“Huh,” Amber said. She knelt down at one of the fissures in the sidewalk. “Ru, hold up.” She ran her hand over the pale roots poking up from the inside. At the end of each grew a fingernail.
“What . . . is that?” Celia said.
“The Roots of Coltus,” Amber whispered.
Ruby walked back to them and knelt down. “Weirdest Big ever. He just messes up roads. Slowly.”
Celia touched one of the hard, smooth roots and flinched. It was warm and felt like skin.
They kept going and passed adults who moved hunched over. They wore pinched and worried looks on their faces.
“Why is that Big a bunch of roots?” Celia asked.
Amber grinned. “I love having someone new to explain things to! So. Littles can change color, or grow horns, tails, claws, and spikes. Sometimes their eyes get weird or their feet become hooved, or sometimes they don’t look that different at all. But that’s nothing compared to Bigs.” Amber bounced in her steel-toed boots.
Ruby had taken the lead again and looked back at them. “Keep up,” she ordered.
“Yes, ma’am,” Amber shot back. “So when Littles become Bigs”—her voice dropped—“some aspect of them becomes really strong. Like maybe someone hated spiders and became a huge spider, or maybe the Roots of Coltus had a phobia about trees or something.”
“Or garbage,” Celia whispered back. “Maybe Dreck had to take the garbage out as a kid and hated it.” The memory of dark muck and not being able to breathe overwhelmed her. She stumbled forward.
“You okay?” Amber asked, putting a hand on Celia’s shoulder.
“I’m fine. I was just thinking about how sorry I feel for any Bigs we might meet today.”
Amber linked elbows with her and rolled her eyes. “So tough, doom girl. But we are going to stay far away from Bigs today, okay?”
They jumped over more cracks in the sidewalk and passed a graffiti mural spray-painted over a caved-in wall. The city will hiss, it read.
That was the next part of the prophecy, wasn’t it? Celia thought.
Ruby took them to stairs that led down to a subway stop. It was covered over in yellow tape that read Danger: Do Not Enter. Ruby didn’t even slow down as she ducked beneath it and skipped down into the darkness.
“Down there?” Celia asked, staring at the stairs that led into pitch black.
“Yep,” Amber sighed. “But Ruby and I will keep you safe, as much as possible. Ruby feels terrible about what happened yesterday.”
Yesterday. Celia chewed her lip and looked into the darkness. I got a monster’s heart. I saved everyone, she reminded herself.
“You kind of have a psycho look on your face,” Amber whispered. “I can’t tell if that means you’ll be the best hunter ever, or just sort of unstable.”
Celia took a deep breath, ducked beneath the yellow tape, and ran down the steps. Amber followed behind her.
Someone from the street yelled down at them, “Get out of there. It’s not safe!”
Ruby’s chuckle rose up from the darkness.
“It is safe though, right?” Celia asked. “I mean, it won’t cave in, will it?” She held on to the rain-slicked handrail as she walked down. A cold, rotten-smelling wind blew steadily up the stairs. Celia walked slower the darker it got.
Ruby said from the darkness below, “They use the subway tunnels. They wouldn’t destroy them.”
Celia bit her lip. That information only swapped out one fear for a bigger one. She took another step down, but there weren’t any more stairs and her foot hit the ground, hard.
“Can I turn a light on, Ru?” Amber asked.
“Fine.”
Light bloomed behind Celia from an electric lantern. It made a small, bright circle along the subway’s dirty tiled floor.
Ruby stood a couple of feet away. She squared her shoulders and jutted her chin out. “You ready for this, O prophesized one?”
Celia nodded.
They sprayed each other with the terrible-smelling protection spray.
“When I first got to the city, I liked to imagine that mole people lived down here and built the tunnels,” Celia said.
“No such thing,” Ruby replied.
“I know, but it’s funny, right, that in reality there are . . .” Her voice trailed off as Ruby walked to the edge of the subway platform. She jumped off the ledge and disappeared into the darkness.
“I wish there were mole people, instead of them.” Amber walked to the edge and fell into the darkness, taking the light with her.
