The Sunlight Slayings (5 page)

“What was that?” Theo was spinning around toward the trees, but the figure was already gone. He turned to Oliver. “Did you see something?”

Oliver shrugged. “See what?”

“Hey,” Maggots said from beside them.

Theo narrowed his eyes at Oliver. “Are you up to something, Nocturne?”

“Hey!” Maggots said more urgently.

Oliver and Theo turned. Maggots was staring at Brent, who was still sitting on the seesaw.

“Nnnn,” Brent moaned. He was bent over the handle.

“What's up with him?” Theo asked.

“Nnnnnnn …” Brent rocked back and forth.

“What's happening to him?” Maggots asked worriedly.

Brent was starting to glow. There seemed to be a faint aura of golden light around him—

“Nnnnnnnaaaaaaaa!” He lurched off the seesaw and collapsed to his knees in the sand, his face contorted, eyes shut, fangs bared.

“B-Brent?” Theo stammered.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Brent's head whipped up. His eyes and mouth popped open and brilliant, blazing light shot out. His head thrashed about, and when the light hit Oliver, he felt an unmistakable sting and leaped backward in panic. It felt exactly like—

“Sunlight!” Theo shouted, grabbing at his chest. His shirt was on fire where the light had hit him. Oliver saw that his sweatshirt was singed. “Run!” Theo vaulted off the jungle gym and sprinted for the nearby trees. Maggots fell over himself, tumbling to the sand and crawling beneath the seesaw.

Oliver stumbled back. Brent staggered to his feet, the light blazing from his eyes, mouth, and ears. His chest began to glow. The beams swept by Oliver and the leg of his pants caught fire. There was searing pain. He tried to run—

“
Tsss!
” His side suddenly seized up on him. The pain from his amulet wound shot like a spear up and down his side. He lost control of his legs and fell to the sand.

There was humming, buzzing light everywhere in the night. Oliver felt heat on his back and managed to roll over, his side screaming in pain. Brent was floundering in his direction, sunlight bursting from every inch of his body now as his skin seemed to crack open. He became only an outline in a tiny supernova. It grew brighter and more intense, and Brent's features were lost completely.…

Then it went dark.

Oliver blinked back blindness. He slapped at his legs and torso, putting out small fires on his clothes. As the green spots in his eyes faded, he saw only a lingering wisp of smoke where Brent had been.

Maggots walked slowly over. He kicked at the sand beneath where Brent had stood, scattering a pile of fine, silver ash. Brent had been turned to dust.

“Brent?” Maggots said weakly. He stared at the ground, then turned to Oliver. “What was that?” Vampires were not ones to get too saddened when another was dusted. Given time, though, they could get very angry about it. Revenge was considered a healthy thing in the vampire world. Right now, though, Maggots just seemed confused.

Oliver pulled himself to his knees, his side burning. “I don't know.” He glanced back at the trees. Whatever it was had come from that direction, and inside, he felt a horrible, freezing worry:
Had Emalie done this?

Suddenly something shrieked in the sky above. Oliver and Maggots looked up to see a large bat circling down through the trees. Now a horned owl swooped over, and a crow. There was rustling nearby, and Oliver saw a raccoon bounding toward them, then a coyote. Flares of black smoke began to swirl around the animals—and adult vampires were leaping down to the playground.

“Don't move! Any of you!” a booming voice called.

In moments, Oliver and Maggots were surrounded.

Chapter 5

The Scourge of Selket

THERE WERE FIVE FIGURES
ringing the sand playground. Three women and two men, all in long black coats. On their lapels were gleaming pins made of bone, carved in the shape of a Skrit symbol that Oliver didn't recognize.

Oliver stood up quickly.

“What happened?” asked a short woman. She had dark skin, frizzy hair, and red eyes.

“Brent,” Maggots mumbled, pointing at the sand.

The woman glanced down at the ash, then to Maggots. “Did you see what caused this?”

“We were just sitting here,” Maggots added.

A narrow man wearing a high black turtleneck sweater beneath his coat stepped forward and knelt in the sand. He had curly black hair and wore small, round glasses. He produced a glass ball, which he flipped open and used to scoop up a sample of the ash.

“How about you?”

