The Sunlight Slayings (21 page)

I kick the gypsum sand at my feet and cross the store until I am standing next to Horacio's ghostly image at the counter.

“What's up, Emalie?” Beth asks, still sorting the sell-backs, with no idea that I can see one of her memories right in front of me.

“Nothing,” I reply. I look Horacio over. He looks weary, and he still looks kinda cute, and …

Bingo.

Leading away from his frozen image are luminous white footsteps, like little glowing puddles on the ground. They head right out the door. No one sees them but me.

“See ya later,” I say to Beth.

This was the goal of the echo spell: If Horacio had been in the store recently enough, then people's memories of him would also include a bit of his spirit energy. We all sense one another's moods, even if we don't consciously recognize them. When you're Orani, you can read that energy, and predict where it will lead, what it might do next. The memory of Horacio suggests that he would walk out the door and head down Broadway.

I follow the glowing footprints. A block later, they turn off Broadway, leading into a long, grassy park.

The steps take a wide track around a fountain, where a cluster of creepy figures are hanging out. Sinister laughter erupts from the group. Could be vampires. I keep to the shadows beneath old trees. Aunt Kathleen recently taught me a new enchantment called
negation
. You think yourself out of sight. It works on the undead. I don't quite get it yet, but I try it now as I pass the fountain.

The footsteps reach a small concrete building: public bathrooms. They reek of old urine, of unwashed bodies. A black iron gate is locked shut across the men's room door, but the gate in front of the women's room hangs open.

Horacio's footprints lead inside, but don't come back out. I pause at the door, trying to keep my breath silent. It's not easy. I can feel fear in Horacio's energy. But for some reason, he had to come here …

I reach into my bag with clammy hands and remove two objects. One is a small figurine, woven of straw, on a leather strap. A protection charm. I place it around my neck. The other object is my wooden stake, the one I made from a hammer handle. It's the only weapon I have, and I want to have something, just in case.

I peer into the dark bathroom. Faint streetlight seeps through frosted windows by the ceiling. I'm just about to whisper “Horacio” when I hear his voice:

“I brought you water …”

There's a sink, then two stalls. The second is larger, and its door is missing. I step across the room and see Horacio, kneeling beside a figure sprawled on the floor. A woman, dressed in a heavy, dirty coat, wearing torn-up pants and boots. She looks like a homeless person, her face unwashed, her hair knotted and long. She radiates fear too. It is pricking my senses. The room smells sour, like neglect.

“Thank you, dear boy,” she croaks wearily.

“It should be safe here,” Horacio says to her. “No one will bother us.”

“Someone already has,” the woman says.

Horacio spins around and sees me. “Hey!” he shouts. He leaps to his feet.

“Wait, Horacio, it's me.” I slip the stake into my belt and hold out my hands.

He peers at me. His face is splotched with dirt. His gaze is lethal, like that of a cornered cat, but then he recognizes me.

“I'm Emalie,” I say. “Remember? Back—”

“You saved me from the Harbingers,” says Horacio. His face softens. He turns to the woman. “Mom, this is her.”

Horacio's mother gazes at me. She is propped against a large backpack. “The Orani,” she says weakly. Her voice sounds relieved. “This is the one you spoke of,” she says to Horacio. “The demon girl who aligns with the chosen vampire.”

I flinch at that. Demon girl? “I'm not—” I begin.

But Horacio cuts me off. He has stepped closer. “Don't,” he says quietly. “It's okay. She gets confused. She's not well.”

“What happened to her?” I ask. “What happened to you both?”

Horacio shrugs. “It's a long story. What are you doing here?”

“I've been looking for you,” I say. I am feeling a little flustered, because he's staring at me again. “I—I was worried about you. And about what you said. You know, about the end of the world. Also, about Selene. My mom was looking for her too.”

Horacio nods. He almost looks disappointed. But he also feels less fearful. The entire room has relaxed.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing. I was just hoping you came to find me because I was … I don't know, nice or something.”

I try not to react to this, but feel my cheeks burning. I glance past Horacio, to his mom. “Can I help you guys out somehow? Get you, like, food, or something?”

