Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow Read online

  “They’re not hunting for treasure.”

  They weren’t exactly hunting for treasure, but they might as well have been. Golders Night turned out to be quite a clever idea, although Morrigan didn’t fully understand the whole thing. It was a massive operation. The Wundrous Society had spent weeks organizing it down to the very last detail, and Holliday Wu’s Public Distraction Department had been promoting it to death. Excitement levels in Nevermoor were so high even the Hotel Deucalion staff had been buzzing about it.

  From what Morrigan could gather, Golders Night was some sort of scavenger hunt. There were maps and riddles individualized to every citizen in Nevermoor, with routes perfectly tailored to steer everyone to designated “green zones”—far away from any potential Project Scaly Sewer Beast spillover—and prizes to guarantee high rates of participation.

  There were only one hundred “treasures” to be found by almost a whole city of participants, and the way people were talking about it, some of them would just about sell their own grandmother to find one. The treasure wasn’t gold or jewels or anything quite so tangible. It was something most people in Nevermoor considered even more valuable: a favor from the Wundrous Society.

  “Treasure, favors, whatever. It’s the same thing.” Heloise hoisted herself up onto a guardrail, crossing her legs. “My point is, nobody’s coming. Trust me, I’ve done loads of these stupid Distractions, and they never put me anywhere anything interesting happens. Just shut up and get on with it.”

  “Ugh, why do you even want me to do it again?” Morrigan snapped. “I burned you the first time. Is your memory that bad?”

  “You can’t do it, can you?” Heloise’s face split in a malicious grin. She jumped down from the guardrail and moved closer, getting in Morrigan’s face. “You can’t do anything. Obviously. If the Wundrous Society really had an actual, proper Wundersmith—instead of a loser like you—they’d put them somewhere more important than out here in the middle of—”

  The moment the fire blazed up from Morrigan’s chest and out of her throat, singeing a street sign above their heads, she knew she’d been played like a fiddle. Heloise gasped and seemed genuinely shocked. Then she shrieked with laughter.

  “Are you insane? We’re in public!” she said, echoing Morrigan’s earlier objection in a high-pitched, mocking voice. “Not supposed to do that sort of thing outside the Society, are you? Wouldn’t want anyone to know YOU’RE A WUNDERSMITH.”

  “Shush, Heloise.” Morrigan glanced around nervously.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to tell the Elders about this,” Heloise continued, tapping the steel star against the side of her leg. “Or you could stand against that wall while I get a bit of throwing practice in? Promise I won’t aim for your head.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  The older girl turned suddenly serious. “It should have been you, you know. You should have been the one to lose your knack. Not Alfie.”

  Morrigan swallowed, head spinning at the sudden change of gears. She’d often wondered about Heloise’s boyfriend, Alfie Swann, who she’d helped to rescue from the Ghastly Market. He’d once been able to breathe underwater, but his knack was stolen from him when he was kidnapped and put up for auction—nobody at Wunsoc seemed to know exactly how. Morrigan hadn’t seen him at school since. She wasn’t even sure if he was still a member of the Society.

  “Do you… still see him?” she asked haltingly. “Is he still…”

  Heloise’s eyes were suddenly red-rimmed, but she scowled, blinking fiercely.

  “Knackless?” she snapped. There was a tiny catch in her voice. “Yeah. His mum reckons—”

  But Morrigan didn’t find out what Alfie Swann’s mum reckoned, because Heloise was interrupted by a sudden bellowing sound from down the street, and both girls jumped about a yard.

  Morrigan looked around for the source of the strange noise and, to her horror, saw a large figure ambling down the middle of the street, a few hundred yards away. Had the figure seen the fire and come toward it?

  She bit down hard on her lip. Had they seen where it came from?

  They watched in tense silence as the figure came close enough for them to see.

  “He’s from the Society!” Morrigan said, a little louder than she’d intended. “It’s… Brutilus Brown, Thaddea’s wrestling coach.”

