Vault of Shadows (25 page)

Milo, Shark, and Evangelyne had fought Stingers only a few days ago, but it had been mostly a matter of more good fortune than skill that had allowed the kids to escape death. Now the three of them sprawled on the ground, shocked into helplessness as more than two hundred pounds of savage fury and alien evil stalked forward.

Shark was on his back, frozen in terror, with the Stinger nearly atop him. Killer stood nearby, tail curled tightly under his body, his teeth bared, ready to defend his master. Pieces of Mook were scattered all around them, and for an instant the Stinger stood there with dark triumph blazing in its eyes. Then the tail rose, the barb quivering and poised to strike.

“No!” screamed Milo as he rolled onto one knee, whipped out his slingshot, and loaded a steel ball bearing into the pouch. “Yo! Bug-Face, over here!”

The Stinger twisted its head sideways and hissed at
him. Mandibles like those of a locust stuck out on either side of the canine snout, and they twitched and snapped as a long line of hot drool dripped onto Shark's chest. The creature began to tense for a leap at Milo, but then suddenly twitched as if stung, turned away from him, and leered hungrily down at Shark.

“No, no,
no
!” Milo yelled, and fired the slingshot. He had no plan other than to distract the creature so that Shark might get up and run for it. Milo had fired his slingshot at other Stingers and accomplished nothing more than irritating the already furious and murderous creatures.

This time, though . . .

The little metal ball whipped through the air faster than any eye could follow, and it struck the Stinger on its armored cheek.

The Stinger instantly recoiled, yelping aloud in pain. Blood burst from a deep crack in the armor. It flowed in lines of red and green—Earth blood and alien blood that shared the same veins but never mingled together.

Milo gaped.

So did Shark.

So did the Stinger.

Terror held as they all reassessed this new factor in the way the world worked. Little boys with slingshots did not cause injuries to alien mutant monster dogs. It didn't work that way.

Except . . .

As if annoyed that his mind was frozen in shock, Milo's hands suddenly jerked into motion and loaded a new ball bearing into the sling. Milo drew and fired even as the Stinger shook off its shock and lunged at him.

This time the metal sphere hit it between the eyes.

It was a dead-solid perfect hit.

Armor burst apart and drops of dark red and vile green seeded the air. The creature staggered backward, more in uncertainty than in actual fear. It roared in real pain, though, and eyed Milo with caution and naked hatred.

Milo reloaded his slingshot and drew it back, but before he could fire, a hissing shape dropped from the closest tree and landed heavily across the shoulders of the Stinger.

“Iskiel!”
cried Milo as the salamander whipped its powerful tail around the Stinger's bull neck and buried his long, needle-like fangs into the face wound Milo had inflicted.

The Stinger went insane with pain as Iskiel injected acid venom into the beast. The barb shot forward and stabbed the salamander through the body, but that was the wrong thing to do.

Iskiel exploded.

The Stinger's head and shoulders, and most of its tail, vanished into a fireball that was so hot, the force of it picked Milo up and flung him into the wet bushes. The headless body stood there for a minute, legs quivering, red and green lines running from the horrific
wounds. Then its knees buckled and it collapsed.

Shark shrieked and managed to roll aside just in time, though he was bathed in alien blood.

Milo stared, shocked by what had just happened, his slingshot still raised.

Then he heard a branch snap behind him. Shark glanced up, and his eyes filled with new horror just as Milo felt something hot and wrong on the back of his neck.

The fetid breath of another Stinger.

There was no time to run. There was no chance left at all. Milo closed his eyes and winced, bracing against the inevitable jab of the barbed tail.

The moment stretched and stretched, becoming unbearable. He could feel the animal hatred, the intense desire to kill, and yet the monster did not act. Instead he heard it . . .
sniff
?

The creature pressed its snout against his satchel, then pushed on each of the pockets of his vest, sniffing, sniffing.

Which is when Milo understood. It wasn't here to kill him. His friends, almost certainly, but not him. Not yet. It had been dispatched like a hunting dog to find and retrieve the thing that pulsed with unnatural energy deep in Milo's pocket.

The egg.

