Library of Souls Read Free

him onto the train with the others. But there he lay, waving to us.
    â€œSergei!” cried Emma.
    â€œYou know him?” Addison said suspiciously.
    â€œHe was one of Miss Wren’s peculiar refugees,” I said, my ears pricking at the wail of distant sirens echoing down from the surface. Trouble was coming—maybe trouble disguised as help—and I worried that our best chance at a clean exit was slipping away. Then again, we couldn’t just leave him.
    Addison scuttled toward the man, dodging the deepest reefs of glass. Emma let me take her arm again and we shuffled after. Sergei was lying on his side, covered in glass and streaked with blood. The bullet had hit him somewhere vital. His wire-framed spectacles were cracked and he was adjusting them, trying to get a good look at me. “Is miracle, is miracle,” he rasped, his voice thin as twice-strained tea. “I heard you speak with monster’s tongue. Is miracle.”
    â€œIt’s not,” I said, kneeling beside him. “It’s gone, I’ve already lost it.”
    â€œIf gift inside you, is forever.”
    Footsteps and voices echoed from the escalator passage. I cleared away glass so I could get my hands under the folding man. “We’re taking you with us,” I said.
    â€œLeave me,” he croaked. “I’ll be gone soon enough …”
    Ignoring him, I slipped my hands beneath his body and lifted. He was ladder-long but light as a feather, and I held him in my arms like a big baby, his skinny legs dangling over my elbow while his head lolled against my shoulder.
    Two figures banged down the last few escalator steps and then stood at the bottom, rimmed by pale daylight and peering into the new dark. Emma pointed at the floor and we sank quietly to our knees, hoping they’d miss us—hoping they were just civilians come to catch a train—but then I heard the squelch of a walkie-talkie and they each fired up a flashlight, the beams shining against their bright reflective jackets.
    They might’ve been emergency responders, or wights disguised as such. I wasn’t sure until, in synchrony, they peeled off wraparound sunglasses.
    Of course
.
    Our options had just narrowed by half. Now there were only the tracks, the tunnels. We could never outrun them, damaged as we were, but escape was still possible if they didn’t see us—and they hadn’t yet, amidst the chaos of the ruined station. Their searchlights dueled across the floor. Emma and I backed toward the tracks. If we could just slip into the tunnels unnoticed … but Addison, damn him, wasn’t moving.
    â€œCome on,” I hissed.
    â€œThey are ambulance drivers and this man needs help,” he said too loudly, and right away the beams of light bounced up from the floor and whipped toward us.
    â€œStay where you are!” one of the men boomed, unholstering a gun while the other fumbled for his walkie-talkie.
    Then two unexpected things happened in quick succession. The first was that, just as I was about to drop the folding man onto the tracks and dive after him with Emma, a thunderous horn blew from inside the tunnel and a single brilliant headlight flashed into view. The rush of stale wind belonged, of course, to a train—running again, somehow, despite the blast. The second thing, announced by a painful twinge in my gut, was that the hollow had come unstuck and was loping in our direction. The instant after I felt it, I saw it, too, plowing at us through a billow of steam, black lips peeled wide,tongues thrashing the air.
    We were trapped. If we ran for the stairs we’d be shot and mauled. If we jumped onto the tracks we’d be crushed by the train. And we couldn’t escape onto the train because it would be ten seconds at least before it stopped and twelve before the doors opened and ten more before they shut again, and by then we’d be dead three ways. And so I did as I