  “Oh! The bearwun,” said Heloise. “Great. I’ll just go and tell him how the nasty Wundersmith set fire to a street sign—”

  “No—Heloise, WAIT!” Morrigan grabbed the older girl’s arm and yanked her back against the station wall, into the shadows.

  “Ow, what are you—”

  “Shush. Look.”

  There was something very wrong with Brutilus. He was behaving like a bear.

  The last time Morrigan had seen him, he was calmly telling Thaddea where she’d gone wrong in her last match. He’d been standing on his hind legs. Carrying a clipboard. Wearing Lycra, for crying out loud.

  Now he was tearing through rubbish bins, throwing their contents all over the ground, snorting and grunting like a rogue grizzly at a campsite.

  “Is he drunk?” Heloise giggled.

  He did seem sort of drunk, but not, Morrigan thought, in a remotely funny way. As he came closer, she noticed the line of thick white drool all around his muzzle, and the strange way he kept sniffing the air. Every now and then he lashed out at a letterbox or thumped erratically on the bonnet of a parked motorcar.

  Morrigan felt sick for thinking it, but… he looked like a rabid unnimal.

  She thought suddenly of Christmas Eve. Of Juvela De Flimsé, the leopardwun on the Wunderground. The way she’d prowled the length of the carriage, sniffing the air just like Brutilus was now, and how she’d lunged for Baby Dave with that vacant, vicious look in her eyes.

  “We have to get out of here,” she whispered. “He’s going to attack us.”

  “What?” said Heloise, snorting. “No, he’s not. He might be drunk, but he’s still a teacher.”

  At that moment, as if to prove Morrigan’s point, a stray cat crossed the bearwun’s path and he batted it violently out of his way, letting out a thunderous roar. The cat zoomed off and disappeared up a tree, yowling.

  Heloise gasped and covered her mouth.

  Morrigan looked for a way to get out of his path, perhaps some shadows that would cloak them while they slipped down a side street, but it was no good. This was a Wunderground station, so of course the whole place was lit up like a night match in the Trollosseum. They were standing in the only shadow around.

  “We need to cause a distraction,” she said.

  Heloise was breathing heavily, having suddenly realized the gravity of their situation. “And then what?”

  “We just need to make him look somewhere else so we can make a run for it.”

  “Easy.” Heloise aimed one of her stars at a letterbox diagonally across the road, and it hit its target with a loud ping. The noise distracted Brutilus long enough for them to sprint fifty or so yards away from the station, stopping to duck down behind an overflowing rubbish bin.

  “What next?” Heloise whispered, having apparently decided Morrigan was in charge, despite being three years older.

  “I… I don’t know, just let me think.”

  Morrigan had hoped the bearwun would move toward the sound, but he’d already spotted the still-smoldering street sign where she and Heloise had been standing moments earlier. He gazed at it, transfixed, and sniffed the air. His nose quivered. His face registered confusion, then anger, and he let loose a furious roar that filled the whole street.

  The noise was so close, so loud, and so sudden that it made both Morrigan and Heloise jump again. Whether one of them knocked it, or the vibrations caused it to move, the lid began to slide off the bin, clattering loudly to the ground.

  Brutilus turned at the sound, a low growl reverberating from deep in his chest. Morrigan’s mouth was dry. She could feel the ancient, primal fear of a hunted unnimal coiling in her
stomach.

  He sniffed the air again. Then he stood up on his hind legs, bellowing, and—Morrigan was absolutely certain—his eyes flashed a bright, glowing green.

  Tossing his enormous head back and forth wildly, as if he had some creature in his jaws and was trying to snap its neck, Brutilus ran straight at Morrigan and Heloise, bounding down the street on all fours.

  “RUN!” said Morrigan.

  They ran, right down the center of the empty road. Morrigan’s chest burned with the effort of it and her ears filled with the clash of their boots on the cobblestones and it wasn’t until she heard her name being cried out some way back that she realized Heloise was no longer running beside her.

  She turned around and her eyes landed on the green-haired girl, crumpled on the ground, while the enormous bearwun barreled toward her. She must have fallen and hurt herself, or else she was frozen with fear.

