The Sunlight Slayings (7 page)

“Did you see her at all while it was happening?”

“Nah.” Dean shook his head. “I kinda lost track of her. I couldn't find her scent or anything.”

“Good,” said Oliver, but it did little to calm his worry.

They took the tunnels downtown, emerging in a filthy alley. The trapezoidal glass facade of Seattle's Public Library loomed over them, its windows dark. They walked to a concrete loading dock, where Oliver rapped on a steel garage door.

After a moment, boots echoed behind the door, and with a grind of metal, the door lifted. Celia St. Croix, the vampire liaison for the library, appeared. “Evenin', boys,” she said brightly. “Welcome. You know where to go?”

“Yeah.” Oliver nodded. He started forward.

“Hold on.” Oliver turned to find Celia with a hand to Dean's chest. “It's vampires only,” she said matter-of-factly to Oliver. “Help has to wait outside.”

“Oh.” Oliver looked at Dean uncertainly. “Sorry, I—I'll be quick. I didn't know.…”

“There's a Dumpster down the ways a bit,” Celia offered to Dean.

Dean's face fell. “It's cool. I'm just gonna take off. Catch ya later, Oliver?”

“Okay,” Oliver replied guiltily. “Meet me before school tomorrow, maybe?”

“Sure.” Dean stalked off.

Oliver and Bane headed across the loading dock and through a heavy metal door. Moments later they emerged on the silent ground floor of the library, in the children's section. They crossed among low bookshelves and around tiny tables. Bane took a moment to grab a stuffed bear from one of the tables, behead it, and place it back on the chair with its head in its hands. Sometimes Oliver couldn't believe they were even brothers.

Streetlight angled in, making diamond patterns on the floor. Their footsteps echoed in the cavernous space. There were three elevators along a wall, with a fourth around a corner. Oliver and Bane walked to the middle elevator, marked #2, and pressed the down button.

A loud
ding
echoed in the empty space, and the elevator doors slid open. They entered and pressed the button for the bottom floor, P. The elevator lowered. The door slid open again, revealing the concrete parking garage, but this was not where Oliver and Bane were headed. As the doors fully opened, Oliver began counting to himself in a whisper:

“One—” he said, then pressed the P button again, even though they were already on that floor. “One, two—” he counted, then pressed it again. “One, two, three, four—” He pressed it a third time. The elevator's chime rang three times, and the door slid closed. Though there were no more floors listed on the panel, the elevator began to lower.

It hummed downward for a long moment, then slid to a stop. The doors opened.

“Ahh. Welcome, Nocturnes.” Before them, a wiry old vampire man dressed in a crisp tuxedo stood behind a high mahogany desk. The desk curved out from the wall of a long room.

“Hi,” Oliver replied to the Librarian, not surprised that he knew them. As soon as Oliver had entered the code in the elevator, their force signatures would have been scanned and their identities verified.

The Librarian slipped out from behind his desk. “Right this way.” He led them down the center of the room, its floor covered in burgundy carpet. The walls were also paneled in well-polished mahogany and lit warmly by swirling magmalight lanterns. At the end of the room was a set of black curtains. Classical music played softly. There were a few other vampires in the room, standing at small tables along the walls.

“May I assist you with your search?” The Librarian asked, stopping and motioning Oliver and Bane to a free table.

“No thanks,” Oliver said quickly.

Bane slouched against the wall, his music blaring, as Oliver stepped up to the small table. In the center was a silver gooseneck stand with a copper microphone at its end. A small speaker was inset in the table beside it. Oliver twisted the cone toward him, then spoke into it: “Zombie raising,” he said softly.

“Eighteen,” the pleasant female voice of the Catalog whispered from the speaker.

Oliver spoke again, lowering his voice and glancing quickly around: “Scourge of Selket.”

“Six,” the Catalog replied.

“Orani,” said Oliver.

“Thirty-four,” whispered the Catalog.

Oliver looked around again. Bane had discovered an attractive girl across the room. Oliver made one more request, his quietest yet: “The Nexia Gate.”

The Librarian glanced in his direction.

“Twenty-two,” the Catalog whispered.

