New Order

by Max Turner

  “We can’t stop here. Those freaks haven’t reached this section, but if one does and starts screaming …”

  “I’m not worried about the horde,” I said. “With Famine dead, they won’t be the same crew of mindless personality disorders we saw earlier.”

  “Maybe not. But it doesn’t mean they’re on our side.”

  He had a good point.

  Standing was difficult, but I made my way along, wincing, with Famine’s corpse cradled delicately in my arms. My burns started to heal, but not as quickly as they should have. I needed blood and a long rest. My skin soon grew itchy. I wanted to scratch myself raw. It slowed me to a snail’s pace, which agitated Vincent. He kept running ahead and then doubling back, as if it might hurry me along.

  “I’m going to go ahead,” he said finally. “It’s not good to keep Vlad waiting.”

  He took off.

  A few minutes later, I heard the grating sound of Vlad’s dragon armour. It was still coated with ash and dust. “We need to keep moving,” he said. “Pestilence is still looking for us.” The Dragon Blade was resting on his shoulder. There was energy in his expression and movements that had been missing earlier, and his skin colour had returned.

  “You’ve fed,” I said.

  “Yes. Miklos brought several of his kin so that you can feed as well. Once you are restored, we will rejoin the others and plan our next move.” His eyes passed from me to the Countess. “Bathory was depraved in life. She has never been anything but a deranged narcissist. You should have let her burn.”

  I was tired and forgot to shield my thoughts: namely, that men would have said he was just as depraved, but when I’d had the chance to destroy him, I hadn’t.

  He shifted so he was right in front of me, the tip of his sword at my throat. I had to back up to the cave wall to keep from being cut open. The Changeling’s truth-in-small-bites comment came to mind. Even tiny morsels could be bitter to swallow, I supposed. The only sound in the cave was the rasp of his breath as he considered what to do.

  “You would not have survived in my time,” he said. “Your enemies would have buried you alive.”

  What could I say to that? It was probably true. But at least I would have died with a clear conscience.

  Vlad snorted, then lowered his blade and shifted away. I followed, carrying the Countess, until we reached the area where Miklos was waiting. He was wearing night-vision goggles. Two young girls were huddled nearby. Identical twins. Their hair had been braided down the sides and they were wearing dresses with puffy sleeves that reminded me of two old-fashioned dolls. Both were pale. In the darkness, neither of them could see. Their expressions were blank, as though they were sleepwalking. The smell of blood was in the air.

  Hunger knotted my stomach. I shifted Famine’s body so I could scratch at my neck. Vlad said something and Miklos walked over. He was holding a chalice. When he spoke, his accent was thick, and his words unusually formal, so it took me a moment to figure out what he’d said.

  “From Draculista to Draculista. Please accept the blood of my kin. May it preserve you through the ages.”

  I thanked him and raised the cup. The smell was intoxicating. It took every ounce of my willpower not to drink. Instead, I held the chalice over Famine’s mouth and let the blood dribble in. Miklos’s solemn expression turned to astonishment, then anger. He shouted something to Vlad, then tried to take the cup away. I pushed him back gently, but the cave floor was damp and slick, and he lost his footing.

  “Have you lost your wits?” Vlad snapped. “This man is a direct descendant of my house!” He grabbed hold of my arm, but I planted my foot in his midsection and pushed him back. He drew the Dragon Blade and closed in.

  “Wait!” I shouted. “Look.”

  He planted the tip of his sword against my chest but kept his eyes on Famine. Where the blood touched her, she was regenerating. It was a fascinating sight, and Vlad, despite his anger, was captivated.

  “We need to question her,” I said. “She’ll have information about the Changeling, and she might know what has happened to the Baptist.”

