Read Online Magisterium by Jeff Hirsch - Free Book Online Page A

can’t stay here,” it said, its head still bent over Kevin. “Your friend needs more help than I can give. There’s a village nearby.”
    “There aren’t any villages beyond the border,” Glenn said.
    The creature remained still, Kevin draped in its arms.
    “Who are you?”
    “My name is Aamon Marta.”
    “How did you know my name?”
    Aamon didn’t move, didn’t look away from the run of the stream.
    “Others will come,” it said. “Worse things than your Authority. We have to go now.”
    The vastness of the forest hummed and pulsed with life, the chattering of insects, the crunching movements of animals as they prowled for food.
    “I want to see you,” Glenn said.
    “There’s no time for —”
    “I want to see you or I don’t go anywhere,” Glenn snapped. She was tired and the hours-old terror had gone stale and shifted toward anger. She was sick of vague answers. She wanted to know who she was trusting with her life.
    Aamon shifted, then began to rise. Glenn scrambled backward as it crossed the stream and lowered itself into the moonlight.
    Ever since she was a little girl, Glenn loved science because it taught her to take new things and incorporate them seamlessly into what she already knew about the world. It was like adding a new room onto an ornate but ever more perfectly constructed house. In science, she learned, everything is connected and everything is explained.
    Despite that, when she looked at the nightmare that crouched before her in the moonlight, she couldn’t help but wonder if Dr. Kapoor had been right about her. Had her parents’ madness finally fallen to her?
    Aamon Marta’s body was covered in what looked to be thick fur that blanketed the rise and fall of his slablike muscles and his fingers did in fact end in glistening claws. But it was his face that made Glenn’s stomach go cold. It was nearly human, but not quite. It was more like a panther’s, a broad triangle topped with arrow-shaped ears and a dark muzzle. His green, vertically slit eyes glowed with an almost sickly light. When Aamon breathed, his mouth opened, revealing deadly rows of fangs above and below.
    “Now that you have seen me,” Aamon said in his deadly growl,
    “may we go?”
     
    They came to the edge of the forest late that night. Aamon
    shouldered through the tree line and disappeared with Kevin cradled in his arms. Glenn stood frozen at the edge. It was insane, she thought.
    There were no villages on the other side of the border. She had seen the pictures to prove it. But what choice did they have? It was too far to go back now. Glenn steeled herself and stepped through the trees.
    Glenn’s breath left her in a rush. Before her was not the
    devastation promised by a hundred school lessons and satellite photos; instead there was a long grassy clearing and, at the end of it, the towering outer wall of a small village. The wall seemed to be made of stout logs stacked one on top of the other to a height of twenty feet or more. Every turning of the wall featured what looked to Glenn like watchtowers. Each one carried burning torches that cast a flickering light, which spilled down the face of the wall and onto the grassland before it.
    No , Glenn told herself, wrestling the shock into submission. This makes sense. A few survivors struggling to get by near the border. I should have expected …
    Aamon stopped a few steps ahead of her. He was standing just outside the reach of the lights, looking up at the wall.
    “If this is it, then let’s go,” Glenn said, striding past him.
    She gasped as one of Aamon’s giant hands fell on her shoulder.
    The needlelike tips of his claws pressed into her skin. The barest pressure would drive them through.
    “I need you to take him,” Aamon said. “It would be better.”
    Glenn didn’t look back. The sight of Aamon still unnerved her. It was as if his body was a cypher Glenn’s mind was scrambling to decode and getting nowhere. She forced herself to push it