by Max Turner
“So, you want to talk to old Baoh, eh? Well, young man, there is a price. There is always a price.”
I had no money. No valuables. This was going to be a short meeting.
“There are many ways of paying.” He faced me so we were standing toe-to-toe. “I am of the ancient world—an age long past. But some things endure through time, and human nature is one of them. Pride. Courage. The need to prove oneself. Fear of failure. There are countless examples. Truths that don’t change. You understand?”
I nodded.
“Cowardice, greed, selfishness. These also endure.” His voice grew angry. Then he calmed. “So what kind of man are you becoming?”
I didn’t have an answer for this.
“In my time, all men were tested by adversity. Pain, loss, struggle. There is less of this now. Life is too easy. But there is one arena in which a man’s true nature could always be discerned, in this or any age. It is the crucible of war, of combat. You cannot know a man until you see him in battle. The truth of this endures also. And so you must be tested.” He leaned forward. His voice grated against my ears. “Fail me, young blood, and you’re doomed.”
— CHAPTER 18
THE PROPHECIES EXPLAINED
Baoh’s back was to the television. The remote was still in his hand. Without turning, he reached over his shoulder and clicked it on. Then he nudged me to the side so we could stand shoulder to shoulder.
“You’re a Microsoft man. I can tell.” He handed me a Nintendo controller. “I prefer the Wii myself.” When I accepted it, he bowed. “We shall see what kind of man you are becoming. The ancient sport of boxing. Or close enough. I much prefer this version. Less painful. But still a valid test. One you’ll need to pass, if you intend to survive the End of Days.”
I stared at the screen. This wasn’t at all what I expected. I wondered if this was how Alice felt when she fell down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.
He turned to face the television as the game loaded. Then we chose our avatars, the little figures that would represent us in the fight. Instead of the usual dozens to choose from, there were only two—a blind monk with oversize eyebrows in an orange robe and a jogger in scrubs with a widow’s peak. It seemed fitting.
As soon as the bell sounded, I stepped forward and threw a jab. I followed up with a right cross and left hook. He ducked and countered. I put up my guard, then dropped a good one on his nose.
“That was pure luck,” he shouted.
I did it again.
“Take advantage of a blind man, will you? Shame! Shame!”
The third time I moved in, he pounded me back with a flurry of his own. “See? Hah. Thought you could get the better of old Baoh!”
His flurries continued. “I got you figured out, young blood. You’re finished now.”
He floored me. This happened again. And again. I struggled to my feet. Or, my avatar did. His eyes were crossed and he wobbled on rubbery legs.
“You’re just being stubborn now,” he said.
The fight ended a few minutes later with his icon, the monk, unconscious on the mat.
Baoh whacked his controller against his palm. “This thing’s not working right. Must be a loose wire.” He tossed it with disgust onto the sofa, then walked behind a counter and started pouring himself a cocktail. “You’re not too shabby. Ophelia would be proud of you. Focused. Difficult to frustrate. Slow to anger. Little vanity. A good balance of aggression and self-preservation. Patience. Confidence. Little fear, just enough to keep you on your toes. You lack a recognizable game plan, but otherwise, she has done well.”
It sounded like a compliment, so I said thanks.
“Courteous, too,” he added, holding his drink up to the light. He lowered it under his nose. It wasn’t quite right, so he continued to fiddle with the ingredients. “Combat, still the best test of a man. Even in a video game. Who you are—it comes through in all that you do, no?” He fixed me with his eyeless stare. “So . . . here is the real test! What did you learn about me?”
His question caught me completely off guard. I took a deep breath. What had I learned? That he could have used a bit of time in the Nicholls Ward. “You don’t take yourself as seriously as I expected you to.”
He nodded as if this was true.
“You’ve adapted to the times. You aren’t stuck in the past.”
“Keep going,” he said.
