Library of Souls (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children #3)(94)

I put my foot on its back and pushed. The hollow tumbled forward and dropped silently into the misty void. After a few seconds, I felt its consciousness disappear from my mind.

The wights across the bridge rode over to our side on the hollow’s tongues, Miss Peregrine’s life threatened again if I interfered. Olive was yanked out of the sky. The guards set about herding us into a tight and easily controllable cluster. Then Caul shouted for me, and one of the guards reached into the crowd and dragged me out.

“He’s the only one we really need alive,” Caul said to his guards. “If you must shoot him, shoot him in the knees. As for the rest of them …” Caul swung his gun toward the tightly packed crowd and fired. There were screams as the crowd surged. “Shoot them anywhere you please!”

He laughed and twirled with his arms poised like a squat ballerina. I was about to run at him, ready to dig out his eyes with my bare hands and damn the consequences, when a long-barreled revolver appeared front and center in my field of view.

“Don’t,” grunted my monosyllabic guard, a wight with broad shoulders and a shiny bald head.

Caul fired his own gun into the air and shouted for quiet, and every voice fell away but the whimpers of whomever he’d shot.

“Don’t cry, I have a treat for you people!” he said, addressing the crowd. “This is a historic day. My brother and I are about to culminate a lifetime’s worth of innovation and struggle by crowning ourselves the twin kings of peculiardom. And what would a coronation be without witnesses? So we’re bringing you along. Provided you behave yourselves, you’ll see something no one has witnessed for a thousand years: the domination and expropriation of the Library of Souls!”

“You have to promise one thing, or I won’t help you,” I said to Caul. I didn’t have much negotiating power, but he believed he needed me, and that was something. “Once you get what you want, let Miss Peregrine go.”

“I’m afraid that won’t do,” Caul said, “but I’ll let her live. Peculiardom will be more fun to rule with my sister in it. Once I clip your wings I’ll keep you as my personal slave, Alma, how would you like that?”

She tried to respond, but her words were lost beneath the bear’s meaty paw.

Caul cupped a hand behind his ear and laughed. “What’s that? I can’t hear you!” Then he turned and began walking toward the tower.

“Let’s go!” the guards shouted, and soon we were all stumbling after him.





CHAPTER IX





We were herded toward the pale tower at a brutal pace, the wights encouraging stragglers with shoves and kicks. Without my hollow I was a limping, hobbling mess: I had nasty bite wounds across my torso and the dust that had kept me from feeling them was beginning to wear off. I forced myself forward anyway, my mind spinning out ways we might save ourselves, each more implausible than the last. Without my hollows, all our peculiar powers were outmatched by the wights and their guns.

We stumbled past the wrecked building where my hollows had died, over bricks misted with the blood of parrots and wights. Marched through the walled courtyard, into the tower door and then up and up its winding hallway past a blur of identical black doors. Caul paraded before us like a deranged bandleader, high-stepping and swinging his arms one moment and turning to hurl profane insults at us the next. Behind him, the bear waddled along with Bentham riding in the crook of one arm and Miss Peregrine slung over its shoulder.

She pled with her brothers to reconsider their course of action.

“Remember the old stories of Abaton, and the ignominious end that came to every peculiar who stole the library’s souls! Its power is cursed!”

“I’m not a child anymore, Alma, and I’m no longer frightened by old ymbrynes’ tales,” Caul scoffed. “Now hold your tongue. That is, if you want to keep it!”

She soon gave up trying to convince them and stared silently at us over the bear’s shoulder, her face projecting strength. Don’t be afraid, she seemed to telegraph. We’ll survive this, too.

I worried not all of us would survive even the trip to the top of the tower. Turning around, I tried to see who it was that had been shot. Amidst the tight-packed group behind me, Bronwyn was carrying someone limp in her arms—Miss Avocet, I think—and then a meaty hand smacked me in the head.

“Face forward or lose a kneecap,” growled my guard.

Finally we came to the top of the tower and its very last door. In the hallway beyond, pale daylight shone on the curving wall. There was an open deck above us, a fact I filed away for future reference.

Caul stood beaming before the door. “Perplexus!” he called. “Signor Anomalous—yes, there in the back! Since I owe this discovery in part to your expeditions and hard work—credit where credit is due!—I think you should do the honors and open the door.”

“Come now, we’ve no time for ceremony,” said Bentham. “We’ve left your compound unguarded …”

“Don’t be such a ninny-willow,” Caul said. “This won’t take but a moment.”

One of the guards dragged Perplexus out of the crowd and up to the door. Since I’d last seen him, his hair and beard had turned alabaster white, his spine had curved, and deep wrinkles grooved his face. He’d spent too long away from his loop, and now his true age was beginning to catch up to him. Perplexus seemed about to open the door when he was struck by a fit of coughing. Once he’d regained his breath, he faced Caul, drew in a snorting lungful of air, and spat a glistening wad of phlegm onto his cloak.