End of Days

by Max Turner

  I could feel that my eyes wanted to close. But this wasn’t the time for sleep. “I had something important to tell you,” I said to Mr. Entwistle. “It’s on the tip of my tongue.”

  “Was it about Hyde?”

  I couldn’t remember. Then more questions popped into my head. Why had he wanted me to meet with my uncle? And how had the two of them met up and reconciled? But I didn’t want to mention any of that with Luna right there. To her and Charlie, Maximilian was a villain.

  “I’ll be inside,” Mr. Entwistle said. “You can tell me later.” He tapped the side of the metal bed frame several times with his knuckles. “I’ll give you two a minute alone, but you might want to consider making an appearance soon. We have a lot to discuss. And a few important decisions to make.” He flicked the bottom of his hat in way of farewell, then opened the door and stepped out. The ambulance sank, then rose again.

  Luna was looking at me, biting her bottom lip. She rested her hand on my arm. I was sure she meant to comfort me, but I could tell by the expression on her face that she was nervous about something.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I just don’t know what’s going to happen when my dad finds out I’m here. He’s going to flip. So is Mom. But I couldn’t risk staying home. If something had happened to you, I would never have forgiven myself. I needed to be here.”

  “I’m glad you came.”

  She smiled. “Me, too. I just don’t want to have to turn around and go back home.”

  I didn’t want that either, although it might have been much safer for her not to stay. “Take me with you if you go,” I said.

  “I’d have to sneak you in the trunk.”

  That sounded perfect, so long as there was room for two.

  Luna stood and checked the machine at the bedside. “There’s not much left.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Blood. This is the last of it. There’s only about a half liter left.”

  She tilted her head so our faces were in line. It was dark inside, but some light from the streetlamps managed to sneak in through the tinted windows. Enough that I could see her emerald green eyes, her copper curls. She reached up and touched my fingers. Suddenly they were on fire, but in a good way.

  “Do you want to go in?” she asked.

  What I really wanted was to stay here with her, but if plans were being made, I didn’t want her to miss out, especially if it meant she might get to stay longer. Then I remembered what I had to tell everyone—that Detective Baddon’s son might be a vampire. I sat up. The room spun. Luna must have seen the look on my face.

  “Better not push it.” She put her hand on my chest and I flopped back down.

  “Wait.” I nodded toward the machine. “You can turn that off.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.” I sat up, more slowly this time. The dizziness came back, but I toughed it out. Sleep would have to wait. “There’s a faster way.” I pulled the needle from my arm, snapped the surgical tubing, removed the bag of blood from the machine, and drank. It wasn’t quite enough. My ankle and calf were still itchy. Some stinging remained. My head was clearing, but I didn’t get the usual urge to go marathon running. “That’s all we have? Is that what you said? This was it?”

  Luna slipped in front of me. We stood facing each other. Like Mr. Entwistle, I had to duck to keep my head from hitting the roof. It brought our faces closer together. Enough that I could feel her breath on my cheek.

  “That’s the last of it,” she said.

  “You didn’t bring any up with you?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry. The last batch I got was tainted. I was hoping to find more here.”

  “And did you?”

  She moved a bit closer. “No. But I’ll be all right for a while. I didn’t get poisoned last night.”

  “Last night? What time is it?”

  “Almost midnight. You’ve been out for about twenty hours or so.”

  Asleep for twenty hours? That meant I’d been out all day. But it also meant there were a good five hours or so before sunrise. I had a pretty good idea how I wanted to spend them. Then I heard footsteps outside the door. It opened a crack and Charlie’s face appeared.

  “Room service.” He smiled when he saw I was out of bed. “He lives.” He opened the door and stepped inside. “I hate to spoil the party, but Luna’s father is on the phone. He was so angry it almost blew apart. You two need to come inside.”

