Vault of Shadows

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Use all of it,” Lizabeth told him.

  He brushed the last crumbs into Barnaby’s mouth and spread them around. Then he sat back and they all watched.

  At first there was nothing to see. The Cajun still looked more dead than alive. His face and body were limp, his breathing so shallow that he looked like a corpse.

  Then . . .

  “Goddess of Shadows,” whispered Evangelyne. “What sorcery is this?”

  Milo felt his mouth go dry as he gaped at Barnaby. Right before his eyes, the teen’s color changed from the gray of near death to a pale flush. He took a long, ragged, audible breath and his eyelids fluttered.

  “Oh my God . . . ,” breathed Shark.

  “This is impossible,” insisted Evangelyne. “He was slipping past all hope of healing.” She turned sharply to Lizabeth. “Explain this, girl. This is ancient magic. I asked you once before; now I demand that you tell me.”

  The look in Lizabeth’s face was almost indescribable. Cold, remote, detached, and inhuman. She met the wolf girl’s harsh stare, and her mouth still wore that strange half-smile.

  “I guess I read it in a book,” she said in a voice that was only barely like Lizabeth’s.

  “No, I insist that you tell me.”

  Lizabeth looked down at Barnaby. “He’s stable, but it won’t last, you know. We can stand around talking or we can get him aboard the ship and try to save him and the others. Which matters more to you, Evangelyne Winter?”

  “C’mon, Vangie,” said Shark, “she’s right. We got to boogie.”

  “Don’t call me that,” snapped Evangelyne, turning away and stalking off toward the ship. Milo saw her waving and shouting orders to the uninjured, who began bringing the wounded aboard.

  “Mook?” said Milo, and the rock boy nodded, bent stiffly, and lifted Barnaby with surprising gentleness and care. He headed toward the ship and soon vanished inside.

  That left Milo, Shark, and Lizabeth standing together. Shark seemed unable or unwilling to address what had just happened, but Milo couldn’t leave it like this.

  “Lizzie,” he said quietly, “what’s going on? What’s wrong with you?”

  The little girl turned and looked up at him. Lizabeth was as tiny and slender as a flower stem. Her pale hair danced in the damp breeze coming off the bayou. The strangeness in her eyes was less evident and she looked like her old self.

  “Wrong?” she echoed. Two tears, bright as diamonds, formed along the lower edge of her eyes, then ran slowly down her cheeks. “The world is screaming, Milo. Can’t you hear it?”

  “I—”

  “There are answers in books,” she said. “All you need to do is read the right one.”

  “Huh? Books . . . ?” Milo asked, suddenly even more confused. “What are you talking about?”

  Lizabeth studied him for a minute, and if possible her eyes turned stranger still. So remote. So unlike the girl who’d trained and studied and laughed and played with him, Shark, and the others. Milo was absolutely certain that he did not know the girl he was talking to.

  As if reading his thoughts, Lizabeth said, “You don’t even know what you know, Milo Silk.” She shook her head. “You don’t pay enough attention.”

  Whatever she meant seemed to make her sad. She brushed at the silver tears.

  Milo reached out to touch her, feeling a sudden need to pull her to him and comfort her. To keep her safe from something more than the Bugs. She recoiled from him, avoiding his hands.

  “No,” she said quickly.

  “Hey, I didn’t mean—”

  But before he could finish, Lizabeth turned and walked toward the ship. She paused at the base of the loading ramp and glanced briefly back at him, just as she had done before. There was no smile this time, though. Milo saw her shoulders lift and fall with a sigh; then she climbed the ramp and vanished inside.

  Milo turned helplessly to Shark, but his friend just stood there shaking his head.

  “What’s wrong with her?” pleaded Milo.

  “Oh, man, I really, really don’t know,” said Shark.

  “What did she mean by all that?”

  Shark kept shaking his head. “That stuff about books? How did that make sense? We read every book we can get our hands on, and you read them twice, dude. Is she talking about other books?”

  “You got me.”

  “Is she talking about some special book your friends have?” He leaned on the word “friends” and Milo took his meaning.

