing head until the sounds of the pursuing Proctors faded, and then climbed out of the slough and huddled against the wall. It was too much. Cal, his true face, this escape with more of the same monsters who had tried to devour me in Arkham—I had to stop and regain my equilibrium before I lost it for good.
I felt the madness, stronger than ever, scraping at the back of my brain. No math could will it away now. Especially since I knew it wasn’t infection, but something I couldn’t name or control.
Cal stopped as well, and kicked off his shoes and socks. His toes curled under, and he climbed out of the slough using claw and nail. He slithered rather than walked, and I scooted away.
“We have to keep moving,” Cal said. Even his voice was foreign, and I tried to look nowhere but his eyes.
“Not until you tell me where we’re headed.”
Cal lowered his lumpy head and gave a snarl of frustration, but I didn’t back away. Cal-the-ghoul wasn’t the worst thing I’d seen today.
“The lady’s got a point,” Dean said. His breathing was ragged, and he felt his pockets for a cigarette but produced only a squashed, empty pack. “You planning on adding us to your ghoul buffet, cowboy?”
Cal scritched behind his ear. His hair was the same autumn straw but thinner, longer, wilder and spattered with dirty water. “I’m taking you home. My home.”
The second ghoul came loping back from his position in the rear. “Men in the tunnel. Men with lights. Got to move.”
“Aoife, Dean,” Cal said. “This is October. My nest mate.”
“You call it brothers,” October said. “Are we ditching the meat or taking it along?”
“Don’t,” Cal warned him. “They saved my life back there.”
“Bah.” Toby flicked his tongue out, tasted the air. “No intruders in the hearth. We don’t make friends with meatsacks, we eat them.”
“Toby,” Cal growled. “Enough.”
The tall, blue-skinned ghoul grunted. “Enough when I say it’s enough.” With that, he loped down the tunnel ahead of us. I hung back, not sure that I wouldn’t be turned into supper if I followed Cal’s brother. Cal shook his head sadly.
“I apologize for him. Not all of us can take the skin—look human—and he’s not used to people.”
“No need to apologize for your brother not being a rat-fink liar like you, Calvin,” Dean said cheerfully. “Or, not Calvin—it’s Carver, right? Fits a slimy, ground-dwelling nasty like you.”
Cal bared his teeth, but he brought up the rear as we hurried away from the underside of Ravenhouse and the Proctors and their shouts.
I gave Dean a look, one he answered with a shrug. I didn’t really blame him. I was furious and frightened, but most of all I just couldn’t believe Cal had deceived me so thoroughly. That I hadn’t seen, in all his toothy grins and odd habits, the ghoul within. I was supposed to be smarter than that.
The slog through the sewers and forgotten places of Lovecraft was arduous and wore on endlessly.
Eventually, we reached an abandoned metro station, a subterranean