The Shadow Thieves Read online

  It took him quite a while to get past all the Underworld Preservation protections and start collecting the blood. You couldn’t just go waltzing through the doors to the Upperworld anymore; the only Immortal who could go through without a pass—besides Hades himself, and he never went anywhere—was Hermes, the Messenger. And there was just no bribing that guy. Philonecron had tried.

  But he was not to be thwarted, and soon he figured out that since the Messenger was the only one who could get through the doors, all he would need to do was follow him out. The wing-footed fruitcake would be too busy showing off his speed to notice.

  And he was. In and out of the doors of Death Philonecron went, lurking in the shadow of the Messenger. Even more so than he had expected—he had thought that once he was in the Upperworld, he would wander freely, yet once there, he found himself strangely drawn to Death, in fact, to the site of the same Death that had called the Messenger through the doors in the first place. He found, too, he could travel only so far from the Death before he was drawn back to it.

  No matter. With Death, so often, came blood, lots of it, especially in this day and age. War and murder were everywhere, and firearms produced so much blood; Philonecron wished he had invented them. Disease ate away at life bloodlessly, but in the vast, sterile buildings that housed the sick and dying there were great storage facilities of blood, almost as if someone there, too, had been trying to stage a coup in the Underworld. In a quieter Death scene, a heart attack by a lone man, there were always neighbors somewhere, sleeping too soundly to notice a quick exsanguination spell. Nothing too harsh. Just a couple of pints. You’ll be a little dizzy in the morning. Rest up, drink some apple juice, you’ll be fine.

  Philonecron was patient. He spent years building up his supply, storing bottles in thick containers under piles in the refuse dumps. He knew they would keep; the Underworld was a natural refrigerator. The only problem would be keeping the Shades from sensing the blood too early—hence the use of the rubbish yard filled with the fetid flotsam of Administration life.

  He lured customers gradually, peddling his product on his garbage rounds. “They’ll be more where this came from,” he would say. “Just you wait.”

  The Shades began to follow him on his rounds, lurking in the shadows to see if he might have something for them. He always did. More came, and still more.

  “Come to the Vale of Mourning on the King’s Anniversary,” he would whisper. “I’ll have something for you. Tell everyone.”

  The King and Queen’s wedding anniversary was a Kingdom-wide holiday in Death. All Administration offices were closed. So you would think someone would have found it odd to see an extra-large garbage wagon making its way from the central refuse dump to the Vale of Mourning, but no one did. Nor did any of the Administrators think anything of the swarms of Shades that seemed to be following it. The Dead were an odd sort, prone to strange gatherings, and the Administrators didn’t think much of it. Really, they didn’t think about the Dead at all.

  Even the Underworld Security Agency would be closed. The ten-foot-tall Sons of Argus, with their burly bodies and giant clubs, would be so full of wine and roasted Calydonian boar they wouldn’t be able to see out of any of their one hundred eyes.

  It was evening and a holiday. Time for fun. Time to frequent the ambrosia clubs and Anniversary galas. Time to drop by Tartarus (for Tartarus was always open for business) and watch the action, maybe buy a few souvenirs. Time to bathe in barrels of wine and darn the consequences. It’s a holiday!

  So there were thousands of Shades on the Vale that night, like a giant spectral army, all buzzing in expectation. And there, on top of his great wagon, was Philonecron, eight feet tall, swathed in a giant black robe, with a magnanimous smile stretched oddly across his pale, shadowy face.

  “Drink up!” he shouted. “There’s plenty for everyone!” He threw small jars one by one into the masses, and ghostly arms reached up and plucked them from the sky. “Don’t be shy!”

  More Shades came and still more; in front of Philonecron legions of Dead clamored and thronged. “I am Philonecron!” he shouted, hurling bottles everywhere. “Friend of the Dead!”

  “Philonecron!” a few voices shouted, and then more. In front of his eyes the Shades were thickening, gaining definition, character, even speech. One by one the Dead had life again—they were laughing, hollering, shouting his name. And with definition, character, laughter, came something else. He saw it in their eyes. They had will. He had them.

