Library of Souls (45 page)

I could hear Miss Peregrine shouting. Emma picked up one of the guards' guns and emptied it at Caul. He wasn't far and she was a good shot. She must have hit him, but Caul didn't so much as flinch. Rather than falling, he seemed to be doing the opposite—he was
growing
. He was growing very quickly, doubling in height and breadth in just a few seconds. He let out an animal scream as his skin split open and healed, split open and healed. Soon he was a tower of raw pink flesh and tattered clothes, his giant eyes electric blue, a stolen soul having finally filled the old blankness he'd nurtured so long. Worst of all were his hands. They had become huge, gnarled things, thick and twisted like tree roots, ten fingers each.

Emma and Miss Peregrine tried again to drag me toward the door, but now Caul was coming after us. He stomped out of the spirit pool and bellowed in a bone-rattling voice:
“ALMA, COME BACK HERE!”

Caul raised his awful hands. Some unseen force ripped Miss Peregrine and Emma away from me. They were pulled into the air and hovered there, flailing, ten feet off the ground, until Caul flipped his palms down again. Quick as a bounced ball, they slammed back to earth.

“I'LL GRIND YOU BETWEEN MY TEETH!”
Caul howled, starting across the cavern toward them, his every footfall an earthquake.

Adrenaline, it seemed, had begun to focus my vision and hearing. I could imagine no crueler death sentence than this: to spend my last moments watching the women I loved be torn apart. And then
I heard a dog bark, and something worse occurred to me: watching my friends die, too.

Emma and Miss Peregrine ran. They had no choice. To come back for me now was impossible.

The others began pouring out of the corridor. Kids and ymbrynes, all mixed up. Sharon and the gallows riggers, too. Addison must have led them here, as he led all of them now, a lantern dangling from his mouth.

They had no idea what they were up against. I wished I could warn them—
don't bother fighting it, just run
—but they wouldn't have listened to me. They saw the towering beast and threw all they had at it. The gallows men pitched their hammers. Bronwyn hurled a chunk of wall she'd carried in, winding back and letting it go like a shot-put. Some of the kids had guns they'd taken from the wights, which they fired at Caul. The ymbrynes transformed into birds and swarmed his head, pecking him wherever they could.

None of it had the slightest effect on him. The bullets bounced off. He batted away the chunk of wall. He caught the hammers between his giant teeth and spat them out. Like a swarm of gnats, the ymbrynes seemed merely to irritate him. And then he spread his arms and his knotty fingers, the little feeder roots that dangled from them dancing like live wires, and slowly brought his palms together. As he did, all the ymbrynes circling his head were pushed away, and all the peculiars were smashed together in a clump.

He brought his palms together and folded them over and over as if crumpling a piece of paper. The ymbrynes and the peculiars rose from the ground in a spherical crush of limbs and wings. I was the only one left alone (except Bentham—where was Bentham?) and I tried get up, to stand and do something, but I could only lift my head. My God, they were being pulverized, their terrified screams echoing off the walls—and I thought that was it, that in a moment blood would pour from them like juice from a squeezed fruit, but then one of Caul's hands flew up and began to flap in front of his
face, waving something away.

It was bees. A stream of Hugh's bees had flown out of the crush and now they were in Caul's eyes, stinging him as he let out a shattering howl. The ymbrynes and peculiars fell to the ground, the ball they'd formed collapsing, bodies spilling out everywhere. They hadn't been crushed, thank God.

Miss Peregrine, screeching and flapping in bird form, pulled people to their feet and propelled them toward the corridor.
Run. Run. Go!

Then she winged off for Caul. He had dealt with the bees and was again spreading his arms, ready to scoop everyone up and splatter them against a wall. Before he could, Miss Peregrine dive-bombed him with her talons and raked deep cuts across his face. He spun to take a lumbering swipe at her, smacking her so hard she flew across the room, bounced off the wall, and fell to the ground, where she lay motionless.