  Famine’s skin had burned away, so we saw her muscles first. They turned pink, and then red. Skin formed. It was see-through at first, like cellophane, but it quickly turned to alabaster. But that wasn’t what caught my eye. I saw what wasn’t there. Then she coughed. The sound woke both girls, who started shrieking. Miklos scampered back to offer them what comfort he could. The Countess started to thrash as though she were on fire again. Most of her skin was still missing. She screamed. The power within her voice was phenomenal. I would have blacked out, but Vlad stepped in and drove the Dragon Blade through her heart. Her scream faded to a whisper and her limbs stopped moving. He drew the blade out and poised it as if to cleave her head off. I stepped in the way.

  “Not everyone is worth saving,” he said.

  It hardly mattered. He’d put an end to things, at least for now. But we had learned something of immeasurable value. “There’s not a mark on her,” I said.

  Vlad quietly examined her corpse. Her body was still charred in the areas untouched by blood, but around her neck, the burns were gone and the skin was white and free of blemishes. There wasn’t a trace of the Changeling’s runes anywhere.

  CHAPTER 52

  THE GRAVE

  “DO YOU KNOW what this means?” I asked.

  Vlad didn’t answer me. Miklos was trying to comfort his children. The two men spoke for a moment in what I guessed was Romanian. Then Vlad shifted closer, the Dragon Blade hanging loosely in one hand.

  “Miklos is more than just my servant. He is our host. To spurn the gift of his daughters’ blood is a grave insult. Laying hands on him in anger is many times worse. The pub where your friends are resting is his establishment. He has forbidden you to enter. I will try to change his mind and repair some of the damage you have done. Until that happens, you must wait here. I will return at sunset. You should be safe, so long as you don’t stray.” He shifted beside Miklos and whispered something, then sent him and his daughters on ahead. “Sunset,” he added. Then he was gone.

  I found the driest bit of floor and lay down. Despite the tension surrounding Vlad’s departure, my thoughts were hopeful. If the sun had removed Famine’s mark, the same might have happened for Tiptoft. I wondered if that might help him remember who he was, or rather, who I wanted him to be.

  Sleep came quickly. I didn’t stir until Vlad nudged me with his boot. I stretched and yawned, then sat up. He was holding a spade in each hand.

  “Night has fallen,” he said. “We must go.”

  I inspected my hands. The skin was still pink and scarred. I needed blood. “Are we meeting the others?”

  “Not yet. There is a person we have to find.” He put a hand under my arm to help me up, then handed me a spade. “Come. We have some digging to do.”

  We left Famine’s body under a pile of stones. Once the cairn was finished, he led me deeper into the caves until we were well outside the city. He seemed remarkably calm. I searched for signs of yesterday’s anger, but none were evident.

  Eventually, the cave we followed opened on a steep bank at a bend in the river. I could still see the distant lights of Buda and Pest rippling on the water.

  “Where are the others?” I asked.

  “Back in the city,” he said. “They have placed their faith in us. We must not fail them.”

  “What about the Changeling?” I asked. “And the Horsemen?”

  “Gone to lick their wounds, I would imagine.”

  “And the Baptist?”

  “Probably dead.”

  He led me to a dirt road set within a forest of very young trees. They looked cold and naked in the winter air. Vlad had oiled his armour. He wasn’t shifting; he walked with quiet, carefully measured steps. He pulled up suddenly and turned to his left, then started counting paces. His eyes scanned the dead leaves littering the ground.

  “There,” he said, pointing to a large rock that rose
several feet from the earth.

  We walked over to it, then he stood on top and faced south. Ten paces later, in an open area between two oaks, he rammed his shovel into the ground. I went to work beside him. The top layer of earth was frozen, so our progress was slow. For a time neither of us spoke, then my curiosity got the better of me.

  “Who are we looking for?” I asked.

  Vlad didn’t answer. His spade hit a rock and sparked. He jumped down into the shallow, man-sized hole we’d dug and pried the large stone loose with his thick fingers. It must have weighed several hundred pounds, but he hefted it with ease.

  “The Changeling has destroyed the undead vampires I had resting in Curtea de Arges, Castle Dracula, Fagaras, Giurgiu, St. George’s in Tirgoviste and Suceava. They are gone, and with them the talents I might have possessed. Of my sanctuaries, none remain that are safe. All of my former allies are either dead or have changed sides, with the exception of your friends, who in our world are little more than children. All I really have left is Ophelia. When I complete the antidote, she will take her rightful place with me. It will be as it once was, before you and your wretched father ruined everything.”

