The Sunlight Slayings (2 page)

“Ollie!” It was Phlox, calling from upstairs. “Can you come up here?”

Oliver slipped on his T-shirt, wincing at the lingering pain. He headed back to the crypt where he and his family slept, he and Bane in their own coffins, Phlox and Sebastian in their double-wide model. He threw on sneakers and his dark gray hoodie sweatshirt.

He was halfway up the stone spiral staircase, lit by globes of molten magmalight, when he noticed a strange smell. It was something like cayenne pepper … and sage … and also
rot
. This wasn't the first time Oliver had smelled it around the house. Maybe it was some new cologne that Bane was trying out. He wrinkled his nose. Spices and decay could often smell good, but this combination didn't. As quickly as it had come over him, the smell faded, and yet, how many times in these last couple weeks had he smelled that? Hard to say. Three? Four?

Oliver entered the kitchen to find everything busy. The dishwasher was grumbling, the forge humming. His family was bustling as well—
NOT my real family!
a voice shouted inside—and Oliver felt a familiar surge of anxiety in his gut. He took a deep breath and tried to make his face look calm and unbothered. He'd been practicing this a lot lately.

Sebastian was on the far side of the kitchen island, knotting a wide tie and stuffing it into his black suit vest. Bane was by the sink, bleaching a new streak of white into his black, shaggy hair. Phlox, wearing a shimmering silver dress and black overcoat, was carefully putting on her earrings, which were sapphires held within tiny rat skeleton claws.

“Now that we have the egg whites whipped …” said a smooth voice. Oliver glanced over to find Clarise Clyne, star of
Confections with Clarise
, a popular show on a human food channel, on the plasma screen over the sink. She smiled a tight-lipped smile that hid the points of her teeth as she addressed the camera: “… we're going to add the raspberry sauce.” She produced a glass bowl of a dark crimson sauce that was steaming hot. “Of course, it doesn't have to be raspberries,” she cooed at the camera with a knowing gleam in her eye. “It could be cherries, or anything else you're … fond of.” Vampires knew what she meant.

Oliver sat on a stool at the center island. The forge timer began beeping. “Oh, good.” Phlox grabbed a thick oven mitt and removed a steaming iron plate. “Here we are,” she announced, sliding the dish to Oliver. She spun quickly back to the counter, then froze. “Honey,” she said to Sebastian, “have you seen the cayenne?”

Oliver perked up, watching Phlox scan the black stone countertops. “I swear it was here an hour ago,” she mumbled. It was not like Phlox to lose track of anything, and this was not the first item to go missing in the last few days. Earlier in the week, Phlox had been looking for a bag of frozen Gila monster heads. Also, Sebastian had been complaining that his razor had disappeared. And worst of all, Oliver had lost something very dear and secret to him, something that he'd been keeping in one of the drawers underneath his coffin.…

“Haven't seen it,” said Sebastian, checking his pocket watch, “but we need to go.”

“Oh, well,” Phlox sighed. “Sorry, Ollie, there's no cayenne.” She popped open the long, sleek refrigerator mounted along the top of the wall. Its door yawned upward with a hiss, revealing orderly racks of blood bags. “What would you like to drink?” she asked. “Pig?”

“Sure,” Oliver replied.

“Sorry we can't take you along, Ollie,” said Sebastian, smiling warmly. “I know everyone would love to see you, and as we know, you could probably handle yourself just fine. It would also save my colleagues from hearing my bragging tales about you again.”

“
Tsss
,” Bane hissed.

“Charles,” Phlox warned, using Bane's real name as her hazel eyes flashed turquoise.

“But technically you're still too young,” Sebastian explained, “so you'll have to wait like every other kid.”

Oliver nodded, making sure he looked disappointed. Really, going to one of the Friday Socials was about the last thing he wanted to do. Everyone dressed up formally and met in the sewers. It was a big night for teens who had their demons, as well as adults. After some leisurely socializing (there were bartenders who set up stands in the sewers), the vampires would head up to the surface, to a large human gathering that had been chosen in advance, usually an all-night rave or a house party. Because the humans had been partying, they would be largely unaware. There would be some chaos, but once the humans were subdued, the vampires could feed fairly leisurely.