By the time he turned back to deal with the others, they had nearly disappeared into the corridor. Caul extended his palm toward them, closed his hand and scooped it back—but they were farther away, apparently, than his powers of telekinesis would reach. Bellowing in frustration, he ran after them, then flopped onto his belly and tried to wriggle into the corridor after them. He could just fit inside, though it was a tight squeeze.

That's when, finally, I saw Bentham. He had rolled into the channel of water to hide, and now he was climbing out again, soaking wet but otherwise unaffected. He was bent over, his back to me, working at something—I couldn't see what.

I felt like I was coming back to life. The pain in my chest was receding. I tried to move my arms—an experiment—and found that I could. I slid them up my body and over my chest, expecting to find a couple of holes and a lot of blood. But I was dry. Instead of holes, my hands found a piece of metal flattened like a coin. I closed my hands around it, picked it up to look.

It was a bullet. It had not pierced my body. I was not dying. The bullet had embedded itself in my scarf.

The scarf Horace had knit for me.

He had known, somehow, that this would happen and had made me this scarf from the wool of peculiar sheep. Thank God for Horace …

I saw something flash across the room and lifted my head—I could just do it—to see Bentham standing with his eyes ablaze, cones of hot white light beaming from his sockets. He dropped something and I heard a tinkle of glass.

He'd taken a vial of ambro.

I used all my strength to turn onto my side, then curled and began to sit up. Bentham hurried along the walls, looking up at the jars. He was studying each one carefully.

As if he could see them.

And then I realized what he'd done, what he'd taken. He'd been saving my grandfather's stolen soul all these years, and now he'd consumed it.

He
could
see the jars. He could do what I did.

I was on my knees. Palms to the ground. Pulled one foot under me, then pushed myself up to standing. I was back, risen from the dead.

By then Caul had wriggled into the corridor and was halfway down it. I could hear my friends' voices echoing from the other end. They hadn't escaped yet. Perhaps they refused to leave Miss Peregrine behind (or me, possibly). They were still fighting.

Bentham was running now, as best he could. He'd spied the other large urn and was heading right for it. I took a few limping steps toward him. He reached the urn and tipped it over. Its blue liquid hissed into the channel and began circulating toward the spirit pool.

He turned and saw me.

He limped for the pool and I limped for him. The urn's liquid
reached the pool. Its water began to rage and a column of blinding light shot up toward the ceiling.

“WHO IS TAKING MY SOULS!” Caul bellowed from the corridor. He began to worm his way back into the chamber.

I tackled Bentham—or fell on him, whichever you prefer. I was weak and dizzy, and he was old and brittle, and we were just about a match for each other. We struggled briefly, and when it was clear I had him pinned, he gave up.

“Listen to me,” he said. “I've got to do this. I'm the only hope you have.”

“Shut up!” I said, grabbing at his hands, which were still flailing. “I won't listen to your lies.”

“He'll kill us all if you don't let me go!”

“Are you insane? If I let you go, you'll just help him!” I grabbed his wrists, finally. He'd been trying to get something from his pocket.

“No, I won't!” he cried. “I've made so many mistakes … but I can put them right if you let me help you.”

“
Help
me?”

“Look in my pocket!”

Caul was backing slowly out of corridor, roaring about his souls.

“My vest pocket!” Bentham shouted. “There's a paper in it. One I carry with me always, just in case.”

I let go of one of his hands and reached into his pocket. I found a small piece of folded paper, which I tore open.

“What is this?” I said. It was written in Old Peculiar; I couldn't read it.

“It's a recipe. Show it to the ymrbynes. They'll know what to do.”

A hand reached over my shoulder and snatched the paper from me. I spun around to see Miss Peregrine, battered but human.

She read the paper. Her eyes flashed at Bentham. “You're certain this will work?”

“It worked once,” he said. “I don't see why it shouldn't again. And with even more ymbrynes …”

“Let him go,” she said to me.

I was shocked. “What? But he's going to—”

She put a hand on my shoulder. “I know.”

“He stole my grandfather's soul! He's taken it … it's in him, right now!”

“I know, Jacob.” She looked down at me, her face kind but firm. “That's all true and worse. And it was a good thing you caught him. But now you must let him go.”

