The Umbral Wake

by Martin Kee

  “They? Who is they?”

  “Demons, Dona. It’s all demons.”

  Dona blinked slowly, and laughed. She fell back into her seat. Tears rolled from her eyes as she held her stomach. She slapped a knee, howling at the ceiling. Victoria waited. After a moment, Dona wiped her cheek as the car swerved again. She hit her head on the window and the laughter ceased.

  “Are you done?” Victoria asked.

  The smile melted from Dona’s face as she stared at the girl. “You aren’t joking.”

  “Does it look like I am?”

  Dona looked out the window again. “Where are we going?” Her voice was small, a child’s voice.

  “We’re going to the only safe place in the city.”

  Dona was about to ask where that was, but as they turned a sharp corner, she saw. She probably already knew. The Grand Cathedral glowed in the distance, its golden crosses blazing in spotlights above the rooftops. As they cleared the rows of buildings, she could see blast walls along the outside of the cathedral. They rose up from the ground, alabaster monoliths of stone and steel, sprouting from an eon’s slumber.

  “The cathedral,” Dona said.

  “It’s a citadel now,” said Victoria. “We’ll be safe there—”

  The car lurched, swerving to miss another running pedestrian. Gareth lost control, the wheel spinning in his hand. Dona became weightless, her head hitting the ceiling. The car slammed back down onto the street and she felt a crunch. Gareth tried to grip the steering wheel as Victoria grasped at a safety hold. The electric engine whined as the carriage rocked sideways, then the other way. They hopped a curb and came to a sudden, noisy halt. A bent streetlamp split the engine block cleanly in two.

  Shifting light flooded the carriage as smoke seeped up from the hood. Dona turned and saw the passenger beside her. Jules stared back, his face slack, his eyes blank, a purple bruise between them. There was no recognition there.

  “Get Jules,” said Victoria. “We’ll have to run for it.”

  “Jules!” Dona gasped.

  He continued to stare, his hands at his side even as chemical battery fluid seeped smoke into the vehicle. She reached across to open his door and saw the scars on his temples. They blossomed like rose buds.

  “What happened to Jules?” she asked, but everyone had already leaped out of the car.

  Julian’s door opened. Gareth’s massive hands reached in and grabbed the boy by the shoulders, lifting him out of the seat. Julian’s feet touched the ground and there he stood, unmoving. Arms hung limp at his sides.

  Dona felt her door open and Victoria’s hands on her arm, but she couldn’t move.

  “What happened to Jules?” she asked.

  “Get out, Dona!” Victoria pulled on her arm.

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” she said, tugging on Dona’s arm. “It’s just—” Tug. “Part—” Tug. “Of the reeducation process.”

  She finally managed to pull Dona from the vehicle. As Dona stood, she spun and slapped her with the sound of a gunshot. Victoria’s head snapped to the side, a lock of golden hair falling in her face. She covered the mark with a delicate hand.

  “Were you going to do that to me?” Dona asked. “But Tom got the special treatment? Tom got the knife and you were going to—to what? Shock the deviance out of me? Were you going to shock me until I thought like you?”

  Victoria looked up at her, a gloved hand still on her cheek. She blinked, closed her mouth. Dona caught her glance at Gareth and shake her head. A chill ran down Dona’s back.

  “Do you want to do this here?” Victoria asked. “Because you’re welcome to stay while we take Jules to safety.”

  “What’s safe anymore?” Dona shrieked. “Look around!”

  “Are you coming or not?” Victoria asked, her voice icy. “Because I’ve saved you more times than you’ll ever know. I saved you when your father was musing to me about having you banished to the Wilds. I was there protecting you when the archbishop asked for you to get the Melissa treatment—oh, don’t look at me like that. You know he did it. I was there protecting you from this!” She pointed down the street as people ran from the shadows. “I am trying to save you now, Dona, because you are and always will be my best friend. You may not like it. And you may hate me. But I am the only best friend you have right now.”

  Dona held her breath, glaring at the girl. Her mouth couldn’t move, and even if it could, Dona didn’t know what she would say.

  “Shadows moving,” said Gareth from behind the car.