  — CHAPTER 26

  SECURITY

  I looked at Luna. I could see she was feeling the same disappointment I was. It was probably good that I didn’t have a driver’s license, or I might have put the ambulance in gear and made a run for the Mexican border. Charlie was obviously worried, too. He stepped out, leaving the door open behind him.

  Luna didn’t move. “It’s funny.”

  “What?”

  “Just how becoming a vampire changes things so much. I don’t mean the sun and food and everything like that.” She was standing close to me. It made it hard to concentrate. “I mean the way you feel changes.”

  I didn’t know what she was trying to tell me. I swallowed.

  “I get upset more often now,” she said. “The things people do . . . I don’t know why. And I feel . . . lonely, in a way I never used to. Especially at night. I don’t like it.”

  I understood. Vampires are complex creatures. We thrive in darkness. The setting sun awakens a deep restlessness in us. A hunger for the hunt, but also for the things that regular people want, including the company of friends. The night can be empty. Without Charlie and Ophelia, things would have been much worse for me. Luna was the only vampire in Newark, at least the only one we knew about. She was alone too often. But I was hoping to fix that.

  She was still looking at me. “And some things don’t change at all.” Her eyes were wide. Almost luminescent. I’ve described them before as emerald green, but that isn’t really true. Eyes are never one color. Hers had ribbons of amber in them. And olive streaks. The overall effect was shocking. And beautiful. I watched, spellbound, as her gaze fell to my necklace. She stepped closer and took the charm in her fingers. The full moon. With her other hand she took out the golden crescent that had belonged to my mother. “Some things are a perfect fit.”

  She looked up at me. I smiled. She smiled. We were smiling together. Again. It was nice.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said. She somehow got a bit closer. This might have been her talent.

  The door was still open. Charlie leaned in. “Sometime tonight would be nice, you slowpokes. Suki’s in the hot seat by herself. It’s torture in there.”

  I backed up and stood aside while Luna slipped past. For just an instant we were side by side. Her hand slid down my arm. Her fingertips gently grazed the back of my hand as she stepped down. I held the door, then followed her out.

  Charlie was looking at me funny. He had the same smile on his face when he was planning trouble.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing.” But he kept smiling.

  “No really. What is it?”

  “It’s nothing. Seriously.”

  I let the two of them go ahead. I didn’t know exactly where to go. We were parked in a lot behind a row of three-story apartments. I had expected us to be back at Ophelia’s safe house, the one we’d left to go to the hospital, but obviously, we’d had to move. I glanced back at the ambulance. It was covered, top to bottom, in a sloppy layer of black paint. That explained the smell I’d noticed earlier. It was still drying. Even the lights on top had been done. From up close, you could still see the brushstrokes. A monkey with a stick would have managed a better job.

  “Who did this?” I asked.

  “Me,” Charlie answered.

  “You missed a few spots.”

  “Who do I look like, Picasso? The sun was coming up. We needed to camouflage it. I was in a hurry.”

  I guess we wouldn’t have stayed hidden for too long with a stolen ambu
lance in the driveway. It looked more like a hearse now.

  Charlie strolled up beside me. “Come on. I don’t like it out here. I got the heebs.”

  The breeze picked up for a second and carried away the smell of drying paint. My hackles started to rise. The same feeling had come over me at the rave the night all the trouble started. As if I was being watched.

  “Do you see anything?” His eyes were busy scanning the backyards.

  I didn’t. Nothing unusual.

  Luna opened the back door. “Come on, you guys.”

  Charlie started in and I followed. Then I spotted the watcher. Or rather, the man stepped out of the shadows and revealed himself.

  I waited until Charlie was inside, then I hesitated on the back step and said, “Just a second.” Before he could object, I closed the door and hopped the fence into the neighbor’s yard.

  The man waiting there was wearing a commando outfit—all black. He looked like a graduate from the school of ninja. The only difference was his headgear. To his attire he’d added some kind of tight-fitting helmet with lenses. He might have borrowed it from Cobra Commander. Even without his face showing, I could tell it was my uncle Maximilian. Agent X. Something in the way he moved, like a stone golem, gave him away.

