“Promise you’ll never turn a kid into a monster,” Amber said.
“I promise.”
“Littles lie.” Ruby took something out of her pocket and held a piece of foil-wrapped chewing gum up toward him. As Ruby peeled off the wrapper, the green piece of gum caught the light and shone bright for a moment.
The Little whimpered and pulled his knees up to his chest. He pressed his mouth closed and shook his head.
“What’s the matter?” Ruby mocked. “You promised.”
The boy shook his head again.
“It’s a spell that makes him hurt every time he thinks about touching a kid,” Amber told Celia.
The Little turned his face to the side. “I’ll never do it, but it’s not like I can control all my thoughts. I helped you. Please. Leave me alone.”
They know what they’re doing, Celia thought as she folded her arms over her chest and watched Ruby pry his mouth open and slip the piece of gum into his mouth. A cold wind blew down the tunnel and right through her. She pretended his choking and whimpering sounds didn’t bother her.
Finally, Ruby let him go.
The Little scrambled up to his feet. He turned and ran down the tunnel, calling back, “I hate hunters!”
“That was good, Ru. Textbook interrogate and intimidate,” Amber said. She looked pale and uncertain in the lamplight. Her voice sounded small and breathy.
Ruby nodded and looked down at her gloved hands. For a second she looked young and lost, but then a hardness settled over her. “Tell us about Krawl, Amber.”
Amber shook her head. “Not down here,” she whispered, and peered over the top of her glasses into the darkness. “Not until we’re somewhere safe and surrounded by other hunters. Come on. Let’s go find more Littles.”
Celia wanted to leave the tunnels and go up into the light of day, but they trudged deeper into the darkness. She kept thinking about that Little. She wondered how lonely it was to be him. Why didn’t I tell them to stop? “How long does it take?” Celia asked. “When they attack and change a kid, how long do they have to touch you for?”
“Ten seconds and you’re gone,” Amber whispered. “Sometimes they get a couple of kids to hold hands, and then they can turn more than one.”
Ruby added, “The more Littles they make, the more powerful they are as Bigs.” She strode through a puddle in between the train tracks, splashing water everywhere.
“There’s no way out,” Ruby continued. Littles don’t change. They don’t age. “Even if that Little back there tries as hard as he can? Even if he goes for decades without hurting a kid, that only makes things worse.”
Celia looked behind her into the darkness. “Worse?”
“The longer they stay Little, the more powerful it makes them as Bigs. I know that kid back there looked pitiful, but what he is, Celia, is a ticking time bomb.”
The world shouldn’t be like this, Celia thought. Someone should do something about it.
“I’d rather be dead than be a Little,” Ruby said bitterly as she stomped through another puddle.
I might be the doom girl, but the Littles are actually doomed, Celia thought as she rubbed her cold arms. She thought about being a creature destined to destroy someone else. “Me too.”
“Good.” Amber grabbed Celia’s hand and squeezed. “I knew you would make a good hunter. You are so brave for just learning about them yesterday.”
Celia smiled into the darkness.
They walked on and on through intersecting tunnels, until Celia lost all sense of how far they’d gone or where they might possibly be beneath the city. They found an abandoned subway stop that had walls thick with black and green mold. Pink-eyed rats as big as dogs hissed and squeaked at them from the platform. They walked through tunnels that dripped water from the ceiling and grew forests of white and brown mushrooms in between the unused train tracks. They walked and walked but didn’t see any other trails of sweet-smelling orange smoke.
Ruby passed out granola bars and small cans of energy drinks that made Celia’s heart race. They rested, perched on the cold metal subway tracks. Celia felt exhausted. She didn’t want to complain.
“Can we go up now, Ruby? Please?”Amber asked.
Ruby checked her watch and nodded. “Hunter meeting is starting soon,” she said. She led them down a different tunnel, then stopped and pointed up to the ceiling.
