“St-stand up. Toward trees,” I stammered. I was too cold to say much else.
We struggled to our feet and lurched toward the forest in a sort of step-hop. The fog was heavy. It gave us some cover, but it also hid whatever was happening inside its murky veil, and that thought had me hopping faster, forcing the others to keep up. A few feet in, we came to one of those sharp, dead trees.
“Lean d-down,” I said. I got close enough to use the rough edge of a limb to saw through my ropes around my hands, then I untied my friends.
“Oh God,” Isabel said, her eyes huge.
I followed her sightline, and through the haze I saw Mariana’s horrified face. Behind her the forest was full of the pale, long-dead children of Necuratul, half-eaten by vegetation and looking for justice. They advanced slowly, the bread crumbs falling from their mouths. They fell on Vasul, devouring him until there was nothing left. Then they turned to Dovka. She screamed and struggled as they dragged her into the lake, and she kept screaming until her mouth was filled with water and she disappeared beneath the murky surface. Mariana tried to run. She was stopped by several ghostly boys who held her tight. The hollow-eyed girl who’d led us into the forest that morning put her hands on either side of Mariana’s face. Where her hands touched, Mariana’s skin turned the color of putrefied leaves. She couldn’t even cry out as the rot spread quickly through her body. The dead girl blew gently, and Mariana’s decaying body disintegrated into a pile of wet leaves that were trampled by the feet of the dead.
I could hear screams in the fog and make out the voices of the old-timers. The tavern keeper stood at the edge of the clearing, shouting to the younger kids. They ran to him, and he motioned for us to follow. I reached for Isabel, who grabbed for Baz, and then we were forcing ourselves to stumble-run, our fear working hard to overcome the heaviness of our soggy clothes and numbed legs. With the screams of the others still echoing around us, we kept our eyes on the hope of his lantern. Pretty soon the lights of the village were close. The wind picked up again and I got that prickly feeling on the back of my neck. The forest glowed with a greenish fog; it thinned, and I saw that the dead were coming after us.
“The soul,” they whispered. “Give us the soul.”
The village was in view. The old woman who guarded the gate was shouting in words we didn’t understand and throwing salt everywhere. The kids ran ahead, and she pushed them inside the gate. I looked back as behind us the tavern keeper cried out. He’d slipped and fallen, and the hollow-eyed ones were almost on him.
“The soul,” he gasped out. “Must burn.”
“Poe!” Isabel shrieked, pulling me along.
We raced inside the gate and the old woman closed it with a bang and sealed it with salt. In the forest the tavern keeper screamed. There was no chance of saving him.
“Holy shit!” Baz shrieked. The three of us were running with the rest of the villagers for the church. “What the hell was he saying, Poe?”
“The soul must burn,” I repeated.
“The hell does that mean?”
“The goat’s head.” Isabel gasped. “The Soul of Necuratul.”
There were more screams. The salt didn’t stop the dead. They’d eaten the bread. They had the power now, and they were coming.
“If we burn it, does this end?” Baz asked.
“Only one way to find out,” I said.
Isabel was the fastest. She bounded up the hill to the ancient church and had the door open in track-star time.
“Come on!” she yelled. I could hear the scuttling of those dead things coming through the village, could hear the screams of the old-timers who tried to fight them off without success. We reached the church and fell in along with some of the children. A few of the old-timers hurried after, but the whispering dark was bearing down on them. One of the old men from the bakery cried out as the dead showed their long, gleaming teeth and picked his bones clean. Two of the children struggled up the hill. Baz and I started for them, but we couldn’t reach them in time. That was when I thought I might lose it completely. We closed the door and sealed ourselves inside the gloomy church. Just us, a handful of kids, and Mariana’s mother against an army of the dead. They banged at the door again and again, and we backed away.
“Cut that shit out right now!” Baz yelled. It would have been funny if we weren’t completely terrified.
Mariana’s mother opened the door of the iconostasis and came back holding the goat’s head, which she handed to me. As we were yelling at her to burn it, she was trying to tell us something but we didn’t understand. The kids did, though. They ran around checking candles, and I realized we were all on the same page, at least. Mariana’s mother went to help them look, while Baz, Isabel, and I stayed up by the iconostasis. One of the kids let out a shout when he found a lighted candle. The banging got louder, and then there was a terrible crash, and the dead were inside.