“There’s little bitterness in you.” I glanced around the room. “You enjoy your life—being a vampire, having fun. You’ve surrounded yourself with things that are beautiful.” Once I got going, I was on a roll. “You’re good-humored. Observant. You see remarkably well for a man with no eyes. And you could have beaten me, but you didn’t.”
“And what does that tell you?”
“That you’re willing to suffer a loss to learn something.”
“Not bad. You missed a few things. My incomparable charm, for example. And superior intelligence. But I forgive you.” He raised his glass as if he was saluting me, then took a cautious sip to test it. The face he made told me he approved. “So what did Ophelia want? Not just for us to meet, I think, eh? She had something specific in mind.”
“I don’t know. She’s great at keeping secrets.”
Baoh took a seat on the sofa. “Baaahhh,” he scoffed. “All women are that way. Knowledge is power. Men have to learn it. Women know by instinct.” I heard him crunch on an ice cube. “So what do you have to ask? Everyone has questions these days. Where do I invest my money? How do I lose weight without exercising or changing my diet? What’s the best way to make my ex-lover jealous? You need help with your résumé?”
I shook my head. And thought. The first question that popped into my mind was How did you get to be such a weirdo? But it didn’t seem appropriate. “Do you know anything about this Beast? The one that’s going around killing off vampires?”
“What?” He spat out his ice and started hacking. It took him a moment to recover. “No one told me about this!” He looked over his shoulder as if the door to the living room were about to explode off the hinges. “I hope he isn’t following you.”
“No. He isn’t.” I had to pause to think. “You mean you don’t know anything about this?”
“When you get to be my age, no one tells you anything. They just assume you know it all. Does this Beast have a name?”
“We call him Mr. Hyde.”
“Does he have seven heads and ten horns?”
I shook my head.
“Well, that’s a relief. Seven heads and ten horns would be bad. Where is all this happening?”
“In Peterborough.”
“That is also a relief.” Baoh wiped his shirt clean where he’d spilled his drink. “But not to you, I suppose. You live in Peterborough?”
“Yes.”
“Is that the place with that big tower that spins?”
He must have meant the CN Tower. “No, that’s in Toronto.”
“Right, right.” He took another drink, then pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “Want a rematch?”
I started shaking my head. “I thought you were a prophet. That you could give me some advice.”
“I am! But what were you expecting? Prophecy is not an exact science. If it were, I’d have bought Microsoft stock back in the eighties. And I can’t prophesy on the Dream Road.”
“Oh.”
“So you don’t have any questions?”
I had tons, once I’d thought about it. “I need to know how to beat this thing. And how to deal with the Coven.”
“Yikes. I’ll need something stronger for that.” He rose and went back to the bar. “Now where did I leave my opium pipe?”
“It’s back in the temple.”
His face sank. He started digging through a liquor cabinet.
“I read some of your prophecies. Some of them I didn’t understand.”
Baoh was pouring himself another drink. “I don’t understand them, either.” He waved his hand in a circular motion a
s if trying to remember something. “And those prophecies weren’t really mine.” He tested his concoction and made a face, then added more alcohol from the bottle he was holding. “No. They’ve been around for centuries. I just tweaked them a little bit. Creative license, eh. Not a bad job. Baoh aims to please.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Was this guy some kind of sideshow phony?
“Baaahhh. Don’t get so upset. Prophecies are like that. Difficult to read. Over time, they change, or perhaps we change and see the signs differently. The originals bore no fruit, either. They were human prophecies for a human world. Or so we first thought, centuries ago. A noble hunter would die and leave his sons orphaned. It is over six hundred years old. Very close to the ones you read the other night.” He reached into his shirt pocket and unfolded a piece of paper. Then he set it on the coffee table so we could both see it. It was the letter from Mutada.
“Where did you get that?”
“From your memory,” he said. “This is a shared dream, after all.
“This is a mistake,” he said, pointing to the page.
The Lamb will be their shepherd [indecipherable muttering follows] . . . a scourge. He will lead them to springs of living water . . . to destruction. Behold, he is coming soon.
