The Nekropolis Archives (74 page)

  She grinned as she took a sip of her shake – strawberry, her favorite flavor. Which was of course why I'd taken the chocolate.

  "They didn't have any beer-flavored shakes," she smiled. "Sorry."

  She took another sip and a little spilled out of the corner of her mouth. But instead of being a light pink color, the liquid was a deep crimson.

  "Something wrong?" she asked.

  I realized then that I was staring at the thick red substance trailing down her chin. I touched my own chin to signal her what was wrong, and she reached up and caught some of the liquid with her finger. She frowned as she examined it.

  "That's weird. Maybe they didn't mix it properly and there's a pocket of strawberry syrup at the bottom."

  "Maybe." But that explanation didn't feel right and the substance on Devona's chin didn't look like strawberry syrup so much as it looked like… like… The word refused to come and I found my thoughts drifting back to the yard work that still lay before me.

  Our home was a ranch house sitting at the end of a cul-de-sac bordering a small park. The kids loved the park's playground equipment and the small woods with a stream running through it. Devona loved the large oak trees and weeping willows. Me? I loved living next to a giant yard I didn't have to mow and trees whose leaves I didn't have to rake every autumn. Dealing with my own yard was enough work for me.

  It wasn't quite lunchtime yet and I'd managed to get half the front yard done, but I still had to finish up here and then do the back before I could call it quits for the day. I glanced up at the blazing sun hanging in the summer sky. That is, if I could take the heat for that long. Then again, the Browns were playing this afternoon. Maybe I could finish the front now and put off doing the back until tomorrow.

  Devona reached out with her tongue to lap up the crimson liquid on her chin then and I found the action to be at once both arousing and disturbing. She frowned.

  "Funny. It doesn't taste like strawberry. It tastes different. Better." She smacked her lips thoughtfully. "Sweet, but it has a kick to it, almost like it contains caffeine. Just a little bit gave me a jolt of energy." She looked at me then. "Wait a minute, what were you saying a minute ago about having bad news to tell me?"

  "The kids were messing around in the backyard and accidentally broke the head off your Buddha statue."

  "Really? Oh, well. It's not like we can't get it fixed, right? We'll just run on over to the Foundry and…" She trailed off. "Why did I say that? What's the Foundry?"

  "I don't know." But the truth was I did know. At least, it felt like I did, somewhere deep down inside me. Only I couldn't quite remember. I decided not to worry about it, realized I seemed to be deciding that a lot lately, then decided not to worry about that.

  I took another sip of my shake and my mouth was filled with a taste so foul that I turned to spit the muck out on the grass.

  "What's wrong?" Devona asked.

  "Damned if I know. It suddenly tastes like shit. Literally. Like the kind of swill they serve at Hem–" I frowned, unable to finish the word, though for the life of me I didn't know why I couldn't finish.

  An unusually cool breeze blew across the yard then, causing both Devona and I to shiver.

  "Something's not right," she said, a note of fear in her voice.

  I knew just how she felt but once more, I decided not to worry about it. No, not decided. I
couldn't
worry about it.

  Devona held her shake in one hand and the empty drink carrier in the other, so I couldn't take hold of her. Instead I stepped forward and put my arm around her waist.

  "Tell you what, Mrs. Richter. The kids are busy making more mischief in the backyard and you and I are both hot and sweaty – me from my Herculean efforts to tame this lawn, you from exercising your athletic prowess on the tennis court. Would you like to join me in a cool, soothing shower?"

  Devona eyed the half-finished lawn. "It's not like you to leave a job undone."

  I kissed her gently on the neck. Her sweat coated skin had the tang of salt. I found it to be erotic and I felt my body responding.

  "Some sacrifices are worth making."

  I leaned in to kiss her lips this time – trying not to think about how she'd lapped up the crimson liquid a moment ago – but before we could kiss, the sun dimmed as if suddenly blocked by clouds. The sky had been clear only a moment ago.

