City of Dust: Completely gripping YA dystopian fiction packed with edge of your seat suspense. Michelle Kenney

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СКАЧАТЬ only to recoil as a spiked head with black, eyeless holes in the centre leered back at me.

      ‘Boo!’ a voice whispered.

      I gasped before rounding on Max with a glare. He grinned mischievously while rubbing the glass to remove two centuries of dust.

      ‘We’re in one of those places they used to display old stuff – a museum, isn’t it … Miss?’ he teased.

      I turned back to the display. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d rescued me from the memory of Cassius riding out into the Flavium; a monster on a black mount wearing similar headwear. And as I gazed, a tiny black sign at the bottom of the glass case caught my attention: Roman Gladiatorial Helmet – worn by Rome’s elite gladiators. I grimaced.

      Of course we were in a museum. Exeter Museum. Or the shell of it anyway. It would also explain the sculpted figure halfway up the steps. It seemed incredible that anything like these silent exhibitions had survived the most cataclysmic war the earth had ever seen. They were like treasures left beside a grave.

      ‘The room’s up ahead.’

      Eli suddenly hobbled out of the grey, his signing jerky and stressed.

      I sighed. So far my attempts at protection were proving futile.

      ‘The back stairs were complete,’ he offered simply.

      Inwardly I cursed for not having the foresight to check for another set myself.

      ‘You should have waited below,’ I hissed. ‘Thought we agreed no heroics?’

      Two sets of eyes danced ironically, and I spun on my heels, swallowing my retort.

      There was less natural light in this part of the corridor, and the air was rank. Something with a thick tail and muffled squeak ran in front of me, making the hairs on the back of my neck strain. There were plenty of nocturnal rodents in the forest, but the shapes that moved in this ruin somehow felt much less animal than at home. I swallowed, and forced my feet forward towards the large closed door at the top of the corridor. It was the room we’d pinpointed from the street outside, where Eli had seen a shadow move.

      Max leaned forward to listen, and for a moment all I could hear were three hearts pumping so hard I was sure anyone inside had to know of our presence instantly. He shook his head, and the strange tingle spread across the back of my shoulders and down my arms. Slowly, he reached out and turned the door handle. His knuckles gleamed, despite the lack of light, and afterwards I realized it was because he was gripping so tightly. Then it swung inwards to reveal a huge, shadowy room, half open to the stars. Full of eyes.

      ‘Get back,’ Max whispered hoarsely but not before several huge black, bulbous shapes inclined their skinny heads towards us. The stench hit us like a wall. It was putrid rotting faeces and my world closed in, taking me back to Pantheon’s tunnels in a heartbeat.

      We stumbled backwards through the doorway, my thoughts running wild. Had Cassius already unleashed monsters from the tunnels? Could we have happened upon a pack of sleeping strix?

      Nausea reached up my throat, as my clumsy movement sent a loose stone scuttling across the floor. There was a moment’s poignant silence, and then the air was filled with opal hunting eyes, threatening hissing, and the deafening beat of large, heavy wings.

      Pandemonium ensued, but somehow I was conscious of Eli forging forward in the opposite direction. I made a grab for him, but clutched only thin air as he disappeared into the murky whirlwind inside.

      ‘Eli,’ I yelled, holding my arms high in front of my eyes to protect them from the thick, swirling dust.

      Eli was the most gifted animal whisperer I knew, but what if these new creatures were of Pantheon’s design? I recalled the effort it had taken to calm the manticore and molossers, and felt my panic swell.

      Then, just as suddenly as the chaos had erupted, it fell unnaturally quiet.

      ‘Eli?’ I whispered again, my chest thumping so hard I thought it might explode.

      Although my brother couldn’t hear me, he usually sensed when I called him. But there was no response, and the still black was more than I could bear. So, swallowing my panic, I crept inside.

      For a moment, I was conscious only of breath, of living bodies other than our own sharing the same dark space. Then as the moon moved out from behind the gunmetal clouds, and the shadows became low-lit pools, my gaze was drawn to the centre. Towards Eli.

      He was seated cross-legged on a central, raised dais that must have originally been some sort of displaying table; while a pack of waist-height, hairless birds scavenged around him. They were huge, skinny, and beyond ugly.

      But they weren’t strix.

      Holding my breath, I edged closer. The birds clattered around the floor, occasionally raising their heads to sniff the rank air. With featherless blue-grey heads, brown ruffed necks and tapered wings, they were clearly birds of prey; and at more than a metre tall each, they were also birds to respect. But no creature on our free-living planet could resist Eli, and right now they appeared calm enough.

      ‘What are they?’ I signed.

      ‘Cinereous vulture,’ he responded studiously. ‘One of the two largest, vulturous species of birds on earth.’

      A brief memory of the giant, clawing strix flickered through my head, but I knew he was talking about birds outside Pantheon. Apex predators of the natural world.

      ‘Have been known to eat flesh, but much prefer their dinner deceased.’ He smirked as Max stepped up beside me.

      ‘Yeah, well … when you’re done having tea with the local wildlife, we’ve a job to do,’ Max forced out, scanning the room.

      I followed his gaze and scowled as more silhouettes of stuffed, old-world creatures took shape within the gloomy darkness. A towering elephant and giraffe made the vultures look little more than pecking chickens; while their glassy, yellowed irises gleamed lifelessly from their mottled skins.

      I dragged my eyes away. The stuffed creatures’ stare was almost worse than the vultures’ clear suspicion that Max and I were a potential threat to their new king. I glared at my brother, who sighed before standing up to address the unsavoury group with a series of crude gestures. Then he slowly backed away, taking care to push us through the doorway first.

      ‘So, what did you say to them?’ I signed, once we were back on the road outside.

      ‘I told them my friends were a little chewy; but if they stuck around I knew of a few others who were rotten to the core,’ he responded blithely.

      And right on cue, a dozen dark shapes soared effortlessly out of the window and into the smoky sky above.

      I scowled. Ravenous, cinereous vultures weren’t exactly my idea of the perfect cavalry.

       Chapter 6

      The grey air was oppressive in this part of town, the memory of the Great War clinging to the buildings like a shroud. We picked our way down the СКАЧАТЬ