  “If the Nightsiders have any special books, nobody’s told me. Actually, I don’t think Evangelyne or any of them have said anything about any books.”

  “Then I’m out,” said Shark, flapping his arms. He tapped his temple with a finger. “I think Lizabeth’s gone bye-bye.”

  Milo grunted.

  Shark said, “Come on, we need to get out of here.”

  But Milo lingered a bit longer, searching inside his mind, hoping to find the process that allowed him to communicate with the Witch of the World. If anyone knew what Lizabeth meant, she would. And if there was no meaning, maybe the witch would know what was going wrong inside Lizabeth’s head. He almost told Shark about a dream he’d had recently of a book about a lost little boy, but it was just a dream. Not one of his prophecies, he was pretty sure. And the boy was a boy, not a little blond girl.

  So he gave it up for now. The last of the wounded were aboard, and Evangelyne stood at the top of the ramp. Milo looked around as if answers might be hung conveniently on signs nailed to the silent trees. There was, of course, nothing but secrets and mysteries. And urgency.

  So he ran for the ship.

  A short minute later the red craft lifted off and began its long flight toward the town of Mandeville, where help might—might—be waiting.

  Or perhaps what he would encounter would be more heartbreak and mysteries.

  Chapter 18

  The shortest route would have been straight across Lake Pontchartrain, but that was also the worst choice. They’d be as obvious as a black fly on a clean white sheet of paper. Or a bright red fly. The Huntsman hadn’t bothered to camouflage his command ship.

  There was a pale cloud cover now, and it faded the blue of the lake to an almost uniform light gray. The cloud cover was low enough to hide Dissosterin patrol craft, and Milo coasted around the edge of the lake, flying level with the trees to hide against their shadowy bulk.

  Lake Pontchartrain wasn’t really a lake, Milo knew, and he pulled from his memory all the details he’d learned. Scavengers were taught a lot of tricks for memorizing data and then recalling important information. Survival, he’d been told a million times, was the most perfect example of the phrase “knowledge is power.” For the kids and adults in the Earth Alliance, it was their strongest weapon against the Swarm, and their only chance of ever winning.

  So he went through what he knew about Lake Pontchartrain. It was a brackish estuary situated in southeastern Louisiana and connected to the Gulf of Mexico. It was a big oval that covered an area of over six hundred square miles. According to the charts, it had an average depth of twelve to fourteen feet, which wasn’t too bad unless the ship were to sink in it and they couldn’t swim out. Even a good swimmer can drown in shallow water if things go sour. Lately things had been going sour a lot more than they’d been going right. Salt water from the Gulf mixed with fresh water from the Tangipahoa, Tchefuncte, Tickfaw, Amite, and Bogue Falaya Rivers and from Bayou Lacombe and Bayou Chinchuba. The lake was surrounded by marshes, hardwood forests, swamps, and wetlands.

  For months now, Milo’s mom and her team of Earth Alliance resistance fighters had lived in a series of camouflaged camps along the two bayous. Milo knew the geography pretty well, though he’d never had to fly over it before, except for during the escape from the hive ship, but that was more like plummeting than actual flying.

  The red ship responded to his commands, but he could still sense its resistance. Its hatred.

  Bite me, he thought.

&nb
sp; Out of the corner of his eye, Milo saw a glow coming from the open air vent and the quick flicker of the salamander’s tongue. The creature peered down at him with his unreadable amphibian eyes.

  “Shark,” Milo called, and when his friend looked up, Milo pointed to the map. “Where should I put us down?”

  Shark swiveled his chair to face the holographic map. Beside him, Evangelyne leaned forward and studied it too. The fact that the alien map did not have any marker to indicate the presence of an EA camp was encouraging. However, it didn’t help them locate it. All they had to go on was the general location and the hope that the camp was still there. When the hive ship had attacked their own camp, the radio equipment had been destroyed. Milo knew that the other camp might just as easily have been attacked, or they might have chosen to move of their own accord, or they might never have been there. All three possibilities held equal weight.