  We both looked up and saw that there were no clouds. Instead, the sun had taken on a shadowy cast, and it now gave off a purple-tinted light, painting the world in strange dark hues. A word popped into my mind then, one I'd never heard before but which at the same time seemed so familiar.
Umbriel.

  The breeze returned then, even colder than before, and this time it didn't pass but continued blowing.

  Devona dropped the drink carrier and her shake and put her arms around me. I slipped my own arms around her shoulders, noticing that the lid had sprung off her shake cup when it hit the ground. Thick red liquid that looked nothing like strawberry was soaking into the grass.

  "Matt, I'm scared. What's happening?"

  It's breaking down, I thought, though I wasn't sure what that meant.

  Yes,
Devona said
. It's our link. Or maybe it's Papa Chatha's necklace. Hell, maybe it's a combination of the two. Whichever the case, something is preventing the illusion from taking full hold of our minds.

  I realized then that Devona wasn't speaking. I'd felt her reply more than heard it, as if she were somehow speaking in my head.

  "Illusion?" I said aloud. I had no idea what she was talking about. And yet… I did.

  She frowned. "I don't know." She'd returned to speaking her words instead of thinking them to me. "It made sense a second ago, but my thoughts keep slipping away. I can't seem to hold on to them for very long."

  I gripped her tighter as the world continued to darken around us. "I know what you mean. It almost feels like we're fighting on some level… resisting. But I don't know exactly what we're fighting."

  Devona started to say something, but her reply was cut off by the sound of our children crying out in alarm from the backyard. Without thinking I dropped my shake and Devona and I started running. When we reached the backyard we saw the twins near their sandbox. They lay on the ground, bodies covered with long tendrils of some kind of strange weed growing out of the ground.

  Leech vine, I thought. I didn't know what that was, but I instinctively knew it was something very bad.

  The vine had burrowed into the children's skin at various place – face, neck, hands, back, belly – and it was pulsing rhythmically as if it was pumping something into them. No, I realized with horror. The plant was pumping something out of them: blood.

  Devona and I stood there in shock for several seconds and during that time we watched the twins' suntanned skin begin to pale as the leech vine rapidly drained the life out of them.

  Devona and I started forward. I didn't know if I would make things worse by tearing the vines away from the twins' flesh. I only knew I couldn't stand by and watch as my children succumbed to some sort of parasitic plant. But before either Devona or I could reach the twins, Lily held her hand out in a
stay back
gesture.

  "Don't!" she said. Her voice was so much weaker than it had been only a few minutes ago in the front yard and hearing it broke my heart. I started forward again, but Toby repeated his sister's gesture.

  "Listen to her!" he said, his voice just as weak as his twin's. "We know what's happening." His hand dropped then, as if it were too weak to hold it up any longer, and Lily's did the same.

  "None of this is real," my daughter said, her voice now little more than a whisper. "We're not real, Toby and I, we're…
pretend
. This whole place is pretend."

  Toby's head gave the slightest of nods, all that he could manage. His skin, like his sister's, was almost ivory-white now, eyes sunken in, lips blue-tinged.

  "You and Mom are fighting. Trying… to break free. That's why all this is happening. Why we're…" He trailed off.

  "Dying," Lily finished for him. "But it's OK, because we were never really…"

  "Alive," Toby said.

  I turned to Devona, and I saw she now possessed overlong incisors jutting down from her upper jaw. I looked at my hands and saw they were gray-tinged, the flesh dry and flaking.

  "Pretend," Lily said. "Just… pretend."

  Sorrow welled up strong inside me, along with anger. This family, my house, my
life
wasn't pretend. It couldn't be! I wouldn't let it be!"

  A shimmering passed through the air, like ripples in a pond, and when it cleared, the sunshine had returned in full force and my children stood there, free of the leech vine, strong and healthy once more. Devona no longer had fangs, and my hands looked normal again. Everything was as it should be.

  I was so relieved that I started toward the twins, wanting nothing more than to wrap my arms around the two of them and never let go. But the expressions on their faces – sadness, disappointment, regret – made me pause.

  "Don't, Daddy," Lily said. "Don't use us as an excuse to hide."

