The Eternal Tomb (6 page)

“And then you switched Kyle's California roll with the intestine surprise,” Emalie added, giggling harder.

“I thought he was gonna vomit!” Dean gasped.

Oliver put away the objects and tried, as hard as he knew how, to join in the laughter. He just wanted things to be normal! To have friends and have fun and sit on a roof with nothing to worry about. Even if it would never be true, he had to try to pretend, at least for tonight.

Chapter 5

Selene's Last Breath

DINNERS WERE QUIET NOW
. Oliver felt like he could hear the echoes of conversations at the table from the past, or from another world where Bane was still with them.

Charles, how was school tonight?
Phlox would ask in that overly formal tone, like she was already bracing for Bane's sarcastic reply:
Whatever. Who cares.
Phlox's eyes would start to smolder, leading to a sharp comment about the importance of school. Oliver would be sitting there thinking Bane was so annoying, yet glad nobody was asking him how his night was.…

“How was your night, Oliver?” Phlox asked.

“Fine,” Oliver mumbled over his goblet. In truth, Tuesday night at school had been nearly unbearable. Oliver had to listen to endless talk among his classmates about the Ball, which was no pleasant distraction from thinking about his recent conversation with Emalie. Worse, he'd found a note from Emalie saying she had to push back doing the Portal to Wednesday, because the final part of the preparation hadn't worked.

“Have you thought about who you'll ask to the Ball?”

Oliver kept his gaze firmly on his plate. Unbelievable. Did his parents really expect to just sit here and talk about the Ball like everything was normal?Like something as stupid as a date to the dance even mattered? As if the beginning of the end of the world wasn't on the schedule for that same night?

“Nope,” Oliver replied stiffly. He shoveled pie into his mouth.

“I would imagine your classmates are looking forward to their first Ball,” Phlox went on.

“Guess,” said Oliver.

“Well, I'm sure you'll find a date in time,” said Sebastian.

The doorbell chimed. Oliver saw Phlox shoot a glance at Sebastian as he got up.

“Who's that?” Oliver asked.

“We have some visitors this evening,” Phlox said, looking at her plate.

Oliver heard the sewer door open, and then the sound of multiple voices and footsteps returning to the kitchen.

“Hello, Oliver.” Dr. Vincent entered the room, removing a long gray coat from his broad shoulders and setting a black briefcase on the table, among their plates. Behind him, Tyrus entered, followed by Sebastian.

“Oliver,” said Sebastian, “Dr. Vincent is here to give you your final force treatment for Friday.”

“I don't want it,” Oliver said dejectedly.

“Ah, no need to worry, Oliver,” said Dr. Vincent with a smile. He always looked so cheery, with his blonde hair and chiseled features. “It's nothing at all.”

“I'm afraid we need to do this,” Sebastian added, looking at him blankly. Oliver had an old familiar feeling as he gazed at his dad and had no idea what he was thinking.

But what was he going to do, resist? Fight his way past these four adult vampires? His head fell. “Whatever,” he muttered.

“All right, then,” said Dr. Vincent, “I'll need you to roll up your sleeve.”

As Oliver did so, Dr. Vincent flicked open the gold latches on his briefcase. Inside was a long syringe and a narrow glass vial. Dr. Vincent carefully picked up the vial. It held a ten-inch-long, squirming creature, with a segmented maroon body and over forty yellow legs. As it squirmed, it threw off bands of iridescent, rainbow-colored light.

“What's that?” asked Sebastian.

“Incan tomb centipede. It's a borderland creature that reproduces in multiple worlds at once. It's about to lay its eggs, which is why it's emitting force spectra like you see.”

“That's interesting,” said Phlox, but Oliver thought he saw a shadow of discomfort pass across her face. Maybe she actually felt a little bit bad about seeing her son treated this way.
Like a lab rat
, Bane had said.

Not bad enough to stop it, though,
Oliver thought darkly.

Dr. Vincent took the syringe and pressed the long needle through the rubber stopper at the top of the vial. He speared the centipede, causing it to flail wildly. For a moment, Oliver felt some relief. At least the whole creature wasn't being put inside him. But a large needle full of its glowing innards was. The syringe filled with its swirling rainbow juices.