Oliver started toward the curtains He saw that Bane had succeeded in catching the eye of the girl and was now leaning against the wall trying to look completely uninterested.

“Please take a long time,” he called sarcastically, waving Oliver away.

Oliver turned, glad that Bane wouldn't be with him. He pushed through the heavy curtain folds, stepping onto a narrow walkway of grated metal. There was a spiral staircase beside him. In front of him, a hallway ran back into darkness. To the left and right were the entrances to more hallways. The walls between these hallways were solid, made of dark wood. Footsteps echoed from floors above and below.

Oliver looked at a gold plate on the wall in front of him. An arrow pointed left beneath the numbers: 16–32. Oliver headed that way, then turned down the next aisle.

The floor and the low ceiling were still made of grated metal, but the walls on either side alternated between sets of black curtains and wood. Beside each set of curtains was a number. Oliver made his way to the curtains numbered eighteen.

“Enter,” the Catalog whispered.

He pushed through the curtains, into a dark chamber lit only by a candle on each wall. Incense smoke lingered in the still, humid air, with a scent of coriander and cinnamon. There was a single pillow in the center of a small rug. Oliver sat down on it, then looked ahead into pitch-darkness.

“Zombie raising,” Oliver said again.

Two glowing blue eyes lit in the dark. There was a grinding sound, and a stone pedestal slid forward. On it sat a figure shrouded in dark crimson robes, its face hidden in the shadow of a hood, except for the glowing eyes. “Continue,” he said in a soft monotone voice.

Oliver paused. He'd sat with a Codex before and knew that in order to access the vast oral history it contained, he had to narrow his search by explaining what he was looking for. That required him saying things that he'd been keeping to himself. But the Codex were governed by strict confidentiality, so he didn't need to worry.
Doctors are supposed to be confidential, too
, Oliver reminded himself. Well, he had little choice but to continue. “How to detect a zombie's master.”

The Codex took a deep, labored breath, and there was a clinking of chains. The Codex were hundreds, sometimes thousand-year-old vampires. Only brilliant academics were chosen for the transformation. The reward was that you were kept alive eternally by enchantments and filled with the complete oral knowledge of one tome of subjects. It was an honor, but since vampires tended to regard honor as something that could be just as easily forgotten as obeyed, the Codex were shackled at the wrists and ankles. The one Oliver sat before now was particularly ancient. There were younger Codex, who were less imposing and were even brought out for story sessions with groups of vampire kids.

“A zombie's master will, with rare exceptions, be the being who killed the human,” the Codex said in a hissing, labored rasp. “The zombie will perceive his master in the first moment following exhumation.”

“Is there a way for a master to hide his identity?” Oliver asked.

“A master could choose not to reveal himself,” the Codex answered. “There are certain enchantments, but they are difficult and rare.”

“How can you discover a hidden master?”

The Codex took another deep, rattling breath. “There is a blood rite that can be performed that will mark the master, a mark that the master will not know exists, and that can be seen above all concealments.”

“Explain,” Oliver said. The Codex listed the steps in the ritual. Oliver listened carefully.

“Mix these ingredients in a VanMuren's Mortar,” the Codex concluded, “and recite the incantation.”

Oliver nodded. “Finished,” he said, and with a grinding of stone, the Codex slid back into darkness, its eyes closing. Oliver pushed through the curtains and headed back up the hall. The ritual was easy, except for the VanMuren's Mortar. It was probably something he could get from Dead Désirée. His side ached at the thought. Going to see her was never pleasant. Then again, this would be a good excuse to ask her why she'd given him the portal vision.

Oliver descended the spiral staircase and proceeded down a similar aisle, reaching the curtained entrance for Codex six, where he planned to ask about the Scourge of Selket—

But the curtains were drawn back, the candles extinguished, the stone altar empty.

“I'm sorry,” said the Catalog pleasantly from its hidden speaker above, “Codex six has been temporarily removed for information authentication and erudition. Codex six will be returned to service on”—the voice paused as another automated voice, still female but slightly lower in pitch, cut in—“date unavailable.” The regular voice returned. “For temporary assistance, please see the Librarian.”

