CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Cyrus crawled through rough and gnarled cement and dropped into a stream of sewage. The smell of ungodly trash instantly hit him. To his rat nose, sewers and trash had started to take on their own unique smell. No place he’d visited was the same. The signatures were always different. This sewer smelled fresher—a higher mix of rainwater and traces of laundry detergent merged with the fetid waste and decomposing trash. The freshness must have been from the laundromat on the corner. The water was warm, making the sewer warmer than outside. The heat radiated off the foamy surface.
Leftovers from the previous rainstorm of the day were still flowing to the Chicago River, but this stream was much more manageable.
The tunnel was too small for him to transform into a human. He
