Vault of Shadows (40 page)
Authors: Jonathan Maberry
His friends all stared up at him.
“He's alive,” said Oakenayl, and he managed to sound deeply disappointed.
“You're awake,” said Evangelyne, and her smile widened.
“I hope so,” he said. Then he corrected himself. “Yeah, I'm awake.”
Shark said, “Dude . . . we all woke up here and that's really, really freaky. You got any idea how?”
“
And the Heart of Darkness is healed,” said Halflight.
“How did you manage it?” asked Evangelyne.
“Mook?” asked Mook.
Milo climbed down from the boxcar. “You guys don't remember?”
“After the shocktroopers broke in,” said Shark, “my whole brain kind of went kerflooey.”
“I don't know what âkerflooey' means,” said Evangelyne, “but I'm pretty sure that's what happened to me, too.”
The hummingbird buzzed directly in front of Milo's face, and Halflight searched his eyes with hers. “Do you know what happened, Milo?”
Milo leaned back against the train and rubbed his face with his hands. “So,” he said, “I met this ghost . . .”
He told them all about it. Every word that he could remember, and he could remember a lot.
As he spoke, the sun climbed high into a perfect sky of blue and he felt himself detach, as if the version of him who stood there and related the strange encounter with the Heir of Gadfellyn Hall were temporarily disconnected from his inner mind. From his private self.
He drifted into his own thoughts, matching the beauty of the day, the peace of the moment, and the presence of his friends against the realities of what was out there.
The Swarm with their shocktroopers and Stingers, hunter-killers and holo-men, and all their alien tech. Relentless and numberless. They wanted the crystal egg that lay nestled in Milo's pocket.
The Huntsman and the queen were still out there too. Maybe trapped for now, but Milo wasn't optimistic about how long it would be until the two of them broke free. And when they did . . . well, there were probably no words for that kind of anger or that level of hatred.
His dad was out there somewhere too. A prisoner of the Bugs. And his mom was somewhere fighting for her life.
Milo knew that he and his friends had won a major victory. The Heart was repaired and hope had not become extinct.
The war, though, was far from over.
FROM MILO'S DREAM DIARY
I had a dream last night.
I dreamed that I was standing on the lakeside watching the hive ship burn. My friends were with me. Shark, Evangelyne, and the others. But there were people there I didn't know. Other kids and some soldiers. And other Nightsiders, too. We were all messed up from a big fight. I could hear someone crying.
But we were cheering. Most of us were, because the hive ship was burning.
Then I heard a sound and looked up. We all looked up.
Everyone stopped cheering.
Everyone started screaming.
There was another hive ship.
And another.
And another.
The sky was filled with them.
These weren't the hive ships from around the world.
No.
There were too many of them.
Forty. Maybe fifty.
I knew what it was, and I screamed too.
It was a second Swarm.
That's when I woke up.
JONATHAN MABERRY
is a
New York Times
bestselling and multiple Bram Stoker Awardâwinning author, magazine feature writer, playwright, Marvel comics author, and writing teacher-lecturer. His books include
The Orphan Army
, the first book in the Nightsiders series; the Rot & Ruin series;
Patient Zero
;
Extinction Machine
;
Marvel Universe vs. the Avengers
; and
Zombie CSU: The Forensics of the Living Dead
. He lives in Del Mar, California. Visit him at
jonathanmaberry.com
.
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Simon & Schuster ⢠New York
Visit us at
simonandschuster.com/kids
Also by Jonathan Maberry
The Nightsiders series
The Orphan Army
The Rot & Ruin series
Rot & Ruin
Dust & Decay
Flesh & Bone
Fire & Ash
Bits & Pieces
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2016 by Jonathan Maberry
Jacket illustration copyright © 2016 by Owen Freeman
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Book design by Krista Vossen
The text for this book was set in Minister Std.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Maberry, Jonathan.
Title: Vault of shadows / Jonathan Maberry.
Description: First edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, [2016] | Series: The Nightsiders ; book 2 | Summary: “Milo must choose between risking his life to save both the human and magical universesâor to live and save only his own”â Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015027662| ISBN 9781481415781 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781481415804 (eBook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Science fiction. | SupernaturalâFiction. | MonstersâFiction. | Extraterrestrial beingsâFiction. | HeroesâFiction. | MagicâFiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General. | JUVENILE FICTION / Science Fiction. | JUVENILE FICTION / Monsters.
Classification: LCC PZ7.M11164 Vau 2016 | DDC [Fic]âdc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015027662