Vault of Shadows, Page 2

  Milo knew that couldn’t last. The Witch of the World had given him a dire warning about the lengths to which the Huntsman would go.

  He will burn the fields of the earth and topple mountains to find you and get back what you stole.

  Milo could feel the Huntsman’s hatred. It was like the smell of acid in the air. It was like an ache in his bones. It was a ball of sick dread in his stomach. He lingered for a moment and stared at the words.

  I WANT WHAT YOU STOLE

  Milo walked up to the burned food cart and spat on the red letters.

  Or at least, that had been his intention. Unfortunately, his mouth was so dry with terror that he had no spit at all. The best he could manage was a weak sound, a pretend spit that had no real force or power behind it.

  Embarrassed, and feeling small and powerless, Milo turned away and looked into the woods toward where his new camp lay. It was well hidden, but he did not believe it was any safer than the one he’d lived in a few days ago. This was an invaded and mostly conquered world. There was no such thing as safety anymore.

  Not until and unless the Swarm and the Huntsman could be defeated.

  The crystal egg seemed to burn like a cinder in Milo’s pocket.

  He touched it through the cloth of his jeans. Felt it pulse. Or maybe twitch. Like something alive trying to flinch away from his touch.

  Milo took a steadying breath and melted back into the woods.

  Chapter 6

  He had gotten less than a hundred yards when he found something very strange in a small clearing. It was a group of mushrooms growing in a near-perfect circle. Milo stopped and crouched down at the edge of it. Like everyone else in his pod, he knew a lot about what grew wild in the woods. What was safe and what wasn’t. Most of the mushroom species here in Louisiana were safe to eat, though there were a few he knew to stay away from. These, however, were a species he’d never seen before. At a glance, they looked like either straw mushrooms or Caesar’s mushrooms, but he was sure they weren’t either of those edible kinds. The caps were pale yellow and about six inches across, and the stipes—or stems—were flecked with gray scales. There were at least sixty of the mushrooms, and when he bent close to examine them, he realized that the circle they made really was perfect. It was only the occasional tuft of grass that made the ring appear warped. This bothered Milo, because nature has its own ways of being perfect—the flight of a hummingbird, the color of bougainvillea, the warm sun of a spring afternoon—but exact geometrical shapes are rare. Perfectly straight lines and perfect circles were unusual. And yet this didn’t seem like the sort of thing the Bugs would ever do.

  However, Milo had come this way not three hours ago and hadn’t seen this grouping of fungi. Surely mushrooms this large couldn’t have sprung up by themselves in just a few hours. That was impossible.

  Which meant what? Milo wasn’t sure. Was this something belonging to the Swarm? Was this something tied to the Nightsiders?

  He didn’t know, but as he wondered about it he suddenly felt very strange, and without meaning to, he dropped slowly to his knees just outside the ring. The air around him seemed to change, become less humid, and the heat leached away, replaced by a deep cold. When Milo exhaled, his breath plumed with steam. He jerked back. Then stopped. Bent forward . . . and breathed out again. It wasn’t just that he could see his breath—he could see it only as the exhaled air crossed the arc of the toadstool circle.

  Milo’s heart began to flutter, and he knew for sure that this phenomenon was tied to the world of shadows and monsters. It was almost the same effect he’d felt when he had discovered a damaged pyramid of stones in the swamps not too many miles from this spot. There had been a perfect ring of icy air around the pyramid, and Milo had later learned it was a shrine that was sacred to the Nightsiders. And it was from that ruined monument that the evil and terrifying Huntsman had stolen the Heart of Darkness—the jewel that was crucial to the survival of Evangelyne and her friends. And maybe crucial to the survival of everyone on Earth.

  There had been no ring of mushrooms there, though, and there was no pyramid here. All he could see inside the circle was grass and mud and . . .

