Vault of Shadows by Jonathan Maberry Read Free Book Online Page B

leader’s chest. “It’s going to hurt but I have to get you out of here. Can you walk?”
    He tried to help Barnaby up, but the Cajun’s legs buckled. When he crashed down, the impact tore a shrill scream from him. Blue pulse blasts exploded around them, but the ’troopers’ aim was spoiled by the smoke and fire. That faint protection wouldn’t last, Milo knew. He had to get Barnaby out.
    And there were still the old and the sick aboard the red ship. Milo saw movement over there, and through the haze he saw an old woman—Ms. Han, the camp’s assistant cook—lean out the hatch with a machine gun in her wrinkled hands. She began firing at the shocktroopers, the gun juddering in her grip, bullets flying everywhere and hitting nothing. One of the ’troopers whirled and fired at her, and Milo screamed as the old woman vanished in a ball of blue flame.
    We’re all going to die, he thought. Right here and right now.
    In his pocket he could feel the weight of the thing he knew the shocktroopers wanted most of all. The red ship was really only a secondary objective. They wanted the crystal egg. That egg, and the Heart of Darkness, which was now in the possession of the Nightsiders. The egg was crucial to the survival of the Dissosterin species, while the Heart of Darkness was the last known link between the Nightsiders here on Earth and all the infinite magical worlds into which most of their kind had fled. Evangelyne and her friends hoped to somehow relearn the secrets of the Heart of Darkness so they could open those shut doors—maybe to escape, maybe to call back others oftheir kind to help in this war and try to save the planet from the Swarm. However, for the Huntsman, the black jewel had a similar but much more destructive potential. He wanted to discover its secrets and open those doors—not to save the world, but to conquer all worlds and all dimensions, to use the Swarm to conquer all of time and space. The Huntsman was obsessed with unlocking the secrets of magic because the Swarm had reached a limit to their own technological growth. The monster they had created—the alien-human hybrid—was not content with destroying his homeworld. He wanted to be a new, dark god of the entire universe. Losing that stone to Milo and the Orphan Army had been devastating. Milo lived in terror of what the Huntsman would do to get it back.
    He will burn the fields of the earth and topple mountains to find you and get back what you stole. That’s what the witch had told him.
    So Milo had to ask himself what he was willing to do to stop these monsters.
    Barnaby groaned in pain and tried to raise his pulse pistol, but he lacked even the strength to do that. There was no choice but to try to use another grenade. Milo fished one out and showed it to Barnaby.
    â€œI have to . . . ,” he said apologetically.
    The Cajun’s face, though now gray with agony, twisted into a wicked grin. “You throw that thing and let’s all go down together. Booyah!”
    â€œYou’re crazy,” said Milo, but he flicked the armingswitch and hurled the grenade as far as he could. Then he pushed Barnaby flat and arched his own body over him, ready to shield his friend with his own vulnerable flesh.
    The grenade vanished into the smoke.
    â€œI want what you stole!”
    Milo scrunched his eyes shut, waiting for the explosion, maybe waiting to die.
    And absolutely nothing happened.
    Nothing.
    Until it did.

Chapter 10
    W hat happened wasn’t an explosion, though.
    The grenade did not go off. Maybe he hadn’t pushed the switch all the way, or maybe it was faulty. Milo never found out.
    The shocktroopers kept advancing, their guns raised, their antennae clicking with the anticipation of an easy kill. Milo cracked one eye open and looked over his shoulder. Seeing the aliens, seeing their hideous faces, seeing the lenses of their glowing blue pulse pistols as