“Nah, we're fine,” says Horacio. “I'm good at getting what we need. We've been on the run like this for over a year now. It's nothing new.”

“From Harbingers,” I say, trying to fill in gaps. “The ones who tried to kill you.”

Horacio shrugs. “That was only the latest time.”

“Well, who are they?” I ask. “Why do they have it out for you guys?”

“Because of what we know about the Gate,” says Mom.

I turn to her. “The Gate? You mean, like, Oliver's Gate?”

“The Nexia Gate,” she says, “which the vampires seek to open, but they don't know its true nature. We do.”

I look back to Horacio. “What's that mean?”

He just shrugs.

“Come here, demon girl,” says the mom. She struggles to sit up. “Come close and I will show you.”

I glance at Horacio, and he nods, so I step over to the woman. The smell around her is rotten, and strangely like meat or something—it's weird—but then she's taking my wrist in her cold hand. She runs a fingernail along my veins. It feels hard, sharp.

“Forces are like bloodlines, worlds like cells, currents running through them,” she says. “Ah, yes, this is the one, my dear boy, the Endline demon girl.”

Her grip on my wrist grows tighter. The Endline?

Wait. Something feels different. Changing. I glance back at Horacio. But … I can't see him.

“Feel that power,” the mom says, her grip on my wrist tightening. “Such nourishment … such sweet energy.”

“Horacio?” I call. But he's not there. Wait, he is—but faint. He seems to be flickering, becoming part of the shadows. What little of him is left shrugs. He looks at me, like, sadly. “I'm sorry,” he says.

Danger. Fear. I feel them crashing down on me. Horacio disappears, like a movie projector turned off, and there is scurrying. In the spot where he just stood, a shiny black lizard scuttles across the floor. It leaps up onto the shoulder of its—

Mother. Oh no.

The hand on my wrist has become a black claw, dirty nails, scaly skin. The body on the floor is no longer a woman slumped on a backpack, but some kind of creature in flowing robes, a hood over a black face with gleaming red eyes.

“Did you like the disguises?” its slippery voice asks, sounding only vaguely like that of the woman—the woman who was a trick. The lizard hisses with delight. “My pet makes a lovely boy, does he not?”

“Let go of me!” I scream, trying to pull away—but her grip is like a vise.

“And you, demon morsel, fell right into the trap.” The figure is standing, a giant shrouded demon, like the Merchynts I have seen in the underground. It smiles, exposing glistening black teeth. “You will nourish me for an eternity,” it growls. “The Orani sustenance, the sweet nectar of the demon girl. And none more powerful than the Endline!”

Far, far too late, I understand. Oh, Emalie, this is a trap. All of this was a trap. Told me exactly what I wanted to hear … This demon baited me, baited us all, even Aunt Kathleen and the Circle. It knew enough about me to reel me in. All so it could feast …

On me.

“No!” I scream.

The lizard that was disguised as Horacio shrieks and flicks its pink tongue. Maybe there will be a scrap of me left over for him.

I yank with all my might, but the demon hauls me closer, and the smell of unwashed clothes has given way completely to the stench of burned flesh, charred bones.

Beneath the giant creature's cloak, the floor is dissolving, becoming a black vortex, a doorway of some kind, to some awful other world.

Its head looms over me. Larger, the mouth spread wider. One bite and I'll be gone—Oliver! Dean! I am screaming in my mind. But no, I wanted to have my own story.

And this is how it ends.

Wretched breath against my face … Emalie, fight! I reach, flailing, to my belt, pull out my stake, and swing as hard as I can upward—there is a loud tearing of leathery flesh and the demon bellows with rage. I yank the stake out of the fissure I have created beside its mouth, ripping a chunk of its leather cheek free.

Before I can strike again, it tosses me like a doll. Across the room, I slam against the concrete wall, breath gone, crumpling to the floor.

“Feisty snack,” the demon growls, and sweeps toward me. I try to move, but nothing works anymore. I took my best shot, I—

But then hands grab me by the shoulders.