At the most elite gatherings, the humans were actually put into Staesys, freezing them in time, and then bartenders would draw the blood for the guests. Regardless of whether the humans were placed in Staesys or were simply out of it due to their own abuses, the New World vampire code remained constant: Humans were rarely killed. They would simply wake up feeling weak the next day, and maybe a little sick, which they would think was their own doing. They might find a strange cream substance on their neck, but the bite marks beneath would already be almost gone.… Oliver was supposed to be looking forward to going to the Socials once he got his demon, but right now he was more than fine with staying home.

“I hope we'll find you asleep when we get back,” Phlox said, kissing Oliver's head affectionately. “Maybe you'll have another dream tonight,” she added hopefully, referring to the demon dreams, in which a young vampire got to know the demon that would soon come to inhabit him in adulthood. Back in December, Oliver had told everyone that he was having those dreams to hide why he was having trouble sleeping. That lie had become the truth when he met Illisius. But he hadn't had another dream with Illisius since.

Sebastian ruffled Oliver's hair as he headed for the stairs. “Good morning, son.”

“See ya.”

Oliver listened as the heavy door to the sewers thudded shut. He dug into his dinner of Guatemalan Sepulcrit casserole (layers of brownie and fiery habanero peppers, a blood-and-cocoa mole sauce in between), then gulped down his goblet.

When he was sure that his family was gone for good, he slid off his chair and headed upstairs. He arrived at a steel door and pressed a red button. The door slid open silently. As it did, Oliver reached up into a hollow in the bare wall above the door. He felt around until his fingers found a power cord, which he pulled from a socket. This disabled the security cameras that had given Oliver away to his parents back in December. If only he'd mistrusted them before and thought to look for cameras, he might still have Emalie and Dean.

Oliver slipped around the carcass of an old human refrigerator and into the decrepit surface floor of an abandoned house. This house sat directly above the Nocturnes' underground home, concealing it from humans. He concentrated on the presence of the
forces
around him, then climbed up the wall. As he did so, he felt a dull ache in his side. He must have really aggravated that wound before. With each reach of his left arm, there was a pulse of pain. Still, he was able to move onto the ceiling and crawl to the center of the room, stopping beside a broken chandelier that hung crookedly. He flipped over and laid up against the ceiling, gazing down at the room below.

He waited and listened, but there was no sound in the dingy room except for the steady plinking of water, dripping from the ceiling into a murky bathtub in the corner. He could hear the echoes of cars through the broken windows, their tires churning in the steady rain. Now the light footwork of a rat behind one of the walls …

She's not coming back, stupid
, Oliver scolded himself.
She hasn't yet, and she won't
. But he knew that, didn't he? Emalie thought Oliver was a killer. “
How could you, Oliver?
” That was the last thing she'd said to him.

But she left me that article
. The one that detailed his parents' death—
They named me Nathan
—and his abduction, long ago.
If she thought about me enough to find me that article, then maybe, when enough time goes by, she'll come back
.

But she hadn't yet.

Two weeks
, Oliver recalled. He'd only known Emalie and Dean for two weeks. In a vampire's existence, even one only sixty-four human years long like Oliver's, two weeks was still a blink of an eye. So how could he even call them friends?

It was how she treated me
, he thought. It had been so easy to be around Emalie. Things just
were
, around her. She'd been interested, rarely disappointed, and never worried about him, as he was used to feeling from others. Oliver had sensed something sad in her, too. Her mom had left without a trace two years ago. Her dad hadn't gotten over it. Emalie had to switch schools often, as they moved from one temporary apartment to another. Despite all that, she'd radiated this hopeful feeling. It was like she woke up every day still convinced that the world was somehow this amazing place, even though it kept letting her down.

Oliver hadn't felt all this about Emalie in those brief two weeks—these thoughts had taken lots of hours, alone in this room, to put together. Really, it all just boiled down to an embarrassing thought: He missed her.
If any of them could hear that thought
… Oliver mused. Pick anyone from the vampire world: They would think he was hopeless.

Suddenly, a sound broke into Oliver's thoughts.

Footsteps.

