Vault of Shadows

by Jonathan Maberry

  “This is so freaky.”

  Evangelyne said, “Is it really freaky or really, really freaky?”

  Shark laughed. “Really, really, really freaky.”

  Iskiel scuttled down from Mook’s shoulder and crawled up onto the coffee table. He sniffed the food suspiciously. Killer leaned in to give everything a thorough sniff too.

  “So do we just chow down and wait?” asked Shark, who was eyeing the baked bread with naked hunger. “’Cause I’m okay with that.”

  Iskiel reached out a clawed foot, grabbed the fattest strawberry in the bowl of fruit, and ran away with it like a thief. He climbed onto the backrest of an overstuffed chair and proceeded to eat it. Very noisily and messily.

  Milo and the others looked at him, at each other, and down at the food.

  They fell on it like vultures.

  For several minutes all they did was eat. Since the invasion, food had often been scarce. Plus everything here was fresh and incredibly delicious. Milo wasn’t sure he’d ever eaten anything as good in his whole life. Shark kept saying repeatedly that he had not. Evangelyne didn’t waste any breath on conversation and instead made serious headway on the pastries.

  After a while, though, Milo took a plate of food with him as he began to explore the endless rows of books. After all, the note had extended an invitation to read.

  He found three books about survival in the wilderness and brought them back to the couch and settled in to read. First thing he did, though, was make sure the books were intact. No missing pages. Even though each of the books appeared to have been read—possibly many times—they were in excellent condition and complete. Milo found that deeply satisfying.

  One by one the others went and found books and brought them back to the chairs by the fire. Even Mook found a heavy book and opened it on his lap. Milo expected it to be about rocks or geology, but it was an oversized hardbound copy of the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm. The rock boy sat there, chin on his chest, and read.

  After a while Milo heard Shark say, “Isn’t this kind of weird? Us just sitting here stuffing our faces and reading? Shouldn’t we be looking for the Heir? Or hiding from the dark faeries. Or . . . something . . . ?”

  But his voice seemed to be coming from far away. Between the warmth of the fire, a full belly, the comfort of the couch, and the seeming safety of the library, Milo found himself drifting. The words on the pages began to lose their anchors and drift across the page.

  He fought to stay awake. He knew he should.

  He closed his eyes to rest them. Just for a second.

  He thought about all that had happened. All that still was happening. He thought about all he’d lost and everything he stood to lose. He thought about being the hero that the Witch of the World wanted him to be, and the ordinary little kid he knew himself to be.

  He wished he could be that hero.

  He wished his mom and dad were here to help him, to protect him. To be with him. To prove they were still alive and they still loved him.

  He wished that he was strong enough to just stand up and fight the Huntsman. To kick him off the planet along with the whole stinking Dissosterin Swarm. And while he was at it, to kick the Aes Sídhe back through the doorway to their little shadow world. The world had enough problems without dark faeries complicating things.

  He wished he had one of those magic weapons he read about in books. An ancient sword or a ring of power. Maybe a high-tech device that could eliminate the Bugs with the flick of a switch. Why not? If all the other things from books could be real—alien invaders, werewolves, cyborgs, faeries—then why couldn’t there be a magic weapon? It was only fair.

  That’s what he thought.

  That’s what he wished for.

  While he drifted into sleep there in the Impossible Library, Milo Silk wished to have that kind of power.

  Chapter 48

  A voice woke him.

  Small, faint. Familiar.

  Milo opened his eyes and saw that everyone else was asleep. Mook and Shark leaned against each other, both of them snoring in unison. Evangelyne was curled up with Killer snuggled against her. Iskiel was dozing in the embers of the fire. The library was almost silent except for the faint popping of the burning logs.

  Something buzzed near Milo’s ear and he brushed at it, thinking it a fly or moth.

  “Milo!” said a musical little voice. “Milo, wake up.”