“Come on, stupid!” Suddenly I am yanked across the room and out the door. Back out into the cool evening. The hands prop me up and I face a new attacker standing right in front of me—

Grinning. Long black hair with a blaze of neon pink down the middle—

“What's up, Oliver's disgusting girlfriend?”

It's Bane.

“N—” I start.

The demon in the bathroom screams in fury, and I hear it slithering toward the door.

“Hold that thought,” Bane says, then shoves me away. I tumble into the grass and look up to find his friends: Randall—who is still missing most of the arm that he lost hunting, well, me—and Ty, both glaring at me.

“Come on, gents,” snarls Bane, “It's showtime.” Bane reaches beneath his coat and pulls out a short kodachi broadsword (Oliver recently showed me the family collection), then charges into the bathroom, his friends on his heels.

I lie there, breath returning painfully, clutching my stake with white knuckles, a black, oil-like substance dripping from its tip. There is a giant crash from inside the bathroom, then a roar.

“Oh, yeah!” I hear Bane shout excitedly. More slamming, tearing. The clanging of metal. A series of thuds. “Again!” Bane screams with delight. A sink flies out the door and crashes beside me.

Then silence.

Bane, Ty, and Randall walk out grinning, their eyes gleaming. Bane's clothes are splattered with the black goo. With one hand, he sheathes his sword. With the other, he tosses something black toward me.

“Here's a souvenir,” he says. It thuds to the grass beside me. One of the demon's claw-like hands.

I want to scream at him, want to run, but instead I stagger slowly to my feet. There's one thing I have to say first: “Thank you.”

Bane rolls his eyes. “Yuck. Don't ruin it, snackpack. That Empatica Demon was hogging a perfectly good hangout. I've dragged many a hapless human like yourself into that bathroom.”

I ignore that last comment. “Did you kill it?” I ask.

“Nah, that would have been bad form.” Bane eyes the severed hand. “We just served it notice and sent it on its way.”

His grin fades. “Now, two things, before we hopefully never see one another again …”

Bane cocks his head toward Randall, who is glaring at me, rubbing the stub of his arm. “You are not forgiven for that.”

“All right,” I say hoarsely.

“But,” Bane goes on, “we are willing to defer your painful retribution, just as long as you never tell my stupid lamb brother that I helped you tonight. Of course, telling him would mean admitting that you got yourself played and practically eaten. That Empatica would have feasted on your freakish energy for eternity times two. So maybe you weren't planning on it anyway.”

Bane is annoying, because he is right. I just nod.

Bane keeps looking at me. He rolls his eyes. “Um, I'm finished. Why haven't you left yet?”

“But why did you just help me?”

Bane's grin returns. “That's for me to know, and you never to ask again.”

“Okay,” I say, and start away.

“Safe travels, snackpack,” Bane calls after me.

I make it all the way to the edge of the park before the shudders, tears, and doubts overwhelm me. It is a long bus ride home.

So, there's that. There are vampire prophecies and hidden zombie masters in this world, but there are dangers for an Orani, too. I'm powerful. I guess that makes me a target. That Empatica demon went to a lot of trouble, inventing that boy and staging the scene in Ballard, and it led me right into its trap. Worse, it knew which buttons to push. Knew to mention Selene, Oliver, everything. Knew to show me a boy helping his mother, the way I'd like to help my mother … It must have been watching me for months. Just to get a chance to dine on me, because of my power.

But it said something else, too: called me the demon girl. Aunt Kathleen hadn't said anything about there being a demon side to being Orani. Maybe that was just another lie. But it also mentioned the Endline … Called
me
the Endline. Could that mean that whatever my mom left for, the reason she was searching for Selene, had to do with me?

And to top it all off, I get saved by Bane. Why was he there? Had he been following me? And why would he have any interest in helping me?

Speaking of that, this is the second time that I've had to be saved from danger. I need to be more careful, but also, I need to learn more … because I am not okay with being the silly damsel in distress.

It's almost dawn. Time for bed—if I can even sleep with all these questions. And the newest ones … I've promised never to tell Oliver and Dean. Only now, I really wish I could.

I have my own “Emalie questions.” Just like I wanted.

Be careful what you wish for.