  Brutilus was almost upon her. Morrigan hummed a few notes and felt her fingers start to tingle with gathering Wunder, trying to come up with a plan, but panicking—Get up, Heloise, she thought desperately. Move!

  But improbably, unbelievably, Brutilus ran straight past the girl on the ground, as if he didn’t even see her. He was coming for Morrigan.

  So Morrigan did the only thing she could think of. She turned and kept running, and hoped that Heloise would be all right, that maybe she would even be able to go for help.

  She ran as fast and as far as possible, for streets and streets, zigzagging and taking unpredictable turns, but he was bigger and he was faster and he was gaining on her. She couldn’t outrun a bearwun.

  She had to outsmart him.

  Morrigan’s brain went into overdrive, taking inventory of everything she passed, anything that might help her.

  Brolly Rail cable. No platform, and you don’t have a brolly.

  Tree. He’ll climb up after you.

  Fire hydrant. No idea.

  Tricksy Lane.

  Wait.

  Tricksy Lane. Red Alert.

  A Red Alert Tricksy Lane meant High-danger trickery and likelihood of damage to person on entry. Morrigan had to make a choice: risk unknown danger down a Tricksy Lane, or the absolute certain danger that when her body tired out, she would be mauled by a vicious nine-foot bearwun with claws the size of pocketknives. She hadn’t learned enough of the Wundrous Arts yet to protect herself—maybe Inferno, but she had no idea what to do with that. Something was wrong with Brutilus. He needed help, not an errant fireball.

  It really wasn’t much of a choice.

  Without slowing down, she turned into the tiny street, ready to confront whatever it had in store. She was barely three yards past the Red Alert sign when water blasted at her from every direction, filling the alleyway and her nose and mouth and ears and tumbling her over and over like she’d just fallen from a ship in a storm. Wave after wave slammed into her, and every time she managed to get her head above the surface she was hit by another.

  Morrigan had no idea if bears—or bearwuns, for that matter—could swim, but she knew she had an advantage on Brutilus. She knew how Tricksy Lanes worked.

  She knew that if you wanted to get through one, you had to lean into whatever horrible trick it tried to play on you. Let it happen, push farther into the lane until you could hardly stand it any longer, until you thought it might just about be the end of you… and only then would it let you go.

  At least, that was how the Tricksy Lanes she’d come across before had worked.

  She stopped trying to fight against the onslaught, stopped trying to keep her head above water. She swam into the tumultuous oncoming waves, not away from them, diving beneath them one after the other, feeling like she might be about to drown or be swept away. There was nothing to hold on to, nothing to keep her safe.

  Morrigan felt a sudden searing pain down the side of her leg and screamed underwater.

  A flash of green light, a cloud of blood.

  She kicked out and her foot met something solid. Brutilus Brown. His face loomed above hers briefly, all open jaws and enormous teeth and ferociously glowing green eyes, as they tumbled over each other in the water. He swiped at her again, missed, and then another wave hit and he was gone.

  Morrigan tasted blood and salt. Her chest ached.

  Her lungs had nothing left in them and her limbs had stopped working and she was sinking to the bottom of the alley like a stone and—oh, this was it, it was over, this was really it, and then—

  Air.

  Morrigan emerged, gasping, from the water at last. She slumped in a twisted heap on the cobbled ground as the ocean departed in a sudden, deafening whoosssshh.

  Then silence.

  She’d done it. She’d pushed through the trick.

  And all she’d had to do was drown.

  Every bit of her was heavy with salt water—her clothes, her hair, her boots. She coughed up mouthfuls of it, choking and spluttering as she tried to heave air into her lungs. Her throat was burning.

  But there was no bearwun in sight.

  When she’d mastered her breathing, Morrigan forced herself to sit up, wincing from the pain and effort of that simple task. Her left trouser leg was torn. Big, deep claw marks ran from above her knee to halfway down her calf. She was still bleeding, and now that the adrenaline had worn off, her entire leg ached and throbbed. She wasn’t certain she’d be able to stand without help.