  He turned and saw that it was not a moth at all. Instead a gorgeous little hummingbird hovered in the air inches from his face, its wings beating so fast they were only a blur. And sitting astride the bird was a tiny girl no bigger than his little finger. She wore a dress of shimmering silver and gold, and instead of hair she had living fire streaming from her head. Colors burst like fireworks around her—wild blues and purples, brilliant yellows and greens, appearing and then fading, only to burst again.

  “Halflight!” cried Milo in delight. His heart lifted at the sight of the little sprite. He had met her at the same time he’d met the other Nightsiders. She was kind and smart and wise, and he thought she was the best person of any species he had ever met. Halflight was able to use strange magicks and could cast glamours—illusions that had allowed Milo and the orphans to sneak aboard the Huntsman’s ship disguised as Bugs. However, those magicks drew directly on the sprite’s own life force, and she had risked so much that she had nearly died. “Halflight, it’s so great to see you. Are you okay? Are you better now?”

  The hummingbird swung around in front of him and Milo’s heart suddenly froze in his chest as he saw that Halflight did not look recovered at all. The bright colors were more wishful thinking on his part than how she really looked. Her head hung between slumped shoulders and her fiery hair seemed to be burning out.

  “Milo . . . ,” she gasped in a thin, faded voice filled with pain and fear. “The Huntsman is coming. He’s almost here. You must wake up.”

  “I am awake,” he told her.

  “No,” she said. Then she turned suddenly in her saddle and looked toward the library door. “He’s right outside. Oh, please wake up . . . wake before it’s too late. . . .”

  The door burst open and he stood there. Massive and powerful and totally alien.

  The Huntsman.

  “It’s already too late,” he said in a deep and booming voice that was filled with dark amusement.

  Milo shot to his feet and waved the hummingbird away behind him. He had his slingshot out and loaded in half a heartbeat. “No! Get out of here or I’ll—”

  The monster cut him off. “Make threats when you have a chance to carry them out.” The insectoid pincers on either side of his wet teeth clicked and snapped. He had his whip draped over a hook on his belt and his knives and pistols ready, but the Huntsman held nothing in his hands. The threat of him was like a hurricane. It was vast and it filled the room with the dark promise of horrible things. His face, already filled with malicious intent, darkened to a mask of hate. “Now . . . give me what you stole. I can hear it beating, I know it’s here. Give it to me now.”

  Milo fired the slingshot. The ball, crafted from some steel alloy designed by Dissosterin science, flew like a silver missile. It was a blur and it flew straight at that evil face.

  And the Huntsman snatched it out of the air as if it were nothing.

  Nothing.

  He held it up between thumb and forefinger, studying it. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “two days ago you might have actually hurt me with this. This is a tullinium alloy. You won’t have heard of it, but the entire Swarm uses it. That’s why the Earth Alliance weapons have so little effect. Fifty times harder than steel. A useful bit of metallurgy the Swarm stole from a planet they devoured a million years ago.” He bounced it in his palm and smiled at Milo. “Two days ago something like this could have hurt me. Maybe even killed me. But now? Ah well, now everything’s different. My lady the Queen has helped me discover how powerful I truly am.”

  “What are you talking about?”
demanded Milo.

  The Huntsman’s smile broadened, becoming a leer. “You know what I’m talking about. You know what I did the other day. You know how I fed.” He laughed, and the sound of it was so ugly it hurt Milo’s head. “Lizabeth VanOwen. Who would ever guess that such a skinny little child like her would have so much life in her? The very young and the very innocent are the most powerful, did you know that? All that purity, all that love and hope and all those unspent years . . . they’re like nuclear fuel.” His leer became a demon’s mask. “And I drank every drop of her life.”

  “Nooooooooo!” Milo screamed as he loaded another metal ball and fired. And another, and another.

  The missiles flew like mad, striking the Huntsman in the chest, in the face, clanking off him, ricocheting to smash into the walls. The monster laughed and laughed.

  He still held the first one he’d caught and, still laughing, he whipped his hand toward Milo, throwing the ball with ten times the speed and force of the slingshot.