  “You feeling better?” he asked.

  “Yeah. A lot. I think I just need some more sleep.”

  “See that you get it.”

  He was holding a heavy gun in his hands. The barrel was unusually large. I’m sure it could have fired a shell to Florida. He flipped it up on his shoulder just as a car turned the corner. There was just enough space between the houses that we could see it. He stepped behind a tree before the headlights could pass over him. My eyes followed the car as it rolled gently to a stop. Then the brake lights went off and it kept on moving. It was a police cruiser.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve set up motion detectors around the property. If anything larger than a cat approaches the apartment, an alarm will sound inside the house.”

  That was just like my uncle. One step ahead.

  I glanced back over my shoulder at the apartment complex. “Do the others know you’re here?”

  He crossed his arm over his chest. “Not exactly. I agreed to stay out of sight, just in case. I won’t be here for long. My last radiation treatment is tomorrow morning, and I’m a bit short on sleep. It’s probably better if I stay out of things for now.”

  He didn’t need to explain why. After handing us all over to the Prince of Darkness last summer, keeping his distance was probably a good idea.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “As much as can be expected. I’ll be fine if all goes well at the hospital.” He nodded a good-bye and turned.

  “Wait,” I whispered. “I thought you should know a few things. After you left the room, Detective Baddon came looking for you.” This led to a conversation about the detective’s son and what I’d seen with Charlie in the hospital. “I think the boy might be a vampire.”

  “Possibly. His condition does seem very unusual. I’ll look into it. If his son’s infected, then we have every reason to expect Hyde will go after him, too. He’ll need protection.”

  I agreed, and I said so. I sensed that my uncle was about to go, but I had a few questions. “When did you leave the hospital?”

  “Right after I talked to you. Why?”

  “Have you seen this thing?”

  “No.”

  “But you’ve hunted werewolves before. Do you think that’s what he is?”

  He shrugged. “We shouldn’t assume he is. To be honest, this thing sounds different. Faster. Stronger. More intelligent. Entwistle says it can talk. I’ve never heard of a shape changer that could do that. Not as a beast. But I’ve only seen two. Lycanthropes are very rare.”

  “Why?”

  My uncle took a deep breath. His head tipped up, as if he was thinking. I could imagine his eyes, focused and intense, under his helmet. “They’re not like vampires. They aren’t immortal. Lycanthropy doesn’t bring them back from death. Quite the opposite, in fact. It ages them quickly. And most werewolves kill their prey, so they don’t spread whatever virus causes it. But I think the main reason is the Coven. When word of a lycanthrope gets out, they move very quickly to neutralize it.”

  I wondered why the Coven hadn’t done anything about Hyde, but I guess I already knew the answer. They were fighting among themselves.

  “We’ll be all right, Zachary, if we keep our heads screwed on straight. We just can’t afford to make any mistakes, that’s all.”

  No mistakes. That sounded painfully simple. And tragically impossible.

  “You need to get some more sleep,” he said. “I can see it in your eyes. Your father used to get that way when he was tired and had too much to think about. You’d better get inside.” He nodded a good-bye. I watched him return to the shadows, where he stopped to examine a small device staked to the ground. A motion detector, I was guessing. I heard a latch behind me and turned. Luna was waiting at the back door of the apartment. She held it open for me. She looked upset. Her eyes were watering.

  I sprinted over. “What is it?”

  “I’m sorry, but we have to go home.”

  — CHAPTER 27

  THE HUNT BEGINS

  I felt my lungs deflate. Through the open back door I could hear Ophelia talking with Mr. Entwistle. He was ranting about the stupidity of anyone under the age of two hundred.

  “Does he really think she’ll be safer there?” he asked. “What protection can he offer?”

  “He’s still looking for a cure,” someone said. “He thinks if he works hard enough, he can make her better.” I didn’t recognize the voice, but I figured it had to be Suki.