Celia chewed on her lower lip as she followed. There were signs all over the subway warning people to stay away from the electrified rails. It was at least five feet down to the subway tracks, Celia saw, as she looked at the two girls below, standing in a small circle of light. Her parents hadn’t written, Celia will not get electrified, or Celia will not chase after monsters in dark subway tunnels. But that was only because who in their right mind would need to be reminded not to do that kind of thing?
“Come on, little doom girl. Fortune favors the bold and all that,” Ruby called up.
Celia closed her eyes, jumped, and landed a moment later on the hard-packed dirt between the tracks.
“This way.” Ruby started walking away with long strides.
“They use these tunnels?” Celia asked.
“It’s mostly just Littles running errands.” Amber’s quiet voice echoed in the tunnel. “Some Bigs, too. But don’t worry. We know the tunnels well, and what to avoid.”
Ruby added, in a louder voice, “There’s Dax, a huge bat-guy who hangs out at an unused station under Twelfth Street. And Smotherer. She’s on the A line, usually. Oh, and Spooks the Clown. But we probably won’t run into any of them.”
“Usually, probably,” Celia whispered, not liking those words.
The darkness seemed to fill up with monsters, always fading just out of sight as they walked deeper and deeper into the subway tunnels. Whatever boldness Celia had woken up with faded away.
She forced herself to breathe as they walked between the lines of the silver train rails.
“Smell that?” Ruby asked.
“Chocolate and whipped cream,” Amber whispered. She clicked the light off for a second. In the pitch blackness, a line of glowing orange smoke led into a side tunnel.
Amber clicked the light back on.
“I’ll take the lead,” Ruby ordered. “Celia stays back. Keep her near escape routes, okay, Amber?”
Amber nodded.
The hunters made no sound as they started running into the tunnel. Their feet barely seemed to touch the pebbled ground. Ruby sprinted forward into the darkness.
Celia ran clumsily beside Amber, desperate to keep up with her so she wouldn’t fall back.
The curling wisps of orange smoke grew thicker. The air smelled more and more luscious.
“Lights off,” Ruby whispered from in front of them.
Amber’s lamp clicked off.
Celia stumbled, every step suddenly uncertain. Her eyes teared and blinked in the darkness, not accepting that there was nothing to see. Amber’s warm fingers slipped into her hand and pulled her forward.
“No!” a boy’s voice yelped in front of them.
Celia and Amber moved blindly toward the sound. At first she thought her mind was making up the dim shadows, but as she kept going down the curving tunnel, she could see more and more.
A hand gripped her shoulder, and Celia would have screamed if another hand hadn’t clamped over her mouth.
Ruby’s face materialized in the gloomy gray light, inches away from them. She removed her hand, put a finger to her lips, then pointed down the tunnel. She grabbed onto Celia’s free hand with rough, callused fingers.
The three of them walked slowly forward. A faint muttering grew into voices. The air smelled like a mixture of chocolate and sour oranges. Ruby inched them forward more slowly, until they could see two people standing inside a gray circle of light at a crossroads in the tunnel.
Glowing orange smoke pooled over the ground. A Little stood frozen, staring up at the Big monster who loomed over him. Celia froze too, as any thought that she was a girl who could fight monsters fled from her. Cold terror took its place.
14
Interrogate, Intimidate
Celia pressed her back against the wall of the tunnel and went motionless as she tried to make herself small and unnoticeable. She watched the scene between the two monsters a hundred feet in front of them. This was supposed to be safe. There weren’t supposed to be any Bigs, she thought as her heart pounded. She was starting to suspect that what the hunters wanted to happen versus what went down were two different things a lot of the time.
“If they notice us, we run,” Ruby whispered, putting her mouth up against Celia’s ear. She pointed across the tunnel toward a dark hole. “Within ten feet it gets too small for the Big to follow.”
Ten feet and we’ll be safe, Celia thought, and wondered when her definition of safe had become a narrow black-holed tunnel beneath the city.
