For Amanda and Destin
Also by Aimée Carter
Simon Thorn and the Wolf’s Den
Simon Thorn and the Viper’s Pit
CONTENTS
1. Tailspin
2. A Crash of Seals
3. Winging It
4. Mousetrap
5. Atlantis
6. A Family of Flukes
7. A Galaxy of Starfish
8. Chum Bay
9. Blood in the Water
10. A Shiver of Sharks
11. Bird’s-Eye View
12. Kangaroo Court
13. A Jiggle of Jellyfish
14. Can of Worms
15. Heir of the Beast King
16. The Shark’s Cave
17. Fish to Fry
18. Drowned Rat
19. Mice and Men
20. Floundering
21. Deer in the Headlights
1
TAILSPIN
As a general rule, Simon Thorn didn’t brag.
He didn’t like it when other people bragged, and he figured they wouldn’t like it much if he tried, too. Besides, he usually didn’t have much to brag about. He was an average twelve-year-old with average grades and average looks, except for his shorter than average height. He didn’t stand out in a crowd, at least not for the right reasons—he had faced a greater than average number of bullies and thought there must have been some reason they picked on him, even if he wasn’t sure what it was.
But as he flew a hundred feet above Central Park, the wings of a golden eagle stretched out on either side of his feathered body, he suddenly had something to brag about after all.
A red-tailed hawk clawed through the air nearly fifty feet behind him, struggling to keep itself in the sky. It was failing miserably, and anyone watching would have thought it was the hawk’s first time flying. As it happened, it had flown at least three other times before, but had yet to get the hang of it. Simon had mostly managed the first time he’d flown, and considering the hawk had dragged Simon out of his warm bed so they could see the fresh blanket of snow that had fallen overnight, he was feeling decidedly smug about the whole thing right now.
“Simon, slow down! You’re flying too fast!” shouted the hawk.
“And you’re trying too hard,” called Simon as he swooped over to it. “You don’t have to flap your wings all the time. Just let the wind carry you and your instincts take over.”
“Easy for you to say. You’ve been flying for months,” grumbled the wobbling hawk. It dipped suddenly, and Simon could hear its frightened gasp. It would have been funny if Simon weren’t worried the hawk would crash into the frozen ground below.
“We should take a break,” said Simon. “See that tree down there? The tall one?”
“There are dozens of trees down there.”
“Just follow my lead.” Simon slowed so the hawk would be able to keep up, and he flew to a low branch, his wings fanning out to stop the rest of his body as his talons caught the icy wood.
The hawk wasn’t so lucky. It didn’t even make contact with the branch. Instead, as Simon watched helplessly, it plowed head-on into a snowbank below.
“Nolan!” Simon immediately flew to the hole the bird had created, his pulse racing as thoughts of the worst ran through his head. “Nolan, are you—”
A boy with blue eyes identical to Simon’s stuck his head out of the snow, sputtering. “That was awesome.”
Simon let out a curse that would have made their uncle Malcolm thwap him over the head. Shifting into his human form, he slumped backward against the frozen ground, his arms stretched out on either side of him like they were still the wings of a golden eagle. “I thought you were dead.”
“Nah, can’t kill me that easily.” His twin brother brushed the snow from his light brown hair, which had been trimmed last weekend. That haircut was the only difference between the two boys: Simon’s hair, also light brown, was shaggy after months of not seeing the sharp end of a pair of scissors. Malcolm had tried at first, but after Simon had refused three times in a row, he’d stopped pushing.
Simon sighed. The pink sky was beginning to brighten to gold as the sun rose over the Manhattan skyline. “We need to get back before the pack starts to howl.”
“We have plenty of time,” said Nolan, and he stood, rolling his shoulders in a stretch. “I want to fly some more.”
“You want to crash some more, you mean,” said Simon. “You need to learn how to land first. There won’t always be a pile of snow to soften your—Nolan!”