The hollow-eyed girl stepped forward. She spoke in both her language and ours. “Give us the Soul. The debt must be canceled.”
Mariana’s mother shook her head at me, her eyes wide.
“If you burn it, we are damned forever,” the dead girl said.
The dead surrounded the living children. Mariana’s mother looked from them to the Soul of Necuratul in my hands. She shook her head again, and the message was clear: don’t give them anything, no matter what. But that meant giving up on the kids. I’d already seen two kids die and I wasn’t watching any more go down.
“Here. You want it, come get it.” I held out the goat’s head.
“Poe. Don’t do it, man,” Baz pleaded. “Don’t give it to the funky dead people.”
“We’re a part of that now,” Isabel cautioned. “Our hair is in those braids.”
“We’re part of this no matter what we do,” I said. “If they can end this, then let them.”
The hollow-eyed girl took the goat’s head in both hands. She had us follow her into the iconostasis, where she placed the head on the altar and spoke over it in hushed tones. Color flooded the faces of the dead, and the shadows under their eyes faded. And then, with small, contented sighs, many of them disappeared into thin wisps of smoke.
Suddenly the girl stopped speaking. She seemed afraid. She backed away just as the altar caught fire, and something rose from the flames. It was a huge man, more beautiful than anybody I’d ever seen, man or woman. He had long black hair, skin like marble, and wings like an angel, but his eyes were murky as the lake where we’d nearly been drowned. His lips stretched into a cruel smile; his teeth were sharp. And when I turned my head just slightly, he seemed to have the head of some beast with enormous curled horns on either side.
“The debt is paid!” the hollow-eyed girl insisted.
“The debt is never paid,” the angel-beast growled in a voice that felt like thousands of flies crawling across my skin. He towered over us. Flames licked at the golden walls. The murals dripped paint, and I could hear screams inside those paintings. The dead who still remained began to melt like wax, puddling on the floor and running through the church. The girl screamed, and that was enough for me.
“Run,” I croaked out. “Go!”
We bolted for the doors and pushed our way out into choking smoke. Every part of Necuratul was burning down. Suddenly the hollow-eyed girl was in front of us. I pulled up short. But she motioned for us to follow, and she led us to the forest. Behind us we could hear the beast shrieking. The fire was at our backs and getting closer, and I was afraid the whole forest would go up, trapping us.
Finally we reached a spot where I could see the bridge below us. It was partially under water but still visible. It was passable. The girl pointed to it.
“I can’t go farther,” she said.
I didn’t know what to say, so I only nodded while Isabel and Baz helped Mariana’s mother and the children down the hill.
“Poe!” Isabel yelled from the middle of the bridge.
The hollow-eyed girl stepped closer, and my heart hammere
d in my chest. Backlit by the flames she looked fragile. She leaned in and kissed me full on the mouth, and something shifted inside me like when I’d drunk the tainted wine.
“You can see what lives in the dark,” she said. “Do not forget.” Fire engulfed a tree. The sparks landed on my sleeve and I had to rub them out. Isabel and Baz were shouting at me.
“Go,” she said. Her body began to shift. Move. Like something trying to break out. Her skin exploded then, and thousands of small moths spiraled up, their wings like faint scars against the blue-orange of the fire, the blood of the moon, and then they were gone. I ran for the bridge, and we all crossed it to safety.
It took us all night and well into the next day to make it back to the train station, where the agent said it was a miracle we’d survived the fire. The entire area around where Necuratul had stood had burned to the ground. Nothing left but blackened stumps of trees and ash. It was so damaged, they didn’t even know if they could build the power plant there. That’s irony for you.
The station agent draped blankets on our backs and made us cups of strong tea. At one point Mariana’s mother came over to me, stared into my eyes for a while, and transferred the evil-eye pendant from her neck to mine. Then she walked away to take care of the children. The station agent didn’t ask any questions. He handed the three of us a bundle of tickets and put us on the next train out. And all of them stood on the rickety wooden platform watching our train inch away, like they wanted to be sure every trace of us was gone.