Oliver looked up to find the woman peering at him. “What?” Oliver said.

“What happened here?”

“I, um, I saw …” Oliver had only a second to decide how much he would say. “I just saw Brent light up. Before that, I felt a flash of energy or something.”

“Do you know where it came from?” the woman asked, her eyes narrowing.

“No.” Oliver cursed at himself inside. Lying again … But he felt like he had to. Had Emalie just done this? Why would she?
Maybe because she saw a vampire kill her cousin
, he thought. True, there was that. Oh, this was not good.

“You didn't see anything else?” the woman asked, sounding unconvinced.

“I don't know.” Again, Oliver tried to talk in truths without details rather than outright lies. “We were just talking when it happened. Me and Theo, and—”

“Are you Theo?” the woman asked Maggots.

“This one is,” a male voice called from across the playground. Oliver looked over to see Theo walking back toward them, being followed by another black-coated vampire—

It was Sebastian. “Hey, Ollie,” he said. “Are the rest of you all right?”

“Yeah,” Oliver replied, more than a little confused. “Just some burns.”

Sebastian turned to the short woman. “Leah, is the area secure?”

Leah closed her eyes. She held her arms out, tilting her palms up and down. The air began to ripple like liquid around them. “There's a zombie a hundred meters northwest and a, wait—” She squinted, reading the resonance of invisible forces. “A human leaving the park—ah, no, sorry, that's a false reading.” She opened her eyes. “The area's secure.”

Sebastian turned to the man who had scooped the ash. “What do we have, Tyrus?”

Tyrus placed the glass ball in the center of a small square gadget. It began spinning in a curved depression. “Well,” Tyrus read grimly from a blue screen, “the burning and vitamin D residuals are consistent with the other incidents. What do you think, Yasmin?”

“It's the Scourge,” Yasmin, a woman wearing a white head scarf, murmured darkly.

“What's going on?” Theo asked impatiently.

Oliver watched as the vampires checked with one another silently and felt his own frustration building. He was becoming far too used to trying to read into the faces of those who were keeping him in the dark.

“It's nothing to be worried about,” said Sebastian.

“But my friend just got dusted!” Theo went on, his voice edged with fear. “We need to know what's happening.”

Oliver found that he agreed with Theo. If he was right about what he'd felt moments ago, whatever had dusted Brent had barely missed him.

“We're looking into it,” Tyrus said firmly. “That's all you need to know right now. We'll escort you home, and if your parents have questions, tell them to contact Mr. Ravonovich at the Half-Light Consortium.” He turned and stalked off into the trees. The raccoon was waiting obediently there and, with a swirl of smoke, he Occupied it and scurried off.

Leah took Maggots by the arm. He was still staring vacantly down at the sand by the seesaw. “Brent,” he muttered again, sounding lonely.

Yasmin led Theo away, and Sebastian moved alongside Oliver. “We should go,” he said simply, putting an arm around his shoulders.

“Dad,” Oliver said quietly, giving the park one more wary glance as they left, “what just happened?” The image of Brent being swallowed by sunlight kept playing in his mind, and an even worse thought occurred to him:
If Emalie did that … what if she'd meant it for me?

Sebastian took a minute before answering. “Listen, I can tell you some things, but please keep them to yourself. The Central Council wants to keep any rumors from starting up, so things don't get out of hand.”

“What things? What happened to Brent?”

“Well, this won't make much sense, but he was slain by sunlight. It's a mystic spell,” Sebastian continued, “called the Scourge of Selket. Our historians have pinpointed its origin in the ancient Egyptian dynasty of Amenemhet I. Peasants used it in a revolt against the pharaoh and his bureaucracy, which was controlled by vampires. Selket was a protective goddess, and they harnessed her power to infect the vampires with sunlight, destroying them from the inside out. Historians think the Orani were involved.”

“Huh,” Oliver muttered, a shiver passing over him as he remembered that Dead Désirée had referred to Emalie as an Orani, part of a secret line of women who had
sight
.

“Yeah,” Sebastian continued, “except that no vampire had been slain by the Scourge in over two thousand years … until this week.”

They left the park and continued down a silent street. A light mist began to fall. The pain in Oliver's side had calmed, but there was still a faint burning there.

