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“Here’s my offer,” said Caul. “Allow my specialists to perform their procedure on you, and when I’ve got what I want, I’ll let you and your friends go free—and your ymbrynes, too. They’ll pose me no threat then, anyhow.”
“And if I refuse?”
“If you won’t let me remove your soul the easy and painless way, then my hollows would be more than happy to do it. They aren’t known for their bedside manner, though, and once they’re through with you, I’m afraid I’ll be powerless to stop them from moving on to your ymbrynes. So you see, I’ll get what I want either way.”
“That won’t work,” Emma said.
“Are you referring to the boy’s little trick? I’ve heard he’s been able to control one hollow, but how about two at once? Or three, or five?”
“As many as I want,” I said, trying to sound confident, unflappable.
“That I would very much like to see,” said Caul. “Shall I take that as your answer, then?”
“Take it however you like,” I said. “I’m not helping you.”
“Oh, goody,” Caul said. “This will be loads more fun!”
We could hear Caul laughing over the PA, and then I startled at the sound of a loud buzzer.
“What’ve you done now?” Emma said.
I felt a sharp pulse in my gut, and without Caul having to explain anything, I could picture exactly what was happening: in a tunnel below the ymbrynes’ room, a hollow had been released from deep within the bowels of the complex. It was coming closer, climbing toward a grate in the floor that was scraping open. It would be among the ymbrynes soon.
“He’s sending up a hollow!” I said. “It’s coming into that room!”
“We’ll start with just one hollowgast,” said Caul. “If you can manage him, I’ll introduce you to his friends.”
I banged on the glass. “Let us in!”
“With pleasure,” said Caul. “Warren?”
Warren pushed another button on the remote. A door-sized section of the glass wall slid open.
“I’m going!” I said to Emma. “You stay here and guard him!”
“If Miss Peregrine’s in there, I’m coming, too.”
It was clear there was no talking her out of it.
“Then we’re bringing him with us,” I said.
Warren tried to dart away, but Emma caught him by the back of his coat.
I ran through the door, into the dark and jumbled room, and Emma was behind me with the squirming, mouthless intern collared in one hand.
I heard the glass door bang shut behind us.
Emma swore.
I turned to look.
On the other side of the door, on the floor, lay the remote. We were locked in.
* * *
We’d only been inside the room a few seconds when the intern managed to wriggle from Emma’s grasp and tumble off into the darkness. Emma started to chase him, but I held her back—he didn’t matter. What mattered was the hollow, which was nearly out of its hole now and into the room.
It was starving. I could feel its gnawing hunger as if it were my own. In moments it would start feasting on ymbrynes, unless we could stop it. Unless I could stop it. First, though, I would have to find it, and the room was so crowded with junk and shadows that my ability to see hollows wasn’t of great advantage.
I asked Emma for more light. She strengthened the flames in her hands as much as she could, but it seemed to only lengthen the shadows.
To keep her safe, I asked her to stay by the door. She refused. “We stick together,” she said.
“Stick together behind me, then. Way behind me.”
That, at least, she granted me. As I moved past catatonic Miss Glassbill and deeper into the room, Emma hung back several paces, holding one hand high above her head to light our way. What we could see of the room looked like a bloodless battlefield hospital, deconstructed human forms scattered everywhere.
My foot kicked an arm. It rung dully and spun away—plaster. Here was a torso on a table. There a head in a liquid-filled jar, its eyes and mouth agape, almost certainly real but not of recent vintage. This seemed to be Caul’s lab, torture chamber, and storage closet all in one. He was a hoarder, like his brother, of strange and ghastly things—only where Bentham was organized to a tee, Caul badly needed a maid.
“Welcome to the hollows’ play space,” Caul said, his amplified voice echoing through the room. “We conduct experiments on them here, feed them, watch them disassemble their food. I wonder what part of you they’ll eat first? Some hollows start with the eyes … a little amuse-bouche …”
I tripped over a body, which yelped as my foot dug into it. Looking down, I saw the scared-to-death face of a middle-aged woman peeping back at me, wild-eyed—an ymbryne I didn’t know. Without stopping I bent down and whispered, “Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of here,” but no, I thought, we would not; this chaos of forms and mad shadows would be the scene of our death—Old Jacob ascending, doom-saying, un-shut-uppable.
I heard something shift deeper in the room, followed by the wet draw of a hollowgast’s mouth opening. It was here among us. I aimed myself toward it and ran—tripping, catching myself, Emma running too, saying, “Jacob, hurry!”
Caul, over the PA, mocking us: “Jacob, hurry!”
He had turned up the music: driving, upbeat, deranged.
We passed three, four more ymbrynes, all tied and struggling, before I finally saw it.
I stopped, breathless, my mind reeling at its sheer size. The hollow was a giant—several heads taller than the one I’d tamed, its skull nearly scraping the ceiling despite its hunched frame. It was twenty feet away, its jaws wide and tongues raking the air. Emma stumbled a few feet ahead of me and stuck out her hand, pointing at something and lighting it at the same time.
“There! Look!”
It wasn’t the hollow she’d seen, of course, but what it was moving toward: a woman, upside down and twisting, hung up like a side of beef, her black skirts blooming about her head. Even like that, even in the dark, I knew her—it was Miss Wren.
Addison was hanging right next to her. They were strugg
ling, gagged, and mere feet from a hollowgast whose tongues were now stretching toward them, slipping around Miss Wren’s shoulders, drawing her into its jaws.
“STOP!” I screamed, first in English, then in the rasping language the hollow could understand. I shouted again, then again, until it did stop—though not because it was under my control, but because I had suddenly become more interesting prey.
It released the ymbryne and she swung away like a pendulum. The hollow turned its tongues toward me.
“Cut down Miss Wren while I draw the hollow away,” I said.
I moved away from Miss Wren while talking to the hollow in a constant stream, hoping to draw it away from her and keep its attention on me.
Close your mouth. Sit down. Lie down.
It turned away from Miss Wren as I moved—good, good—and then as I backed away, it came forward.
Yes. Okay. Now what?
My hands went to my pockets. In one I had what remained of Mother Dust’s finger. In the other, a secret—a vial of ambro I’d swiped from the previous room while Emma wasn’t looking. I’d taken it during a momentary lapse of confidence. What if I couldn’t do this on my own? What if I needed a boost?
Sit down, I said. Stop.
The hollow whipped one of its tongues at me. I ducked behind a mannequin and the tongue lassoed that instead, lifted it up and flung it against a wall, where it shattered.
I dove away from a second tongue. Banged my shins on a tipped-over chair. The tongue slapped the empty floor where I’d just been. The hollow was toying with me now, but soon it would go in for the kill. I had to do something, and there were two somethings I could do.
The vial or the finger.
There was no way I’d be able to control this hollow without the boost in my abilities a vial of ambro could give. Mother Dust’s crushed finger, on the other hand, wasn’t something I could launch away from me, and I’d lost my mask. If I tried to use it, I’d only put myself to sleep; it was worse than useless.
As another tongue smashed into the ground beside me, I slid beneath a table and pulled the vial from my pocket. I fumbled to uncork it, my hands shaking. Would it make a hero of me, or a slave? Could one vial really addict me for life? And what would be the worse outcome, being an addict and a slave, or being dead in this hollow’s stomach?