In front of them, the two monsters faced each other. The Little looked like a kid a couple of years younger than Celia, except for his yellow skin and blue horns that jutted out from his hairless head. He stood with his neck craned up at the Big.
She towered over him, standing on bony, birdlike legs. She wore tattered red shorts and a black tank top. Spikes and thorns jutted out from her arms, torso, and head, like a porcupine’s. They were bone colored and looked sharp. Her small head was dominated by a long beak. In one spiked hand she held a lantern. With the other, she dangled her fingers over the Little’s head.
“Speak the words!” the Big hissed and squawked. One of her spiked fingers sliced through the air and hit the Little’s head.
He yelped as blood trickled down the side of his face. “Your will be done. Complete obedience, always and forever, of course,” he stuttered.
The Big twitched her fingers, and a glowing red ball appeared in her hand. She dropped the orb of light onto the top of the Little’s bald head. It flared and broke like an egg. Magic ran down his face in a goopy mess.
The Little stumbled back, wiping away the magic with his yellow fingers. “Ow! That really hurts, Master Aruna. Like a hundred bug bites! Ow.”
The monster threw back her quilled head and laughed with a hacking bird sound.
The Little howled. He stumbled to the ground as he kept trying to get the magic off his face.
“Know the cost,” the big said in her raspy bird voice. Her spikes bristled and stood up all over her body as she leaned over him, opened her beak, and bit his ear.
“Ow!” he screamed. He put his hands over his head. “I said I’d obey. I’m bound to my word. Why’d you have to put another binding spell on me?”
“Everything moves.” She hissed and shifted her weight from one bone-thin leg to the other. “Everything tilts. The great spell is afoot.” Her thorny fingers wrapped around him and lifted him off the ground. She held him up, inches from her face. “Obey!” She flung him hard against the tunnel wall.
He fell to the ground and lay there for a long moment. Then he sat up and drew his knees to his chest. “I always obey,” he whined as the last of the magic faded around him. “I was out running messages for you, like you asked.”
The Big leaned over him and bit his other ear. She laughed, a wild bird-of-prey sound, and turned and started sprinting down the tunnel, in the opposite direction from Celia and the hunters. She took the lantern with her and left blackness behind.
In the sudden darkness, the only sound was the Little’s soft sobbing.
Ruby’s hand slipped out of Celia’s. Celia breathed into the inky darkness, trying to imagine what it would be like to be that boy. That Little.
A couple of long moments later, Ruby called out, “Lights.”
Light bloomed beside Celia, blinding and bright until her eyes adjusted. Amber held up the lantern and walked forward. Ahead of them, Ruby pinned the yellow-skinned monster against the tunnel wall with one gloved hand. She used her other hand to cover his mouth. Plumes of orange smoke fell out of his sleeves and pants cuffs as he struggled to get away. The chocolate and whipped-cream smell intensified as Celia trailed behind Amber.
Amber stopped and whispered, “Everything we do, we do it because we have to. Remember that.”
When they got near, Ruby glared at the boy and hissed, “Tell us what you know.” She spoke like each word was its own sentence. “What are they planning? What does your master want?” Slowly, she took her hand off his mouth.
He inhaled sharply and shook his head from side to side. “Leave me alone,” he whimpered. “They never tell me anything. I have messages to tell other Bigs, but they’re all code words that don’t make sense to you or me. I don’t know stuff. Why would I know stuff? I’m just a Little.” He rubbed the tip of one blue horn and sniffed the air. “All I know is they’re freaked out about something, and are trying to catch someone. But if you wanted, all four of us could try to find out together. We could be friends.” His eyes went big and glassy as he turned to stare at Amber. “You smell so good,” he added. “I promise I won’t hurt you.”
Amber walked right up to him. She stood less than a foot away.
A dreamy look came over his face as his hand reached toward her.
Amber leaned closer to him.
His smile widened. He licked his lips. His yellow fingers floated up toward her face. They darted forward and touched her chin.
A hissing sound filled the air. He gasped and pulled his hand back. Red welts rose up on his fingers as he howled.
