The Phantom Oracle (Vampire Innocent Book 5)

by Matthew S. Cox

  Swords clatter against the door, and Cutlass Boy in the hole is still trying to reach me.

  I stare down at myself—finally noticing that my bikini top is gone. Red lines in varying degrees of healing from quarter-inch-deep gouges to cat scratches crisscross my skin, too many to count. Three broken rapier blades, one basket hilt, two table knives, and a fork stick out of me at random places.

  Ugh. This is going to hurt.

  A piece of hand bone slides over my toes, on its way to rejoin a gathering pile of fragments.

  Oh hell no. They’re going to get back up?

  The skull-faced drawing in the trunk stares up at me in spite. Pretty sure each time it emits one of those little light pulses, it’s waking up another skeleton.

  What if…

  I grab one of the table knives, pull it out of my side… and spend the next maybe thirty seconds paralyzed in pain. Not sure what hurts more: encrusted not-quite-sharp blade ripping loose or saltwater entering the wound.

  The constant clatter of swords and bony fists on the door snaps me out of my agony trance. No one ever told me if being sliced into small pieces will kill a vampire, but I really don’t want to find out. I drift down to kneel over the box and rake the knife at the metal plate with the skull engraving, grinding at it with as much strength as I can summon. The blade crumbles away from the force, but I’m scratching the plate. Breaking the skull drawing doesn’t seem to do much, so I turn my attention to the writing around it. I can’t even recognize the language those symbols came from much less what it says. It looks like the sort of thing game developers put on magic scrolls, all fancy and squiggly.

  As soon as I gouge the text, a bright camera-flash of emerald light explodes from the metal plate along with a faint pop noise.

  All the clattering falls silent.

  I twist to my right. A cutlass sits on the floor near the hole, no sign of the skeleton.

  Whew. That was easier than I thought… then again, a normal person—much less a girl my size—probably wouldn’t have been strong enough to scratch steel.

  My attempt to breathe a sigh of relief hurts.

  Ugh. This is going to suck.

  Trying to pull these things out is going to be torture if I do it slow. Of course, doing it fast is going to hurt a bunch, too. I grab the second table knife that’s probably in my left kidney, take a few seconds to psych myself up—and yank.

  I finally have one complaint about being a vampire: we can’t faint from pain.

  We can, however, curl up into a floating ball and cry for Mommy and Daddy.

  Once I get control back, I grab the fat end of the sideways rapier blade that pierced my heart and both lungs. About an inch of it sticks out of my right armpit, preventing me from lowering my arm all the way. Damn, that is super annoying. It’s a trefoil blade that’s thicker toward the hilt and tapers to a needle point. Each of the three edges had once been sharp, but the metal has such a thick layer of ocean crust on it that even the point isn’t all that sharp at the moment. And yeah, it’s like tearing sandpaper spikes out of my body.

  A sharp yank rips it clear with the agony of a red-hot saw blade. I clamp one hand over the hole on the right side, shuddering from pain while debating how many mystics I’m going to kill. They could’ve warned me about these stupid skeletons. That gets me wondering if they knew about it and sent me down here in an attempt to kill me, or if they genuinely wanted these books and had no idea the trunk is a spiteful piece of shit.

  I extract the last two rapier fragments out one after the next, as well as the four-inch blade still attached to the basket hilt, while mentally screaming F-bombs over and over. After, I just hang there in the water for a while, clenching my jaw while my body restores itself and forces the saltwater out. Tiny particles of whatever that crust is also grind their way to the surface. It’s an obnoxious sensation a little shy of painful, more an itch inside that I can’t reach to scratch—ants digging tunnels in my flesh.

  Time loses meaning, but eventually I feel pretty decent—other than being topless and trapped in a shipwreck at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. I drift over to the wetsuit, shake it out to clear it of silt, then pull it back on. I can’t even tell where my bikini top went—or how many pieces it’s in—and I don’t feel like staying here long enough to search for it. It’s easy enough to replace, and it isn’t like I have plans to go to the beach any time soon. Hmm. Back in Aurélie’s day when vampires ran around in those fancy, elaborate dresses and suits all the time, did that make them hesitant to fight? Replacing a cheap swimsuit top is one thing, but those outfits had to be expensive.

