Vault of Shadows (32 page)

“When were you planning on telling us?” demanded Milo.

She gave him a funny look. “Never. I thought we'd get here long before Queen Mab escaped. I never thought it would come to this.”

Milo wanted to yell at her. Instead he ground his teeth together and pushed past her as he ran up the steps. The big clock inside his head was starting to ring its alarms.

The others followed at a run.

Evangelyne caught up to him as he reached the landing. “Do you know where you're going?” she asked. “Are you being guided by your dreams?”

He grunted, realizing that he probably was but hadn't been aware of it until she asked. He looked down the shadowy length of the second-floor hall and all at once knew that this was familiar to him. These were the halls
the Heir had walked all those years ago. There were doors on either side of the corridor, and he immediately knew which ones would open onto drab rooms filled with sheet-draped furniture and which doors would be locked. None of these doors led to where they needed to go.

He rubbed his eyes and then blinked to clear his vision. His feet had never been here, but somehow he could remember each quiet footfall of the Heir as he prowled this vast and ancient house in search of . . .

Of what?

He hadn't been looking for the library. The Heir had found it by accident.

What had that lonely kid been looking for? Why had he been abandoned here? What had happened to the people, the adults, who should have lived here?

None of those answers were in his dreams, and therefore they were not in Milo's head.

“This way,” he said quietly, and moved forward.

“You sure about this?” called Shark in a low, urgent voice.

“No, of course not,” said Milo. But what he wanted to say was,
Yes.

The corridor ended in a T-junction. Each of these halls was even longer than the one down which they'd come, and there were at least twenty closed doors on each wall. Milo took a step toward the left hall, then stopped and shook his head.

“No,” he said.

Mook walked a couple of paces past him; then he also stopped and retreated, shaking his head.

“Why?” asked Evangelyne. “What's wrong? What's down there?”

“I—don't know,” admitted Milo. “But it doesn't want us to go that way.”

“What doesn't?” asked Shark.

“The house.”

Shark stared at Milo. “The house,” he echoed flatly.

“Yes. Don't ask me to explain it, because I can't. I just know that we're not supposed to go that way.”

“Why not?”

Milo just shook his head. He didn't tell them the thoughts that filled his head, because it was hard to put his feelings into words. There were secrets down those halls, maybe important ones, but they weren't today's secrets. Maybe, if he lived through this afternoon, through this day, he'd return to Gadfellyn Hall and go exploring. Like the Heir had gone exploring.

Maybe he would get lost in this house.

He was almost certain he would. The house wanted him to go that way, just not now. Not today. The longer he lingered there, the more a coldness built up inside his chest.

Come back,
a voice seemed to whisper.
Come back and stay.

“No,” murmured Milo.

Come back and play with us.

Milo almost took a step forward. Almost.

But the more he thought about his dreams, and the more he listened inside his head to that whispery voice, the more he heard something else.

A sound, deep and low. A thump, like a weak hand striking a drum. Not in a rhythm. It was awkward and painful to hear. It shouldn't have been, he knew that with every fiber of his being. It should have been a strong, steady, beat.

No . . . not just a beat. A pulsing beat.

A heartbeat.

The chill in his chest swept through his entire body as he realized what he was hearing.

It was the dying, struggling throb of the Heart of Darkness.

So weak. So fragile.

Milo made himself turn around and look down the other hall. The sound was louder that way. Or . . . maybe not louder, but clearer. More correct.

He could feel everyone watching him, but they said nothing. They knew that this was his to do, this part of it at least. Finding the way.

“Come on,” he said hoarsely.

Milo began walking quickly, then broke into a run, passing door after door, knowing they weren't the right ones even though he didn't know exactly what he was looking for. He could remember his dreams as something hazy and indistinct. They were, after all, only dreams. In dreams, nothing looks the way it does in the real world.

Not that Gadfellyn Hall was within a million miles of the real world.

Absolutely not.

The corridor ended at another T-junction and again Milo took the hallway on the right, increasing his pace, racing now, with the others following as fast as they could. Mook lagged behind, his rocky feet pounding on the old floorboards. Evangelyne could have turned into a wolf and outrun them all, but she didn't know the way. So instead she ran at Milo's left side and Shark huffed along on Milo's right, with Killer at his heels.

“How big is this place?” grunted Shark as they ran down a hall that seemed to grow and stretch out before them, adding more and more doors that were shut and locked against them.

“A lot bigger than this,” said Milo, though even he didn't know what he meant by that; he only knew it was true.

At the end of the next hall they slowed to a stop at what appeared to be a dead end. Instead of a door, there was a huge picture mirror that stretched from wall to wall and from ceiling to floor. The glass was shattered, though, and pieces lay everywhere on the floor. Some jagged splinters were still stuck in the edges of the frame.

Milo stepped forward and stood amid the glittering pieces of mirror. At first he only glanced down to see his reflection, but then he did a double take because the reflection in those pieces was all wrong.

So wrong.

In one he saw himself as he was. Eleven, on the skinny side of slim, short, with a scuffle of brown hair and dirt on his face. Haunted eyes that were filled with sadness and fear. That's how he knew he looked. The real him.

But there were other versions of Milo Silk. Some were memory images, others were not.

He saw himself as a little boy in the days before the Swarm came. Wearing footie pajamas with the Ninja Turtles on the chest. Rosy cheeks and bright eyes that were filled with laughter. But right next to that image was one whose nature horrified Milo. It was a broken, distorted version of himself. No longer entirely human. His body had been torn apart and rebuilt with gleaming metal and patches of ugly green-brown Dissosterin armor. Clicking mandibles forced their way out between teeth and cheeks, stretching his mouth into a permanent grin of alien hunger. Instead of his own eyes, he had the multifaceted eyes of a monstrous fly. It sickened him, because in that image he was a miniature and tortured version of the Huntsman. A pet or, worse, an apprentice.