These Stingers weren't just attack dogs—they were hunters. Retrievers. And now they'd found what their master had sent them to find. Milo heard the inquisitive
sniff abruptly pause as the monster bent to the level of his jeans pocket. Then Milo heard a low, mean, terrifying growl of triumph.

The shadow of the Stinger's tail fell over Milo, bathing him in darkness. This was his death. Right now.

“Milo—
move!
” yelled a voice that was harsh and feral. Not Shark's and not Mook's. A girl's voice that was filled with its own canine growl.

Milo instantly flung himself forward as Evangelyne came up off the ground, changing in shape from a dazed girl into something wilder and more primitive. The wolf jumped in and slashed at the Stinger with her fangs.

The Stinger howled in pain, but it shook the wolf off and whipped its tail down again and again. The wolf yelped and dodged, evading the killing blows by mere inches. Then the wolf faked left and darted in right, moving at incredible speed. Her powerful jaws snapped shut, and without even breaking stride the wolf tore the lower leg from the Stinger.

The Stinger had five more, though, so the attack caused pain but little else.

Milo rose to his knees and fired the slingshot, but nothing happened. During his dive to safety he'd lost the ball. He dug frantically in the pouch, found another, loaded it, pulled back, and fired—and very nearly hit Evangelyne as she lunged in under the Stinger's tail to strike again. Her teeth tore at a pincer on the side of the Stinger, snapping it, and at the same second Milo's ball
hit the creature in the mouth, snapping off one of the mandibles.

The Stinger howled in greater pain, and now there was a small note of fear in its cry.

We can do this,
thought Milo, and somehow just thinking that—as uncertain as his belief truly was—gave him new strength. He fired another ball. And another, each one hitting hard, doing damage,
hurting
this monster.

Shark lumbered heavily to his feet and shoved Milo. “Out of the way!”

As Milo staggered, he saw his friend raise something that gleamed with silver fire and flashed with blue lightning. There was a hot, burning
zap!

And then the Stinger was falling backward, its head gone as surely and completely as its companion's. Evangelyne staggered sideways, wolf eyes bugged wide in shock.

The Stinger collapsed. Its big scorpion tail rose sharply, trembled, and then flopped down too. The creature lay still.

Everyone—Milo, the wolf, and the little dog—turned toward Shark, who stood with the Dissosterin pulse pistol gripped in two brown hands. He looked every bit as shocked as they did. Then he slowly lowered the gun and stared down at it as if surprised by what he had just done.

No one said a word.

Milo turned at the sound of clacking stones and watched as splinters of stone and small rocks rolled together and began slowly—almost painfully—forming
themselves into the lumpy shape of Mook. Those movements were the only movements in the clearing. When Mook was reassembled, he turned and looked at the figures around him. And at the destroyed Stingers. He slowly raised his eyes and stared at Shark.

“Mook?” he asked tentatively.

“Yeah,” said Shark a little breathlessly, “I agree. Mook.”

“Mook,” said Milo, then coughed out a jagged little laugh.

Evangelyne transformed from wolf to girl. She wiped alien blood from her face.

“Mook,” she agreed.

Killer looked at everyone else and just barked. His version of “Mook,” Milo figured.

“I
s everyone okay?” asked Milo.

“Well,” said Shark as he ran a trembling hand over his cornrowed hair, “I'm pretty sure I need to change my underwear.”

Evangelyne looked aghast. “Eww. Really?”

“No,” he said, giving her a nervous grin. “Close, though.”

Mook went over to the first of the dead Stingers, bent stiffly, and picked up a four-inch piece of leathery tail. “Mook.”

“Um,” began Shark, “Milo, you say that Iskiel kind of
does
this, right? Blows up and comes back? Like a phoenix?”

“No,” said Evangelyne, “a phoenix explodes into flame and rises from its own ashes. Iskiel regrows his body from remnants.”

“Oh, right, that's totally different. What could I have been thinking?”

Evangelyne gave him a narrow-eyed look, uncertain whether he was messing with her. Milo figured she'd catch on eventually. If Shark couldn't be snarky,
he'd
probably blow up.