  Even more worrying, Morrigan had no idea where she was. She couldn’t go back the way she’d come, that she knew. The streets were dark and she was shivering with cold and there was nobody around to help her…

  And… and she’d just been attacked by a bearwun and drowned, for goodness’ sake!

  Suddenly, Morrigan felt like crying. She thought she might do exactly that—just sit there on the ground, in her wet clothes, and cry. A small, sensible voice in her head told her that would be highly impractical and wouldn’t get her any closer to home. But the small, sensible voice sounded very far away, and frankly Morrigan just wanted it to shut up.

  She closed her eyes, leaning back against the brick wall. Her breaths came in short, shallow bursts. She was so tired.

  She just wanted to sleep. Just for a minute.

  Her eyes fluttered open, then closed again.

  The night grew dim and silent.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  VISITORS

  Morrigan was at the bottom of a deep, tranquil ocean, and everything was fine. She could have stayed there forever, and perhaps she would have, but her quiet peace was interrupted.

  A voice dropped into the stillness, like a pebble breaking the surface far above.

  Get up, it said. There’s nobody coming to help you.

  Was someone there, or had the voice come from inside Morrigan’s own head? Either way, she wasn’t interested. A dark, warm blanket of nothingness had enveloped her, and she only wanted to burrow deeper into its folds.

  Get up, the voice said again. Unless you want to die here.

  “Go away,” she whispered croakily.

  Silent moments passed. Morrigan slowly became aware of the steady, rhythmic sound of her own breathing, still warm in the cocoon of half-sleep.

  Suit yourself, said the voice.

  The sound of footsteps faded into the distance, while Morrigan floated gently up, up, up into consciousness.

  Her eyes fluttered open. She was alone.

  One deep, shuddery breath, and then another. Clenching her jaw as tight as she could, Morrigan began to pull herself up the alley wall, sliding bit by bit and trying to put her weight on her good leg. She’d almost made it to a standing position when her good leg gave out beneath her and, slipping sideways, she landed heavily against the cobblestones.

  Morrigan cried out at the flash of pain that radiated down her leg, and stayed statue-still for a long time until it diminished to a dull throb. She listened hard for any sound—footsteps, a distant voice—and again contemplated staying put until help magically arrived.

  But the s
treets were still. The voice in her head was right. Nobody was coming.

  “Get up,” she told herself through gritted teeth. “GET. UP.”

  It took her ten minutes, a lot of groaning and shivering, and a very stern self-talking-to, but she made it to her feet and began her slow, squelching journey, keeping her eyes open for a street sign or landmark she recognized. Once she knew where she was, she was certain she could figure out a way home. That was what she was good at.

  She pictured a map of Nevermoor inside her head. Usually it gave her a strange sort of comfort. She liked the way it was disorderly and chaotic, and yet it could be memorized and mastered. The monster could be tamed.

  But something was wrong now. The streets in her head were jumbled, and she couldn’t quite keep the map in focus.

  She’d barely made it half a block from the alley when a manhole in the middle of the street flew open.

  “What now?” she groaned, swaying on the spot. Had she wandered into a red zone, right in the middle of Scaly Sewer Beast territory? Was this yet another thing that wanted to kill her tonight?

  But up from the sewers came half a dozen black-clothed, sweaty-faced Society members, dropping their equipment right in the middle of the street to high-five each other, chug bottles of water, and drop to the ground from exhaustion.

  “Morrigan?” said a familiar voice, and Thaddea’s wild ginger head came into view. Her horrified expression suggested that Morrigan must look about as terrible as she felt. “Morrigan, what’s—your leg—you’re bleeding! What happened?”

  “’S just a scratch.” Morrigan had always wanted to say that about an injury that was demonstrably not a scratch. She felt quite pleased with herself for having sufficient wits about her when the opportunity arose. But even as she shot Thaddea a proud grin, she felt it sliding woozily off her face.

  “Whoa, whoa—easy now,” said Gavin Squires, and Morrigan felt a pair of muscular arms grab her around the waist as the ground came suddenly closer. He had a strong whiff of the sewer about him.