  Milo felt a punch.

  He coughed.

  He looked slowly down at his chest.

  At the dark red hole in the center of his sternum.

  Milo opened his mouth to say something.

  Nothing came out.

  His eyes rolled up in his head and he felt himself falling backward and downward into the well of forever.

  He felt himself die.

  Chapter 49

  A voice woke him.

  Again.

  “Milo. Milo, you have to wake up.”

  It was a female voice. But not Halflight’s. Not Evangelyne’s, either.

  He opened his eyes and he wasn’t in the library anymore. He wasn’t in New Orleans.

  He stood in the swampy woods. Mosquitoes thrummed in the air like fighter squadrons. Spiderwebs glistened with morning dew. He could hear bullfrogs and nutria down by the bayou. He looked up and saw the sky through the canopy of trees. The moon was out.

  No, not the moon.

  This was something closer and uglier and it moved slowly across the sky, pushing through the clouds, insulting the very air with its presence.

  A hive ship.

  “Milo,” said the voice again, and he turned. Behind him was the shattered bulk of the food cart from his camp, and the Huntsman’s demand was painted on its side.

  Give me what you stole.

  A slim, small figure stood in the shadows thrown by the cart, but even in that purple darkness her hair glimmered with pale light.

  “Lizzie—? Oh my God—Lizzie!”

  He ran to her, needing to hug her and force her to be real and to be alive again. He would never let her go, never let death or the Huntsman take her. He had no siblings, but Lizabeth was his sister nonetheless. Just as Shark was his brother. But before he touched her she stepped away, evading his touch, shaking her head.

  “No!”

  That word stopped him in his tracks. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Shadows covered her face and he couldn’t read her expression, and when she spoke her voice was different. Wrong. Not the voice he knew. It was too old and she had an accent he’d never heard before.

  “Milo,” she said, “you must wake up. Worlds turn and turn and you must wake up.”

  He drew back, suddenly afraid of her.

  “Who are you? Where’s Lizzie?”

  “You know what happened to your friend. She is gone. He has stolen her life just as his masters steal the life from our mother world.”

  “Who are you?” Milo repeated. “Why do you look like Lizzie? Why are you doing this?”

  The figure pointed to the ground and Milo saw a fairy ring there, and in the disturbed dirt he could see the impression of a small, slim body. He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the pain, the loss.

  “It’s not fair,” he said. “Lizzie never hurt anyone.”

  “There is such power in innocence,” said the figure. “Such wonderful power. Had she lived to grow up, Lizabeth VanOwen would have been a healer. She would have served life itself. The Huntsman stole that from her when he stole her from the world.”

  “I want to kill him,” snarled Milo. “He’s got to pay for what he did.”

  She said nothing and instead looked up at the hive ship. Milo glanced around the clearing and then suddenly thought he understood what was happening.

  “I’m dreaming,” he said.

  “Of course you are. Life is a dream.”

  “No, I mean I’m actually dreaming. I’m back in the library and I’m asleep and this is just a dream.”

  “Just a dream?” she said, repeating the words slowly. “You live in a world at war with itself. Science and magic are in collision. Doors are breaking open and dreadful things are being set loose. Tell me, Milo Silk, how is that just a dream?”

  He studied her face, seeing the alien light in her eyes and understanding what it was. “You’re her, aren’t you? You’re the woman who was buried here all those years ago. The Daughter of Splinters and Salt, and this is your shrine.”

  “I was her,” she said. “Now I am shadows and dust.”

  “Were you here when Lizzie died?”

  She pointed to the ground inside the faerie ring. “That is my grave. The Huntsman desecrated it with his foul deed.”

  “You saw what happened. Did it . . . did she . . . ?” He stopped and started several times, trying to push the words through the ache in his chest. “Did it hurt? For Lizzie, I mean?”

  “The Huntsman is a monster and a necromancer. He feeds on pain and fear. He was like that before he became a necromancer, and now he has become a kind of vampire but more frightening. It was dreadful to behold.”