  The hackles on my neck rose. Vlad reached behind his back and removed a tranquilizer rifle from under his cloak.

  “It was clear to me as we entered the cave to meet the Baptist that she cared more for your safety than for mine. I cannot risk that she might turn from me to you at some time when my life is in the balance. I cannot have her loyalty divided.”

  He pointed the gun at me and pulled the trigger.

  Shrish.

  I tried to jump out of the way, but I was so surprised I forgot to shield my thoughts. One of my legs spasmed. This was Vlad’s doing. The dart hit the fleshy part of my throat. I grew dizzy, then collapsed face down into the hole we’d dug. I couldn’t move.

  “I replaced the tranquilizer with a paralytic agent,” Vlad said. “I didn’t want you to sleep through this.” He flipped me over and started shovelling dirt onto me.

  “I hope you can forgive me for allowing the Changeling to abduct you. Istvan was already working with him closely, and I thought the offer of you and Castle Dracula might further their relationship, but the Changeling is too cautious. He kept Istvan at arm’s length and, to my chagrin, neither killed you nor forced you to take his mark. It is obvious that he sent you back only to get to Ophelia and me.”

  The moon was rising. Vlad was pensive, and for a time I heard nothing but the scrape of his shovel as he piled more dirt on me. With each passing moment, my distress grew until it seemed it would crush me. I couldn’t move. I was completely helpless. And I was going to die. This alone wouldn’t have scared me, as I’d been to the tunnel of light and knew it for what it was, a place of healing. But there is an instinct to survive in all living things, and coupled with this was a bitter sense of failure, and of being used and deceived and betrayed. My spirit railed against the injustice of it, and against my powerlessness. And against the awful truth that I’d never see my friends again. That neither Luna nor Charlie would ever know that I was stuck in a hole, or that Vlad had put me there. It seemed that once I was buried, the truth would be buried with me. If I’d been able, I would have screamed murder until the sky cracked open.

  “I never believed in the prophecy,” Vlad said at last. “Not even when it was applied to me centuries ago. The son of a great hunter. An orphan who would be born again. Nonsense. Or so I thought. But Vincent has made a believer of me. I told you that you would regret keeping him alive.”

  I regretted a lot of things, but raising Vincent after his father’s death wasn’t one of them. I only wished he could have been there so he could see Vlad for the monster he was.

  “I think he has taken quite a liking to Luna. I must confess, I have encouraged this attachment where I could. It will help her deal with the pain of your death. And once they are closer, it will give me another tool with which to leverage him. You must admit, he is certainly better at taking care of her. You seem to have developed the nasty habit of dying just when you’re needed most.”

  He stopped shovelling. One side of his mouth rose in a smile. “You have only yourself to blame. Of what use are you to me if you would rather save my enemies than kill them?”

  If I could have spoken I would have quoted Abraham Lincoln: “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?” Mr. Entwistle had taught me that. No sooner did I think the words than I realized how badly I’d taken this advice to heart. I’d never made any sincere effort to befriend Vlad. I hadn’t forgiven him, nor had I expressed any gratitude for his keeping my friends and me alive. Had I acted differently, I might not have been in this mess.

  “You fool yourself,” Vlad said. “Friendship for men like me is impossible. The entire relationship is based on equality, and none are my equal.”

  He threw a shovelful of dirt on my face. I tried to close my eyes, but my lids were paralyzed, like the rest of me. More dirt fell. The night sky disappeared. The sound of the shovel was muted as soil filled my ears. My next breath was nothing but dirt. Some air snuck in, but not enough. What little oxygen I had trapped in my lungs soon disappeared. Then the pressure in my chest and head was too much and I passed out to the muffled sound of Vlad patting down the soil of my grave.