  "You've always faced the truth, no matter how hard it was," Toby said. He smiled then. "That's your job, right? To find out the truth."

  "Find it now," Lily said. "For us, if for no other reason."

  I turned to Devona, and I didn't know I was crying until she reached up and gently brushed the tears from my face. She was crying too, but her tears were tinged with red, and while that should've seemed strange to me, I somehow knew it was perfectly normal for her.

  "It tears me up to say this, Matt, but they're right. I can feel it. And I know you can too."

  I wanted to tell her that I didn't feel anything, that this was real, and I didn't want to hear another word about it. But instead I nodded. I took her in my arms and held her as tight as I could.

  "This really sucks," I said softly.

  "I know. Ready?"

  I wanted to look at the kids one last time, but I knew I couldn't bear it. So I closed my eyes and said, "Ready."

  I felt Devona's mind reaching for mine and I reached back. Vertigo took hold of me then and when the world stopped spinning I opened my eyes and found myself standing amidst dozens of bizarre displays – and I remembered.

  I was no longer physically capable of crying, but if I had been I'd have broken down and sobbed right then.

  It's all right, love,
Devona thought
. It's over. We're back.

  I tried to move, but I still couldn't. Orlock's stasis field was still in effect and I knew that it had remained so the entire time.

  What he said about time passing pleasantly… He created an illusory life for us to live while we were trapped here. Like filling an aquarium full of plastic plants and ceramic undersea ruins for the fish to swim around.

  Yes,
Devona thought.
But he didn't count on your necklace and our telepathic link. They reinforced what was real and fought against what wasn't. Because of that, the illusion couldn't sustain itself.

  I thought of all the other beings trapped within Orlock's stasis domes, all of them living virtual lives deep within their minds while their bodies remained frozen as the long years passed. It was like being trapped in a kind of hell, only one that you weren't aware of. Somehow that made it all the worse.

  Then again, maybe it was worse to come out of the dream. I missed my children and grieved for their deaths, even though I knew they'd never been real. And now Devona and I faced the prospect of spending our time in stasis without the comfort of Orlock's illusion to distract us. I wished my necklace had nullified the stasis field too, but either it was completely technological or its magic was too powerful for the necklace to handle on its own without the added help of Devona's and my telepathic link. For whatever reasons we'd broken the illusion but the stasis field remained intact.

  Are you all right? I asked her.

  Devona didn't answer right away. Finally she said,
Honestly, no. You?

  Working on it, I said, tying to sound braver than I felt at that moment. I'll tell you one thing, though. When we get out of this damned bubble, I'm going to find Orlock and… My thoughts trailed off as I realized something. The lights are on. They were off when the illusion took hold of our minds.

  You're right,
Devona thought
. Maybe Orlock's coming back. Maybe he wants to ask us more questions about Osseal, since he'd love to get his talons on it.

  Since Orlock's a vampire, he can see in the dark, I reminded her. He said he uses the lights only for his guests.

  We heard footsteps coming toward us then and I could tell right away that they didn't belong to Orlock. The pace was too measured, the rhythm too steady for the crablike way he walked. My surmise turned out to be correct when a few moments later a woman approached our dome and stood regarding us, hands planted on her hips, head cocked at an angle, grin plastered on her face.

  "Hello, Matt," Overkill said. "You're a damned hard man to find, you know that?"

  My first impulse was to tell Overkill that she was a sight for sore eyes, but since I wasn't able to speak, I couldn't. Besides, I wasn't entirely sure her arrival was a good thing.

  She was dressed the same way she was when I saw her last, only now she was better armed, with a P-90 submachine gun slung over her shoulder by a strap, and a weapons belt around her waist with a holster for a 9mm, sheaths for several lengths and types of knives – including, I was disturbed to see, a dire blade – and storage pouches that presumably held whatever the wellaccessorized mercenary was carrying these days. Considering how often I have to root around in my pockets for my own toys, I wondered if I should invest in a belt like that, but I decided against it. I don't like my adversaries to know how well armed I am. I prefer to let them underestimate me. Besides, a belt like that would just look silly on me.