  “Would you like some more?”

  “Yes!” they screamed, and he picked up the tremendous hose he had made from Minotaur intestine and began to drench the crowd.

  And then he waited. He waited until every last Shade he could see had been touched by the blood. Hundreds, thousands of useless shadows becoming whole before his very eyes. And they had him to thank for it.

  “Does King Hades give you blood?” he shouted.

  “No!” they cried.

  “No! He denies you the one thing you want most. Is that fair?”

  “No!”

  “Ladies! Gentlemen! What kind of a king denies his subjects what they most desire? What kind of a king deliberately keeps his people in shadow? Death need not be a phantom existence. With me, you could Live again!” He had been practicing this speech for decades. He had it all thought through. “The Underworld is not for the gods, but for the Dead! For you! It’s time to take it back!” He raised his arms up in the air, so excited by the speech that he did not notice the cheers of the audience were slowly weakening.

  “Rise up!” he shouted. “Rise up against tyranny! Rise up! Follow me! We will have a new rule in the Underworld!”

  That’s when he noticed the immense shapes approaching him. He turned to look. Six Underworld Security Agents were lumbering toward him, clubs poised, apparently not glutted on Calydonian boar. Six hundred eyes blinked menacingly at him. Ten Griffins swooped down from the sky, howling and cackling, their enormous claws poised to rip into his skin. Three Erinyes appeared behind him, the snakes in their hair hissing wildly. And with them was the black, willowy form of Thanatos, riding in on a black winged horse, staring at him with an eerie composure that was marred only by a slight twitch in his left eyebrow.

  The Erinyes grabbed him, pulled snakes from their hair, and tied his hands with them. Before they could gag him, he shouted to the throng in front of him, “See what they do? See? Knock down the Palace! Free yourselves!”

  But it was too late. The effects of the blood were wearing off. They were becoming Dead again, Shades, phantoms, useless. They milled around aimlessly. Their will was gone.

  Philonecron was pulled away. Thanatos appeared and raised his hands to the crowd. The Vale was silent.

  “Go your ways, everyone,” Thanatos said, his voice carrying as if through eternity. “There is nothing for you here.”

  Philonecron had expected to be sent to Tartarus—where there was a special chamber for disloyal Immortals. He wasn’t afraid. Pain only made him stronger. He would come out eventually, he would begin his collection again, he would have enough blood to sustain the Shades through revolution, and then he could sit on Hades’s ebony throne and lock all the Shades up in Tartarus for good. It would take time, but he would begin again. He would collect blood for years, decades, centuries if he had to. He would not fail next time.

  But he was not sent to Tartarus. The Erinyes dragged him into Hades’s Palace. Hades stood before him, a mountain of cold rage.

  “Philonecron,” he said, his black eyes burning. “You are banished. You have betrayed me, and my world is forbidden to you now. You may never set foot in the Kingdom of the Dead again. You will spend all of eternity wandering through the empty plains of Exile.” He turned to go. Philonecron squirmed. Hades stopped, turned, and added, “Oh, and have a nice life.”

  For one year Philonecron wandered around the outskirts of Death, forbidden by Hades’s very words to cross the threshold into the Kingdom. He slept in a ca
ve and spent his days wandering the outer banks of the Styx with the Unburied—the lost souls who, for one reason or another, Charon would not ferry into Death.

  He practiced his spell casting (there was a great advantage to having a demon father) and performed experiments on the Unburied. He followed the Messenger into the Upperworld nearly every day to collect blood, but as the days went by, he could not help but despair. He would never have enough, he could never keep the Shades alive long enough to overthrow Hades. He was a general with no army.

  Then one day something happened. He was out on a blood-gathering round; the scent of Death had taken him to the body of an old woman somewhere in England. She had died peacefully, bloodlessly, and Philonecron would have to look elsewhere. But something struck him about the tableau in front of him. It was a typical deathbed scene: a family—a man, a woman, and a boy—tears rolling down their cheeks, heads bowed, whispers hanging in the still air. But there was something unusual about it. Something off. Something that caught his eye. The light in the room—no, no; the position of the body—no, no. It was the boy. There was something strange about the boy.