Metal rungs were cemented into the side of the tunnel wall. They climbed up and pushed open a metal circle on the ceiling that was a manhole on a side street in Chinatown. The sun had already set, but the air felt full of light compared to where they’d been.
15
Who Unites Them
They walked along the edge of Chinatown, with its brightly painted dragon sculptures that wound around the telephone poles. They stopped at an earthquake relief tent handing out hot buns, seaweed-wrapped rice balls, and soy hot chocolate. Ruby spoke rapid-fire Mandarin to the gray-haired woman handing out food. They trudged on through the north edge of downtown, where gray skyscrapers loomed and shattered glass sat in jagged piles on the sidewalk.
Celia looked everywhere for signs of monsters but didn’t see any. She felt tired but at the same time like she might never sleep again. Amber and Ruby walked on both sides of her, linking elbows with her.
“Slumber party,” Amber said. She rubbed her eyes. “When this is over, I want to eat takeout Indian at our place and watch a million movies. You have to come, Celia. The council always gives us downtime after things have been intense.”
Ruby nodded, scanning the street for trouble. “I’m going to play video games for three days straight.”
Amber rolled her eyes. “Ruby relaxes by killing imaginary monsters instead of real ones.”
“Amber nerds out and reads spell books and history books that weigh twenty pounds each,” Ruby shot back.
“And then they make you fight monsters again?” Celia asked. “How did the hunters and the Council of Elders get started in the first place?”
Amber shrugged. “I’ve tried to research it. Not all histories get written down. As far as anyone knows, hunters started when kids fought back against them. When they grew too old to see them, they trained younger people and taught them everything they had learned. The council passes down hunter lore and gives us spells.”
“How old are they?” Celia asked.
“The Youngstown council?” Ruby paused to think. “The youngest is eighteen, and the oldest is in his nineties or something.”
Even if they couldn’t help fight monsters, at least some grown-ups somewhere were helping, Celia thought. They trudged on through the city. When they finally got to the cathedral and opened up the heavy doors, they were the last hunters to arrive.
The hunters inside waved and called out hellos that echoed through the massive church. Oil lanterns smoked and burned bright along the outer edge of the room, lighting up the stone faces of saints. The three of them walked in, past the holy water and all the burning beeswax candles, each one lit with a prayer.
Celia glanced up at the balcony behind them. No sign of Demetri.
Amber and Celia slid into the same pew they’d sat at before.
Ruby walked down the aisle and took her place in front, standing tense beside the pulpit that held a dozen burning altar candles. She ran a hand through her hair. “Report back. Tell me what you got.”
A boy with dreadlocks raised his hand and cleared his throat. “Pips and I went hunting along the docks. We followed Wolfjack into Magog’s territory. They sent a pack of dogs after us, then a swarm of locusts, then cats.”
A girl sitting next to him with short blond hair nodded. “Squeak distracted them with fish. We listened in on two Bigs scheming. We heard they’ve got thirty Bigs working together.”
Gasps followed her words. Celia shifted where she sat as she remembered Amber saying the only reason Bigs didn’t take over everything was that they never worked together.
“Good job,” Ruby said.
“We heard rumors from four different Littles that the next part of the prophecy will hit soon,” a small girl, who couldn’t have been older than ten, called out. Her leather jacket was ripped open at the shoulder.
The boy sitting next to her added, “The city will hiss and the girl will run.”
Kids turned and stared at Celia. She chewed on a hangnail and looked up at the stained-glass window, pretending not to notice. Celia couldn’t imagine running anywhere. Now that she finally got to sit down and be still, she never wanted to move again.
“What about you? What did you find, Ruby?” a girl with messy ponytails called out.
“First, we killed Dreck last night.” Ruby tried to look indifferent, and held it for a moment before she grinned. “Turns out that one isn’t as useless as she looks.” Ruby pointed at Celia.
All the hunters stared at her again with wide eyes and open mouths.