“It doesn’t matter how nice they seem—they always try to attack us,” Amber said, looking at Celia in the dim light.
The Little started crying. He touched the cut on his head that the Big had given him. He stared at his wounded hand. “Just leave me alone. Why can’t everyone leave me alone?”
Ruby’s gloved hand kept the Little pinned to the tunnel wall.
Celia stood with her hands on her hips and tried to look tough. They weren’t really going to hurt him. Amber had promised that.
“Talk,” Ruby ordered.
“You want to know what I know? Nothing. Everyone’s losing it since the earthquake,” the Little said. He scrunched his eyes closed, like he could make everything go away by not looking.
“Poor Little monster,” Ruby taunted. “If you can’t tell us anything, you’re going to the cages.”
He started crying harder. Fat tears rolled down his yellow face.
Celia chewed the inside of her cheek. This is part of hunting. Part of being the doom girl, she thought. Even if I don’t like it, we do need to learn stuff.
“You think we’re mean?” Ruby winked at Celia over the Little’s head. “Our friend destroyed Dreck yesterday on her first mission out. She’s got a taste for it and wants more.”
The boy’s yellow-sheened skin went lemon-lime as he looked at Celia.
Celia glared back at him.
He jutted his chin out. “Good. I hated Dreck. I hate them all. We’re on the same side, you know? And even if I knew something, even if I accidentally overheard something I wasn’t supposed to, you think they’d let me just tell you?” He started coughing.
“Useless,” Ruby growled. “Utterly—”
“Wait,” Amber said. “You mean you can’t tell us, don’t you?”
He nodded and coughed harder.
“He must be hexed,” Amber informed Celia. “That coughing is from a spell that keeps him from saying something.”
“No!” he yelped. “I’m definitely not hexed.” He coughed some more.
“How do we break it?” Celia asked.
“We don’t.” Amber opened her bag and pulled out an old Ouija board with frayed edges. She laid it down on the uneven tunnel floor and held the piece of plastic in her hand that could spell out words or answer yes-or-no questions. She sat down cross-legged in front of it.
Ruby let go of the Little. “Sit. If yo
u try to run? Try anything, and a hex will be the least of your worries.”
He sank to the ground on the far side of the Ouija board. Celia sat down beside Amber. The monster watched them miserably.
Ruby stayed standing above them, playing with a small, sharp knife that she tossed between her hands.
“Did you overhear a plan?” Amber asked the Little.
He shook his head.
“A spell?” Ruby asked.
“Nah.”
“A name?” Celia guessed.
“No! Definitely not a name!” he yelled, and then smiled a little.
Celia smiled back. Up close, it was hard not to stare at his blue horns and shiny yellow skin.
“A name. Okay.” Amber placed the plastic piece on the Ouija board and moved it around the alphabet.
“Not that way! You definitely don’t want to go there. No! That’s not the first letter!” he yelled. “Go the other way. You’ve got it all wrong! Go back!”
The plastic piece circled the letter K.
“No,” he growled, “that’s the most wrong you could possibly be.” He gave them a small smile and a thumbs-up. “No, not that way!” he started up when Amber began moving the plastic piece again.
They got four more letters—R, A, W, L—before the Little relaxed back against the walls of the tunnel.
“Krawl?” Amber whispered.
The word sent shivers through Celia. What was a Krawl?
“You heard some monsters talking about Krawl?” Amber whispered.
“Absolutely not. That’s the one name no one has ever said in front of me!” he said.
“Who’s Krawl?” Ruby asked.
Amber shook her head. “I’ll tell you later.” She focused on the Little. “Does Krawl have something to do with the earthquake?”
“No! A hundred times no! That is absolutely not true!”
Which meant yes.
“Can you describe what Krawl looks like?” Amber asked.
The Little relaxed. “No idea.”
“Anything else?” Ruby asked.
The Little shook his head and closed his eyes. “That’s all. Honest. I want you guys to destroy them. I hate them just as much as you do. Will you leave me alone already?” Sweat rolled down his face next to the lines of dried blood where his master had cut him.
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