  “How long until morning?” Victoria asked. Her eyes never left Dona.

  “Three hours… maybe four.”

  “And the fleet?” she asked him.

  “No word yet.”

  “Well then we’d better get moving.” She said, then to Dona, “Now, are you coming or not?”

  More shrieks spilled out of the shadows. More people fell from rooftops and landed in gutters. Here it was chaos, but in there—in that Grand Citadel there was a murderer. Melissa’s murderer.

  She took a breath and looked at Victoria. “Better the devil you know, I guess.”

  Vicky smiled her gummy smile, those false incisors eggshells in the yellow lamplight.

  “That’a girl,” she said and took Dona’s hand.

  *

  Her footsteps were all she heard as Dona tried to keep up. Ahead of her, Victoria ran with a hand torch, flashing the light into the shadows. The beam touched moving creatures that dissolved beneath the light. Ahead of them the citadel loomed white over a shroud of shadow. Above them lamplights flickered.

  An orange flash blossomed, bathing them in warmth. Dona spun to see the carriage erupt in flames. The gas lamp they knocked over had finally ignited, sending a plume into the air.

  “That should help a little,” Victoria said. “We have to stay in the light. Do you understand?”

  Dona nodded and they ran further down the street. From the corner of her eyes, she saw bodies, parts of bodies, pools of blood that painted the cobble a glossy black. The pools were still and she saw reflections in the blood. Everything smelled like copper.

  “It will be safe during the day,” Victoria continued. “We’ll send soldiers out to start reclaiming the city. Then once the fleet arrives we’ll drive them back for good.”

  “What fleet?” Dona panted as they slid around another corner, sticking to the gas streetlamps. Even under that amber light, Dona noticed her shadow seemed darker somehow, the ground beneath her feet softer.

  “We’ve made a mess of it,” Victoria said. “Now we need el poppa to come bail us out, as always.”

  “El… the Pope?” Dona almost tripped. She looked down and saw a burnt doll on the street. Next to it was a small hand.

  Victoria turned to her and smiled. “Both of them.”

  Behind her, Dona could still hear Gareth running. A part of her wanted to ask why they were bringing Julian at all, what purpose he served.

  God, you sound like your father. Listen to you, Donald Jr. “What’s in it for me?” Or even worse, you sound like Vicky. She clamped her mouth shut as they turned a corner.

  Flames shot from the ground a hundred yards away. She felt warmth on her face. The air filled with the sick smell of burning methane. At the center of the inferno sat the blackened hulk of a steam truck, its many wheels melted and running like blood. It had hit a building, bursting the external gas line. A twenty-foot wall of orange fire stretched across the street, igniting the surrounding buildings. The cathedral lay beyond.

  “Shit,” Victoria said under her breath. “We’ll have to go another way.”

  “The school is nearby,” Dona said. “We can cut across St. Anthony’s.”

  “Good thinking.”

  They backtracked one block and turned left down the alley towards the school. The loose board had been removed, and Victoria stood peering through it.

  “Looks like someone’s already been—”

  Dona grabbed the gir
l’s shoulder, spinning her around. She pinned Victoria to the fence, pressing an arm against her throat. The girl looked up at her with lucid blue eyes, her mouth open, gasping.

  “She was right here, wasn’t she?” Dona hissed. Behind her she could already hear Gareth catching up. There was little time for an interrogation. “Missy was right here, being abducted. And you knew.”

  She pressed harder, enjoying the feeling, drinking in the surprise on Vicky’s face. The girl moved her mouth, tiny croaks of sound coming from her throat. Dona leaned in.

  “What’s that?” she said.

  “Now… isn’t… the time.”

  A thick arm snaked around Dona’s throat, pulling her off the ground. Vicky stepped away from the fence, rubbing her bruised throat. Her hair had come loose, making wispy patterns that stuck to her sweating face. She stepped up to Dona and pointed at the ground. Julian lay on the dirty cobble, his eyes staring at nothing.

  “It’s your choice, Dona,” Victoria said. “I can have Gareth leave him and carry you, or you can come willingly and Julian will live. Because if I had to choose, I’d choose you.”