  One last pull snugs the zipper up to my neck. I set my hands on my hips and stare at the trunk.

  Now, how the hell am I going to get that thing out of here?

  30

  a Little Bit of Reality

  Whatever magic sealed the room broke when I scratched the writing on the plate.

  One kick knocks the door open, revealing about twelve more skeletons—collapsed on the floor. Well, ceiling since the boat’s upside down. With luck, the trap and the magic that protected the books are different. But, I can’t say I honestly care too much if the contents survive. All I want to do now is spend some quality time with a peaches and cream bath bomb, then curl up in bed under an excessive amount of blankets.

  The trunk isn’t too heavy, though I am abnormally strong and we’re underwater. No surprise it’s easy to move. I tow it down the hall over the mess of bones, down two sets of stairs, then into the space between the upper deck and the seabed, sending small bluish crabs scrambling to get away from me.

  Naturally, the trunk is way too big to fit in the gap I slipped in, so I lose some time kneeling in the sand while digging it out enough to get the trunk past it. And, I’m not the most patient girl in the world at the moment. Perhaps a board or two had to break.

  I swim out first and pull the trunk after me, beyond grateful to be outside the wreck. Few things on this Earth are as frighteningly claustrophobic as the inside a shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean. Dad once watched this documentary about a submarine that went down, its crew trapped alive inside. Ugh. I can’t even imagine how horrible that would’ve been for those guys. I can’t drown and I can see in the dark—and it still freaked me out a little.

  Since I’ve completely forgotten which way is east or west, I glide straight up. Whether or not vampires can suffer the bends would depend on gases dissolved in our blood. We don’t aspirate like living things, so I’m not sure what exactly our blood is like. It is a bit thicker and darker than normal human blood. Meh. No sense inviting more pain tonight. I’ve had plenty. I take it reasonably slow going up.

  My head breaches the surface into a breeze as warm as a clear August day. Yeah, my hands right now have to be cold enough to cause heart attacks if applied to the back of someone’s neck. Ashley does that all the time. Oh, look how cold I am—grab.

  Why must people do that? Like do they think we won’t believe them unless they make us squeal to prove it?

  I invert myself, feet in the air, and let all the seawater drain from my lungs. While I no longer have any need to breathe, my body decides this is a great time for a horrendous coughing fit. I choke and gag on ocean water, which also streams out of my nose, burning like hell. Somehow, I manage not to lose my grip on the trunk and send it racing back to the sea floor.

  Seriously, this thing is not in the mood to float. Trying to pull it into the air doesn’t work, it’s both unwieldy and heavy. Okay, so this box weighs more than Ashley. I could fly with her on my back, but she’s like 120 pounds. Ugh, taking this thing home is going to be a pain in the ass. It’s either full of seawater or packed to the brim with books. And it’s huge. Yeah, not exactly ‘packing light.’

  A passing wave douses me, causing an involuntary shriek at the cold.

  Damn. I’ve adjusted to the air being normal temperature, so the sea is once again frigid.

  Time to go home.

  Th
ere’s only one thing I can really do in this situation, since neither air travel nor swimming are feasible. I grab the handle on one end while draping myself over the trunk and flying as fast as I can without smashing it apart. Basically, I’m turning it into a giant skipping stone. Other than having to occasionally swerve to ride the edge of a wave too big to plow through, I head straight for shore. Though the constant icy splashing chills me way worse than being all the way at the bottom did. When everything is the same temperature, I don’t notice. But mixing like forty degree air with splashes of much colder water is hell.

  Something tells me that vampire who went treasure diving probably brought a boat along to help him carry stuff.

  The Enigma went down reasonably close to shore, so I only have to put up with the personal watercraft from hell for about fifteen minutes. As soon as the sea becomes shallow enough for me to walk, I lift the trunk over my head and trudge up onto the beach. I’m tempted to sit there for a while and rest, but that’s an echo of past instincts. The kind of tired I feel won’t be helped by idleness. I’m effing hungry.

