The Sunlight Slayings (10 page)

“The Yomi?” Oliver said slowly. Was it possible that Emalie could be that crazy? “Come on,” he said, and rushed to the gap. He reached the wall and looked back to find Dean standing at the edge of the level.

“Over here!” Oliver hissed.

“Why? I can just jump down,” Dean said proudly.

“No, Dean—” But then Oliver watched a woman callously bump into Dean. He was jostled to the side, where he brushed against a young girl walking beside her father.

“Gross!” the girl whined, and the dad pushed Dean away. His face fell.

“You know what,” said Oliver, “go for it.” Why should he be embarrassed for Dean? It was ridiculous how these other vampires were acting.

The unsure look on Dean's face remained, but he half-smiled at Oliver's words, then leaped off the edge. Oliver watched him sail downward and land with an awkward stumble on the next level down, setting off frustrated rumblings among the vampires. Without Dean to carry, Oliver took a steadying breath and dropped off the ledge, too. He followed Dean and his wake of annoyed vampires, lowering level by level down to the ninth, where brightly lit tunnels led to the charion station.

“Down here,” said Oliver. He crossed to the edge of the level and stepped up onto the railing. Dean joined him and peered down into the dark chasm. “See that ledge over there?” Oliver pointed diagonally across the space, beyond the waterfall and the billowing steam clouds, to a barely visible cavern. “Can you make it?”

“Sure,” Dean said, but he didn't sound quite convinced.

Oliver launched himself off the railing, arcing through the steam. It was a long jump for him, but he just made it, then turned to see Dean hit the ledge with his shins and tumble forward, landing on his face on the wet rock. Oliver almost laughed, but Dean was wincing and rubbing his knees. “I'm fine,” he said through gritted teeth before Oliver could ask.

Oliver started back into the cavern. They walked through darkness, and then joined a smooth passageway lit with a red tube of magmalight along one wall. The tunnel sloped steadily downward. A gust of wind kicked up in their faces, and they heard the rumble of an arriving charion somewhere above them. The walls shook.

After a few moments, other sounds penetrated the silence: There was a din like a great many people heard from a distance, the rumble of barely definable drums, and the whining of laboring machinery. The slope of the tunnel increased, then opened up on a vast black space.

“This is as far as I followed her,” said Dean.

The floor became a staircase, switching back and forth down a precipitous wall of damp rock. Oliver could vaguely make out enormous stalactites in the shadowy cavern around them. Magmalight lamps dangled down on chains from the unseen ceiling. And there was light from below, but it was out of sight, almost beneath the wall they were descending.

They crisscrossed down the steep face, and then the path tunneled back into the wall. The temperature had grown warmer, the air more damp. The tunnel's ceiling began to rise. Oliver stopped and pointed down. Carved into the floor was a large Skrit:

He looked warily at it. He'd never been in the Yomi. The curved bottom of the symbol indicated that the Yomi was a borderland, sharing a boundary with other worlds that weren't solid. Physical laws could be tricky here.

Oliver had no idea how Emalie planned on surviving this. Sure, she may have found some way to enchant herself so that she was hard for vampires and zombies to see—though Oliver didn't understand how she'd know how to do that, either—but enchantments weren't going to work in the Yomi, not with the physical anomalies. Any spell that even an advanced Orani knew wouldn't be enough.

“Any sign of her yet?” Dean asked.

Oliver sniffed the air. “Nothing.”

“Why do you think she's coming down here?” Dean asked.

“Maybe she needs something to use the Scourge,” Oliver mused. “Some ingredient that you can't get anywhere above this.”

A shrieking scream echoed in the dark. Oliver had no idea what it was. “All right …” he said with a flutter of uncertainty, and stepped forward.

As he crossed the giant Skrit on the floor, the world seemed to shiver and quake, as if he were passing through something more liquid than air—then he was on the other side. Turning, he saw that Dean was passing through a rippling energy barrier. He looked blurry for a moment before emerging.

“What was that?” Dean asked.

“Dead detector,” said Oliver. “To keep out any living creatures.”

“So how did Emalie get through that?”

Oliver just shrugged.

The passage was dark and dank, only now the sounds of voices, machinery, and drums were much louder, washing over them in chaotic swells. Oliver's nose was overwhelmed by pungent odors of warmth, death, and oil and gas fumes.

They walked another minute in darkness, and then emerged from the tunnel into a narrow alley. There was no ceiling, just darkness. Rickety shops were clustered together on both sides, leaning over the path. Some of the shops were just stands; others had windows lit by neon signs in Skrit and other pictorial languages Oliver didn't know.

Billows of steam and smoke washed over the crowd. Above the shops, wooden ladders zigzagged back and forth along precarious bamboo scaffolding that climbed up into the darkness. Some of the ladders led to ledges, some to other stores high up, and some to recesses that were merely dark, gaping suggestions.

There were masses of creatures clogging the alley, hanging over counters and out of stalls, and lurking in the scaffolding above. Each one seemed hunched or huddled to hide its appearance, sometimes with a hood. Oliver smelled zombies and vampires, and other things unfamiliar, likely true demons who were taking form briefly in the borderland.

The shop owners in the Yomi were Merchynts. They were known as omni-realm demons, meaning they existed simultaneously in multiple worlds. Since it was built in a borderland, this Yomi would also exist in the other nearby worlds, and so each Merchynt would be operating his business in all the worlds at once, appearing different in each.

The only light in the Yomi was from fire: Open metal troughs like gutters had been cobbled together from the roof of one shop to the next, holding channels of continuous flame. Oliver's nose was overwhelmed by the scent of petroleum, being pumped from deep in the earth by those laboring machines. Sometimes the gutters were spaced by a metal bowl, which pooled the petroleum and allowed for a brighter light, but for most of the business being conducted in the Yomi, light was not especially welcome.