  Philonecron could not believe what he was seeing. But it was true. There was no denying it.

  The boy’s shadow was loose.

  CHAPTER 10

  Creative Problem Solving

  GATHER SOME CLAY FROM THE BANKS OF THE STYX. You may have to bribe Charon to look the other way, but that’s easily done. It would be better to use clay from the other bank, the one in the Underworld, but you cannot go there. So you make do.

  Take the clay. Soften it well with Stygian water.

  Form it into the shape of a man.

  Pause for a moment and think about your place in history, think about how the Titan Prometheus did just this, so long ago, to make the race of Man.

  Well, not quite this.

  Take one Unburied. Don’t use force. Be gentle. You need his loyalty. Tell him you will make it worth his while. Tell him you are going to change things.

  Show him the corpse of clay.

  Tell the Unburied to lie down. Right inside it. It won’t hurt a bit.

  Watch as the clay embraces his shadowy form.

  Now take an urn of ram’s blood. Pour it over the body. Don’t be shy. Drench the clay.

  Say the magic words.

  Wait.

  Wait…

  Purse your lips.

  Think.

  Take an urn of human blood. Pour it over the body. Drench the clay. Don’t be shy.

  Say the magic words.

  Wait.

  Wait…

  Purse your lips.

  Think.

  Raise up your arm.

  Mutter a few words.

  Let the skin on your arm open, then the vein, and let your own blood, your half-demon-half-god blood, drip over the clay form.

  Say the magic words.

  Wait…

  There!

  Behold.

  Alimb twitches. And again. Clay skin adheres to clay bone. Unburied spirit relaxes into molded form. Fingers wriggle. Eyes open. Mouth. He blinks up at you, you nod, and he slowly lifts his body out from the ground that birthed him. Clay falls from him. He stands, he looks his body up and down. Feet. Shins. Knees. Thighs. Hips. Stomach, chest, shoulders, arms…it’s all there. He is a man, or something very like a man. His body seems to stretch before your eyes, the stocky frame becomes too tall now, too thin, soon he stands as tall as you do, you, his master, but he looks as though you could break him with a glance. His death-white skin stretches tautly over his frame. His face is like a white clay skull. His eyes are yellowed, like memory. His lips are gray and scaly.

  Well, you say, looking him up and down.

  And then you make more.

  Soon you have twelve—a good number, an Olympian number—and you line them up, one by one, murmuring to them, murmuring to yourself. You have twelve, all identical, except for the letter of the alphabet you carve into each of their foreheads to signify the order they were made. You have twelve of them in front of you, their clay skin crackling, their every bone painted in shadow, and you hold your arms out magnanimously and say:

  My children. My people. How beautiful you are.

  We are one, you and I. We are the same.

  We are citizens of Exile, and I am your leader.

  Together we will make a Kingdom.

  But we will not be content to stay here, for we must take back what has been denied to us.

  Soon we will rule the Underworld.

  But we need an army. And you are going to help me get it.

  Their eyes drink in your meaning. You survey them up and down. Your eyebrow arches. You clear your throat. You clap your hands together and say:

  Right…let’s get you some clothes, shall we?

  CHAPTER 11

  Zee and His Shadows

  THE MORNING AFTER HIS GRANDMOTHER’S DEATH ZEE woke up feeling odd. This was to be expected—his grandmother had just died, and her death had been an unwelcome intruder in dream after restless dream the night before. So when he awoke, he found himself feeling achy and exhausted. He was torn between letting sleep carry him off again and trying to shake it off and face the day. But if he fell asleep, he’d eventually have to wake up and remember all over again that Grandmother Winter was dead.

  Zee decided that once was enough. He rubbed his eyes and stretched in the bed. He sat up. As soon as he was upright, a wave of dizziness flooded over him. His eyes filled with black, then the whole world seemed to go black, and he lay back down again. He exhaled, squeezed his eyes closed, and slowly sat up.

