The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [160]
“You haven’t said much since last night,” Dean said.
I shrugged. “Not much to say.” The dream of my mother lingered, like a corpse’s touch against my skin, a spot of chill that no amount of steam heat could erase. You shouldn’t have walked in the lily field.
“How long do you have?” Dean said.
“Six days. I was born at four a.m. Six days and four hours.”
Dean fingered a Lucky but didn’t light it. “You might be spared, you know.”
“I won’t be,” I said shortly. “Because life’s not fair.” On this point, I was sure.
Dean spread his hands. “I don’t—”
“We find out there is no necrovirus and my family is still mad,” I said. “So clearly, I will be too. And now I’m even further from knowing why.”
Dean took me by the shoulders and turned me to face him. “I ain’t good at words, Aoife. I made my living with my blood and my boots and my fists, and I’m not a poet.”
His hands gripped more tightly, but I didn’t try to wriggle away even though he was hurting me a little. He was the only thing in the tunnel that was really solid.
“I’m not running,” he said simply. “I’ve seen what can happen and I’m not scared. You may be mad and you may not be, Aoife, but you’re stuck with me. I ain’t run from a problem yet and I’m not about to start with you.”
He released me, and walked on. I wished I could be as brave as Dean. I wished I could be as loyal as Cal. But I was only me, and that was going to have to be enough for what was ahead.
“Dean.” I caught up with him, my feet echoing in the empty pipes. “I know,” I told him. “I know that you won’t leave.”
He nodded, some of the knots slipping from his posture. “Good,” he said. “Then we’re square. You’ve paid your part of the bargain and I’ve held up mine.”
“No more bargains,” I said as we reached the guard grate and came to a halt. “Just Aoife and Dean from now on, all right?”
He smiled, brushing a thumb down my cheek. “I like the sound of that.”
Toby tugged at the grate ineffectually, his claws shrieking over the rusted iron. “Carver, don’t just stand there catching flies. Give me a hand.”
I slipped on the blue glass goggles while Cal crouched. His skin rippled, bones with it, like his skin was sand and his insides were the ocean, pushing and re-forming it. He grunted as he became ghoul, the only hint of the pain that must rack him whenever he twisted his bones and skin into the shape of what he despised.
I wondered how long Cal had been passing as a human, how often he’d ventured over ground to find medicine or food.
How long Draven had tortured him the first time, until he agreed to spy on me.
Someday, I vowed, as I searched the vent and its connected discharge pipes for a hint of the next jet of steam, I would see Grey Draven again. And I would take back my father’s book and make him answer for all that he’d done to those I cared about.
The vent fell away with a clang, and Toby stuck his finger in his mouth. “I broke one of my claws clean off.”
“Now who’s the baby?” Cal asked him.
“Quiet!” I snapped. I could see the steam, moving like a phantom through the discharge pipes, gathering speed like a spectral hurricane. “It’s coming,” I whispered.
“What’s that mean for us?” Dean said.
I grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight. “It means we have to run. Now.”
“Aoife!” Cal shouted as we ducked through the opening the ghouls had made. His voice was lost in the roar of the gathering vent jet, but I think he was telling me to be careful.
* * *
Dean and I ran through steam, and it took me back to running through the mist with Tremaine. Just as it had been then, I risked being stolen away, not by the corpse-drinkers or the other things that lingered in the fog but by the molten jets of steam from the Engine that even now throbbed under my feet.
The goggles showed me the encroaching vent, the access hatch we needed to reach before the heat exploded into the tunnel.
It was so very far away. My breath jabbed in and out of my chest like a pickax, and my heart throbbed in time with the Engine.