Baz and Isabel slept a lot. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw those dead faces, Mariana turning to rot, and the angel-beast rising above us like a threat of something to come—and I’d wake up gasping. It was night, and I made my way to the café car. I ordered a Danish and some black coffee and sat next to the window to watch the night crawl past.
“I told you the pastry was stale, didn’t I?”
Mrs. Smith had settled into the seat next to me. She opened her bag and took out a hunk of cheese, offering me some. I shook my head.
“Now you have seen,” she said quietly. “Now you know.”
“Yeah? What the hell am I supposed to do about it?”
“What do you think? Stop the fuckers.”
I stared at her. “How do I do that?”
“You can’t fight evil all at once. That was just a small test. There are bigger ones to come, Poe Yamamoto.”
I turned away. “I don’t want this.”
“Who would?” She snapped her handbag shut and stood to go. “Don’t lose my card. That’s embossing on there. Not cheap.”
“What’s going to happen?” I asked, but she was already making her way through the car, singing some song that I could have sworn was AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.”
Anyway, I don’t know if you’re still watching this or not. Maybe you clicked on something else—a clip of a cat caught in a ceiling fan or an interview from Comic-Con. Maybe you think I’m making this up, and there’s nothing out there in the dark but what our minds conjure up when we’re looking for a thrill.
But if you are still watching this, I want to tell you one last thing: On the train ride back I had a dream. It was me and Baz and Isabel, and that fog had come up really quickly. I couldn’t see what was ahead, but I felt like it could see us. And then I saw John. His eyes were black pools. A jagged, half circle of a scar made an angry smile at his throat. And his teeth were sharp as the man-beast’s.
“There’s so much on the other side,” he whispered to me. “Things you can’t imagine. There’s a lot of evil to bump asses with out there, Poe. You have no idea.”
He wasn’t kidding.
I’m gonna try to keep this account running, update when I can, so you’ll know whatever I know. But right now, I gotta go. Baz and Isabel can’t hold that door forever and unless you know something about super-powerful werewolves and can text me right this second, then I’m gonna have to go deal.
Just be looking out, okay? Trust the lizard, my friends. Something’s going down. Something big. It’s already started.
Be ready.
About the Authors
Libba Bray is the New York Times bestselling author of the Gemma Doyle Trilogy, A GREAT AND TERRIBLE BEAUTY, REBEL ANGELS, and THE SWEET FAR THING. Visit her online at www.libbabray.com.
Cassandra Clare is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of CITY OF BONES, CITY OF ASHES, and CITY OF GLASS. CITY OF BONES was a Locus Award finalist for Best First Novel and an ALA Teens’ Top Ten winner. She is also the author of the upcoming YA fantasy trilogy THE INFERNAL DEVICES. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her boyfriend and two cats. Visit her online at www.cassandraclare.com.
Claudia Gray is the author of EVERNIGHT. She has worked as a lawyer, a journalist, a disc jockey, and an extremely poor waitress. She lives in New York City. Visit her online at www.claudiagray.com.
Maureen Johnson is the critically acclaimed author of 13 LITTLE BLUE ENVELOPES, THE KEY TO THE GOLDEN FIREBIRD, GIRL AT SEA, DEVILISH, SUITE SCARLETT, and THE BERMUDEZ TRIANGLE. She lives in New York City. Visit her online at www.maureenjohnsonbooks.com.
Sarah Mlynowski is the author of numerous novels, including the four books in the Magic in Manhattan series, BRAS & BROOMSTICKS, FROGS & FRENCH KISSES, SPELLS & SLEEPING BAGS, and PARTIES & POTIONS. She also co-wrote HOW TO BE BAD with Lauren Myracle and E. Lockhart. Originally from Montreal, Sarah now lives in New York City. Say hello at www.sarahm.com.
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Copyright
VACATIONS FROM HELL. “Cruisin’ ” copyright © 2009 by Sarah Mlynowski. “I Dont Like Your Girlfriend” copyright © 2009 by Amy Vincent. “The Law of Suspects” copyright © 2009 by Maureen Johnson. “The Mirror House” copyright © 2009 by Cassandra Claire, LLC. “Nowhere Is Safe” copyright © 2009 by Libba Bray. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition April 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-186169-7
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Libba Bray, Vacations From Hell
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