Page 79 of Hollow Child

All around me, the air was filled with the scent of food. Tangy kabobs and spicy chili and venison sausage. But despite my extreme hunger, none of itsounded appealing. It all smelled as appetizing as dirt.

That left me with no real distractions as I followed thepull, letting it lead me away from the stage and toward the mayor’s office at the edge of downtown.

But I wasn’t the only one.

The woman Harlow accused of being Mercy Loth, I saw her again, and she was sneaking into the side door of the mayor’s office. She slipped in with the door closing behind her. But it didn’t matter that I lost sight of her, because I knew that I’d be able to trail her the same way a dog would track its prey, and I went inside.

Since the mayor’s office had been a church before, the exterior walls were lined with large stained-glass windows. The lights inside the old sanctuary were off, but all the excess lighting from the fest made the room glow crimson and emerald through the stained-glass.

Mercy was nowhere to be seen, but my legs marched directly across the room. I opened a door, leading to a staircase into the basement. It had a dank, musty odor, but underneath that was something familiar, something that summoned me down the stairs.

As I made my way down, I heard a woman weeping softly.

“What have they done to you?” she cried.

In the basement, there were several jail cells. The only one that had anybody in it held the same zombie boy from my nightmares. His hands and legs were bound with a rope, but he was sitting near the bars so Mercy could reach in and untie him.

“Don’t worry. Mommy will get you out of here, and everyone who hurt you will have hell to pay,” she promised him.

Suddenly, the whole world began to shake, and dust and dirt rained down from the ceiling above.

46

Remy

“As an ember will ignite a flame, we will reignite the human race,” Vaughn was saying as his speech meandered around again. His voice became shrill at times, and his eyes were practically bursting out from his skull. His face had a puffiness, like maybe he was drinking too much booze, or maybe having a mild allergic reaction to something.

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from,” Vaugh said, adding a recitation of T.S. Eliot to his already long speech.

“There is something seriously wrong with that man,” I told Boden as I glared up at the mayor on the stage.

“Hey, where did Stella go?” Max asked. He was holding the baby and glancing around.

“Wasn’t she just here with us?” Boden asked, sounding alarmed.

The air felt charged and dangerous, and out in the town plaza, we were exposed and vulnerable.

“We have to find her, and we have to go,” I said, and there was no pushback from either Max or Boden.

They mayor was still talking because the band was still on a break. At the edge of the plaza, Harlow was sitting at a picnic table between Lazlo and her girlfriend Kimber. Nova stood nearby with Sage in her arms.

“Take care of Max and the baby,” I told Boden, and I went straight for Lazlo and Harlow. “Have you seen Stella?”

Harlow looked at me with tears in her eyes, and her girlfriend wrapped her arm around her shoulders. “She was here when I saw Mercy, but I haven’t seen her since then.”

“Did something happen?” Nova asked me.

“I don’t –” I began, but a low rumbling sound stopped me short.

At first I thought it was thunder, but then I realized it was coming from the front gate. The whole crowd slowly fell silent, and everyone turned to look toward it.

“Why aren’t the Guardians talking or sounding alarms?” Boden asked quietly, and he and Max had followed me.

“Where is the safest place in town?” I asked, hoping that anyone would answer, but I never took my eyes off the darkness around the gates.

“Um, the mayor’s office, maybe,” Nova said. “There’s a storm shelter in the basement.”

The fencing abruptly crashed forward with a bang so loud that it shook the earth. Spotlights illuminated the chain link fences that provided a maze-like entrance passed the examination sheds, and they partially obscured the view of the gates and the exterior fence. But the beast who broke through was an incredible monster.

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