Voice of the Undead Read Online Free PDF Page B

died right there. The inch-long cut on his throat had only healed recently.
    Alex shook the memory away and shared what had happened, from the Mercedes to the fire. Sangster said, “Tell us more about the worm.”
    Alex continued talking as Armstrong typed away. “It was about yea big,” he said, holding out his hands. “It started out small and then it split into kind of a starfish.”
    â€œDid it have circular jaws?” Armstrong asked, not looking up. She tapped a key and on the screen appeared a three-dimensional diagram of the worm itself, slowly spinning, diagrammatic lines pointing to various parts of the creature.
    â€œYeah, that’s it,” Alex said.
    â€œYou ever seen one of these?” Armstrong said to Sangster.
    â€œOnly in Anzio,” Sangster said, looking at the diagram.
    â€œIt’s Italian?” Alex asked. Anzio was a coastal city where an enormous military cemetery stood. He had been there with his family.
    â€œNo, it’s—Sangster is talking about the Polidorium’s creature school in Anzio,” Armstrong told him. “Anyway: the worm is called a Glimmerhook. This is a very unusual thing for the Scholomance to haul out and throw at you. They would have had to procure it from one of the heavy-duty blood-wielding clans, the kind that can make enhanced creatures using blood. They come in an egglike, ah, grenade—so there are usually a handful of them, like you said. There’re only one or two clan lords who can make them, so it would be an expensive get.”
    Alex remembered the worms crawling into his jacket. “What does it do?”
    â€œJust two things,” Armstrong said. “It sucks your blood and expands to carry back however much it can take, and oh, it poisons and kills you.”
    â€œPoisons? It bit one guy, Steven Merrill. He was in my room.”
    â€œDid you find him being bitten? How much blood—”
    â€œI was there when it jumped on him and I pulled it off almost immediately,” Alex answered. “Steven collapsed a few minutes later. He’s in the hospital.”
    â€œHow’s he doing?” Armstrong asked.
    â€œWe won’t know until tomorrow,” Sangster said, shaking his head. “What will the effect of the worm look like?”
    â€œSomething like malaria,” Armstrong said. “A blood disease. It’ll try to kill his white blood cells. It sounds like the bite was very brief. With any luck they’ll treat him at the hospital and he’ll pull through.”
    â€œYou think so?” Alex asked.
    Armstrong paused. “I guess I kind of hope so, Alex.”
    â€œSo they hit him with an expensive and exotic weapon,” Sangster said. “Doesn’t that seem a little overboard for a retaliation?”
    â€œWhat are you thinking?” Armstrong asked, searching Sangster’s face. Alex watched her eyes dart; she had this way of scanning you like a map.
    â€œI don’t know. Tell me about the escalation you’re seeing,” Sangster replied. “It’s a stretch, but maybe it’s connected.”
    Armstrong turned her attention back to the keyboard and tapped some more. Information began to scroll down the wall, codes Alex could not read except that each was appended with a date and time down to the thousandth of a second. “When it comes to Scholomance activity, there absolutely has been an escalation,” she said. “Just a week ago, Chatterbox looked pretty normal.”
    Alex raised a hand. “Chatterbox?”
    Armstrong nodded. “This is something new we’ve been working on. It’s still in its early stages—we have the main architect coming in to do some tweaks. Okay, actually, it’s way beyond me, but it is very cool.”
    Now the screen began to arrange itself into a dynamic map of information—circles connected by dotted lines. As Armstrong swiped her hand, the map swiveled on its