Simon Thorn and the Viper's Pit

  To Courtney

  Also by Aimée Carter

  Simon Thorn and the Wolf’s Den

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  About the Author

  Early Bird

  “Simon, duck!”

  Simon Thorn took one look at the gigantic moose swinging its antlers at his head, and he hit the sand beneath him hard. Scrambling toward the edge of the pit, he stared wide-eyed as the moose threw its head back and laughed.

  “What are your options, Simon?” said his uncle Malcolm from the bleachers surrounding the sand pit. Simon’s heart pounded as he huddled against the stone barrier, but his hulking dark-haired uncle didn’t look concerned. He never did during these early-morning training sessions no matter what kind of animal Simon encountered, and Simon was beginning to resent him for it.

  “Yeah, Simon,” taunted the moose, prancing across the sand toward him. “How are you going to get out of this one?”

  Simon climbed shakily to his feet, never taking his eyes off the moose. It towered over him, and Simon was sure that if his uncle were in the pit, it would tower over him, too. Simon might have been small for his age, but Malcolm was tall and broad. There weren’t many humans or animals who would willingly tangle with him. “Run,” said Simon plainly.

  “You can’t run now. Try again,” said Malcolm. He was right, of course. Even if Simon hadn’t been trapped inside the pit, he was still stuck inside the L.A.I.R.—the Leading Animalgam Institute for the Remarkable far beneath Central Park Zoo, where Animalgam students trained. It was a place that, up until recently, Simon would’ve never guessed existed, let alone that he might one day attend.

  For most of his life, Simon had grown up in New York City thinking he was perfectly ordinary. However, over a year ago, he’d suddenly developed the ability to talk to animals, which had been weird enough. He hadn’t told anyone, not even his mom or Darryl, the uncle who had raised him. For a whole year, he let the kids at school think he was crazy, and at first he thought they were right.

  But Simon wasn’t crazy. Unbeknownst to him, he was really an Animalgam—a human who could not only talk to animals, but developed the ability to turn into one, too. He hadn’t believed it at first, of course, like most rational seventh graders. But when he had seen Darryl shift into a huge gray wolf right in front of him, everything in his world had changed.

  Now, two months later, instead of studying math or geography like most normal twelve-year-olds, Simon was facing down a moose. If he couldn’t run, then what could he do?

  “Fight?” he guessed. The edges of his vision were growing fuzzy as he tried not to blink. The instant he showed any sign of weakness, he knew the moose would attack again.

  “Against those antlers? I don’t think so,” said Malcolm. Out of the corner of Simon’s eye, he thought he saw his uncle whittling a small piece of wood. Great. He was barely paying attention.

  “I’m not shifting,” said Simon firmly as he inched around the edge of the pit toward the exit that led into the rest of the school. The doorway was narrow, and there was no way the moose could follow him into the hallway with those antlers.

  “You need to get over this sooner or later, Simon,” said Malcolm. “You can’t ignore your Animalgam form forever.”

  Watch me, thought Simon, though he didn’t dare say it out loud. Instead he muttered, “At least I’m not a moose.”

  The moose made a strange noise that sounded like a cross between a groan and a whine. “You don’t like my antlers? Fine. Let’s see how you like this.”

  Rapidly, almost too fast for Simon to follow, the moose morphed right in front of him. Its antlers disappeared, its body and long legs shrank, and its brown fur turned black with a long white stripe running down the middle. By the time Simon blinked, the moose had vanished, and a skunk stared up at him.

  Simon turned and bolted toward the door. Yanking on the handle, he groaned when it didn’t budge. He was locked in. “Malcolm!” he protested. His uncle glanced up.

  “Can’t have anyone walking in,” he reasoned, even though it was early enough that Simon was sure none of the other students were awake.

  The skunk ambled toward him, raising its bushy tail. “Guess what I can do.”

  “I know what you can do. You don’t need to prove it,” said Simon, his voice tight as he looked around for an escape route. His only option was climbing over the wall and into the bleachers, but the skunk had him backed against the door now.

  “I had a lot of beans for dinner last night,” said the skunk, turning to point its rear end at Simon. “I think I feel a massive fart coming on.”

  Having no other choice, Simon darted forward and leaped over the skunk right as it released a cloud of stink. Covering his nose, Simon scrambled up the bleachers, climbing as high as he could get. The smell was overpowering, and as he reached the top, he was gagging.

  “Nolan!” That had gotten Malcolm’s attention, and he stood, covering his nose as well. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m trying to make him fly, like you said,” said the skunk, his tail puffing indignantly. “The smell isn’t that bad.”

  “Try shifting back into a human and seeing how you like it,” said Simon from the top of the pit.

  The skunk huffed. “You’re just being a baby,” said Nolan, and as if to prove his point, he began to change again. This time, instead of shifting into another animal, the black and white fur on his head turned into brown hair, his four legs elongated into human limbs, and his muzzle and beady eyes morphed until a boy identical to Simon stood where the skunk had only seconds before, wearing the same black student uniform the L.A.I.R. required.

