Blood Ties (7 page)

Sometime later, Oliver felt an elbow nudge. “Hey…” It was Dean. “What's happening?”

Oliver saw Dean looking around in wonder, then noticed that the walls of the charion had changed in two ways: They were glowing a faint red, and they had become ever-so-slightly transparent.

“We're passing through the mantle,” said Oliver.

Outside the train, they could see a vague impression of swirling magma, in shades of oranges and reds. Now they passed through an area that was white hot, and the train vibrated noticeably. The walls became even more transparent, so that it looked like only a collection of seats was speeding along. Glimpses of rocks and minerals flashed by, only to be swallowed again by heat and magma.

“It's getting hot in here,” said Dean worriedly. “It seems like maybe you wouldn't want the walls to get thinner when we're in the hottest places.” He glanced around nervously, but most of the passengers were sleeping soundly.

“Don't worry,” Oliver assured him. “We're safe. When it gets too hot, the charion uses transdimensional magnets, and we kind of phase into a parallel world for a little while. Otherwise the train couldn't last in these conditions.”

Dean didn't look totally convinced. The Charion shimmied again.

“These trains do this every day,” said Oliver. “Before deep-earth travel like this, it took forever to get anywhere.”

“Vampires never heard of airplanes?” commented Dean.

“Nah,” Oliver replied. “For one thing, human airlines are way too unpredictable and smell terrible. There was a vampire airline for a while called Twilight Air, but they could never really figure out how to deal with the solar radiation at such high altitudes. Vampires were getting low-grade combustion fever, and every now and then a pilot would burst into flames, which was a problem.”

A half hour later, the sides of the train began to solidify, and the heat and red glow faded. Oliver and Dean played more video games, falling asleep on and off until the train arrived beneath New York City.

New York's charion station was cavernous and modern, and they had to cross a sea of travelers that seemed never ending before barely reaching the train to Morosia in time. This charion was larger, two levels, with domed windows on the top. As the train hummed out of the station, Dean looked up through the windows, seeing nothing but black.

Oliver noted his skeptical expression. “Just wait,” he said.

A few minutes later, Oliver nudged Dean and pointed up. They were emerging from the ground—onto the ocean floor. Black became deep blue, with pale, harmless sun flittering through the water from far above. The train began to angle downward, nearing an almost vertical pitch, its speed increasing.

“Ah,” Dean groaned, grabbing at his ears again.

Oliver felt it, too. “We're dropping down the continental shelf,” he explained. He'd been waiting for this the whole trip. The charion dropped like a roller coaster down the steep edge of the world, the light from the sun becoming weaker and weaker. Shadows of fish were visible for a moment, then lost in inky dark. When the black had become complete, bright white magmalights flicked on from the sides of the train, casting beams out into the darkness, catching the tiny fish, drifting debris, and the occasional glimpse of some leviathan of the deep.

Oliver watched serenely, noting that Dean was gripping the sides of his seat.

“It's almost over.” Moments later, the charion began to level out and settled into a trench cut into the seafloor. The lights speared upward, and Oliver reclined his seat to watch for the belly of a giant squid or sperm whale or something even stranger still.

“Whoa! What was that?” Dean exclaimed, bolting up in his seat moments later.

Oliver had seen it, too. Something striding on the seafloor, stepping over their trench, its leathery belly stretching up into the dark. “We're probably passing through a borderland area,” said Oliver. “It could have been anything.”

Soon the blurring ocean dark had put the cabin to sleep once more.

Halfway across the Atlantic, a pleasant
ding
sounded, waking Oliver. He yawned, thinking that, all in all, he'd probably gotten more sleep on this trip than he had in the entire last weekend. With the excitement of travel, that conversation between his parents and Tyrus seemed almost unreal.

“Are we there?” Dean mumbled.

“No, but”—Oliver motioned to the windows—“check it out.”

The train had risen out of the trench, and the waters around them were glowing with red light from ahead. Stretching in either direction were conical buildings, round at the base and rising to hollow points. From their tops spouted jets of orange light and billowing clouds of ash that drifted upward into the darkness. The charion halted, towers on either side.