  Dona took a long breath and nodded. Without so much as a word, Gareth released her. He scooped the boy up from the ground, throwing Julian over his shoulder like a sack.

  “That’s better,” Victoria said. “And yes, I knew. If you had any idea what was at stake, you would have done the same.”

  Dona kept her mouth shut, despite how strongly she disagreed.

  They ducked through the gap in the fence, Victoria flashing a beam across the ground. “It looks like it hasn’t spread here yet. Or it’s been here and moved on. Gareth, do you see anything?”

  Silence.

  “Gareth?”

  They both turned. The big man stared at them, his face blank. Julian lay on the ground again, and Victoria sighed. “Why did you drop him?”

  But Gareth’s face was blank, half-lit in shadow. His right arm fell, hitting the ground with a wet thud. His other arm fell after that. Dona thought he looked like a statue of dried mud as he began to crumble away, sliced off by the darkness behind him. The rest fell to the ground. What stood in his place didn’t look like a man at all.

  Scattered light stretched to the space behind Gareth’s body. But the figure danced around it. The figure twisted around the light, flowing with liquid movements. Victoria swung the light, waving it as the shadow man danced along.

  “Get it on Jules,” Dona said. “Get the light on him.”

  “Don’t,” Vicky said. “Forget Jules. Just run.”

  Dona spun to look at Victoria, to shake some sense into her, but froze instead.

  A revolver sat in Victoria’s other hand. She trained it on Dona. It shook, the barrel wiggling in the darkness.

  “You wouldn’t…” Dona said.

  The gun moved and pointed at Julian. “I’ll shoot him to keep you from slowing us down.”

  Jules looked like a doll there on the ground. His eyes stared unfocused at nothing as the spidery figure loomed over him.

  Dona stepped over towards the boy and scooped him up. Victoria swore, swirling the beam along the ground. Several times the shadow reached for Dona. It pulled back with a shriek as the light touched it. Julian weighed next to nothing and Dona lifted him into her arms and carried him back to Victoria.

  “Now where?” she asked with the boy in her arms.

  But Victoria was frozen, her eyes staring up at the looming wall of darkness. She could see the world through that strange figure. The light that filtered through it appeared gray, lifeless, sterile. The creature lowered itself onto Gareth and began to feed.

  Dona turned, Julian in her arms. It was at least another mile of shadow between them at the citadel now. Victoria still held he gun, but now it hung limp as the girl stared. Dona wondered how many more of these things they would encounter. How many more would attack them? How long would this night last?

  “Vicky, let’s go.”

  They backed up from the feasting shadow. Keeping to any light they could find. As they approached the cafeteria, Victoria stumbled. Dona turned and saw her expression.

  “What?”

  But Vicky’s mouth instead moved silently, her eyes fixed on something strewn across the yard. Dona looked down into Beth Humphrey’s eyes. Beth stretched from one end of the yard to the steps of the chapel. Her neck ended at what looked like the cut of a baked ham, and for a moment Dona thought that her mouth might have moved. The girl blinked.

  Victoria screamed and dropped her hand torch. Their only protection shattered with a crash on the cobble.

  Chapter 47

  Bollingbrook

  SEEING THE COIN was one thing. Getting to it was a completely different matter altogether. In order to avoid any further incidents with the Reverend’s minions, she was forced to navigate the upper layers. This, mixed with the complete lack of depth perception, made her nearly give up more than once. Everywhere she went, Skyla saw the unspeakable damage she had caused with the torch. Rifts opened into city streets like the gutted bellies of fish, spilling shadows out into the streets. She passed windows and saw people running, watched them tumble from their bodies as the shadows consumed them. Every time she would make progress toward the coin, a new obstacle would block her path. It would be daylight again before she found her way.

  A crowd of puppets followed her at a distance, tracking her, waiting for her to go deeper so they might pounce. She knew better, but up here the light was deadly. Sirens and flickering flames caused passages to collapse suddenly, turning them solid. Skyla backtracked again and swore.

  There were no familiar landmarks anymore. She could have been in any random city.

  I could be in Arist for all I know.