  Much better.

  He yawned, stretched, and stood….

  And had to sit down again.

  After a few minutes of steady breathing Zee managed to get up without any more problems, though his muscles still felt like dried-out clay. And his chest was filled with a burning, hollow feeling that was not remotely physical.

  Eventually Zee made it to breakfast, where, once again, his grandmother was not. His mother was there, sitting in the big green easy chair in the living room, wrapped in an afghan and staring off at nothing. She gave Zee a long hug and touched his cheek. Zee made his way into the kitchen, feeling his muscles protest a little. His father was scrubbing some pots in the kitchen sink.

  “Hey,” he said gently. “Can I make you something?”

  “Sure,” Zee said.

  Mr. Miller opened the fridge and took out a big pack of sausages and some eggs. He poured a tall glass of orange juice and brought it over to Zee, squeezing his shoulder softly. Zee drank the juice down.

  “How’re you holding up?” his dad asked quietly.

  Zee shrugged. His dad sat down at the table and put his arm around him. They sat for a moment, and his father seemed about to say something but then stopped when he noticed Zee’s face. “You know,” he said, “you look awfully pale…are you feeling all right? I mean physically….”

  “Yeah, um…I feel a little off today.”

  “Well,” Mr. Miller said, standing up, “let’s get you a nice big breakfast, shall we?”

  After breakfast (eggs and many, many sausages, which did help Zee feel better) his father sat down and talked to him gently about what would happen next. There would be a small funeral on Friday in Exeter. Afterward Mr. and Mrs. Miller would stay for a week or two to tie everything up. It would be a lot of work, and Zee could go back to London after the funeral if he wanted.

  Zee did not want. He wanted to stay.

  Summer was over for Zee in July, replaced by the strange season of mourning. Zee quit the football club—he walked to training on Monday to tell them, cutting through the university fields by unconscious habit and not even noticing that he was looking away—and spent his days helping his parents pack up Grandmother Winter’s house. There was no way he could play anymore, and he’d be leaving in a couple weeks anyway. But a few of his friends from the club came to the funeral, dressed in suits that had been hastily shipp
ed from their homes all over the West Country. Zee thought that it was pretty great of them to come. More would have been there, his friend Ben told him, but some of the guys on the team were sick.

  “I’ve been feeling weird myself,” said Zee. “Dizzy.”

  “Naw,” said Ben, “this is something more. They’ve got it bad. Flat on their backs. Totally useless to the club now. Gits. Plus we’ve lost our best forward!” Ben nudged Zee.

  “The best if you don’t count the other four,” Zee said.

  “Well, yeah,” grinned Ben. “That’s what I meant.”

  Zee thanked them all profusely for coming and promised to come by training before he left. He got invitations from three boys to stay with them next summer so he could play with the club again. He told them he’d think about it, but he didn’t mean it. As much as he liked the club, summer in Exeter would not be summer in Exeter without Grandmother Winter.

  “Hey,” Ben said, “some of us are going to the Grecians game tomorrow. I don’t know if you can, but…”

  Zee inhaled sharply. He had entirely forgotten about Samantha Golton. He couldn’t watch the match, not now. But he had no way of contacting Samantha to let her know; he had no idea where she was staying.

  “Can’t,” he said. “But listen, will you…” He trailed off. He couldn’t just send Ben to give her a message. That would be…ill mannered. His gran had taught him better than that. He would have to meet Sam himself, tell her himself. He’d meet her, send her off to watch the match, then go straight home. “You say hi to everyone for me.”

  “Sure, mate. Come by next week, or we’ll come get you.”

  The next day Zee took a bus to St. James Park an hour before match time and stood right in front of the gate. And waited.

  And waited.

  People flooded in around him, but none of those people was Samantha Golton. Or Ben, for that matter, or anyone else he knew.

  Then, fifteen minutes before match time, he saw one of Samantha’s friends a few yards away. He waved and she came toward him.