“Now arriving at Atlantic One Refinery. All departing passengers report to compression chambers and prepare to disembark.”

“Those are magmalight refineries,” said Oliver. “They're built here, where the two ocean plates are spreading apart, because magma is easy to drill for. And you need cold water and pressure for refining.”

Oliver gazed off into the water, superheated around these refineries and clouded with red bacteria blooms, and wondered what it would be like to work and live here. Peaceful, he imagined.

The charion arrived at the Morosia station several hours later. Feeling stiff and bleary, they exited with the rest of the passengers and crossed the station, which seemed very old, made of stone blocks and lit with torches. After a short walk they entered a vast, high-ceilinged cavern, its curved roof studded with stalactites.

“Whoa,” Dean breathed.

A wide river of black water flowed through the center of the cavern. Torches on the wall cast no reflection on it. In fact, the river didn't really seem to be made of water. Yet there was something flowing by: a liquid concentration of energy that seemed to ripple.

“That's Acheron,” said Oliver. “The river of sorrow…”

“So that's what, like, liquid sadness?” Dean asked.

“Technically, it's force leaving this world, but some of that energy is life, and the loss of life causes a sad feeling in humans. The river transfers energy between worlds.”

As the crowd of passengers from the charion stood at the black river's edge, a low horn sounded. In response, a small amber light ignited on the far side of the river. The light bobbed in the gloom, slowly growing in size. Soon they could make out its source: a lantern hung from the railing of a large square skiff. It was a ferry, empty except for a single figure using a long pole to push it through the water.

Dean almost laughed. “You guys build trains through the mantle of the planet, and that's the best you can do for crossing this river?”

“
Tsss,
” Oliver hissed, noting a few annoyed glances in their direction. “That's New World stuff. Across this river is the Old World. You have to do things a certain way.”

“You couldn't just build a bridge?”

Oliver almost smiled, but kept his voice low. “This ferry has been here since before even vampires can remember. You've always had to pay its driver to get into the true Underworld. Vampires take this kind of stuff pretty seriously.”

The ferry reached the edge of the river. The driver, a tall, skeleton-thin old woman in a black gown, laid down her pole. One by one, the vampires approached her. She opened her large mouth, and the first passenger bowed his head and placed a
myna
coin on her tongue. She swallowed the coin and opened her mouth for the next payment. When it was the Nocturnes' turns, Sebastian handed them each a coin.

Oliver could see no eyes beneath the driver's hood. He reached gingerly into her mouth, between long, ancient brown teeth, and placed the coin, trying not to make any contact, but his finger just grazed her tongue. It was scalding hot. He had barely removed his fingers when her teeth snapped shut and she swallowed.

Dean stepped up behind him. As he reached toward the mouth, he muttered, “Wielders of chaos, guide my hand…” He placed the coin in and yanked his hand out.

Oliver looked at him oddly. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

“Huh?” Dean asked. “Oh, nothing. Just nervous.”

The vampires stood silent as the ferry slowly crossed the black river. The only sounds were the regular plunks of the driver's pole and the faint gurgle of the water. Oliver found himself wondering where Acheron began, and where it ended. He'd never thought about that before, and never heard anyone talk about it. Like the ferry, the river just
was.

Oliver wondered why he'd even had the thought. Maybe it was because of his brief moment in The Shoals back in February, when Jenette had hid him from the Brotherhood. (The Shoals were areas on the edges of the worlds, where spirits like wraiths lived.) Or maybe it was because of their time in The Yomi, the underground market that was built on a border between many worlds.

After being in such places, Oliver had found himself considering how things were connected, how the realities seemed to flow through one another and how, even though a vampire could sense these things so much better than a human, there still seemed to be some larger purpose to it all that he couldn't quite see.

The ferry reached the far side. Everyone disembarked and passed under a large archway carved into the cavern wall. Enormous Corinthian columns towered on either side. A hall lined with torches sloped steadily downward. Vampires always preferred it very warm, and down here it was not only warm but also sticky, almost tropical.