“So,” Oliver asked, “Brent wasn't the first to get attacked by this Scourge?”

“No,” Sebastian said. “He was the third. Both the others were kids, too. The first one was over in Capitol Hill. The boy's dad had a home lab for rot leeches, so when we heard that somebody self-combusted, we assumed it was an accident with flame incubators. But then the second was just a kid at a convenience store in Madrona … and now this.”

“Nobody's been talking about it at school or anything,” Oliver mused.

“We've been keeping it out of the news,” Sebastian said.

“Who were those people you were with?”

“They work with me at Half-Light,” Sebastian replied.

“They were all lawyers?”

“Ha, no.” Sebastian laughed. “I'm the only attorney.” He didn't add anything further.

It occurred to Oliver that he really didn't know what the Half-Light Consortium did. Sebastian had described his job as being there to get Half-Light out of legal trouble when they were doing whatever
else
they did.
One thing they do is keep an eye on me
, Oliver reminded himself. That was something he still needed to try to find out about. But his dad always managed to talk about his job and Half-Light without giving any details. Oliver tried to think of a question for him now, to get more information—

But suddenly Sebastian halted, throwing an arm in front of him. “
Tsss
.” He peered warily up at the rooftops, sniffing the air.

“What is it?” Oliver asked.

They were in the middle of a well-lit intersection. Something scraped above them.

“Who's there?!” Sebastian roared through the darkness. Oliver spied a silhouette atop a four-story apartment building. The figure spun around to flee—

“Whoa—” But instead slipped and toppled off the edge. He fell four stories and slammed to the pavement with an awful thud. “Buh,” the figure moaned, slowly getting to his feet. Oliver saw who it was and sagged. “Hey, Oliver,” Dean said groggily. He limped toward them, dragging one leg behind him. “I think I broke something.”

“Who's this?” Sebastian asked, sounding confused.

Oliver wondered if there was any way he could pretend he didn't know Dean. No, it would never work. So, what could he say about his zombie friend?

“Isn't that the boy you killed?” Sebastian asked quietly, that uncertain tone that had been so common in December returning to his voice. Luckily, he'd asked too softly for Dean to hear.

“Yes,” Oliver muttered.

Oliver felt Sebastian's gaze fall on him. He glanced up, ready for the worst, but was shocked to be greeted by a wide smile. “Ollie, this is amazing. You—wow … Oh, I'm sorry.” He turned to Dean. “I'm Sebastian Nocturne, Oliver's father.”

“Hi,” Dean said nervously. “Hey, Oliver, are you all right? What happened back there?”

Oliver wanted to ask Dean what he had seen, but he knew he had to save it for later. “I'm fine. We don't really know what happened.”

“How long have you been risen?” Sebastian asked curiously, gazing at Dean in wonder.

Dean looked at him confusedly. “Huh? Oh, right, like from the grave. About two weeks.”

Sebastian nodded to himself, like he was counting in his head. “Right, of course. You'd have to lie dead for one lunar cycle before you could be raised.…” He glanced at Oliver again with a look of amazement. Oliver had thought Sebastian would be disappointed in him for having a zombie as a friend, but then he understood:
He thinks I raised Dean
. That was the logical explanation, if you thought that Oliver had killed Dean to begin with. Well, this could work in Oliver's favor, but he had to get Dean out of here. Oliver still needed to explain this stuff to him.

“Dean, we have to get home,” he said quickly. “Meet me after school on Monday, okay?”

“Cool.” Dean nodded. “Nice to meet you,” he added to Sebastian, and started limping off in the other direction, wincing. “See ya later,” he called.

Oliver and Sebastian returned home. They were just entering the kitchen when Sebastian called excitedly, “Phlox, you won't believe it.”

Phlox was chopping sugarcane at the counter. She looked up quickly. “You're all right.…” Her face relaxed into a smile. “What happened?”

Bane was sitting at the island, dumping a can of Jolt into a French press cup of coffee, while popping chocolate-coated cicada larvae into his mouth. He looked up, saw Oliver's sullen face, and his eyes lit up with excitement. “Is he in trouble?” he asked like a hopeful vulture. He removed the press and drank the concoction with the coffee grounds still in it.