Oliver stared at the empty chamber. It seemed like too big a coincidence that the Codex containing information about the Scourge would be unavailable at exactly the time when the Scourge had reappeared. Oliver headed back up the stairs, wondering as he went if this was the Half-Light Consortium or Central Council, or both, trying to keep people in the dark until they could solve the problem. Oliver wondered if there was a way to ask his dad about this without unraveling any of the other lies that had brought him to the library in the first place.

Speaking of which, Oliver now arrived outside the curtains marked thirty-four.

“Enter,” said the Catalog.

Oliver entered an identical candlelit chamber. He sat on the single pillow and uttered: “Orani.”

Orange eyes lit in the dark and the stone pedestal rumbled forward. The crimson-robed Codex breathed heavily, but with less labor than the previous one had. “Continue,” it said in a raspy female voice.

“General history,” said Oliver.

The Codex inhaled deeply, echoing in the chamber. “The Orani, Overview, as described by Professor Irving Emerick, Sitting High Doctor of the History and Epidemiology of Demo-sapien Bloodlines, Avernus Academy, Morosia: A human tribe cursed with extra-dimensional intuition, the Orani first appeared in Mesopotamia in the Bronze Age and were worshipped as goddesses. When their fame spread, they were invited to the high court of Pharaoh Amenemhet I. Their leaders were promptly enslaved and their followers massacred. But the Orani organized a revolt and disappeared. They have since lived a secretive existence.

“Leaders have often searched for the Orani, seeking their intuitive powers to advise their rule. Emperor Dometian of the Roman Empire and Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire were each reportedly successful in finding an Orani, yet soon after, both of these leaders coincidentally fell ill with conditions of paranoia and insanity consistent with Orani dream manipulation.

“No cited references for the Orani appear after the year 1657, yet they are believed to exist in hiding, and persons of power and influence are still known to seek them.” The Codex inhaled again. “Please specify topic to continue.”

Oliver hadn't planned on asking anything else, but something about what he'd just heard struck him, so he said, “Orani dream manipulation.”

The Codex inhaled. “Professor Emerick has asserted that Orani can travel into the dreams and memories of another to change them. These alterations can lead the victim to believe falsehoods and be consumed by paranoia, guilt, and fear. Emerick theorizes that the Orani are to blame for the mass hysteria that destroyed Arcana in 1868. Please specify topic to continue.”

“Finished,” Oliver said blankly. He exited, lost in thought about Emalie. He'd had that dream where she seemed to be moving things around, directing the action. She'd been telling him he'd killed Dean, even when he protested that he didn't. It had almost seemed like she was
making
him responsible for Dean's death in his own mind. Was that possible?
She thinks I killed her cousin
, Oliver thought.
Is it so crazy to think that she's after revenge? Maybe she tried to change my memories—maybe it didn't work, or it's taking too long—so she's trying to kill me with sunlight instead
. Could she really hate him so much that she was trying to kill him in two different ways? Maybe he should just try to ask her.
She called me a monster
, he reminded himself sadly.
What good is asking her going to do?

Oliver reached the final Codex chamber: twenty-two. His brain felt full, and he wondered, with what he'd just learned about Emalie, if he could handle any more worrisome information. He could feel his stomach churning with anxiety. But he was here, and more information on Nexia would be good, because in between thoughts about Scourges and Emalie and Dean's master, there was that rather large question of what Illisius had said, of what it meant to open Nexia's Gate, and why he had to be made different to do it—

He reached for the curtains.

“Occupied,” the Catalog informed Oliver.

Oliver stepped back. He checked his watch: They'd been here for half an hour. Bane was probably sick of waiting, and if they were home late for dinner there might be too many questions from Phlox and Sebastian as to what Oliver had been researching. He turned to go.

“Occupant finishing,” the Catalog said. Oliver paused and turned back to the curtains. Maybe he did have time if he was quick. The curtains swept open—

Bane stepped out.

For the slightest moment, Oliver and Bane locked wide eyes, and Oliver saw a look of complete surprise on Bane's face. There was no sneer there, no anger, just a look that Oliver had never seen before. Did Bane look a little shaken? What had he asked the Codex?