  CHAPTER 53

  LÚ-YÍNG, THE SHADOW ROAD

  I’M SURE DYING can be terrifying for those who’ve never tried it, but the act itself is surprisingly simple. Your heart stops and you go to the light. I expected the warmth of it to surround me, but it didn’t. I wondered if this meant I was undead again. Stuck once more between life and death.

  I felt an odd pressure against my chest and I began to sink. I thought of something Vlad had said, that not all who died went to the light. It occurred to me as I sank into the dark earth that I didn’t deserve to go to the tunnel. On the ship, L’Esprit Sauvage, I’d broken a promise to myself. I had killed. And I’d done nothing to atone for it.

  As I sank, my image stretched behind me. It was similar to the streak you see in a photograph if a person moves while it’s being taken, only the trail I left was like a black flame. Two hands were clasped around my torso. Like my body, they seemed to blaze with a dark energy.

  Don’t panic, youngblood, a man said. You’re in good hands. I recognized the dry crackle of his voice but couldn’t remember his name. A moment later, my feet touched down on solid rock. Everything around me was shades of black. Fissures, spires, tunnels and jagged edges. If you took the earth, stripped it of soil, water and life, then blasted it half to smithereens and sucked out all the colour, it would have looked just like this. Something like ash floated in the air. It was so thick, I couldn’t see more than a dozen feet in any direction.

  A bald figure took shape beside me. He stood no higher than my shoulder. Long eyebrows floated over his eyeless orbits. Like me, he glowed black, though his clothes were etched with lines of silver, like a photo negative.

  “Is this hell?” I asked him.

  “Not unless we took a wrong turn somewhere.”

  “So I’m still alive?”

  “I hope so. Because if you’re dead then so am I, and I’ve missed my last chance to visit Walt Disney World.”

  I squinted to see better through the ash, but it was no use. “What is this place?”

  “It is a plane of existence that intersects with our own. A realm of negative energy.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You don’t need to know, youngblood. You just need to listen.” He took me by the arm. “But first things first. Do you know who I am?”

  I shook my head.

  “Do you know who you are?”

  I thought for a moment. Nothing came to mind.

  “Well then, son of the hunter, remember …”

  Darkness stretched from his mind and enveloped me. Images swam before my mind’s eye. I saw a city of stone through the eyes of a child. I reached a fallen temple. My father was there,
buried under pieces of the roof. Devastated and confused, I ran until I saw two red eyes staring at me from the darkness. A creature darted out and bit me. Pain and death followed. Later I was in a mental ward, my arms strapped behind my back. I was ravenous and tried to bite a nurse. Then Ophelia arrived and made everything all right. When I was older, she trusted me to leave the ward. So I did. And I ran, and ran, and ran. My feet were a blur. Other images swam through my head. Dreams of my father. My first visit from Maximilian. Charlie’s cottage. Meeting Luna. How could I have forgotten someone so beautiful? Vrolok, who was really Vlad. Mr. Entwistle. Meeting Baoh on the Dream Road. Facing Hyde in the Warsaw Caves. Iron Spike Enterprises collapsing. Suki dying. My whole life played out for me in seconds.

  “Do you remember now?” Baoh asked.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Well then, Zachariah, it is time for you to fulfill your destiny.”

  He made it sound so easy. “Isn’t my body buried in a hole?”

  “You were buried,” Baoh answered. “But I have moved you. Does the ground not feel solid under your feet?”

  I shifted my weight and felt the same pressure I would have anywhere else.

  “You are here in body and spirit. We just need to find the right doorway and send you back.”

  “What do you mean, doorway? What’s going on here? Why did you bring me here if we’re just going to leave?”

  “Think of this as a shortcut.” He pointed to a textured wall of rock beside us. A section of it looked smoother than it should have, as if someone had sanded it flat. “Can you see through that? You are not a shadow-jumper, so your vision may be impaired here.”

  When I moved closer to the wall, I could see that the smooth patch was really an opening. It led to another cave, one that looked strangely distant, as if the threshold between where I was and where I was looking contained an invisible lens that pushed the image farther away.