So I released his hand. Stood up, with help from Miss Peregrine. And then Bentham stood, too, a sad, bent-backed old man with the starry black drippings of my grandfather's soul running down his cheeks. For a moment I thought I could see a flash of Abe in his eyes—a little of his spirit there, sparking back at me.

Bentham turned and ran for the column of light and the spirit pool. The vapor was gathering into the shape of a giant almost as large as Caul, but with wings. If Bentham reached the pool in time, Caul would have a worthy challenger.

Caul was nearly out of the corridor now, and he was raging mad.
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!”
he cried.
“I'LL KILL YOU!”

Miss Peregrine pushed me flat to the ground and lay beside me. “There's no time to hide,” she said. “Play dead.”

Bentham stumbled into the pool, and immediately the vapor began funneling into him. Caul had finally wriggled out of the corridor and lurched heavily to his feet, then ran toward Bentham. We were nearly crushed as one of his enormous feet crashed down not far from our heads, but Caul arrived at the pool too late to stop Bentham from merging with whatever old, great soul had been in that urn. Miss Peregrine's younger, weaker brother was already rocketing up to twice his original height.

Miss Peregrine and I helped each other up. Behind us, Caul and Bentham began to clash, the sound erupting like bombs. No one had
to tell me to run.

We were halfway to the corridor when Emma and Bronwyn sped out of it to meet us. They caught us by the arms and whisked us toward safety faster than our weak and battered bodies could've managed alone. We didn't speak—there was no time to do anything but run, no way to shout loud enough to be heard—but Emma's face, electrified with wonder and relief at the simple fact that I was alive, said it all.

The black tunnel enveloped us. We'd made it. I looked back just once, to catch a glimpse of the riot exploding behind us. Through clouds of dust and vapor I saw two creatures, taller than houses, trying to murder each other: Caul choking Bentham with one spiky hand, gouging his eyes with the other. Bentham, insect-headed, thousands of eyes to spare, feeding on Caul's neck with long, flexible mandibles and battering him with great leathery wings. They danced, a tangle of limbs, slamming together into walls, the room coming down around them, the contents of countless shattered soul jars flying, a luminous rain.

With that preview of my nightmares thus cemented in my brain, I let Emma pull me into the dark.

* * *

We found our friends in the next chamber, swallowed by the dark, their only light a fading gleam from the lantern in Addison's mouth. When Emma fired a flame and they saw us loping toward them, worse for wear but alive, they let out a great whooping cheer. I saw them in her light and winced. They were in rough shape themselves, bloodied and bruised from being slammed around by Caul, a few limping on sprained or broken legs.

There was a momentary lull in the blasting noises coming from the cavern, and Emma was finally able to hug me. “I saw him shoot you! By what miracle are you alive?”

“By the miracle of peculiar sheep's wool and Horace's dreams!” I said, and then I kissed Emma and broke away to find Horace in the crowd. When I did, I hugged him so hard his patent leather shoes lifted off the ground. “I hope one day I'll be able to repay you for this,” I said, tugging on my scarf.

“I'm so glad it helped!” he said, beaming at me.

The destruction resumed, the sound immense, unbelievable. Rocky debris rolled out of the corridor at us. Even if Caul and Bentham couldn't reach us from where they were, they could still bring the whole place crashing down on our heads. We had to get out of the library—and then out of this
loop
.

We ran, scraping and hobbling back the way we'd come, half of us a limping mess, the others acting as human crutches. Addison guided us with his nose, back through the maze and out the way we'd come. The sound of Caul and Bentham's battle seemed to pursue us, growing louder even as we got farther away, as if they were growing. How big could they get, and how strong? Perhaps the souls from all the jars they'd broken were raining into the pool, feeding them, making them even more monstrous.

Would the Library of Souls bury them? Would it be their grave, their prison? Or would it crack open like an eggshell and birth these horrors into the world?

We reached the grotto exit and dashed once again into the orange daylight. The rumble behind us had become constant, a quake that reverberated through the hills.

“We must keep going!” Miss Peregrine shouted. “To the loop exit!”