  Luna and I walked in through the back hall, past the kitchen, and into the living room where everyone was waiting.

  “I tried that route with Zachary for almost eight years,” Ophelia said. “There is no cure.”

  I remembered this. Ointments and pills and injections and blood transfusions. Most of it just made things worse.

  “It’s not his speciality,” Suki said, “but he thinks one of his colleagues can help. A blood specialist in Toronto. They went to school together. My dad thinks he might be close to something.” She was sitting on the couch, her feet drawn up on the cushions and her knees bent so her head was resting on top of them. It seemed as if she were trying to take up as little space as possible. The change in her appearance was so dramatic, if I hadn’t expected her to be sitting there, I wouldn’t have recognized her. The long blond hair of last summer had been cut short and dyed black, and she had piercings above each eye. Her skin, normally bronzed, was pale as alabaster. Charlie was beside her, a foot of space between them. Last year they would have been wrapped up like two pretzels.

  “Do you think we can talk him into letting you stay?” Charlie said.

  Suki looked away and rolled her eyes. “Good luck.”

  I moved farther into the room toward the only empty chair—a La-Z-Boy across from the sofa Charlie and Suki were in. I offered it to Luna, but instead of sitting down, she pushed me into it. My body flopped back against the cushions. I could easily have fallen asleep.

  Ophelia was leaning against the kitchen counter, a phone in her fist. Both she and Mr. Entwistle looked frustrated. He was standing beside the window, peeking past the blind, his face grim.

  “Are you serious?” I asked Suki. She seemed a bit nervous, a far cry from the bubbly, bouncy person I’d met a year ago.

  “Yeah. He wouldn’t let us stay here if it was the last place on earth.”

  She didn’t have to explain why. After what had happened last summer at the Abbott family cottage, I wasn’t exactly at the top of their Christmas-card list. Dr. Abbott wouldn’t want his daughters anywhere near me. It was unfortunate. With Mr. Entwistle here, this was the safest place next to the White House, but that wasn’t what I’d been asking about.

  “No. I mean about the cu
re. Is someone really close?”

  Suki shrugged.

  I glanced at Charlie. He was scowling. “Would you really want one?”

  Would I want a cure? I wasn’t sure. Of course, I could imagine being human—or at least being able to go out in the sun. But I’d been a vampire for most of my life. I didn’t really know what it meant to be a normal person.

  Luna sat down on the armrest of my chair. “I’m not going anywhere.” Her words and tone surprised me. She wasn’t normally rebellious. That was more Suki’s domain. It was what made her so compatible with Charlie.

  “I’m not going to shelter you here without your parents’ approval,” Ophelia said.

  Mr. Entwistle was still holding the same wine bottle that he’d had in the ambulance. He swallowed a mouthful and frowned. He looked like an undertaker raised from the grave. “If we let Luna leave, we’ll be killing her. The Coven are already sending their drones here. Hyde killed one in your driveway. When word of that gets back to head office, some higher-ups are going to send in the troops. If we don’t stick together, we’ll be finished.”

  “I’m more worried about Hyde than the Coven,” Charlie said.

  “You should be worried about both. But Hyde’s a local problem. The Coven is global. It’s just a matter of time before they’re here in force. If we allow Luna to become isolated, she’ll be killed.” Mr. Entwistle turned and looked her square in the face. “Your father can’t protect you.”

  “I know. I don’t want to go home. No one there really understands what I’m going through.”

  I looked over at Suki when she said this. A hurt expression was on her face.

  “When is your father coming?” I asked.

  “He’s leaving now. He’ll be here tomorrow.”

  “And then what?”

  Ophelia looked uncertain. “We’ll see. Perhaps we can talk him out of leaving right away.”

  I looked at Luna, then at Suki, to see if any trace of hope was in their faces. There wasn’t. No one moved. Then something beeped. It was coming from downstairs.

  “What is that?” Luna asked.