All That Burns by Ryan Graudin Page B

this just as a protestor looks over his shoulder. His eyes carve through the dark, land straight on my lamppost.
    I will him to pass by, but there are no more veiling spells left in me. The man stops; recognition glints through his eyes. He calls back to the others with a slapping yell, “Hey! That’s her! She’s the one who spelled the king!”
    The air burns with danger. Dozens of stares and lights turn toward me. Root out my hiding place. I’ve never been afraid of mortals before. But there’s something about this crowd which tells me to run.
    So I do.
    A chunk of the protest breaks away, hounding me with footsteps and yells. I dash down the sidewalk, around thestatue of the warrior queen Boudica in her chariot. The mortals’ lights blaze up behind me. Just ahead I catch a snag of crimson and blue, the edge of an unmoving escalator. An entrance to the Underground.
    I swing around, feet skidding against cool asphalt as I head for the sign. I don’t know why I’m running. Why they’re chasing me. Or what they’ll do when they catch me.
    My fingers grip hard onto the edge of the escalator. I take the steps in leaps and bounds. Push faster, harder than I’m afraid this mortal body can take. Just as I reach the final step the first torch swings down, fills my world with harsh, terrible light.
    I’m trapped.
    The Underground’s entrance is shut, laced over with a metal grating. I shake it hard, even though I know it won’t open. My insides feel gutted, but I scream the spell anyway: “ Opena! Opena! ”
    Nothing. No magic, no power. Just the cold, hard rattle of the grating. The sound of dozens of feet racing down dead escalators.
    “She’s trying to do magic!” someone screams. “Get her!”
    The lights are halfway down the stairs, beams stabbingmy eyes. They sweep closer, closer. I brace myself against the grating. Metal diamonds press hard into my back. The meat-voiced man is almost to the last step. Eyes made of flint as he reaches out.
    At the last moment I switch and duck. He falls hard into the grating, but there are more hands behind him. More eyes. They flash from all corners.
    Someone grabs my dress. I turn to push them away and another hand grips my hair. Too many. There are too many. More hands shove me back into the grating. There are yells everywhere, crowding my ears with anger and hate. But then another sound rises, cuts through them all. A howl. Pure and powerful.
    The metal at my back gives way, crumples against the Black Dog’s magic. The creature bursts out of the tunnels, bristling in front of the torches. It’s a massive spirit, too large to squeeze into the space of the escalators, where the crowd is now screaming, clawing their way back up to the streets. It snarls, lichen-yellow teeth gnashing.
    That aura. I recognize it. There’s only one Black Dog which scavenges the tunnels near Westminster Bridge.
    “Blæc,” I whisper the creature’s name. Its ears prick,head twists around to where I’m sprawled over the broken gate. Those eyes sear like a nightmare. Yellow and so very hungry.
    “How do you know my name?” the creature rumbles.
    We’ve met before, Blæc and I. But there’s no point in telling the dog this, since I wiped its memory after the fact. “I am . . . was . . . one of the Frithemaeg.”
    “Frithemaeg?” The beast sniffs at the air. Whatever it smells makes it growl. “No . . . Something different. Something tasty.”
    Human prey has been scarce in the months of the integration. Most soul feeders have retreated to morgues and funeral homes, living like vultures off the already dead. But some, like Blæc, have stayed in their territories. Slowly starving.
    I crawl backward, and the Black Dog edges closer, eyes and teeth fluorescent. Leering like a demon.
    A monster.
    Maybe the mortals are right.
    “Blæc,” I say its name again. “Please.”
    “I’m huuuuungrrrry.” The beast’s syllables stretch out in a soft howl, crooning.
    The escalator is too