The Owl Keeper (11 page)

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"Head for the pantry!" shouted Rose, and they charged back down the hall. In the kitchen she flew across the tile floor, Max skidding behind her.

The kitchen door banged open and he froze. A tall skeletal figure rushed in: a woman in frightening night goggles and a crepe mouth mask, blue-dyed hair streaming down her back. She wore lizard-skin boots and a high-collared cape the color of blood.

Slinking beside her was a huge animal with red eyes and black spiky fur. Dirty white foam dripped from its mouth. Max's stomach did a double flip. Plague wolves were real!

The creature snarled. Terror surged through Max. Paralyzed with fear, he gazed at the wolf's sharp curved teeth. Then, out of nowhere, Rose appeared; she pulled him behind her into the pantry and they tumbled through a door.

With a bang, it slammed shut behind them and they clattered down a ladder, into a vast cellar lit by flare lamps. Once they'd reached the bottom, Rose pushed the ladder and sent it crashing down. Max blundered ahead, disoriented by the shadows, knocking over a stack of wooden crates. Heart thudding, he pushed aside old machinery as he and Rose stumbled over broken desks and filing cabinets, dented freezers, smashed computers heaped in piles. Overhead he could hear the woman running.

The wolf howled.

Rose clutched his hand and they ran wildly down a stone passage, into complete and utter darkness. Terror gripped Max's chest, squeezing his lungs so he could hardly breathe. His only hope was that the guard wouldn't follow. The ladder was gone and night goggles, he'd been told, only worked properly out-of-doors.

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The passage twisted and stretched, winding deeper into the earth. Max raced on, gripping Rose's hand, boots pounding over wet stone. The tunnel narrowed, its dripping walls closing in around them. He could see a faint light ahead. Huffing and wheezing, he lurched toward it.

Moments later they stood before a wooden door. There was no handle, no smart-card machine, just a door of ancient pitted wood that Max guessed hadn't been opened in at least a century. He scratched his head, trying to think what to do next.

Rose didn't hesitate. She swung her leg back and kicked. To Max's surprise, the bottom half of the door fell in. "Dry rot," she said, and kicked again.

The door splintered and collapsed. A dreamy light flooded over them.

Max gazed up a flight of stone steps that wound upward, vanishing into the light, and a million scary thoughts crowded into his mind. What if the Dark Brigadier knew a shortcut and was up there with the wolf, waiting to attack?

Rose scrabbled up the steps, coat swirling around her. "I don't believe this!" she shouted down to Max. "Come here, quick!"

Heart banging, Max scrambled after her, wishing he had his owl with him, to give him a boost of courage. At the top of the steps stood Rose, framed beneath an elaborate curved doorway. He looked about, bewildered, at the endless arching spaces around him.

"What is this place?" he whispered.

"Don't you know?" Rose's eyes glowed with feverish excitement. "We're in The Ruins!"

97.

98

CHAPTER TWELVE

[Image: The pillars.]

The grainy air trembled. Pillars arched above them, and Max stared at the worn carvings, the high stone walls, the thick candles that dripped from suspended iron wheels. His skin went cold and clammy.

Rain wept against the stained glass windows. The space around him was vast and terrifying; thick gnarled columns trailed off into the gloom. In the hushed silence nothing moved.

"This is a cathedral!" said Rose, her voice filled with awe. "That tunnel we were running in? That was a crypt, Max, it had to be!"

Max looked around in wonder. Gran had told him about cathedrals, and how many of them dated back to medieval times. She'd been furious with the government for pulling them down.

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"My dad said the High Echelon turned some of the cathedrals into prisons," murmured Rose, "but this doesn't look like a prison to me." She wandered off, looking strangely enchanted by everything. "Who lit all these candles, do you think? Monks?"

Max knew very little about monks. The High Echelon had branded them superstitious outcasts, but Gran said many monks supported the Silver Prophecies. He wondered if there were monks living here now.