  As Milo watched, he could feel something changing. Inside and out. His eyes began to drift shut, as if he were sliding toward the edge of sleep. He wanted to fight it, knew he should fight it, but all at once he had no will to try to stay awake. And yet he did not topple forward into sleep. Instead he wavered there on his knees, swaying as if to the rhythm of a distant piece of strange music. The air inside the circle seemed to shimmer like a mirage. His eyelids fluttered, but he couldn’t tell if they were open or closed.

  And then . . . then . . .

  Something moved inside the circle. Tiny figures no bigger than crickets, but human in shape. Almost human. They were dressed like soldiers from some ancient painting of war. Each warrior was dressed in clothes similar to those Milo had seen in books about the Middle Ages. Shining armor and long doublets with strange creatures embroidered on them: fire-breathing dragons, griffins, unicorns, basilisks, sea serpents, and mermaids. Each soldier had a miniature sword hanging from a leather belt, and a helmet of polished silver. There were female soldiers as well as male, dressed in the same armor and carrying the same swords. The soldiers were not really people, though. Small as they were, Milo could see that their skin was a pale green, almost the color of grass on the first morning of spring. A few of them had tapered helmets that did not hide their ears, and Milo saw that these ears rose to sharp points.

  As they danced, the little soldiers sang a song in voices that were so heavy with a foreign accent that it was hard for Milo to understand them. He bent close, his nose almost touching the shimmering air at the edge of the toadstool ring, and listened to the song raised by their tiny voices:

  He wha tills the faeries’ green

  Nae luck again shall hae;

  And he wha spills the faeries’ ring

  Betide him want and wae.

  For weirdless days and weary nights

  Are his till his deein’ day.

  But he wha gaes by the faerie ring,

  Nae dule nor pine shall see,

  And he wha cleans the faerie ring

  An easy death shall dee.

  Milo couldn’t easily follow what the creatures were singing, but as he listened, he found himself drifting ever closer toward the edge of sleep.

  And toward the shimmering circle.

  The creatures laughed and beckoned to him as they broke their own circle and whirled, some dancing together, others doing jigs by themselves. A few stood and clapped to keep time, and though Milo heard the music of strange pipes and drums, he could see no instruments.

  Milo felt his lips move and he heard himself whisper two words that he was absolutely certain he did not know and had never heard before.

  “Aes Sídhe.”

  They came out almost as a sigh, sounding to his ears like “ays sheeth-uh,” though somehow Milo knew this wasn’t how they were spelled. He was too dreamy and faint to wonder how he knew that.

  The dancing figures laughed aloud at the sound of the words. Their dances became faster and faster, and Milo was getting dizzy trying to follow their movements.

  “Come to the Sídhe, Milo. . . . Come play with us. . . .”

  “I . . . I . . . ,” he began, but he had no idea what he wanted to say. Or whether he could say anything at all. The world swam around him, and it seemed as if the only real and stable point in the universe was inside that ring. Milo felt seasick and woozy.

  “Come with us,” cried the tiny dancing figures. “Come play with us. Come be safe with us.”

  Milo began to lift his hand, to reach out, to reach through. As his fingertips brushed the outside of the shimmering wall, a shock went through him. It was like touching electricity. Milo snatched his hand back.

  Except he didn’t.

  He wanted to. He willed his hand to pull back.

  But instead it kept reaching forwar
d. Touching the wall of shimmering air was like touching flowing water. It was more solid than empty air, but not something he could grab. The ground seemed to tilt under him, to make him lean forward so that his fingers pushed through the outer surface.

  Inside the circle, the little figures danced and laughed, but Milo suddenly felt very afraid. There was no humor on their tiny smiling faces. The grins were like jack-o’-lantern grins—cruel imitations of smiles, with no human joy. And there was a kind of hungry delight in their eyes that burned like coals.

  “Come play with us,” they cried.

  Milo’s fingers kept reaching through the shimmer, and his body tilted forward inch by inch so that his face was right there, almost close enough to feel it on his skin.

  “Be safe with us . . .”

  As they chanted, the shimmering air above them inside the circle began to change. At first Milo thought it was a column of smoke rising from a fire he couldn’t see, but it wasn’t that. It moved like smoke, though, swirling and rippling, becoming darker as it filled the air and towered above the figures. The chants of the tiny soldiers increased as they begged Milo to enter the circle.

