A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,144
rolled her gently onto her back, squinting against the light that shone from inside her. I pressed two fingers to her neck. Her skin was hot to the touch. After a moment, I found an artery—and a pulse—and I breathed a sigh of relief.
A strange, keening wail sounded from across the room. I spun to look. H lay splayed on his back on an old Persian rug. His hollowgast sat astride him, one muscled tongue lashed around H’s waist and the other two around his wrists. The thing looked like it was about to crack open his skull and eat his brain.
“Get away!” I shouted, and the wailing stopped as the hollow hissed at me.
It was not about to kill him, I realized. Its friend was dying.
It was crying.
I summoned a few words of hollowspeak to shoo the creature away. It hissed at me again, unwound its tongues reluctantly from H’s wrists, and scuttled into the kitchen.
I crouched beside the old man. Blood had soaked through his shirt, his pants, and the carpet beneath him.
“H. It’s Jacob Portman. Can you hear me?”
He sharpened. His eyes fixed on me.
“Damn it, son,” he said, scowling, “you really don’t follow orders for shit.”
“We’ve got to get you to a hospital.”
I began to slide my arms underneath him. He groaned in pain, and the hollowgast let out a howl from the kitchen.
“Forget it. I’ve lost too much blood already.”
“You can make it. We just have to—”
He wrenched away from me. “No!” His voice and his arms were so strong that it shocked me, but then he collapsed back to the floor. “Don’t make me sic Horatio on you. The whole neighborhood is crawling with Leo’s guys. If I go out there again, it’ll rain bullets.”
Noor moaned from the corner. I looked over to see her shift on the couch, eyes still closed.
“She’ll be okay,” said H. “She got sleep-dusted pretty good, but she’ll come out of it.”
He winced, and his eyes went a little glassy.
“Water.”
I sprang up to run to the kitchen, but before I could take three steps, a hollowgast tongue was already sliding through the air past me, wrapped around a sloshing glass. I helped H sit up while the hollow’s tongue tipped the glass to his lips, marveling at the strange tenderness of it.
H finished drinking, and the hollow’s tongue ferried the glass away and set it down on the coffee table. On a coaster.
“You’ve got him trained pretty good,” I said.
“Should have by now,” H replied. “Been together forty years. We’re like an old married couple.” He tipped his head to look down at himself. “God, they made Swiss cheese out of me.” He coughed a mist of blood into the air.
The hollow groaned and bounced on its haunches. It had crept out of the kitchen and was crouched nearby, and its black eyes wept oily tears down its cheeks and onto a stained handkerchief tied around its neck.
I looked at H, and suddenly I wanted to cry, too. It’s happening again, I thought, a sob forming in my chest. I’m losing another one.
I swallowed back the sob and managed to say, “What happened?”
“Should’ve been a piece of cake,” he croaked. “A simple extraction. If it weren’t for Horatio, who carried us both out of there, we’d all be Leo’s prisoners now.” He sighed. “Guess I got old.”
“Why didn’t you let me help you?”
“Couldn’t risk you getting hurt,” he said. He looked past me at the ceiling, picturing something. “Abe’s special boy. Baby Moses in the reeds.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
His head turned to Noor. “You can help Miss Pradesh now. I’m dying, so there’s nobody else.”
“What do I do? Where do we go?”
“Out of New York, for starters.”
“We could go to Devil’s Acre.”
“No. The ymbrynes would only send her back to Leo. They don’t know how important she is.” He was fading, starting to mumble. “Neither does she.”
“Why is she important?”
“You know, before she got dusted, she saved my ass about three times today? Thought I was supposed to be saving hers.” He laughed weakly. “Too bad her lightbulb trick can’t stop bullets.”
His thoughts were running away from him. His eyes beginning to close.
I put my hand on his cheek, his rough beard, and forced him look at me. “H, why is she important?”
“I made a vow to your grandfather. Not to involve you.”
“We’re way past that now.”
He nodded sadly. “I guess we are.” He drew a shaky breath. “She’s one of the seven whose coming was foretold.”