Shadowcry - By Jenna Burtenshaw Page 0,10
after it. He was dressed in the long black robes of a warden, but he looked much older than any wardens Kate had seen. His robes were shabby and worn, he had strips of rags wrapped around his feet instead of boots, and every piece of uncovered skin was streaked with pale mud, making him look grim and skeletal in the half-light.
He raised his torch, turned a grimy dagger in his hand, and looked down the bookshop’s tunnel. Kate and Edgar stared back, not knowing what to do. The man’s light did not stretch all the way along the tunnel. Maybe the shadows would keep them safe. Kate looked up the shaft. The hatch was starting to crackle now. The fire had made its way into the hiding place and the trapdoor was smoldering, sending small sparks fizzling through cracks in the wood.
Something snapped above them, and a handful of hot sparks rained down from the trapdoor into Edgar’s hair. Kate brushed them out before he could notice, but the edges of the door were glowing and curling in the heat. A few minutes more and they would be getting more than sparks dropping on their heads.
The old man showed no sign of moving.
More sparks sprinkled down. The trapdoor began to buckle.
It was time to go.
Kate grabbed Edgar’s arm, pulling him awkwardly behind her, and together they ran for it. The man looked up, spotted Kate’s frightened face heading his way, and grinned.
“Ha!” He lifted his blade, but Kate kept running. She had just one chance. Dozens of shiny beetlebacks were glistening on the floor and some were creeping their way steadily up the tunnel walls. As soon as she was close enough, Kate scraped a handful of squirming beetles from the stones and threw them into the old man’s face. He yelped with surprise, trying to scratch them off with his fingernails, and Kate collided with him, struggling to keep her balance as he fell to the floor.
“Keep going!” shouted Edgar, holding her steady as they clambered out of reach of the old man’s slashing blade. A fist-sized chunk of burning wood bounced down the bookshop’s ladder, sending fiery splinters spearing toward them from the dark, and the man cried out, shielding himself from the sudden burst of flame. Kate and Edgar didn’t wait to see what would happen next. They were already past him, hurtling as fast as they could along the right-hand tunnel, hoping to find a way out—but instead of heading upward, the tunnel dipped steeply down. Edgar grabbed a flaming torch from the wall and tried to keep up.
The tunnel walls whipped past them in a flicker of stones and damp slime, widening slightly the deeper they went. It was like running through a dirty alleyway closed off from the sky. Rotten food spilled out of paper bags stacked against the walls, old blankets were piled up high, wrapped around pieces of rusted metal left leaning against each other, and there were rats: dozens of brown, furry bodies scuttling through it all, carrying off whatever they could salvage from the mess.
At last the tunnel sloped upward and Kate checked the ceiling as they ran, hunting for another trapdoor, a ladder, anything that would take them back up into the world outside before the old man caught up. She could hear him in the tunnel behind them, shuffling along like a vicious crab, gaining on them all the time.
“What’s this?” said Edgar, stopping suddenly. “Look! A door!”
Kate doubled back and found him tugging frantically at a curled handle jutting out of the wall.
“It won’t open,” he said, trying to push it instead. “It won’t . . . Got it!” With one good shove the door scraped open through a mess of food spilled over a hard stone floor. They squeezed in as soon as there was room, bolted the door, and backed away from it, listening for any sign of their pursuer on the other side. He was definitely faster than he looked. He reached the door less than a minute after they did. They could hear him moving in the tunnel, talking to himself.
A sharp scratching noise traced the door’s frame, the handle rattled suddenly, and Kate stepped farther back. The bolt was small. One good kick and it would snap from its screws in a second. “We have to get out,” she whispered. “Where do you think we are?”
The torch shone around a large underground room lined with shelves, each one holding rows of