  “He comes!” cried the little figures, and Milo thought they were referring to him. Not so. They pointed at the swirling column of smoke. “The destroyer comes at our call.”

  The dark smoke was taking shape now. Slowly, though, as if time itself had become uncertain, or as if the very air were reluctant to witness what was forming.

  “No . . . ,” murmured Milo, but he could not look away, could not pull back.

  “The destroyer comes at our call,” the creatures repeated, and now Milo could hear a wicked joy in their voices. “He will open the door and set us free!”

  Inside the ring Milo could see the figure more clearly with each passing second. It was huge and almost—almost—human. Male, massive, with broad shoulders and a body packed with so much muscle that it looked bestial and deformed, its torso was wrapped in layer upon layer of chitinous plates, just like the Bugs. And like those aliens, it had a set of pincer arms sprouting from its sides, just below the muscular human arms. Insectoid pincers snapped at the air on either side of its cruel mouth. Antennae rose from the sides of its head, and the eyes were the multifaceted eyes of a blowfly. The human arms had been transformed into something monstrous and were covered with plates and ridges from which spikes jutted. Weapon belts crisscrossed the massive chest.

  This creature was not a Nightsider or a Bug, or even human. It was something else entirely. Unique in its hideous nature, and unparalleled in its towering, destructive madness.

  Even as it took shape in the air, Milo could hear an echo of what the Witch of the World had said when he’d first seen this monster.

  This is the destroyer. This is the Huntsman who will hang us all like trophies on his wall.

  Milo screamed.

  The dancing figures laughed and cried out in triumph as the Huntsman took shape within their magic circle.

  “Here is the one you seek, O champion,” they shouted. “Take this boy and do with him as you will. Then lead us to victory over all!”

  Milo reeled. These creatures were conjuring the most dangerous monster who ever lived.

  The Huntsman, as if able to read his thoughts, threw back his hideous head and laughed. But his laughter was silent, as if he was not yet enough in this world, not real enough, to be heard. He reached out toward Milo, toward the point where Milo’s fingers were penetrating the shimmering wall.

  Milo felt his will melting away, felt his fingers pushing forward. He felt he was losing himself as the creatures danced and the Huntsman reached.

  And then a sound split the air.

  Sharp.

  Loud.

  Not inside the ring. The Huntsman had not found his voice.

  No, this was an animal sound. A very particular kind of animal sound.

  And it came from behind Milo, off to his left, farther up the slope and beyond the edge of the field of wild sugarcane.

  Milo turned, and the action pulled his fingers most of the way out of the shimmering wall. The tiny figures stopped dancing and glared up at him with naked hatred. And the Huntsman’s image flickered for a moment.

  The sound came again, and again.

  Louder. Closer.

  Urgent.

  And familiar.

  Milo licked his lips and blinked, trying to clear his eyes. He heard the sound again and forced himself to turn away from everything in the circle. Something was out there. Something was coming. He tilted his head to raise one ear, trying to catch the full sound. Was it a wild dog? Or, worse, was it a Stinger? Was it one of the Dissosterin mutant hunting animals, the nightmare blend of giant mastiff and deadly scorpion, come to greet its alien master?

  Milo made himself turn more so that he couldn’t even see the little people out of the corner of his eye.

  Don’t look at them, he told himself. Don’t look at him!

  The sounds came from a patch of wild cane, and as Milo watched, the stalks rippled as something headed toward him with increasing speed.

  I’m dead, thought Milo.

  Then the canes parted and a figure moved into a patch of sunlight. Much, much smaller than Milo had expected. White, with brown patches, about the size of a meat loaf, standing on four bandy legs, eyes dark and bright, mouth open to reveal lots of tiny sharp teeth. The animal looked around, sniffed the air, then jolted to a stop as it caught sight of Milo. The little creature’s eyes seemed to bug out of their sockets, and the slender tail began whipping back and forth so fast it turned into a blur.