His brother had already begun to shift. His thin body shrank, and brown feathers sprouted from his skin and clothing as his arms turned into wings and his feet curled into yellow talons. In the space of a heartbeat, his human brother turned into a golden eagle, the same form Simon had taken earlier.
“Race you!” chirped the eagle, and before Simon could argue, he clumsily took off from the snow, teetering and unstable as he flapped his giant wings.
Frantically Simon looked around, hoping no one was close enough to see what had happened. Two boys appearing from the snow was one thing, but a boy turning into a bird wasn’t as easily explained. Most of the people in New York City were normal humans, but Simon and his brother were Animalgams—a secret group of people born with the ability to shift into an animal. While the city wasn’t exactly the most obvious place for them to live, it was the location of the most prestigious Animalgam academy in the country: the Leading Animalgam Institute for the Remarkable, or the L.A.I.R., which was hidden beneath the Central Park Zoo. Predators from all five kingdoms attended, and while they learned about history, zoology, and how to fight in their Animalgam form, they also learned about the laws of their world. And the most important was to make sure no human ever found out about them. If anyone had spotted Nolan shift, both boys would be in a world of trouble.
The few people who populated the park this early weren’t anywhere near them, though, and Simon thanked his lucky stars. Shifting back into a golden eagle, he caught a frigid breeze, climbing into the sky until he caught up to his brother.
“Where are you going?” he called. They were headed straight for the Central Park Zoo, where he could make out several gray wolves prowling the empty pathways, but they were too high to land safely.
“Where do you think?” Nolan let out a peal of laughter and flew even higher, dangerously unsteady in the headwind. Simon could barely breathe as his brother flew over the edge of the park, away from any soft landings. Instead he soared toward a skyscraper a few blocks away. A glass-domed roof reflected the rays of the early-morning sun, and Simon’s heart plummeted.
Sky Tower.
“Nolan, no,” he shouted, but his cries were lost to the wind. His brother stretched out his talons and miraculously managed to grasp on to the edge of the roof, where he swayed for one terrifying moment before finally gaining his balance.
“See? I’m getting it,” said Nolan proudly, walking toward the slope of the dome. Simon landed beside him, skidding on the icy glass.
“We can’t be here,” he panted, his eagle head twisting as a lump of fear rose in his throat. “Orion—”
“Orion isn’t here.” Nolan ruffled his feathers, but at least he had the good sense not to turn back into a human. Not when they were forty stories above the pavement. “And if he were, I’d kill him.”
Simon shifted his weight nervously. Orion was the lord of the bird kingdom and, unfortunately, their maternal grandfather. Despite this familial connection, he had once thrown Simon off the roof of Sky Tower, and while Simon had managed to shift for the very first time midair, saving his life in the process, that wasn’t the only awful thing that had happened on that roof.
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For most of Simon’s life, he had been raised in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, right across from Central Park, by his uncle Darryl. Darryl had been an Animalgam, too—a huge gray wolf—which Simon had only discovered when his mother was kidnapped by an army of rats, and Simon had been forced to run away to the Central Park Zoo to try to find her.
Ultimately his search had brought him here: to the roof of Sky Tower, where Orion had murdered Darryl in front of Simon. As he perched there shaking in the freezing wind, he could see the exact spot where his uncle had died. Almost four months of rain and snow had washed away any trace of blood, but Simon could still imagine his uncle’s lifeless body.
“We need to go,” he said, his voice catching as he turned away. Nolan began to protest, but he glanced in the same direction and seemed to deflate.
“Oh—I forgot. Your uncle.”
“Your uncle, too,” said Simon hollowly, though Nolan had never really met Darryl. Shortly after Orion had killed their father, their mother had separated the infant twins to keep them safe. While Darryl had raised Simon, Nolan had been raised by the Alpha of the mammal kingdom, Celeste, who was Darryl and Malcolm’s mother and had adopted Simon’s father. Their mother’s choice had protected them, but it had also ensured he and Nolan had not only never met, but they hadn’t known about the other until they’d come face-to-face twelve years later.