  “I should have been here. Maybe I could have done something.”

  “You would have died too. And the world with you.”

  “You’re wrong. I’m not important. I’d have given him the crystal egg if he had let her go.”

  The Daughter of Splinters and Salt stepped out of the shadows. She still looked like Lizabeth, but Milo could see it wasn’t her. The lights in her eyes were so different. As alien, in their way, as the Huntsman’s. Her eyes now blazed with intensity.

  “You must not say such things. You must not. Listen to me, child of the sun,” she said. “You have been charged with a great task. It does not matter that you do not think you are strong enough. Few of this world’s greatest champions were born as heroes. You are young, you are small, and you think that makes you weak. But you are so wrong. The Witch of the World told you this. I tell you this. The mountains and the forests of the Earth tell you this. And the Heart of Darkness screams it as she dies. You must rise, Milo. You must find a way.”

  He shook his head. “Where is she? Where’s Lizzie?”

  The ghost touched a hand to her chest. “She is here,” said the Daughter of Splinters and Salt. “She is with me and of me. We are beginning a journey together, she and I, and not even the fates know where it will end.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She smiled. “It is not yet to be understood. We are adrift in the waters of eternity and possibility, Milo Silk.”

  “I don’t understand that and I don’t care. All I need to do is kill the Huntsman for what he did to Lizzie.”

  The smile faded. “Seek revenge and you seek your own death. Give in to that kind of hatred and you steal from this world its last hope. Being a hero means thinking of everyone, not of oneself.”

  “Will you people get off that? I’m not a freaking hero. Why can’t anyone understand that? I just want to stop the Swarm. That’s the only thing I want. Why’s that so hard to understand? It’s the only thing that matters.”

  The Daughter of Splinters and Salt began to reply, then stopped and stared upward. Milo followed the line of her gaze. Far above them, the hive ship opened massive gun ports, and from them emerged the focusing crystals of enormous pulse cannons.

  The cannons fired and the whole swamp exploded in blue fire.

  Milo felt himself b
urn.

  Chapter 50

  Milo woke up. Again.

  He stood on a vast barren field from which columns of smoke rose into a dark and troubled sky. Above him, a hive ship was burning as thousands of small fighter craft swarmed around it. Milo stared in shock. The fighters were all built like the red ship he’d stolen from the Huntsman but they were painted with the round blue-and-green logo of the Earth Alliance.

  This was a counteroffensive. It was the kind of battle he’d dreamed of, and as he stood there and watched, Milo knew—somehow knew—that this was because of him. He’d brought the red ship to the EA, and the scientists and techs had scavenged it, reverse-engineered the tech, and used it to build a fleet.

  An entire fleet of ships that were as fast and powerful as the Huntsman’s craft.

  Swarms of barrel-fighters clashed with the EA ships, but one by one they exploded as the resistance fighters of Earth showed them what would happen in a fair fight.

  It was wonderful.

  It was everything Milo had wished for.

  Explosions rippled along the body of the hive ship as its internal engines ruptured.

  “Enjoy your moment,” said a voice, and Milo spun to see the Huntsman behind him. The hybrid was bleeding and he leaned on a makeshift crutch fashioned from a piece of metal tubing. His pincers were broken, one eye was missing, and his body was crisscrossed with wounds that bled red or green. Even now the creature’s human and alien blood refused to mingle despite flowing through the same veins. “Enjoy your victory, general.”

  It took Milo a few seconds to realize that the Huntsman was indeed addressing him. But . . . general?

  “We’re going to wipe you off the planet,” Milo said, and the sound of his own voice startled him. It wasn’t a kid’s voice. It was an adult voice. Deep, strong, filled with confidence. “And then we’re going to hunt your kind across the universe. We won’t rest until we wipe you out of existence.”

  The Huntsman coughed and blood ran from the corners of his mouth. “I remember when you were a boy. Such a little thing, all those years ago. I should have killed you when I had the chance.”