  “If we can’t find it,” said Evangelyne, “set us down anywhere and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Milo and Shark exchanged a look. They knew what she meant by that. Once they were down, she could transform into a wolf to use her far more powerful animal senses. Even though it was a weird thing for a human kid to hear, Milo found comfort in her statement. Evangelyne was strange, and he wasn’t entirely sure she liked him anymore than Oakenayl did, but for now they were allies.

  Maybe they were on their way to becoming actual friends. It was hard to tell with her. She rarely spoke, and when she did she tried very hard not to relate on a real one-to-one level. Being friends with her was going to take a lot of effort and a lot of time. He hoped they had that time.

  “I appreciate the help,” he told her, and the wolf girl gave him a grave nod.

  “What’s the expression you Daylighters use? One person washes the other?”

  “Hand,” corrected Shark quickly. “One hand washes the other. Totally different meaning.”

  She thought about it, then nodded. “Oh, I get it. Hand. That makes more sense.”

  Shark turned away to hide a grin.

  “Say, Evangelyne,” said Milo tentatively.

  “What?”

  “Ever since we stole this ship, you haven’t said much. Not to me, anyway. Have I done something to, you know, make you mad?”

  She looked at him with genuine surprise. “Make me mad? You? No. Why would you ever think that?”

  “Well, like I said, you’ve been kind of avoiding me and all. . . .”

  Evangelyne shook her head. “No, it’s not like that. We’re not—I mean the Nightsiders—we’re not like you. We don’t . . .” She fished for the right word. “Chat. We don’t do much small talk.”

  “You hardly do any kind of talking.”

  A smile came and went on her pretty face. “It’s not about you, Milo. It’s us. You don’t really understand.”

  “I’d like to. Why not try me?”

  She thought about it, then shrugged and nodded. “It’s the Heart of Darkness. It doesn’t mean the same to you as it does to us. To you Daylighters it’s just a trinket, a beautiful stone. But for us it’s the most precious object we have. It’s sacred. And it’s important. So, so important. Without it the doorway to the shadow worlds can never be opened.”

  “I know, but—”

  “No, you don’t. You think you do, but you can’t.”

  “Then explain it so I can,” said Milo.

  The wolf girl considered. “You know your mother is out there somewhere. Her patrol and Shark’s aunt and the other soldiers, you know they’re out there, right? I mean, you believe that they’re still alive out there, just out of touch for now.”

  “Sure, I guess.”

  “And your father, you think that maybe there’s a chance he’s alive somewhere. Even if he’s in a cell aboard a hive ship, you think there’s a chance he’s alive. You told me that.”

  Milo nodded.

  “And the Earth Alliance resistance groups—millions of people in groups all over the world—you know for sure that they’re out there, hiding, staying under cover, working on ways to fight back. You have no doubts they’re there, right?”

  “Sure, but they are there.”

  “Exactly. Now, imagine that they were all taken away to some distant world and there was only one spaceship left that could get you to them or bring them home to you.”

  “Oh. And that’s what the Heart of Darkness is?”

  “Yes. It’s the only link that we know of, the only key to the last remaining doorway to the shadow worlds. If it’s destroyed or lost, then everyone we few orphans know, and all the millions of Nightsiders of the many supernatural races, will be lost forever.” She paused and shook her head. “Forever. With no chance of ever being found again. None. It would be as if they never existed. All we would have is memories and regrets.”

  Milo understood now, and it horrified him. She was right; he had only thought he understood, but now he truly got it.

  Evangelyne watched his eyes, looking for that understanding, and nodded when she saw it. She touched the small leather pouch hanging from her belt. “We don’t even know how to keep it safe. Halflight might be able to figure it out, or maybe one or two others in this part of the world, but between Oakenayl, Mook, and me, we simply don’t know.”

  “Yeah, about that . . . Where is Halflight anyway? I mean, she’s still alive, isn’t she?”

  Evangelyne looked away. “She lives,” she said, but there was no enthusiasm in her voice. “Faeries are so powerful but also so delicate. She spent much of her life force to cast glamours when we went aboard the hive ship. She is sleeping, and we can only pray that she wakes up.”