  Picking the trunk up with my feet on solid (mostly) ground is easier than I thought. It’s noticeably heavy, but compared to my new strength, it’s no worse than an overloaded laundry basket was to my mortal self.

  I trudge from goopy, waterlogged sand, to dry sand, then to grassy sand, and finally grass, having no idea where I am. I don’t feel like lugging this trunk into the forest that’s straight ahead of me, so I stop, look around to make sure there’s no one here to see me, then float straight up for a better view. A road not too far north of me leads from the beach to a small strip of civilization. Deeper inland, past a narrow lake that stretches a long ways north and south but only a short distance east, the road connects to a highway that looks like it will take me home—or at least closer to it. I know I went mostly south while hunting for this trunk. Further east is all forest. Ugh. The road I want to be on appears to be about a mile away. Not too big a deal to walk, but I’m barefoot.

  Oh well. If I cut myself, it’ll heal.

  Heh. Cut myself. Nothing on the ground is going to hurt anywhere near as much as rusty rapier blade.

  I land, pick up the trunk, and start for the road. A sandy path leads from the beach to a paved circle with a road leading east from it. I’m still clueless as to exactly where I am, but following the road is my best bet. Fortunately, at whatever time it is, the area is deserted.

  This strip of paving doesn’t have much of a sidewalk, so I pad along in the middle of the right lane. No chance a car could come from behind me without teleportation being involved. I pass an empty parking lot on the left. Otherwise, I’m surrounded by trees for the next few minutes of walking.

  Eventually, I pass a couple houses, a few with lights on but no one seems to notice me. The first cross street I reach is labeled Clark Road. Apparently, I’ve been on Sunset Beach Road. Still, no idea where I am. I keep going, just an innocent girl in a wetsuit carrying a trunk down the street at like two in the morning in the middle of September. Nothing at all unusual here.

  Soon after I pass an RV park on the right, I hit a bridge over that narrow lake. Still haven’t seen a single moving car, which I suppose is both good and bad. More houses go by on the right, open field… maybe a golf course, on the left.

  My mile-long hike brings me to the end of Sunset Beach Road, a T-intersection with the north-south road I saw from the air. I’m ninety percent sure I need to go north. Make that ninety-nine percent. It’s odd that my toes don’t feel like they want to fall off from the cold. Even odder is my not feeling tired after hiking a mile. Well, more tired. I’m sure I burned a bunch of energy preserving myself in the extreme cold of the deep ocean, and the skeletons didn’t help much.

  A sign by the intersection identifies the other road as Oregon Coast Highway. Shit. I’m way south. That’s a problem. By sheer time alone I’m probably not going to be able to make it home before sunrise. At least, not on foot. I suppose I could stash this box somewhere, fly home, and drive back down here tomorrow to get it—assuming Mom lets me take the Yukon. This thing isn’t fitting in the Sentra.

  Do I have too much dignity to hitchhike? No not really. All I have to do is get someone to stop and make eye contact, and they’ll drive me wherever I want them to. Getting them to stop could be a problem. However, I’m a young-looking girl alone at night. If a creep tries to abduct me, I get a meal and a free car.

  Hmm.

  I walk across the highway—not sure how anyone can call a two-lane road a highway—and start heading north while debating if I could bring myself to kill a guy who intended to murder me. Like, Scott was already dead, so I didn’t so much kill him as cremated an existing corpse. If I ran into a dude who wanted to like kidnap, abuse, and kill me… Yeah. You know what? I think I could. In fact, I think I would. Someone who’d do something like that to a girl ‘my age’ doesn’t even qualify as a human being. So, yeah, it’s not murder. And I’d rather have the potential guilt of doing that than the worse guilt of wondering who else he’d hurt if I left him alive.

  One of the old movies Dad likes has a guy in it who calls assassination the greatest public service, or something like that. In this case, I’m inclined to agree.