“It's an amazing feat this little guy performs,” Dr. Vincent was saying. “It suspends itself in a multi-world state, existing in up to fifty worlds simultaneously. It's the power to suspend that we are transferring to you. It will help you to acclimate to the Anointment.”

Dr. Vincent traded the vial for a small kitchen blowtorch. Depressing the trigger created a little blue flame. “This will sting a bit,” he said matter-of-factly, and proceeded to put the flame to Oliver's arm.

“
Tssss!
” Oliver flinched, almost falling off the chair, but Sebastian held him in place. A sour odor of searing flesh filled the room, and a small circle of Oliver's arm was burned to black.

“There we are,” said Dr. Vincent, and immediately plunged the syringe into the burned spot. Luckily, Oliver could no longer feel any pain there, though the pain he'd already felt still had him shaking. He looked at Sebastian's stern face above, Phlox's concerned expression, even Tyrus's tense gaze, and hated them all. Watching him suffer, doing nothing.

Dr. Vincent depressed the syringe. Oliver felt a brief surge, and his vision blurred for a moment, then cleared.

“And that's it,” said Dr. Vincent. “See? Nothing to it.”

“What exactly did that do for him?” Sebastian asked quietly.

“Well,” Dr. Vincent explained as he packed up his gear, “when Vyette Anoints Oliver, she is giving him transdimensional energy. When Illisius does come calling, Oliver will need to be able to travel through multiple worlds. No vampire has ever even fully left
this
world before. Once Oliver is out, he'll encounter different time states, forces he's never felt, and we don't want him to be torn apart in the process. Creatures like this centipede have adapted ways to hold their essence together despite the pull of different force parallels.” He slapped Oliver on the back. “It'll keep him whole!”

Oliver wanted to scream.
This
was not what he needed to make him whole, not by a long shot.

Oliver woke and left the house as quickly as he could Wednesday evening, but only reached the Aurora Bridge before he stopped. He didn't want to go to school, or anywhere else. His arm was still killing him, and a dull ache had spread up through his shoulder to his chest.

Beside him was the giant stone troll sculpture. Oliver climbed up the dirt embankment into the shadows behind its head, listening to see if there were any vampires already in this spot. Bane and his friends Randall and Ty used to hang out here all the time.
Run along, Lamb!
Bane would have shouted at him. Now the spot was silent, empty.

Oliver fished Bane's objects from his pocket. He opened the amethyst box and looked at the frozen firefly. “Speak,” he said softly. “Hello? Can you tell me how to be free of all this?” The firefly didn't move.

Oliver closed the box and now examined the other object, the tiny parchment scroll. As he unrolled it, he frowned. It was six inches long and seemed to be full of writing, but most all of the lettering was burned to black and unreadable. It had likely been an enchantment: the kind that could be used only once. Whatever it was, Bane had already done it. Except there was one last line at the bottom of the page that remained unburned. It was written in Skrit, but Oliver wasn't sure of the meaning. He pronounced each symbol aloud, slowly:

“Revelethh…lucenthh…persechhh…”

There was a flash of white light. Oliver squinted, his vision overwhelmed. He heard a faint hiss, like electricity, with soft sparks.

Hey.
The apparition had appeared beside him on the dark slope. It was a figure about his height, made of white light edged in silver, and throwing off pale blue sparks. There were impressions of details, like jeans, a sweatshirt, and shaggy hair. It seemed to be a boy, but the face was impossible to see in the blinding bright.

Oliver wanted to shout,
Where have you been?
but he didn't, because, as had happened before, the apparition made him feel calm.
Hey
, he thought back at it instead, then asked his question politely,
Where have you been?

I have to be summoned
, the apparition replied.

Oliver looked down at the scroll.
I just did that, didn't I?

Yes.

So, Bane was summoning you?
Oliver sifted through his memories and realized that every time he'd seen the apparition, it had been around Bane.

Your brother was the one who brought me here to begin with
.

Oliver looked down at the scroll.
You're part of Bane's treachery
.