Amber slung an arm around Celia’s shoulders.
“What intel did you get from Dreck?” a girl wearing a wool fedora asked.
“Nothing. His heart got destroyed. By accident,” Ruby answered.
Amber sat forward. “And today we found a hexed Little. We got a name off him. Krawl.”
“Krawl? Who’s Krawl?” a boy called out.
Amber swallowed. Her eyebrows pulled together as fear flickered across her face. She took a deep breath.
“There’s monsters and then there’s monsters.” Her fingers twisted around in her lap. “Krawl used to rule Youngstown, from back when monsters first showed up until, I don’t know, sixty years back? Of any Big I’ve ever read about, she was the best at magic. Spell casting was her game. She would set fires in classrooms and lock kids in just to make a sacrifice for a spell she was doing. She poisoned a cloister of nuns and set lions loose at the zoo. Back when she was the biggest Big in town, the council and the hunters spent all their time trying to stop her. They never even came close. No one even learned what she looked like. Then, one day, she was gone. Some people say that something banished her, or that she ran from something. Rumors of her popped up in Ukraine next; then she caused the Bermuda Massacre and moved on to Rwanda.”
“Why did she leave? Why is she back?” a boy with long hair whispered.
No one had an answer to that. Everyone took turns shrugging and looking scared.
“She sounds powerful enough to force a bunch of Bigs to work together,” a girl with a pixie cut called out. “She sounds powerful enough to know how to make an earthquake.”
Everyone went quiet, and Celia felt a rising panic fill the air. A boy with curly black hair wearing a faded leather jacket raised his hand. “We got something else. You might not want to hear it, Ruby.”
“Speak.” Ruby paced back and forth, stomping her boots.
The boy bit his lip and looked at the ground. “We swung by council headquarters and got the Grogan’s heart, so we could give it a squeeze and he would have to obey us and tell us everything he knows.”
Something thudded against one of the cathedral’s doors. Everyone turned to look.
“Just the wind. Keep talking,” Ruby said.
“The Grogan told us that the new Big in town—he must have meant Krawl—is back to find someone. Someone who all Bigs hate.”
“Who?” Ruby asked.
“We squeezed his heart good. The Grogan didn’t lie to us.”
“Who?” Ruby growled.
“Demetri.”
Demetri? Celia jerked up in her seat.
Ruby frowned and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right.”
“That’s what he told us,” the boy countered.
“Who’s Demetri?” Celia asked.
“No one.” Ruby crossed her arms over her chest and glared at the hunters—at anyone daring to contradict her. “He’s a stupid fairy tale that Littles tell so they can sleep better at night.”
“The stories say he’s good at hiding,” Amber called out. “Maybe the reason we don’t think he’s real is because he doesn’t want us to think he’s real.”
Celia swallowed and thought about all the wards Demetri wore. She touched the one under her clothes.
“No,” Ruby said. “There’s no way Demetri can be real.”
Celia was just about to ask why, when something touched her ankle. She looked down.
A thin green snake wrapped itself around her leg. It raised its head and hissed.
16
And the Next Will Hiss
Celia screamed and kicked her leg forward, flinging the snake off her foot. It went sailing underneath the pews. She jumped up into a crouch on the pew. Behind her, hundreds of snakes slithered in through the front doors. Others dropped down from a cracked stained-glass window twenty feet up. They moved swiftly and silently, S-curving along the cathedral’s stone floor. They came in all sizes and colors, with diamond patterns, hooded heads, and rattles.
The other hunters pulled their legs up onto the pews too.
Ruby drew her thin swords out from underneath her long wool coat and yelled, “Hunters, get behind me!”
The hunters began jumping from pew to pew before leaping off the benches and onto the raised platform Ruby stood on. They spread out in a V shape behind their purple-haired leader. Amber and Celia were the last to get there.
More snakes poured into the cathedral through the front door. They spread out and covered the ground as they slithered toward the hunters.
