The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [152]
Lovecraft had shut down the Metrocar after the ghouls came into the underground, nearly fifty years ago by my count. The station was as it must have been the day the Proctors bolted steel plates over the entry stairs and cut the aether feed. The sign worked into the tile of the wall read DERLETH STREET STATION, and the long, echoing drip of water all around confirmed we were close to the river.
“You feeling all right, doll?” Dean said as we crossed the tracks and ducked into a hole broken through the scarred, sooty tiles of the jitney tunnel.
“My shoulder hurts,” I said. The Proctors hadn’t lied about the ghoul infestation. Just about everything else.
“This is a terrible idea.” Toby clambered up the wall and walked along the ceiling, suspended overhead like a great spider. “They’ve both got blood in the wind. They’re food, Carver.”
I flinched at the hunger underlying Toby’s words. Everything I knew about ghouls screamed at me to run before I was in six pieces, but everything I knew came from the Academy. They’d lied about the necrovirus … what else had they been wrong about?
Cal sighed. “Toby, shut up. I told you, I owe Aoife a debt, one of blood, and she’ll be safe in the nest.” He fixed his brother with a glare. “One way or another.”
Eventually the tunnel became brick, older than the Metrocar line, and mud sluiced around my ankles. Toby dropped back to the floor, his way across the ceiling blocked by glowing stalactites of fungus.
“Carver paid a heavy price for your skin, girl. He’s still paying it.”
I instinctively flinched away from his humped form and gravel-grinding voice, then felt myself flush. Whatever he was, whatever he thought of me, Toby had saved our lives.
“I—I had no idea about Draven and his assignment,” I said. “Cal told me he had a family, but obviously I didn’t know his … situation.”
“His situation is that he’s bringing humans to the nest,” Toby snarled. “In case you’re dumb as you look, that doesn’t happen. Not with live ones, anyway.”
“Toby, I know that Cal had to do what he did,” I said gently. “But he helped us escape and I bear him … you … no ill will.” I hoped he couldn’t tell I was only marginally sure he wouldn’t eat me.
“How about you?” Toby jerked his pointed chin at Dean. “You smell like the wind and wet. You’re no more human than we are … you going to be trouble?”
“You know, you can keep walking down that road, friend, but you sure as hell aren’t going to like where it ends,” Dean told him. “ ‘We ain’t got a quarrel unless you’re fixing to start one.” He glanced behind us, back down the tunnel.
“The Proctors won’t follow us beyond Derleth Street,” Toby said. “The tunnels beyond aren’t clear.” He grinned at me, and it was like looking at a basketful of razors. “The tunnels north of Derleth Street belong to us. The people of ghul.”
I turned away from his grim smile and fell back to walk with Cal. I forced myself to look at his face—his new face—and his hunched body with his plate-shaped hands and black razor claws. What could a girl possibly talk about with a ghoul?
“Have you …” My voice was rough and squeaky, and I abhorred Cal thinking I was frightened of him, even though he unsettled me. I cleared my throat behind my hand. “Have you always been able to turn into a human?”
“It’s called taking the skin.” Cal’s tongue darted out and over his lips. “It’s shape-shifting. I’m not human. Isn’t that what you’re trying to say?”
I tossed up my hands. “Hell, Cal. You’re a monster that mothers threaten children with and you’re still touchy as an ugly girl in a pretty dress.”
After a moment, I heard a gentle snorting in the dark. The snorting turned into chuckling, Cal’s laughter, familiar and safe.
I joined, unable to keep a most unladylike giggle from rising to the surface.
“Do you remember when we hid an aethervox under Marcos’s bed and convinced him his room