  Simon had only met Nolan two months ago, on the night he’d unsuccessfully tried to sneak into the school to search for his missing mother. Before that, Simon had lived his entire life on the Upper West Side just a couple of miles away, while Nolan had lived with their mother beneath Central Park Zoo. Simon had only gotten visits from her on Christmas and his birthday, something that still bothered him whenever he thought too much about it. And never, not once, had she ever mentioned the fact that Simon had a twin brother.

  The sounds of gagging interrupted Simon’s thoughts, and he refocused on his brother at the bottom of the pit. Nolan could only pretend the smell didn’t bother him for so long, and at last he bolted up the bleachers, toward a spiral staircase. “That’s disgusting!” he shouted as he disappeared into the upper level of the school, where Malcolm’s office stood.

  “Simon—” Malcolm began.

  “Nolan did it, not me!” he called, darting after his brother and leaving their uncle to grumble on his own.

  As soon as Simon exited the pit, he took a deep breath, only to discover the foul stench was clinging to his clothes. Terrific. He was enough of a social pariah as it was. If he went to breakfast smelling like skunk, that would give even his best friends a reason to avoid him.

  Simon adjusted his black armband, turning the silhouette of an eagle in toward his arm so it was hidden. He had shifted into a golden eagle for the first time two months ago, and while he could think of few th
ings cooler than being able to fly, he was the only member of the bird kingdom who attended the L.A.I.R. His grandfather, Orion, the leader of the bird kingdom, had been at war with the mammals for longer than Simon had been alive, and since the mammals ran the school, they had banned birds from attending. Simon was only allowed because he was Nolan’s twin.

  “You should help Malcolm clean the pit,” said Simon as he found his brother lingering in the upper hallways. Only faculty was allowed up here, but since Malcolm not only ran the L.A.I.R., but was now also the Alpha of the entire mammal kingdom, no one ever gave Simon and Nolan a hard time about being there.

  Nolan made a face. “You help him. If you had just shifted, I wouldn’t have had to spray you.”

  “I told you, I don’t like flying in the pit,” he said. And while technically that was true, there was another reason—a much bigger reason—Simon didn’t like shifting in front of other people.

  Nearly all Animalgams could only shift into a single animal, and they belonged to one of the five Animalgam kingdoms: mammals, birds, insects, reptiles, or underwater creatures. But Nolan was different. He was the heir to the Beast King, a tyrannical ruler who had gained the power to shift into any animal he wanted, making him almost impossible to defeat. Though the five kingdoms had banded together half a millennium ago to overthrow him, his line had continued in secret, and Simon and Nolan’s father had been the Beast King’s heir before being murdered. Two months ago, they had discovered Nolan was the twin who had inherited his abilities, and that was why Malcolm had locked the doors of the pit even though it was so early that the sky was still dark. If anyone else found out that the Beast King’s line still existed, it would start another war between all five Animalgam kingdoms—and this time they would all be trying to kill Nolan.

  Simon couldn’t let that happen, but he also couldn’t tell anyone his secret and the real reason he was so reluctant to shift in front of everyone while he still wasn’t very good at it. Not even Nolan. Especially not Nolan. Despite their tentative cease-fire after what had been, to put it lightly, a rocky start to their relationship, Simon was sure that the moment Nolan found out he wasn’t as special as he thought he was, he would hate Simon all over again.

  “All you have to do is flap your wings a few times, and Malcolm will be happy,” said Nolan, annoyed. “I don’t get why you won’t do that.”

  “He’ll get there eventually,” said a voice behind them—Malcolm. He must have followed them. “Just like you’ll stop relying so heavily on your mammal forms and start working with the other kingdoms, too.”

  “I shift into animals from other kingdoms all the time,” said Nolan, shoving his hands in his pockets as the three of them stood outside the doorway to Malcolm’s office. “I shifted into a hawk yesterday, and an alligator the day before that.”

  “Mammals make up the smallest kingdom,” said their uncle, “yet you almost always revert to a mammal form during morning practice. If you have any hope of protecting yourself someday, you’re going to need to be proficient and comfortable in forms from all five kingdoms. And,” he added, “you’re going to have to start cleaning up after yourself. I can’t open the pit until that skunk stench is gone.”

  “Make Simon do it,” said Nolan.

  “You’re the one who made that mess,” said Simon. “I’m not cleaning up your skunk juice, no way.”

  “But you’re the one who made me—”

  “Enough.” Malcolm pinched the bridge of his nose. “Nolan, you’re cleaning up your own mess. Simon, go change. I can smell you from here. But if I don’t see your wings in the next twenty-four hours, you’ll be the one taking care of any future skunk messes in the pit.”

  And if Simon knew his brother at all, he was positive Nolan would skunk him every chance he got just to make him clean up.

  “That’s not fair!” cried Nolan. Malcolm set his hand on his shoulder and started to lead him down the hallway.

  “It’s perfectly fair. Now come on, the kitchens must have a few extra gallons of tomato juice lying around.”

  As the sound of their argument faded, Simon headed through the hallway and down into the Alpha section. The underground L.A.I.R. was called the Den, and it was shaped like a pentagon, one side for each kingdom. Since the birds weren’t invited to attend, the Alpha and his family stayed in their section instead. Once Simon changed into a clean uniform, he would have the whole place to himself, minus a handful of pack members posted as guards.

