Hollowpox The Hunt for Morrigan Crow - Jessica Townsend Page 0,147

weight lifted from her shoulders that she hadn’t even known she was carrying.

Squall had been right about Wunsoc ‘ flipping the script’. He’d been right that Dr Bramble wouldn’t find a cure. But when he said Wundersmiths didn’t have friends, he couldn’t have been more wrong.

Morrigan had friends. True friends, friends who worried about her, and who she worried about in return. Not the long-dead ghosts of Sub-Nine’s history, but real, living friends who would break down a door to reach her when she was in danger. Friends who were family, who would defend her against anything, like Jupiter, and run through a horde of crazed Wunimals to protect her, like Fen. And she knew she’d do the same for them, no matter what.

That was what made her and Squall different. She wasn’t him. The sudden certainty of it made her feel buoyant and brave.

‘Miss Crow, we are running out of time,’ said Squall urgently. Fenestra, noticing him for the first time, jumped so high she just about left her body. ‘You can’t hold them off forever. If you don’t do something now—’

‘I know! Shush, I’m thinking.’

‘Squall,’ growled Fenestra. Her fur stood on end. It looked like she’d been electrocuted.

‘He’s helping me destroy the Hollowpox,’ Morrigan told her. Fen’s mouth fell open in shock or dismay or possibly both. She appeared to have lost the power of speech.

‘Miss Crow – now!’ shouted Squall.

She closed her eyes, shutting out the external noise, trying to pretend she was alone.

Use what you know. What you’re good at.

Inferno, she thought. I’m good at Inferno.

Everything is connected.

Morrigan opened her eyes and looked down at the ground, at the pattern between the uneven cobblestones.

She knelt down and reached towards the ground, taking a deep breath – and squealed as she was knocked sideways by a giant grey paw.

‘Ow! Fen, what—’

‘MORRIGAN, GET DOWN!’

The great white bearwun was rushing at her through the flames, bellowing like a wounded giant. But Fenestra was easily twice the size of the bearwun, and when she roared back at him over the top of Morrigan’s head, it was so loud it hurt her ears and vibrated through her entire body. The bearwun flinched away, but quickly recovered and lunged for Morrigan again. Fen stepped in just in time, and the bearwun’s jaws closed tight around the Magnificat’s neck, twisting and bringing her head down onto the cobblestones with a resounding CRACK.

‘FEN!’ Morrigan screamed.

And suddenly – as if this was the cue they’d been waiting for – the Wunimals set upon Fenestra like a swarm of book bugs. Within seconds, nothing of her could be seen but one enormous paw grasping blindly, its sharp claws drawing blood wherever they made contact.

With a raging, wordless shriek, something like a battle cry, Morrigan pressed both her palms to the ground. Channelling every scrap of fear and fury inside, she unleashed it in one pulsing burst of fire that surprised even her. It spread instantly across the whole of Courage Square, in a pattern of interconnecting cracks and spaces between the cobblestones. The square lit up like an electrical grid struck by lightning. It was more than just fire, it was energy, bright and burning, and it lifted every Wunimal in Courage Square metres into the air, rising like heat itself. They paused there, suspended, for just a moment, until the fire burned itself out and went dark.

The Wunimals dropped to the ground with a sound like a forest of trees being cut down, all at once. Just like at the Sunset Gala, the nebulous green glow of the Hollowpox left their bodies, rose up into the air and hovered there uncertainly.

Morrigan swayed on the spot, ears ringing as she watched the eerie display. The sudden silence in Courage Square was like a blanket, heavy and soft. It felt like they’d entered the eye of a storm.

She’d done it. She’d done something big.

‘Now what?’ she asked, in a hushed voice that didn’t quite convey her inner panic. This was the moment, she could feel it: if she didn’t destroy the Hollowpox now, each one of these hundreds of fragments of it, these parasites, could split apart and disappear into the night. Zoom away to who-knew-where and infect hundreds, maybe thousands of new Wunimals.

The lights flickered around her like little emerald fireflies, swarming together and splitting apart, but keeping a respectful distance. Waiting.

Morrigan turned to Squall, who was watching them with a detached curiosity.

‘It thinks I’m you.’ She felt her legs give way a little. She was