“Where's the magmalight?” Dean asked, squinting in the flickering gloom.

“They don't use it in the Old World. It's too modern.”

The tunnel ended on a wide terrace, at the top of a grand staircase. Below, in a cavern beyond measure, stood the ancient Underworld city of Morosia.

Chapter 5

Old vs. New

IT WAS A WORLD
of red light and stone. Oliver's eye was immediately drawn to Phlegethon, the molten river of magma flowing through the center of the city, crossed by black iron bridges. On either side of the canal loomed enormous stone buildings: temples, spires and towers, all intricately lit by torches, and in the exact center, largest of all, a colossal Mayan pyramid, with a black cauldron of fire burning at its peak. It looked as if someone had been collecting signature buildings from the great civilizations of human history, and that was somewhat true, as Morosia had existed through all of ancient times.

“Kinda looks like Las Vegas,” Dean remarked.

Cobblestone streets led away from the giant structures along the river, back into a twisting labyrinth of low buildings. The cavern walls were covered with apartment buildings, in the style of ancient pueblos, which rose to dizzying heights in the murky, smoky dark.

“Can we go downtown first?” Bane asked, sounding as genuinely excited as he ever had.

“We're expected right away for dinner,” said Phlox. Since about New York, her mouth had taken on a permanent tight frown, and her scent was tense. She started quickly down the wide stairs, angling to the left. “Our train was a little late, so keep up!”

They weaved through the narrow streets, passing shops and open-air markets, and there was a general din and stench to the place that Oliver found overwhelming, but maybe a little intriguing. Even he had to admit that the Underworld had a relaxing air of simplicity and darkness.

Reaching the pueblo walls, the Nocturnes lined up for one of the manual elevators, which ran up the outside on thick ropes and pulleys. It was operated by two zombies in nondescript gray clothes.

“I'm not going to have to wear that, am I?” Dean asked, gazing dejectedly at the zombies.

“Only if I make you,” Oliver replied.

“Ha ha.”

They rode the squealing contraption up thirty floors, then stepped off onto a narrow rock walkway. They edged along, a precipitous drop beside them, and finally ducked into a cramped alley.

Phlox stopped in front of an apartment door. Oliver watched her take a deep breath, then knock. There was a muffled exchange of voices from inside. The door creaked open. A burst of spices greeted Oliver's nostrils: cinnamon, cloves…

“Well, they arrive at last!” a thin voice hissed, and Phlox's mother, Myrandah, appeared. She was in her early four hundreds and still stood fairly straight despite her age. She had most of her skin, and her teeth were as white as ever behind black-painted lips. As she stepped out of the dim apartment, the layers of beads and crystal jewelry that she couldn't get enough of jangled on her wrists and around her neck. She wore a long black dress that flowed to the ground, with a high, embroidered collar that mingled with the many carved earrings that hung low from her ears. Her hair was platinum like Phlox's, yet pulled back and piled in thick curls atop her head.

The combination of the dress and the hair was so similar to Phlox that Oliver noticed his mother reach up and quickly stroke at her own hair. He wondered if she was trying to make it look neat, or was worried because it wasn't as ornately done, or was checking to make sure it didn't look just like her mother's. Oliver guessed that it was a bit of all three.

“Hello, Mom,” Phlox said, and leaned in as Myrandah offered a cheek.

“Hello, my darling Phloxiana. And where are the precious hellspawn?” she asked affectionately, darting right past Phlox and seizing Bane and Oliver in a single hug. She pulled back and smiled warmly at the two of them. “Look at the darling young…” Her eyes momentarily glowed pink with emotion. Then she glanced past Oliver and spied Dean. Her lips tightened to a knowing grin. “Ahh, yes … Oliver brings along his pet. What did you name it?”

“He's Dean,” Oliver answered awkwardly.

Myrandah reached out and stroked Dean's shoulder. “Does it obey its master?” she asked.