“This place is intense,” Dean said nervously, sounding like his old living self.

“Let's just stay together and move fast.” Oliver started ahead, jostling among the secretive figures, keeping his head low among the grunts and hisses. Strange lights glowed in the shops, from signs, from crystal objects, from within the hands of hooded Merchynts. There were displays that looked ordinary at first, like a rack of skinned animals the size of cats—but cats didn't have six legs or only a single eye.

The crowd pressed close around and above them. Oliver had trouble focusing and keeping track of direction. Suddenly they found themselves in a gap in the crowd. Glancing about, Oliver saw that everyone had moved into the shadows of the shops. Oliver wondered why—

Until the entire world went black.

It was as if reality had momentarily cut out. The fires were extinguished, the noise of machinery gone—afterward, Oliver couldn't remember if he'd been able to see or sense anything in that single moment—and then they suddenly found themselves standing straight out sideways. The Yomi had turned itself, and now the floor had become the wall. They weren't falling, though. Their feet were rooted to the floor as if “up” and “down” were sideways now, too. A faint red light lit the Yomi.

“What just—” Dean began, but he was drowned out by the deafening blast of an air horn. There was an incredible roaring and grinding of machinery. The ground stayed sideways where it was, but now all the shops, the scaffolding, and the gutters began bending and hinging at millions of joints, rearranging themselves. The shops spun so that they were floor-to-roof, one above the next. Ladders arranged themselves downward from one shop to the next. The gutters made tight zigzags down the walls. Now the Yomi looked like it had been built on the side of a cliff wall.

A hissing sound heralded the arrival of fresh petroleum, rushing downward, splashing carelessly at the zigzagging corners, then igniting with a great sucking of air.

Light returned to the Yomi. Oliver noticed that everyone around them was quickly taking a firm hold of the nearest ladder.

“Dean, grab my arm,” Oliver said, holding out his hand as he stepped toward a ladder.

“Why—”

A second air horn exploded, and now gravity reasserted itself. “Down” became down again, and Oliver's and Dean's feet slipped off the floor. Oliver lunged and was just able to reach a ladder as his body started to fall. Dean managed to grab Oliver's sleeve and swing over to the ladder with a tearing of fabric, and a burst of pain in Oliver's side. He looked up from below. “Sorry.”

Everyone in the Yomi began moving again, scaling up and down the ladders. Oliver and Dean continued down slowly, Oliver favoring his arm and leg. He was nearing where the ladder branched like an inverted Y, splitting into two aisles, when he spied Emalie. He swung to the outside of the ladder. “Dean, stop.” Oliver pointed. “There.”

Emalie was standing across the way at a shop counter, looking so short beside two looming figures. The cloaked Merchynt behind the counter, his eyes and long teeth glowing a luminescent white, was dealing with a zombie on her right. The figure on her left was enormous, with a black business suit tailored to his four arms. Short horns protruded from his bald head.

Emalie was wearing her cheery green vest, her black sweater underneath. A braid slipped out of her black hat. She stood innocently, patiently, a tapping foot the only sign that she might be nervous about her situation. It hurt Oliver to see her there, in such danger.
No more dangerous than being with you
, she might have said, but it was, so much more so. It also hurt just to see Emalie, to imagine her turning around and being glad to see him across the way, yet knowing that if she really did turn and see him, she might just try to kill him.

It occurred to Oliver that this was the clearest he had seen Emalie lately. That black shroud seemed to be missing.

“What is that to her left?” Dean murmured.

“Trolgoth demon, I think,” said Oliver. “That thing should be having Emalie for a snack right now—”

As if on cue, the Trolgoth sniffed at the air. It turned its eyeless, waxlike face down toward Emalie. She didn't seem to notice at all. The demon's four arms reached toward her—

“Hey,” Dean said nervously, preparing to jump, “we should—”

Oliver felt frozen. Even if they went leaping to her rescue, they were no match for a Trolgoth demon—

A high-pitched hissing sound froze the Trolgoth in its path, its hands inches from Emalie's thin, unaware throat. Oliver looked up to see a fluid ripple of black streaming down the ladder from above. It spiraled around Emalie, coiling like a snake around her body, then lunged up, ready to strike the demon. What had appeared aboveground as merely a shadow had much clearer details here in the Yomi. Oliver could see the smoky black impression of a face hidden by a veil, of bared teeth, and of small, clawlike hands with long nails.

“What is that thing?” Dean asked.

“A wraith,” said Oliver.

The Trolgoth demon lifted its hands away and bowed respectfully toward the wraith, which uncoiled itself and hovered just behind Emalie's shoulder. It had a vaguely human form, long and lithe, and looked a bit shorter than Emalie, though it was floating above her head now.

Emalie just stood there, seeming completely oblivious.

“Is it going to attack her?” asked Dean.

“No, it's protecting her,” said Oliver. “I— I don't know how she's controlling it, or how she hired it, or—” Oliver shook his head, bewildered. This was more dark power. Not only wielding the Scourge but working with a wraith. How was it possible?

“Is it a ghost or something?” asked Dean.

“Yeah, the spirit of a dead person, trapped in this world, sometimes from a curse, sometimes from its own suffering. It's—they're always different.”

“I've never seen one before.”

“They're only fully visible in the Underworld and the borderlands. That's why Emalie's had that shadow around her. The wraith has been helping her move around, hiding her scent.” Oliver felt like a fool for not having figured that out earlier. But how could he have guessed that Emalie would be dealing with a wraith?

“Are they powerful?”

“Yeah, but unstable.”

Dean peered across the way. “What's she doing now?”