Ruby turned to Amber. “Take Celia and find a safe place to hide! We’ll hold them back.”
“No,” Amber said. She stared glassy-eyed at the snakes. “I’m not going to leave you here, Ru. There’s too many of them.”
All around them, the hunters faced the snakes and prepared for battle. A wild-haired girl opened her messenger bag and pulled out two coiled whips tipped with steel points. The scarred boy took out a bow and arrow from his backpack. Other hunters grabbed spray-paint cans, tennis balls, throwing stars, and baseball bats. Amber reached into the pouch she wore on her belt and took out a handful of exploding marbles.
Ruby glared at Amber. “Leave now with the doom girl. You know what our orders from the council are. Keep her safe.”
Amber tugged on her long black braid and frowned. “Promise me you’ll run when they get too close. Promise me you’ll keep safe and—”
“Go!”
Amber stood her ground, hands on her hips.
The snakes slithered closer.
“I promise,” Ruby growled.
Snakes wound around the front edge of the platform the hunters stood on. They hissed and struck at each other. Some of them raised their heads and flicked forked tongues into the air, tasting the hunters’ fear.
Amber grabbed Celia’s hand, and they sprinted through a maze of dark hallways until they came to a door with a battery-lit exit sign. “There’s a safe house a couple of blocks away. We’ll go there,” Amber said, and opened the door.
Amber gasped. Celia stopped breathing for a second.
The moonlight shone down on a sea of snakes moving along every road and sidewalk, for as far as they could see. Snakes slithered through the trees, climbed fire hydrants, and wound themselves around telephone poles. There were thousands of them: tens of thousands. A musky scent filled the night air.
Celia and Amber slammed the door shut and stood in the dark hallway. Screams echoed from the front of the cathedral where the hunters fought. They breathed hard.
A soft hiss came from their left. The shadowy shape of a massive snake moved down the hall.
They ran in the opposite direction, sprinting left, then right, and then up a spiral staircase, taking two stairs at a time. They ran up to the balcony with the pipe organ. There didn’t seem to be any snakes up
there. They paused and looked down at the hunters.
The kids made a tight circle on the raised platform. Thousands of snakes circled them. One hunter used a slingshot to lob bouncy balls at the snakes. When the rubber balls hit the ground, they exploded with a bang, sending snakes flying. Weapons danced through the air, striking at the reptiles. A kid sprayed black spray paint on the ground, and the snakes hissed and moved away from it.
A flick of motion out of the corner of her eye was all that warned Celia. She jumped right just as the striking head of a huge cobra whipped by with bared fangs. It was seven feet long and as thick as her leg.
Amber stood wide-eyed on the far side of the snake.
The cobra rose up. Its diamond-shaped head wobbled from side to side as it stared at Celia. It licked the air and fixed her with yellow eyes before swinging its head around to look at Amber.
Both girls began backing away from the snake and widening the distance between them. The snake swayed and watched Amber.
“There’s another staircase behind the organ! I’ll meet you upstairs,” Amber whispered. She turned and bolted away.
Before Celia could do the same, the cobra swung its gaze back to her and hissed, showing off glistening fangs. Celia took two more steps slowly backward under the snake’s watchful stare. Its forked tongue flicked through the air. Snakes couldn’t smile, but it looked like it grinned.
I can’t do this, Celia thought. I’m just a kid and I can’t—
The cobra pulled its head back, readying to strike.
Celia turned and ran. She flew past the silver pipe organ. Fangs nipped at her ankle. She ran faster. The snake bit into the leather of her boot. The sudden weight of the snake pulling back on her foot almost made her fall. Celia kicked back, as hard as she could. She got free from the snake and ran toward the staircase.
Her legs pushed her up and up the dark stairs, running past moonlit stained-glass windows. She kept running until she came to a trapdoor in the ceiling and couldn’t go any higher.
Little Apocalypse Page 9