“Well,” continued Shark, “
do we wait for him to re-lizard himself?”

“He's a salamander—an amphibian,” Milo corrected, but Shark ignored him.

Mook held up the piece of tail. “Mook,” he explained.

“Which means what, now?” asked Shark.

“I think it means we take him with us,” said Milo.

The rock boy nodded. “Mook.”

“Sure,” agreed Shark. “Portable lizard parts.”

“Amphibian.”

“Shut up, Milo.”

“We can't stay here,” said Evangelyne. “These Stingers found us too easily. We need a safer place to hide while we rest.”

Milo looked around. “I don't suppose you have any magic caves or grottos or anything like that around?”

She shook her head. “These are not my woods. We could be at the doorway to a palace of shadows and I couldn't tell. If we were closer to home, maybe.”

“I don't get that,” said Milo. “Earlier you seemed to be saying that because I've seen magical things, I can see more of them. The ant and hawk thing. That's why I could see the faerie ring. So why can't you see magical stuff around you?”

She shrugged. “It's complicated.” When it was clear that wasn't going to be enough of an answer, Evangelyne explained, “Like all Nightsiders I can see some things that only our eyes can see. I can see the smile of the goddess
of the hunt in the face of the moon. I can tell which fireflies are fireflies and which are fire sprites. I can hear the song of certain trees.”

“Um. Oh,” said Milo. “That's maybe the coolest thing I ever heard.”

“Yeah,” said Shark, his mouth and eyes wide. “Definitely the coolest thing.”

But the wolf girl looked annoyed. “No, you don't understand. That's like you looking at an oak tree and recognizing it because of its leaves. It's ordinary stuff. These aren't things that can help us right now. We have to get moving. I don't care how tired we are, we have to get away from here. Someone sent these Stingers—either shocktroopers or the Huntsman—and in my experience, hunting dogs seldom run that far from the hunter.”

No one could argue with that, so with bodies jittery with adrenaline and limbs heavy with exhaustion, they packed their meager supplies and left the scene of slaughter behind.

Evangelyne became the wolf again and ranged far ahead, picking out a trail. It was soon apparent that there were other hunters in these woods, and the safe passage she picked was neither straight nor fast.

The moon abandoned them, and as it set, the forest was plunged into an almost impenetrable darkness, lit only by starlight. This slowed them even more and turned a difficult hike into one of constant paranoia and danger. Milo and Shark had flashlights, but they dared not
use them except to navigate ravines, and even then they had to smother virtually all the light because even a little glow could be seen easily at night. A flashlight could only mean the presence of humans, and nothing hunting in these woods was friendly to their kind.

Several times Milo recoiled from monstrous shapes that seemed to rear up in his path, and each time the shape turned out to be something harmless: a stunted tree draped in Spanish moss, or the rusted hulk of an old piece of farm equipment. Though once he whipped out his slingshot because he was absolutely certain there was a figure pacing them in the woods not thirty feet from the trail.

“What is it?” asked Evangelyne, hurrying to his side.

“I—don't know,” he admitted. “I thought I saw someone. A face. Or eyes at least. Watching us.”

Without a word Evangelyne became the wolf and ran into the woods, but after five fruitless minutes she returned as a girl, shaking her long pale hair. “No, there's no one there. No Bugs. All I can smell are the trees and flowers.”

“I saw a face,” said Milo firmly.

“What kind of face?”

He hesitated. “I think it was the same tree face I saw earlier. Like Oakenayl but different. Or at least I think I saw it.”

They looked at the woods around them, but there was no sign of anyone or anything.

“Can't
you smell whoever's out there?” asked Milo.

Evangelyne looked annoyed. “If it was a person or animal, sure, but if this is a tree spirit of some kind, then no. Remember, they
make
bodies from the woods around them, which means that they smell like the rest of the forest. I can smell the forest and each plant, but there's no way for me to pick out a scent like that.”

“Swell,” muttered Shark. “Any chance you can find us a place where we can crash for a bit? I'm dead on my feet.”

Without another word the girl leaped forward, became the wolf, and vanished into the woods. The boys stood there, exhausted and uncertain.