  He wasn’t interested in a nap before breakfast, though. He could hardly believe his luck at getting the rest of the early morning off, and he knew exactly what he was going to do with that extra forty-five minutes: practice shifting the way he couldn’t in the pit, not in front of Nolan and Malcolm. Because while his uncle only wanted to see him stretch his wings, Simon could do much, much more.

  And that was Simon’s big secret, the one he kept from everyone, even Nolan. Somehow, someway, his twin wasn’t the only one who had inherited the Beast King’s abilities. Simon could shift into any animal he wanted, too. He hadn’t had nearly as much practice as his brother, however, and every time he shifted in front of others, he was painfully aware he risked thinking of the wrong animal and exposing his secret. That was why he refused to shift in the pit.

  But while he didn’t have the experience his brother did, he knew all the lectures Malcolm gave Nolan were right. If he wanted any chance of protecting himself and his brother from the people who wanted to destroy the Beast King’s line, he had to learn how to fight in the style of all five kingdoms. If he couldn’t do that in the pit, then there was only one other place he could safely practice.

  After saying hello to the wolves standing guard near the tall trees that filled the Alpha residence, he headed up the winding glass staircase and into his bedroom. Their section, which had been built to house the bird students, was several stories high, and while it would have been easy enough for Simon to fly around, he wouldn’t be able to practice shifting into other animals. Not with the pack members watching.

  “You’re back early,” said a sleepy voice from Simon’s bed. Curled into a ball on his pillow lay a tiny brown mouse. Felix was, in many ways, his best friend, but Simon knew where he ranked when it came to the little mouse’s priorities: right below naps and television.

  “Yeah, Nolan tried to skunk me. Malcolm’s making him clean up the pit right now,” said Simon, heading over to his dresser.

  “That explains the smell,” muttered the mouse. “You need a shower.”

  “And you need to sleep another hour if you’re going to be this cranky.”

  Felix grumbled to himself, not disagreeing, and Simon grabbed a fresh change of clothes and ducked into the bathroom. As soon as he closed the door, however, he headed straight through into the adjoining bedroom: Nolan’s.

  Beneath Nolan’s desk in the far corner of the room was one of several tunnels that led to the Central Park Zoo above. While the Den was one of the safest places in New York City for Animalgams, it had its fair share of secrets, and Simon had discovered this one shortly after arriving. Moving the chair out of the way, he bent down and nudged open the secret panel. On the other side was an opening barely big enough for Simon to crawl through, but he didn’t need much space. As soon as he closed the small door and was engulfed in darkness, he closed his eyes and focused. Within a heartbeat, he began to shift.

  The cold tunnel expanded as he grew smaller. It didn’t hurt, but it did tickle, especially as fur sprouted all over his body. His face grew pointed, and his spine elongated into a tail, leaving him unbalanced for a moment. But before it could bother him, his transformation into a mouse was complete. Simon wasn’t sure exactly how many animals he could shift into, but between watching his brother in the pit and the experiments he tried when he sneaked out on his own, he had yet to find any exception.

  He scurried through the rest of the tunnel, careful not to make a sound. As soon as he reached the grate that let out into the middle o
f the Central Park Zoo, he shut his eyes and imagined a golden eagle, and his body once again transformed. His front legs twisted and lengthened into wings, feathers replaced his fur, and his nose and whiskers turned into a hard beak. He hopped out of the tunnel, his long talons scratching the paved stones. The sun was only beginning to creep up between the skyscrapers surrounding Central Park, and with his vision sharpened, he could see everything even in the low light of dawn. Twisting his head around, Simon searched for the wolf pack that patrolled the zoo while it was closed. No signs of life. At least not the kind that would get him grounded.

  Confident he was alone, Simon spread his wings and took off, soaring into the sky. At first he meant to only fly around the zoo for a little while, but he climbed higher and higher, his feathers adjusting to take advantage of the wind. He soared above the park, dipping down to swoop among the trees, not realizing where he was headed until he could see the building. His old apartment—the one he had lived in almost his whole life with his uncle Darryl.

  It had been two months since Darryl had died on the roof of Sky Tower, and they had been the hardest months of Simon’s life. While Simon missed his uncle fiercely, most days he went through the motions and pretended everything was okay, and no one knew just how deeply he was grieving. Sometimes Simon even managed to fool himself into thinking he had adjusted, that the biggest loss of his life was in the past instead of only an errant thought away. But as he circled above his old building, that gnawing ache returned full force, hitting him so hard that he almost forgot how to fly.

  He couldn’t stand seeing their apartment, not when he knew it would be one more reminder that Darryl wasn’t there anymore. Instead, with his insides in knots, he landed on a branch in Central Park near the path he’d taken to go to school. Glancing around, he half expected to see the boys who had bullied him, but it was far too early. Instead he ruffled his feathers and tried to pull himself together. If he spent the morning upset, Malcolm might demand an explanation—or worse, ask if he wanted to talk.