  A few cars go by over the course of the next maybe half hour, but none stop. Guess this is an interesting part of town if a girl in a wetsuit with a giant trunk isn’t weird enough to make them at least slow down to stare.

  The heavy rumble of a tractor-trailer shakes the road under my feet a few seconds before I hear it. Not wanting to be steamrolled, I step onto the shoulder to give traffic a lot of extra room and turn to look back. A big rig trundles down the street, the headlights so intense I squint.

  It slows to a stop right beside me, amid the hissing of pneumatic brakes and the reek of diesel exhaust. The passenger side window opens, and a fortyish guy with a beard and a red ball cap leans up to check me out.

  “Hey, you okay? Need a lift somewhere?”

  My intent to simply compel him to drive me home wanes when we make eye contact. Wow. This guy isn’t even considering anything creepy at all. He thinks I’m like fifteen, ran away from home, and shouldn’t be out on the road alone after two in the morning. The wetsuit confuses him though.

  “Uhh, yeah. I’m going home. Guess I look like a runaway or something, but I’m not.” I smile, futilely trying to puff a strand of hair off my face. “You heading to Seattle?”

  “Olympia. I can get you at least that far.” He hops over the seats, opens the passenger side door, and climbs down. “I’m Mike. Here, let me help you with that.”

  As soon as I let go of the trunk, it drags him to the ground. He gawks at it.

  Oops.

  When he looks up at me in bewilderment, I make him forget trying to hold the like 300-pound chest.

  “Where can I put this?” I ask.

  He opens a storage compartment on the side of the cab that’s just big enough for it. I ease the trunk inside, then climb up into the passenger seat. Mike jogs around the nose end to get in via the driver’s side door. Once he’s got the rig rolling again, he smiles over at me.

  “Kinda odd seein’ a little thing like you out here on her own this hour.”

  “What time is it?”

  “2:19 in the morning.”

  “Damn. Any idea how long it’ll take to drive to Seattle from here?”

  He runs a hand down his beard. “Well, if we were goin’ straight through, reckon about three and a half hours.”

  Umm. Sunrise is around 6:40 or so this time of year—the weird things my new life makes me study. I could make it, but it’s going to be damn close.

  “What are you gonna do in Olympia?”

  “Just drop a trailer off, then sleep. I’m a vampire.”

  I glance at him. He most certainly is not. But, I’m guessing he’s talking about sleep schedule. I giggle and flash an innocent smile. “Me too.”

  He shakes his head, chuckling. �
��Kinda have to be one for this job. Never did much care for gettin’ up early. Drivin’ at night’s a lot easier. Less traffic.”

  “Yeah.” Now there’s a thought. If I was totally alone, a night-drive trucker might be a career choice. Constantly moving, no shortage of feeding grounds, no worries about people recognizing me. But, I have a family… at least for the next eighty or so years.

  “So how’d you wind up out here all alone in a… what happened to your shoes?”

  “Epic Jet Ski mishap.”

  He blinks. “Come again?”

  “Oh, just kidding. I was on a boat with some friends and fell overboard when Ricky accelerated too hard. They were, uhh, kinda drunk so didn’t notice. I had to swim back to shore.”

  Mike looks at me like I’m speaking Swahili.

  Ugh. Forget it. I rewrite his memory of that conversation to something about me being a college student who broke down and he picked me up on the side of the road. He also now believes I’m wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers. I’m super tempted to feed from him since I’m so hungry, but he’s driving and he’s also a genuinely nice guy.

  The ride to Olympia takes about an hour and a half. Mostly, Mike talks about his wife and two daughters back home in Astoria. He likes the job because it lets him spend some time with his kids before going to work after they’re in bed. He’s also thinking of moving to Portland, or at least the suburbs.

  When we arrive at the shipping yard he’s going to, I thank him for the ride and hop out while he’s dealing with the security guard at the gate. Neither of them notice me remove the trunk from the storage compartment and set it on the sidewalk. It makes for a decent place to sit while waiting for him to finish. Once the rig pulls in and disappears among the rows of other trucks and cargo boxes, I approach the security guard.