“Indecipherable muttering? You’ve got to be joking! I was as clear as the tax man.” He waved a hand over the passage. “Amateurs!”
The Lamb will be a shepherd or a scourge. He will lead them to springs of living water, or to destruction. Behold, he is coming soon.
He pointed to it, then took another sip. “There, that’s better. And much improved over the original version. It was in Latin, you know, although I’m told there’s a Han version that’s older. No one can find it. Probably destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. But if you’re a fan of irony, you’ll like this little twist. In the fifteenth century, the prophets all lined up behind Vlad Dracula. Can you believe it? Your creator, no less.
“Vlad’s father was a great falconer, a nobleman. One of the founders of the Order of the Defeated Dragon. And a mighty cavalryman. Dracul—the Dragon—he was called. He was assassinated, and so the great hunter died. He left many sons, the Sons of the Dragon, behind him as orphans. Vlad was a hostage of the Turks at the time. When he emerged from his prison, great things were expected. . . . Great things . . .” Baoh sipped his drink and shook his head. “But Vlad led the Western crusade against the Turks straight into the toilet.” He paused and mumbled quietly to himself for a few seconds, lost in thought. “After his death, his head was taken by the Turks to Constantinople. Istanbul. My guess is, it must have been the head of a changeling. In any case, when he came back as a vampire and formed his Coven, he lost his interest in human history. It was too fleeting, too temporary for his liking. He became an alchemist, and the scourge of the vampire world. I’ll bet my best tea set he’s killed more of us than the Roman Catholic Church. He says it’s to keep the spread of the disease under control, but I wonder . . .”
“Is he alive?” I asked.
Baoh shook his head. “Vlad? No—he sleeps, and it is always best to let a sleeping Dragon lie, eh? I hope no one wakes him, but I suspect the Baron Vrolock, Dracula, will rise again before the End of Days is concluded. But this is not the trouble you speak of, no? You mentioned a vampire hunter. A creature—Mr. Hyde. Do you think he is the Beast of the Apocalypse? The Beast that none can war against?”
“You mean he can’t be beaten?”
“Yes.”
“I hope not. But Mr. Entwistle couldn’t beat him, and he claims to be the greatest fighter alive in the world.”
“Who is Mr. Entwistle?”
“A vampire. John Entwistle.”
“What? The bass player from the Who? He’s come back as a vampire? Wow, that’s cool! I always liked the Who. I’m a bit of a pinball wizard myself, you know.”
I shook my head. This dream was getting a bit nutty, even for me. “Not the musician. A different John Entwistle. Ophelia says he was once John Tiptoft.”
Baoh’s eyebrows shot skyward. He swallowed an ice cube whole. I actually watched it go down his throat. “Are you certain? What does he look like?”
I did my best to describe Mr. Entwistle’s appearance. His weathered features, scruffiness, and long, salt-and-pepper hair.
“You sure that isn’t the Undertaker?” Baoh topped up his drink and sat back down on the couch. “Well, that explains it.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Ophelia insisted that we meet now—on very short notice. She is trying to hide her feelings, but not much gets past old Baoh. She is terrified. I haven’t seen her that scared since your father died.” He looked at me when he said this. With his sunglasses on, you could easily forget he was blind.
“I think she’s worried about the Coven,” I said. “And about Hyde. I don’t think Mr. Entwistle is the problem.”
Baoh swirled his drink delicately in his hand. The room was so quiet I could hear the sound of ice clinking against the edges of the glass. “I wouldn’t assume that. No one knows who he really is. His past is cloaked in darkness. It was decades after his turning when he emerged as John Tiptoft, the Earl of Worcester. How many men he has been since that time, and how many men he was before, only he can say, but he has been a mercenary in his day, and an executioner, a warlord, a murderer. The worst kind of vampire—ruthless and cruel. Death walks at his right shoulder. She would be wise to keep her distance from him.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. Without Mr. Entwistle, we didn’t have a chance. “He couldn’t be as bad as Vlad.”