  “Whoa, wait . . . I mean, she will, right?”

  Evangelyne would not answer the question.

  “What about other Nightsiders?” Milo asked after an awkward pause. “Aren’t there supposed to be more out there somewhere?”

  She seemed surprised. “Oh, of course. A few. Some are like us—abandoned or accidentally left behind. Some are renegades who would never help us. And as I told you earlier, there are the wicked ones.”

  “Queen Mab and the Aes Sídhe.”

  “Yes. Though she is still trapped in her faerie realm. However, there are others, and some of them are as evil as evil gets.” Evangelyne shivered. “Some are every bit as dangerous as the Huntsman.”

  “Okay, so let’s not go to them, but shouldn’t we at least try to talk to Queen Mab? Maybe if we give her a heads up about the Huntsman, she’ll be grateful. Maybe she’ll be open to working out a deal. Remember, I’ve been inside the Huntsman’s head, and that put me inside the Swarm’s head too. He wants to conquer everything, and that probably means the faerie world as well.”

  Evangelyne started to argue, then lapsed into a brief, considering silence, but ultimately she shook her head. “Mad Queen Mab’s hate and treachery are legendary. We can’t risk any direct contact with her.”

  “We have to do something.”

  “Milo,” she said, her voice gentle and tentative, “that’s why I’ve been so silent these past few days. I haven’t been pulling away from you; it’s just that I’ve been trying to decide what to do and the answers simply won’t come. And I’m getting desperate, Milo. I’m so scared that I can’t keep the Heart safe. I’m so scared that the Huntsman will find us and take it away and then all will be lost. Now I have Queen Mab to fear as well. And if either of our enemies gets the Heart, it will be my fault, because I wasn’t able to protect it.”

  She looked like she was about to cry, but then she made an angry face and took a deep, steadying breath.

  “You know you’re not alone, right?” said Milo. “Shark and me . . . and Lizzie . . . we have your back.”

  “But you’re human children. What can you do?”

  Milo arched an eyebrow. “First . . . children? Really? How old are you?”

  She grunted something that might have been an apology, or she could have been clearing her throat.

  “Second,” continued M
ilo, “I seem to remember that it was my plan that got us aboard the hive ship. I’m not just some dumb boy.”

  Evangelyne colored. “I never said that.”

  Milo laughed. “I’m just messing with you. I guess what I mean is that none of us are alone if we stick together. That’s how it works. It takes five fingers.”

  “It what?”

  “Oh, that’s something my mom sometimes says when she’s talking to the soldiers about working together. It takes five fingers to make a fist.”

  “Hunh,” grunted Evangelyne. “That’s a wise statement.”

  “That’s my mom. That’s why she was in charge.”

  “I hope I get to meet her,” said the wolf girl.

  “Yeah, me too.” Then Milo brightened.

  “She—” began Evangelyne. Then she suddenly stiffened and sniffed the air. “Wait—what’s that smell?”

  “What smell?” But as soon as Milo spoke, he smelled it too. “Oh no . . . something’s burning.”

  But Shark was already out of his seat, dropping Killer to the floor, and was running across the bridge. Thin tendrils of blue smoke had begun worming their way through a vent on the far wall. Shark dropped to his knees and began pulling away sections of the panel. Immediately thicker, darker smoke boiled out, driving him back in a coughing fit. Tiny fingers of yellow fire wriggled inside the smoke.

  “What is it?” demanded Milo.

  “It’s the engine coolant,” croaked Shark. “I told you it was banged up.”

  “Put it out, boy,” ordered Evangelyne. “Or we’ll all burn!”

  “I know, I know. See if you can find a fire extinguisher.”

  “A what?”

  “You know, for putting out fires.”

  She looked confused. “There’s no water. . . .”

  “First,” said Shark quickly, “you don’t put water on an electrical fire. Not unless you want to die. Second, we need a fire extinguisher. Probably a red cylinder with a spray nozzle.”