Yeah, I've heard that.
The apparition reached down and touched the amethyst box.
And I can help you with this
.

Oliver flipped it open.

Watch.
The apparition pinched its own forearm with two fingers and pulled a small sphere of swirling white energy free as it had done to give Oliver tears on the night of Bane's slaying. Oliver thought he felt a sensation of pain from it, as if doing this hurt. It reached over and placed the sphere onto the firefly. The light dissolved into the insect, and suddenly it began to glow pale green, and its wings buzzed to life. The firefly lifted off the felt, and hovered in front of Oliver's face.

There was a sound of inhaling, like someone struggling to breathe.
Hello, Oliver
, a female voice said distantly, as if speaking on a distant radio station. But Oliver still knew the voice. Selene.

Say hi back
, the apparition urged.

“Hi,” Oliver said to the firefly.

Oliver
, it whispered faintly,
in order to undo the prophecy, you must be made whole with what was lost yet lingers. This can be done in the company of what was taken, but only before the Anointment has been completed
.

The firefly went dark. With a slight hiss, its wings shriveled, its body curling into a tight ball, and it fell into the box, dead.

Oliver frowned. “What's that supposed to mean?” He looked at the silent insect. “I need more than that,” he said, then turned to the apparition. “Do you know what that means?”

The apparition seemed to sigh.
I have an idea, but I have to go now
.

“Why?”

It's not safe
.

“Not safe?” Oliver repeated. “What's not—” but then he noticed a hissing wind, growing louder. He recognized the sound and looked up.

Plumes of smoke were rushing down from the bridge, spiraling toward the street, and re-forming as vampires. Boots, long black coats, lapel pins made of bone…Half-Light.

“I have a reading! Behind the troll.” It was Leah, her palms swirling in the air.

There were five of them, the kind of team that Sebastian used to lead. And there was one other among them: the tall, black-robed Reader with its single white eye.

Oliver.
The apparition sounded dead serious.
They can't find out that you know about me.
…

“Set up the binding net!” Oliver heard Tyrus barking from below. He looked down to see Yasmin and the others flanking the troll.

Oliver scrambled to his feet. They'd be surrounded in moments. He backed up farther into the shadows beneath the bridge, spectralizing.
There's nowhere to go
, Oliver thought to the apparition.

Suddenly, another voice spoke in his head.
Don't worry, I've got you
.

Invisible hands yanked him backward, right out of the world.

Oliver watched through a sheet of gray, like the world was beyond a dusty window, as the Half-Light vampires scoured the area where he had just been.

Sorry I didn't get there sooner
.

Oliver turned, looking over the small hand on his shoulder. Jenette stood beside him. The wide gray beach of the Shoals, and the lapping black ocean with stars beneath its surface, stretched away behind her.

Thanks
, said Oliver.

Unlike in the physical world, where Jenette appeared as a misty presence wrapped in veils, here she had a small, delicate face and long chestnut hair that reached almost to her waist. She wore white flannel pajamas with tiny smiling frogs on them. She looked younger than Oliver by a year or two, and maybe a little too old to be wearing frog pajamas, but what Oliver was seeing now was Jenette's wraith-self, a mix of who she was at the moment she'd died, and a reflection of the passage of time since. How long had Jenette been dead and roaming as a wraith? Oliver guessed that it hadn't been that long, as ancient wraiths tended to look quite hideous, and Jenette was still—

Cute?

What?!

Jenette's eyes fell.
Ah, sorry, I just hoped you were going to say “cute.”

Um
… Oliver tried to think of any kind of response.

Jenette glanced up sheepishly, blowing her bangs out of her eyes.
It's okay. No worries
.

Where's the apparition?
Oliver asked.

The what?

You know, the
—he tried to think of how to describe it—
the glowy thing
.…

Oh, him, ha.
Jenette laughed.
Right. He's here.He lives in the Shoals, after all
.

He does?
Oliver frowned at her.
You know what he is, don't you?

Well…kinda.
Jenette smiled.
I'm surprised you don't, actually, but you vampires are funny. You pride yourselves on a larger understanding of the universe, but then sometimes it's amazing what you don't get
.