  Then it raced toward Milo at missile speed.

  It was Killer.

  Milo jerked his fingers completely free of the wall and reached out as the dog jumped into his arms, bore him backward, and tried to lick all the skin off his face. Killer slobbered all over Milo, biting his hair, whimpering, and dancing on the boy’s chest and stomach.

  Milo laughed out loud, and it was that sound as much as anything else that changed the day. The deep cold vanished, and when Milo dared to look, he saw the little figures disappear one by one. For a minute, though, one remained—a tiny woman dressed in armor the color of rotting leaves, with hair as red as flame and a thick band of carved gold around her throat. Above her towered the swirling image of the Huntsman. The monster spoke, but Milo could not hear a single word. However, the red-haired woman seemed to understand. She nodded and then turned toward Milo, and there was a look of such intense hatred on her face that it chilled Milo to the marrow. She pointed a slender finger at him.

  “You will scream as you die,” she said. “But only after watching everything you love burn. And then my champion and I will conquer this and all worlds.”

  Then she, too, faded. A moment later, so did the hideous, silent image of the Huntsman, and every one of the toadstools. It was as if they had never been there. As if this had all been some kind of waking dream. Or a nightmare that had tried to invade the daytime. The grass was unmarked, and the warmth of the bayou rolled over him and reclaimed the day.

  Killer barked at him, demanding his attention. Milo pulled the dog to his chest and hugged him, kissing his head, rocking him back and forth. Grateful to have found him, grateful to have been saved by him.

  Four days ago, when the hive ship had attacked Milo’s camp, Killer had gone missing. Everyone assumed the little dog was dead, burned to black bones by the firestorm of the attack. Killer’s owner, Shark, was Milo’s best friend, and Shark been grieving as much for the dog as for the friends they’d lost in that terrible attack. So many people were still missing—including Shark’s adoptive aunt and Milo’s mom—but finding the dog seemed to prove that being missing did not have to mean gone forever.

  Still holding the wriggling dog to his chest, Milo climbed to his feet. There were tears on his cheeks but he didn’t care, and besides, the dog lapped up the salty wetness.

  “I got you, Killer,” murmured Milo. “I got you. You’re safe
now.”

  Though he meant that for himself, too. Safe now.

  Safe.

  The clearing was empty. Not a single mushroom was in sight. And even the memory of that strange song and those cruel smiles seemed to be fading, racing away from him like roaches scattering to hide from the light. Had he really seen them? Had he actually seen the Huntsman?

  The more he thought about it, the less certain he was that it had happened at all.

  “I must have been asleep on my feet,” he told himself. Killer wagged his tail as if Milo had said something to him. “Just me being weird.”

  Milo finally set Killer down and examined him. The terrier was thin and covered with scratches and cuts, and his coat was filthy. The last four days had clearly been cruel to the dog. Despite that, the defiant fires that had always burned in his eyes were undiminished. He might only weigh fourteen pounds, but all of it was grit and determination. Killer had very little “give up” in him.

  “I know someone who’s going to lose his mind when he sees you, boy,” said Milo. “Shark’s going to go nuts.”

  At the mention of his person’s name, Killer began wagging even harder and uttered a high, thin whine.

  “C’mon, Killer, let’s get out of here.”

  Milo retrieved his slingshot, cinched the flap of his satchel, did a full turn to check the surrounding woods, and then clicked his tongue for Killer. They set off through the cane, moving as fast as caution allowed, making sure to leave no marks of their passage, relying on skills and smarts to stay safe and to ensure that death did not follow them back to where their friends waited.

  FROM MILO’S DREAM DIARY

  So much has happened that sometimes I have to stop and think about it to keep everything straight. That’s important because when I dream, the story sometimes changes. In my dreams, my mom was with me when I met the Nightsiders.

  In my dreams, the Nightsiders weren’t strange monsters. They were my brothers and sisters. All of them.

  Evangelyne Winter—the strange, moody werewolf girl.