But all he could think was, whoever was here--monks, prisoners, wolves--he didn't want to meet any of them. What he really wanted was to go home.

"I've got a bad feeling," he said, catching up with Rose. "Listen to me!" He grabbed her arm. "Something's not right here. This place is even creepier than Cavernstone Hall!"

"Hey, Max, this is an opportunity with a capital O." Shaking him off, she strode away. "If I can tell my father any little thing about The Ruins, he'll be so grateful and happy."

Max frowned. He somehow doubted her father would be pleased to know she was inside The Ruins.

She glanced back over her shoulder. "You're not scared, are you?"

"Of course not," he muttered. But naturally he was. He was petrified. "Okay, five minutes."

Max knew she wasn't listening. Rose never listened. Growing more anxious by the minute, he trailed behind her, noticing how everything in the cathedral was covered in dust and cobwebs, and coated with layers of grime. They should call in Mrs. Crumlin, he thought wryly, she can clean this place up with her extra-large feather duster.

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Candles sputtered, shadows crouched and leapt. From high overhead, strange serpentine creatures stared down. Along the walls, he could see coffins tucked into marble niches, engraved with skulls and angels, their inscriptions so faded they were impossible to read. A statue of a winged lady gazed at him with a mournful expression, its paint flaking away.

"They're hiding something here, don't you think?" said Rose, checking under a bench of rotted wood. "My dad says the government's experimenting with exotic bugs. They've created germs that can wipe out entire cities."

Max hoped she was exaggerating, but he had a feeling she wasn't. He wished he could remember what Gran had said about the High Echelon's secret experiments.

Boldly, Rose drew back a curtain of tattered brocade. Dust billowed around them. Max caught a whiff of mold and something else that set his teeth on edge. He peered into a deep alcove, its concave ceiling painted in shades of gold and cornflower blue.

Without warning his sun mark went cold, pressing like an ice shard into his neck. Startled, he jumped. This had never happened before.

"What do you think is in those boxes?" Oblivious to Max, Rose was pointing at the stacks of metal boxes, arranged in rows along the wall.

There were at least a hundred, guessed Max. He stepped forward bravely and lifted off the top box. It looked eerily familiar, like something he'd once seen in a dream. Etched into the lid were the words skræk #176.

"What does that mean?" he wondered aloud. "It must be imported from some foreign country."

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"Maybe it's a new brand of minicomputer," suggested Rose, "or a machine that scans fingerprints. Hey, I bet they're smuggling stuff across the border! Or what if--" Her voice fell to a tremulous whisper. "What if it's a box of exotic bugs? Or something even weirder?" She nodded at the box. "Open it."

As Max started to open the latch, he heard a faint scratching sound. Alarmed, he almost dropped the box. Then he saw the tiny holes punched into its sides. His legs wobbled and his heart beat fast. Whatever was in there, he thought, needed air.

"Give me that." Rose snatched the box away, fingers scrabbling at the latch.

Before Max could stop her, the lid to the box sprang open. An acrid odor filled the air. A wire mesh screen stretched across the box's top, attached to the edges with tiny copper nails, forming a cage. Beneath it stirred a pale indeterminate shape.

Max moved closer. A claw shot up, talons raking the screen. "It's alive!" he shrieked.

"Yech, it smells disgusting!" Rose shoved the box at him. "Hold on, let me get my flashlight."

Trembling, he held the box as she shined her beam into it.

"Whatever's in there can't get out," she said. "It's inside that wire cage."

"I don't know, Rose, look how sharp its claws are--" Max saw the creature twitch, startled by the light. It had no hair and its slimy skin was nearly transparent, with a tangle of pulsing veins underneath. His breath caught in his chest. It was the creature from his nightmares!

His first impulse was to drop the box and run, or else be sick.

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He felt his arms and knees go weak. So he hadn't invented the creature after all. Somehow it was real!

"Holy cow!" said Rose, taking the box from Max and setting it on a stone shelf. "It looks like a huge worm." She turned the box around, studying its contents from different angles. "A giant grub, maybe?"