From where? Oliver glanced to the refrigerator, to the window—

The door. Someone was coming.
Is she back?

Just then, Oliver caught that overpowering scent of cayenne, sage, and rot that he'd smelled on the stairs.…

The door creaked open.

Chapter 2

A Return Visitor

A FIGURE PEERED WARILY
around the door, then stepped in. The smell was overwhelming, but beneath it, Oliver picked up some faint characteristics: male, and undoubtedly dead in some manner. He was tall, narrow, wearing a long coat and a black sweatshirt with the hood up over his head. He moved warily around the bottomless hole directly in front of the door, apparently not recognizing that it was really just a design trick to scare hapless humans. The actual hole was only a foot deep.

Getting past that, the figure trudged over to the bathtub. He knelt in front of it and started scrubbing at his hands. Oliver saw long, filthy fingernails, and the brown tub water wasn't helping. The figure looked at them and sighed. The sound was miserable.

He scrubbed a little more, then slapped at the water in frustration. Spinning away from the tub, he shuffled on his knees toward the wall. The figure sat down on a pile of moldy clothes, folding his long legs and then rummaging around in his coat.

Oliver crept across the ceiling to get a closer look. What had this creature been doing in his house? Now he pulled something from his coat. Oliver saw that it was a squirrel. A meal, he guessed, but the figure just gazed down at the animal's lifeless black eyes. Oliver thought he even heard a sniffle.

More rummaging in the coat, and now there was a dull flash of metal, a familiar whiff of musk—there was Sebastian's razor. What the figure attempted to do next made Oliver wrinkle his nose with pity. He seemed to be trying to skin the animal, but a razor was no match for hide and fur. It didn't go well. After a minute, he groaned in failure and hurled the razor across the room. It skittered into the shadows.

“Gah!” he growled, and hurled the squirrel as well. He started digging around in his coat again, this time producing a bag of tennis-ball-sized objects. He pulled one out. Oliver recognized the Gila monster heads taken from their refrigerator. There was a splintering crack as the figure broke open the skull to scoop out the insides. He tossed the skull aside, stuffed the bag back in his coat, then rummaged some more. Oliver wondered what he would pull out next—

And then he saw it.

In the figure's blotchy, grimy hand was a crumpled piece of newspaper. Oliver recognized it, because it was the secret item that he had been missing: a carefully clipped newspaper article, but not the one about his kidnapping that Emalie had given him. This one was more recent.

“That's mine,” Oliver hissed through the gloom.

“Whu—” The figure glanced up and spied Oliver. Their eyes locked, and Oliver couldn't believe what he was seeing.

“Dean!”

For a moment, Dean looked like he might run, but then he croaked: “Hi, Oliver.”

Oliver dropped to the floor. “Hey.” This was amazing! Dean, back from the grave. Oliver offered him a smile, his anger forgotten. “It's okay.”

Dean looked sheepishly at him, then down at his own hands, at the blotchy, pale-and-purple skin, at the filthy long nails. When he spoke, it was barely a whisper: “What happened to me?”

“Well …” Oliver replied. “I'm pretty sure you're a zombie.”

“Zombie,” Dean repeated, and he almost chuckled. “Yeah, that sounds about right. So, I'm really still dead?”

“Yeah,” Oliver replied, “undead, really. You know, dead, but—not.”

Dean sighed. “I knew it.”

Oliver wondered what to say. Dean didn't sound too happy about this. Oliver thought about pointing out that, really, it was an improvement over being just dead. Then again, maybe Dean was missing being alive. Oliver could kind of relate to that.

“Come on,” said Oliver, patting Dean on the shoulder. “Let's get out of here.”

“All right.”

They ducked out the front door and walked down Twilight Lane, through the rain-swept dark.

“How long have you been back?” Oliver asked.

“About two weeks, I think,” Dean mumbled, his head hung low.

They headed steadily downhill until they reached the canal.

“Want to stop here?” Oliver asked.

“Sure.”

They sat on the grass, a high bridge arcing above them. Out on the black water, a long sailboat cruised by, lit with strings of golden lights. Warm silhouettes frolicked on the deck, laughing and talking.