Milo tore his gaze away but then saw himself in another terrifying aspect. Standing mute and gray-skinned, with a network of wires running in and out of his flesh and a visage that flickered back and forth between his own grim dead face and one that pretended to laugh normally as if inviting his friends to come and play. It was a lie, though. The laughter was a trap, because in that reflected image
Milo was a holo-man. A corpse used as a living land mine to trap and murder his friends. Like the holo-man who had appeared as his dad and nearly killed him.

There were other images. In one he knelt over the still and silent body of his mother. Her eyes were open but a thin line of blood leaked from the corner of her mouth. There were pulse-blast burns stitched across her chest. In that image Milo screamed and screamed and screamed, even though the piece of shattered mirror made no actual sound.

He saw his dad, playing guitar and laughing.

He saw his dad turned into a hybrid.

He saw his dad lying dead.

He saw his dad in silhouette, twisted and strange, transformed into something more monstrous than anything Milo had ever seen.

He saw his dad standing with a gun, his face scarred but alive, his eyes filled with power. And Milo prayed that this image was true, that it was more than his own weak hope that his father was still alive somewhere, fighting the aliens. Fighting to come back to him.

He saw Lizabeth, her shirt burned, her hair tangled with twigs and leaves and dirt, her eyes empty.

He saw Lizabeth rising into the air, her skin aglow as if all the starlight in the universe shone through her flesh, a sword of fire in one hand.

He saw himself staggering through a world where everything and everyone lay dead. Shark was there, his brown
skin torn by blade and pulse blast. Evangelyne was caught between wolf and girl, and in that mismatched phase she had died, cut down by the
Aes Sídhe
or the Huntsman.

He saw all these things and many, many more.

Death and life. Defeat and victory. Despair and hope.

Then he turned back to that one sliver of glass that reflected his face as it truly was in this moment. The Milo in that reflection spoke to him, and Milo heard his own voice inside his head. But it wasn't the voice of a kid. It was an older, stronger, deeper voice. Still his own, but not his yet.

These aren't real. They're lies and predictions. They're hopes and dreams. The future is a storm that rolls and changes, Milo. Nothing is set. Nothing is certain. Not victory and not defeat. This is a universe of chaos and every possibility exists. Do you hear me? Every possibility still exists.

Milo tried to reply in thought only, but he couldn't, and so he answered aloud.

“Help me,” he whispered.

“Milo?” called Evangelyne, concern in her voice, but he waved her off.

You walk in a dream, Milo. Anything is possible. Be very, very careful. Follow your heart in all things. That's more powerful than sorcery or spaceships or death.

“How do I know what's right, though?”

You aren't alone, Milo. There are allies you can't see. You are not alone in this war. Others are fighting too. Some will rise to fight beside you. Others will make their own stand in their
own places to fight the Swarm and to fight the dark magicks that have been unleashed. Don't give in to despair. But know this: In the end you will be called on to lead an army the likes of which this universe has never seen, because only such an alliance can ever hope to prevail against what the Huntsman will become. Darker times are coming, Milo. Be strong.

And that's when Milo realized the voice he was hearing was not some older version of himself.

It was the voice of someone who had been lost. Taken. Maybe destroyed.

Milo reached a trembling hand toward the fragment of mirror. “D-Dad—?”

Be strong, son. Be true.

And then the voice was gone.

Milo's knees buckled, and he would have fallen if Evangelyne and Shark hadn't caught him and held him up.

“Geez, what's wrong?” cried Shark.

Milo pushed them away and staggered across the hall to lean both palms against the wall. The mix of emotions swirling and boiling inside him was almost too much to contain, and he threw back his head and screamed.

The sound that erupted from him was not right. Not normal.

It was the roar of a monster, a
thing.
It was an animal roar of primal rage and endless need, and all along the hallway the doorways cracked and shuddered in their frames. Pictures fell from their hooks and shattered on the floor. Cracks whipsawed along the ceiling, and the pieces
of broken mirror exploded into clouds of glittering silver powder.

The frame that had held the mirror suddenly swung backward, turning inward on hidden hinges. Milo's scream seemed to be pulled like smoke through a fan, vanishing into the dark recess that was now revealed.

Milo pushed off the wall and stood there gasping, his chest and throat hurting, strange lights bursting like fireworks in his eyes. His fists tightened into balls and he bared his teeth at this new doorway.

His friends had recoiled from him and were standing back, fearful and wary.

Then slowly . . . so slowly . . . the storm that had exploded inside Milo passed. It blew out of him as if pushed by a freshening wind.

No one asked him to explain what had just happened. They were in a ghost of a house and nothing here was real.

Except that Milo was absolutely certain it was all real. In some way, maybe in a thousand different ways, this was all real.

Without saying a word to anyone, Milo bent and picked up the slingshot he hadn't realized he'd dropped. The ball bearing was there on the carpet, and he looked at it and saw yet another distorted reflection of his face.

Then he pushed the hidden door open and stepped through into darkness.

One by one, the others followed.

T
hey stepped into a narrow space that looked like it had been built as a walk-in closet. There was barely enough room for them all to fit. The door swung shut behind them, plunging them into darkness. But almost immediately the far wall swung away from them to reveal another door, and another, and another.

Milo understood what was happening. The Heir had come this way, going through one doorway to find another and another and another.

Until they found the last one. Shark swept his flashlight beam around and the beam fell on a large crystal doorknob that was faceted like a big diamond. Milo took a breath and glanced at the others, who nodded encouragement. None of them offered to touch it, though. They were letting him run this hunt.

He was only sort of okay with it. He knew he had to, but he really didn't want to. Those strange, cryptic words spoken in his dad's voice echoed inside his head.