Baoh’s lips turned down as if he was puzzling it over. “As a man, a prince, Vlad killed with purpose. With great enthusiasm, to be sure, but always for a reason. He was not as crazy as history books would have you believe. As a vampire, he kills with equal enthusiasm, or he did, but again, for a reason. To stop the spread of the disease. To silence those people who found out about us. Tiptoft was a different kind of monster. He killed for fun. For sport. To satisfy some sadistic craving.” Baoh sat back and pursed his lips. “In the end, which is worse?”
I was speechless. Mr. Entwistle only spoke to me about forgiveness and truth and doing what was right. This had to be a mistake.
I felt Baoh’s hand on my shoulder. His sunglasses were off. I stared at his eyeless eyes. “He is ancient, Zachary. And there is only one reason God permits us old-timers to live so long. It is because the sins of our first lives are so heinous, it takes us centuries to atone, to redeem ourselves. If John Entwistle is John Tiptoft, is he atoning for his past sins?”
I nodded.
“Then he might be a changed man. Never underestimate the transformative power of pain and loss and time, of love and forgiveness and faith. People can change. Why, look at old Baoh. Two centuries ago I weighed five hundred pounds.” He paused and settled into the sofa cushions. “Hard to believe, eh? I look pretty snazzy for a man of twelve hundred, wouldn’t you say?”
I would say, and I did. He seemed pleased.
“Now, whether you can trust this John Entwistle or not, Baoh can’t say. But I would advise you to be careful. You have a role to play in the future of our kind. It is your decency that makes you suitable. Be righteous, and if you survive, you will have earned it, and if you die, you will move into the next world with a clean soul.”
“Is that what it says in the prophecies?”
“Baaahhh, who knows? They only make sense when they’ve already come true. That’s the trouble with them. But this isn’t a helpful answer, eh? Let me say that the prophecies you read are as accurate as I can make them. I check often for signs and portents. I meditate. I listen to the inner voice that speaks to me, and sometimes through me. It might be God. Might be the devil. Might be a restless spirit, good or bad. I might have a split personality. Baoh doesn’t have all the answers. But I can tell you this: for decades those vampires with the power of true sight have witnessed the coming of the messiah. No two seers agree on
all the details. No two visions are perfectly identical. But the essence remains the same. The greatest vampire hunter the world has ever seen will die, or has died—perhaps by his own hand. His son will be orphaned and will become a blood drinker. There is some disagreement about which comes first. What we all agree upon is that the future of our kind rests with him, with this orphan—the hunter’s son. And he will be a saint, or a scourge. He will elevate our kind to new heights, or lead us to destruction. A time of change is upon us. Apocalypse. An end and a beginning. Perhaps only for vampires. Perhaps for the whole of the world. God only knows, and He is usually very quiet about His plans.”
God only knows . . . I looked at the floor, thinking. My head was full of questions. “Am I that messiah?”
“That is for God to know.”
“So what do I do? Who can I trust? This thing, this Beast, it seems unstoppable. And the Coven wants me dead. And my friends. They’ve already sent one vampire. Mr. Entwistle thinks they’ll send an army of them once they stop fighting one another.”
Baoh put his sunglasses back on, took a sip of his drink, and chomped down on another piece of ice. “A smart warrior fights his battles one at a time. Focus on the most immediate threat.”
“That’s Mr. Hyde.”
He sat back and thought. “Any creature that bleeds can die. You must only hope that he is not one of us—a vampire. Only against a lycanthrope will you have a chance.”
I wanted to ask what he meant by this, but I was starting to fade, literally. My body was almost see-through. I looked at my hand and saw a blurry image of the carpet coming through from underneath.
“What is happening?” I asked, but I already knew the answer. The same thing had happened to Luna when I went to visit her.
“You are waking up, Daniel Zachariah Thomson. But have no fear. All will be well, if you walk the righteous path, and do not do to others that which is harmful to yourself.”