  She emerged in an alleyway at last, shaking the dust from her clothes and trying to get her bearings. Through the goggles she saw creatures made of light run through the streets. They slipped over the unfamiliar terrain, their eyes glowing and hungry. It wasn’t until she looked up that Skyla realized she hadn’t traveled far at all. She had emerged from one of her rifts in Bollingbrook, behind her old school. Skyla pulled the lenses up with a snap.

  Now things became familiar. There was the fence she used to sneak through for school. A piece of fabric hung from it, a torn sleeve. As she approached the sleeve, Skyla saw more evidence, more horrors moving through the darkness. One stood cornering a pair of girls. Skyla recognized Dona immediately. She held a boy in her arms. The girl behind her was unmistakably Vicky. And between them the shadow loomed, unfurling wiry arms to pounce.

  “Hey!” Skyla yelled at the creature. “You won’t like them. They taste awful.”

  The spindly shadow turned and Skyla pulled the hand torch from her belt. She wound it three times, and flipped the switch. Light lashed out at the being, slicing it in two. The separate halves squirmed away, mewling along the ground. She ignored it and spoke to the girls.

  “You can see me?” Skyla said.

  They both nodded. Dona looked terrible, her eyes dark and confused. Her hair fell in wet matted strips on her face. The boy in her arms seemed dead if not for the faint shadow he cast. And Vicky looked as if she was seeing a ghost, her blue eyes huge and liquid. She backed away from Skyla as she approached.

  “It’s okay,” Skyla said. She held out her hands. “You don’t have to be scared. I think I can help…”

  Her voice trailed off as she heard the metallic click. Vicky held a gun, the barrel a hollow, eye staring at Skyla’s heart. The pause in her step seemed to embolden Victoria the way a dog can smell fear and the girl smiled, her hand steady as she raised the gun.

  “Someone’s having a bad day,” she said, tilting her head.

  Skyla said nothing. She stared at the gun.

  “Wow,” said Victoria. “You’re usually so chatty. I thought you were going to say something sassy. Maybe tell Dona again how her daddy molests her. Or maybe you’ve got some dirt on Julian here.”

  “Shut up, Vicky,�
�� Dona said, then to Skyla. “Can you help us? We’re trying to get to the citadel.”

  “The what?” Skyla said.

  “The cit—the cathedral. We can’t reach it. There’s… things in the way. They killed Beth… and Gareth.”

  Skyla saw the bodies then. They lay in pieces, strewn across the schoolyard like toys fought over by selfish children. Beth stared back at her, the light in her eyes gone forever.

  Victoria spoke. “Yes, Skyla, can’t you help us? I’m just so scared this gun might go off.”

  Skyla wanted to say something, wanted to talk her way out of it somehow, but this wasn’t the old schoolyard anymore. This was a killing field. They were at war, and Victoria had made it clear what side she fought on.

  Skyla cleared her throat, tearing her eyes from Beth. “I can’t take you there… not physically. But I could lead you.”

  “Then lead us,” Victoria sighed. “I doubt Dona has the strength to carry our friend any further.”

  “Let them go first.”

  “Let who go?”

  “Dona and Julian. You’re holding them hostage.” Skyla looked down at what had been Gareth. “Or you and he were.”

  “Hostages? No. Dona’s my friend and I’m doing what friends do. I’m trying to get her to safety. You see, I don’t just run out on my friends like you do.”

  Skyla bit her lip. She wanted to say something, wanted to be a smartass. She could see the shadows closing in, leaking in over the buildings, could see the grim expression on Dona’s tired face. Along the wall behind Victoria, everything was spelled out—Melissa’s abduction, the kidnapping, the betrayals, the letters.

  “She told you about Melissa?” Skyla asked Dona.

  “I figured it out,” Dona said. She gave an exhausted shrug. “I… Now isn’t the time though.”

  “He did it, you know. The Reverend. He’s still hurting people.”

  Dona frowned. “Why are you telling me this? Why now?”

  “Because she is working with him. She’s been working for him for years.”

  Dona’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know?”

  “I just do.” Skyla looked again at the gun. “Not that it matters now.”