Max was too terrified to speak. How could Rose be so casual? Why wasn't she frightened? He heard the creature's wings crackle as they opened. It was a sound he remembered clearly from his dreams.

"Looks like somebody hacked those with a scissors," said Rose.

Max stared at the creature in horror and disbelief. Its face looked pliable and half-formed, like one of Mrs. Crumlin's griddle cakes. The eyes were sunk deep into its head, so deep he couldn't see them. It was all he could do to not throw up.

"It can't be a worm or a grub, can it?" Rose went on. "Because it's got those tacky-looking wings." Her eyes grew bigger. "Hey, it could be a genetically spliced mutant! My dad would know for sure. You can bet it was made in a laboratory."

"You don't know that," said Max, his voice shaky. "It could be some animal we never saw before, something from a swamp or a jungle--"

Nostrils quivering, the creature flicked its stringy tongue.

"Yeeks, black licorice!" Rose glanced up at Max. "See how its tongue forks at the end? These mutants are lethal, you know, they can slice you to ribbons in minutes flat."

Max nodded. She didn't have to tell him--he already knew.

The creature snarled at them, showing two rows of tiny serrated teeth.

"Nice choppers," quipped Rose, as if she wasn't in the least bit scared. "That's how it rips things apart."

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Max was repulsed, horrified. His heart hammered so loud he was sure Rose could hear it. How could she be joking at a time like this? His stomach churned wildly.

He looked over at Rose. Her green eyes were gigantic, like they belonged to some extraterrestrial being. Rose is frightened too, he told himself, she's just good at hiding it.

The creature pressed its face to the screen and hissed. Max jumped. "It's got no eyes!" he screamed.

"Those little operating tables, the teeny-tiny instruments," Rose whispered. "The eyeballs in the fridge, Max! They were going to give it eyes!"

"Don't say any more, Rose, I don't want to know." Max backed away, sickened to the core. The creature writhed and squirmed, clawing at the sides of the box.

He had to get away from here; his nerves were shot and his sun mark throbbed painfully. Worst of all, the creature's shrieks were getting inside his head.

"I'm going, Rose," he said. At this point he didn't care what she thought of him. "Are you coming?"

"Look, it's bleeding, Max! It cut itself on the wire."

Max peered into the box, trying not to gag. He could see a trail of purple-black liquid, flecked with bits of red, oozing from its leg.

He looked up in horror at Rose.

"Those glass tubes," she murmured, leaning closer to the box, "that bubbly purple stuff with red bits in it..." He watched the color drain out of her face. "Oh, Max--"

Thoroughly rattled, he shook his head vehemently. "No, Rose,

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that would never happen." He knew Dr. Tredegar would never inject him with blood from a gene-spliced creature. "Only mad scientists in comic books do things like that."

And yet, he thought, only a mad scientist would create a genetically altered mutant like this one.

"Forget your stupid comic books!" shouted Rose. "Mad scientists work for the High Echelon! The government funded all this!"

Max felt a roaring inside his head. Sickened and overwhelmed, he slumped against the wall, the harsh reality sinking in at last. It was time to stop kidding himself and admit that Rose was right. Gran had always said the High Echelon was evil, but he'd never realized how truly malevolent it was. How could he deny the secret experiments, he asked himself, when he was staring one in the face?

Rose grabbed his hand, squeezing it so tightly his bones felt crushed. "Do you know what this means? They're giving you this mutant's
blood!
Why, Max?"

The creature flung its grublike body against the mesh, whipping its head back and forth. As it twisted and turned, Max saw a yellow shape on the side of its head and beside it the number
176.

"A tattoo!" gasped Rose. "It's got a sun tattoo, like the one on your neck!"

Max was stunned. What was a mutant doing with a tattoo that matched his birthmark? He swallowed hard. It was too much of a coincidence.

Before he could think any further, a shout rang out from below, followed by a low, prolonged howl. The hair on his head stood straight up.