A shrill cry filled the air, and Simon snapped to attention. A pair of peregrine falcons circled above them, growing closer with each lap.
“Simon and Nolan Thorn!” cried the first in a voice too human to be a normal animal. “The Bird Lord commands your presence.”
A shiver ran through Simon. “I told you so,” he said to his brother. “Come on, if we can reach the zoo before—”
“I don’t take orders from Orion,” called Nolan, and he spread his wings. “If you want me, you’re going to have to catch me!”
The falcon screeched—or maybe it was a laugh—and Simon groaned. “You’re an idiot,” he said as the brothers took off together, this time heading toward the zoo. “Peregrine falcons are the fastest in the sky.”
“And you’re …” Whatever Nolan said, it was lost in the wind. Or maybe he was focused so hard on flying that he hadn’t finished at all.
The falcons dived through the crisp morning air, quickly closing the distance between them. “Stop, in the name of the Bird Lord!” one shouted. Simon mentally urged Nolan to fly faster, but despite his towering confidence, he hadn’t gotten any better in the past thirty seconds.
As they approached Central Park, the golden eagle in front of Simon wobbled in the wind like a toddler taking his first steps, seemingly incapable of flying and dodging skyscrapers at the same time. Ahead of them loomed an old building called the Arsenal, which marked the entrance to the L.A.I.R. If Nolan could just make it that far …
But the falcons were closing in, and somehow, inexplicably, his brother was slowing down. He must have been flapping too much, or maybe he’d lost his wind. Either way, Simon’s insides constricted, and he knew what he had to do.
“Hey, birdbrains!” he shouted, breaking from Nolan’s trail and looping around to soar straight for the falcons instead. “Mind your own business.”
For a split second, the falcons appeared startled, but it didn’t last long. The slightly bigger bird adjusted its feathers to meet Simon head-on. An instant before they clashed, the falcon feinted, its talon catching Simon’s wing.
Burning pain tore through his shoulder, and Simon cried out as his body spun wildly, careening toward a nearby window. Dimly he could hear the falcon’s laughter, and it was only through sheer instinct that Simon managed to catch himself before he broke his delicate eagle bones on the glass.
“The Bird Lord wants them alive, you fool!” yelled the smaller falcon, who was getting closer and closer to Nolan. The larger one readjusted, heading for Simon once again, but this time Simon was ready.
He pushed his wing directly into the falcon’s path, throwing his opponent off balance as it tried to avoid a direct collision. Simon caught the falcon by the tail feathers and, using the golden eagle’s strength to his advantage, he spun the falcon toward the nearest roof as hard as he could.
The last thing he heard from the larger falcon was a pig-like squeal, and had Simon been in a better mood, he would have laughed. As it was, Nolan was still in danger, and as soon as he was sure the falcon had landed on the roof hard enough to take him out of the fight, Simon dived toward the zoo.
The golden eagle had nearly reached the Arsenal now, but to Simon’s horror, the second falcon was barely a feather’s breadth from catching Nolan. With an outraged scream, Simon pushed himself as fast as he could go, his body tightening and elongating as he used his momentum to plunge toward the pair. If the remaining falcon pulled on Nolan’s feathers, Nolan would undoubtedly spin out of control, and he didn’t have the skills to recover. This time, when he crashed into the ground, Simon had no doubt his chances of survival would be slim.
As Nolan passed over the edge of the Central Park Zoo, the falcon’s beak snapped at his tail feathers. Panic swept through Simon, and his lungs burned. “You’ll kill him!” he shouted.
The falcon hesitated, and that was all Simon needed. In that fraction of a second, Simon caught up to it, and he grabbed it by the wings and pulled up with all his strength, throwing the smaller bird into the empty sky and away from the struggling golden eagle. For one awful moment, as Nolan once again jerked unsteadily, Simon was sure the falcon had yanked his brother with it. But amazingly, Nolan continued on a too-fast course directly for the seal exhibit in the middle of the zoo plaza.
