Vanished

CHAPTER 40

She couldn’t kill me, so she’d do something worse to Will. I Sprayed that Michael and Marsden had found an opportunity to grab Will without waiting for me.

As Purcell and I were prodded out of the room by Dez with the glowering kreanou in his wake, I tried to think of a new way to thwart Wygan’s plans. I didn’t have my dad’s option—and I wouldn’t have taken it if I had. I’d come close when I’d been new to Greywalking but I didn’t think giving up was a good idea anymore. Marsden had seemed to think just getting me out of the way would stymie whatever Wygan was up to, which meant there wasn’t a new Greywalker around with similar talents. But that wouldn’t stop Wygan from trying to make another like he’d pushed to make my father and then me into the shape he wanted. If it came to a fight, I might not survive.

I wasn’t sure, specifically, what the kreanou was, but the term “killing machine” fit it in general pretty well. I didn’t want to tangle with it if I hoped to live and save Will.

I kept Will in the front of my mind, even through the torturing jolts the cage stabbed into me with every step, even when my thoughts tried to wander to Quinton and whatever terrors were building back home, even when I wondered about the strange little puzzle in my pocket and what a gate might do with its own key. I focused on the one immediate thing: I had to get Will out.

We passed through the magical barrier around the room in a haze of pain. Once outside of the ceremonial chamber, the cages dropped off and Purcell and I could move easier, but we were both drained from the agony of the short walk. It was wretched going with Dez and the kreanou prodding us along through the buried catacombs.

“What’s this place?” I muttered to Purcell.

“We’re in the bones of the city. The catacombs and old tunnels. Down where the rivers used to flow until they covered ’em over and made ’em into sewers. You can hear the Fleet muttering its old songs if you listen,” he murmured back, misunderstanding what I’d meant to ask.

“No, I mean what’s this House of Detention?”

“Used to be the holding jail—where they kept prisoners until they could send ’em to another place. Or hang ’em. Miserable, it was. It’s a ruin now. Breeds ghosts like a battlefield. Most of ’em nasty.”

I tried to see into the darkness that descended as we went farther into the tunnels, but the ghost light was uneven and I kept catching glimmers of white and reflections of forgotten illumination that caught in my eye like dust. Things moved in the distance and sounds echoed and rattled strangely.

The last of the candlelight from the chamber beneath the priory had long faded, when I saw something flicker down a connecting tunnel like a distant mirror in the sun.

Then came a silver-white flash behind us that went up to the ceiling with a concussion that threw us forward. The roar and scream of the explosion came right behind it and my ears rang, but I could still hear a mad cackle in my head. Marsden’s cackle.

Fast footsteps pattered like a distant storm on my right and a clammy hand grasped my upper arm, wrenching me upright. I jerked my head to look at the hand’s owner.

Michael Novak yanked me toward the nearest black branch of the tunnel. “Come on!” he rasped in a low, panicky voice.

Screaming and rending sounds came from behind and the iron smell of blood mixed with the nauseating corruption of vampire curdled the air.

I didn’t look back. Whatever Marsden was doing, I didn’t want to waste the time he was buying us by watching it. I started to go with Michael, but Purcell threw himself between us onto my other arm. He stared into my eyes and clapped his hands around mine, pressing something rigid and toothed into my palms. “Edward’s vault. Tell him I am sorry.”

The kreanou shrieked its victory as Dez’s screams cut off short. Purcell shoved me after Michael before turning to run toward the carnage.

The younger Novak hauled me along, twisting my arm near to dislocation in his rush. “Run, run, run,” he chanted.

I gathered my wits, closed my fist around the hard, biting thing Purcell had entrusted to me, and sprinted with Michael through the opening and into the darkness of a passageway that plunged downward into the earth and the smell of sewers. I could hear scuffling and growls behind us but not a single cry. I hoped Purcell was made of tougher stuff than Dez and Glick had been. Never thought I’d root for the vampire. I hoped all this wasn’t in vain.

“Will?” I asked as we ran.

“Couldn’t get to him,” Michael replied, gasping the words. “Got worried. waiting for you. ”

“You know. where?”

He grunted, “Uh-huh.” Then he shut up and we charged on.

I was lost, not knowing what direction we were going or where we were in the twisting tunnels and dry, ancient sewers below Clerkenwell. I just tore along in Michael’s wake. We flashed past a silvery line on the floor and I heard a crack of thunder as another blur of white light shot up behind us, leaving a barrier of sparking magic and acrid smoke. The shape of the spell reminded me of the tangles and traps Mara had made for me once—little bits of hedge magic woven into rings of thorns and grass. It wasn’t the same but it was similar, and I assumed it was something Marsden had done to cover our escape. I didn’t really care so long as the kreanou didn’t follow us.

Michael jagged to the right and into another tunnel. A pale smear detached from the wall and hurried beside us.

“That should send ’im whimperin’ back to his mother,” Marsden crowed as he fell in with us. “Round the left—we’ll be able to hop over there.”

“Over. what?” I panted, adrenaline shortening my breath and making me stagger.

“Time. To the House of Detention when it was still standin’. There’s a way out back then.”

“No!” I objected. “That’s. where—”

“I heard the plan,” he snapped. “But we shan’t be going through the bit that bloodsucking bitch had in mind, and they can’t follow us my way. The only other way out from this end takes us through St. James’s. You don’t want that!”

“No,” I agreed.

“Then bleedin’ trust me!”

Around the next bend in the passage we came to the fragment of an ancient wall and threw ourselves over it. Marsden scrambled up first, clutched at the thickly silvered air, and wrenched.

The world jerked sideways.

We rolled to the ground and up against the wall at a new angle. Or possibly a different wall.

Marsden picked himself up and brushed dirt from his trousers and coat. He turned back to us, whispering, “Been a prison for three hundred years. Lots of bad things floatin’ about.” Then he put his finger over his lips. We followed him in silence.