“Watch out!” yelled Simon, but it was too late. His brother made a splash landing in the shallow pool, his wing catching one of the large boulders looming in the center, and before Simon could do a thing, he disappeared under the water until only ripples remained.
2
A CRASH OF SEALS
Cold with fear, Simon landed on the metal railing surrounding the seal exhibit and immediately shifted back into a human. There would be no tourists in the park this early, and even if someone did see him, he didn’t care right now.
“Nolan!” He scanned the frigid pool, his weaker human vision unable to see into the dark water. “Nolan, where—”
His brother surfaced beside the boulder, his hair plastered to his face and his eyes squeezed shut in pain. Despite this, once he’d spit out a mouthful of water, he started to laugh.
“That was the coolest thing ever.”
Instantly Simon’s fear dissolved, replaced with blinding fury. He wasn’t usually the cautious one. When it came to the adventures he and his friends had been on recently, Simon was almost always the first one to suggest making a reckless move. But he always had a reason for it, and it was always for a greater purpose. “Are you kidding? They could have killed you. They could have killed us.”
As Nolan waded over, Simon gripped the metal railing and reached out to grab his arm, only for his brother to wince again. “Ow, ow, ow,” cried Nolan. “Don’t, please, I’m sorry—”
Simon let go. “You’re not sorry,” he snapped as he gently took his brother by the other elbow and helped him climb up to the edge of the railing. “You’re never sorry. Why did you want to go to Sky Tower anyway? Do you have any idea what those falcons could have done to you?”
“I knew you could take them,” said Nolan, his teeth chattering. “And if you couldn’t, then I would have—”
“You would have what? Shifted in front of them?” growled a voice much deeper than theirs. Standing behind Simon at the edge of the exhibit, his massive arms crossed and his bulging muscles visible even underneath his winter coat, was Malcolm.
He was tall, with broad shoulders and the kind of obvious physical strength that made even the bravest of bullies keep their distance. Not only that, but the scars that riddled his body told everyone he met that he knew how to fight and win. The first time Simon had
seen him, he had been terrified of him. Now, months later, he knew Malcolm was about as likely to use his advantages against the boys as he was to turn into a peacock and start strutting. Which, considering his uncle could only shift into a wolf, wasn’t very likely at all.
“I—” Nolan shivered as he perched on the railing, still cradling his bad arm. “If I had to.”
“Out in the open, where anyone could see you?” Despite the deadly look on Malcolm’s face, he helped Nolan to the ground. “Do you understand what would happen if you shifted?”
“He didn’t, though.” Simon climbed over and landed on the cobblestones with a solid thud. Nolan was dripping wet, and his lips, which were no longer twisted into a self-satisfied smirk, were quickly turning blue. “And they didn’t catch him. I would never let them,” added Simon fiercely.
Most Animalgams could only turn into a single animal and belonged to one of the five kingdoms: mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, and underwater creatures. But Nolan was special. He had the supposedly unique ability to change into any animal he wanted, a gift he had inherited from the Beast King, a tyrannical ruler who had lorded over their world and absorbed the power of countless Animalgams hundreds of years ago. Eventually the five kingdoms had banded together to defeat him, but they hadn’t known about his secret child who had inherited his powers. And so, for the countless generations that had followed, heir after heir had kept their talents secret, because if the five kingdoms found out the Beast King’s abilities still existed, they would undoubtedly ensure that no Beast King could rise up again and threaten the Animalgam world.
Malcolm sighed and pulled off his coat, draping it over Nolan’s shoulders. “No flying until after the holidays,” he said at last. “And that means during vacation, too.”
“But—” Nolan started to protest, but Malcolm cut him off, bending down so they were eye to eye.
“If you can’t obey the rules I set out for you, then I’ll just have to tell your teachers to give you extra homework each night. Is that what you want?”