New Order

by Max Turner

  Charlie laughed. He was picking his teeth with the end of his knife. He nearly dropped it when Baoh stepped out of himself, moving sideways and standing still at the same time. One person became two. Two became four. Four became six. Then the last in the row stepped sideways, leaving a seventh duplicate behind, one Baoh for each of us in the room.

  “I thought you said he could be in only one place at a time?” Charlie said.

  “His words, not mine.”

  “How do we deal with this?”

  I shrugged. The only story I knew about vampires that came close to this was a Russian folk tale my father had read to me as a child. A group of villagers, having been tormented by a local vampire, formed a mob, captured the vampire and set about trying to burn it. When they threw it on a pyre, it exploded into a host of snakes and toads. The villagers had to kill them all, knowing that if even one survived, the spirit of the vampire would live on. We were standing face to face with seven Baohs. Did we have to kill them all? Were they real people or just ghost images, like the apparition we’d been talking to earlier? I had no idea. Fortunately, there was someone in the room with true sight.

  “Charlie, that one!” Mr. Entwistle said, pointing to the figure on the far left. He started running towards it. Vlad shifted across the room. Meanwhile, all of the other Baohs scattered. One leapt onto a shelf covered in ornamental jars. One slid under a table. Others disappeared into shadows and emerged on the far side of the room. They didn’t stop moving.

  Charlie threw his knife at the figure Mr. Entwistle was attacking. I don’t know how they kept their eyes on the real target—it was a live shell game. As the knife somersaulted through the air, one of the Baohs grabbed Luna and pulled her in front of the spinning blade. It hit her throat just below her chin and she crumpled to one knee. It happened so quickly, there was nothing I could do. As I started towards her, eyes wide and heart pounding, Vincent leapt forward and slashed at Baoh. He wasn’t quite fast enough. The prophet became a puff of vapour and slipped through a crack in the floor. I blinked and all the Baohs were gone. I blinked again, and they were back in the room, having risen from shadows along the walls, behind the table, under benches or chairs and in the beams of the ceiling.

  One stepped out of the fireplace. I could see from the floor that he had more weight than the others. Charlie noticed too. He push-kicked the table across the floor, but we were both fooled. The table went right through and crashed into the wall.

  Mr. Entwistle swung at one and missed. “He’s moving from apparition to apparition,” he said.

  Luna pulled the knife from her throat and pressed a hand over her voice box. Blood ran through her fingers. I wasn’t sure how to help her. She waved me off just as one of the Baohs emerged from the shadows beside her. I threw myself at him in a flying tackle, but it wasn’t really him and I landed face first on the floor. At the same time, another grabbed Istvan from behind and pulled him into the shadows beside a column. The apparitions all vanished, then reappeared in different locations. Istvan was gone. My guess was he’d been trapped on the Shadow Road.

  “Can you breathe?” I asked Luna.

  “I’ll be fine.” She pulled her hand away from her neck. The opening had sealed and was turning from pink to alabaster. She grabbed my belt and hauled herself to her feet.

  The real Baoh slammed into Charlie. The two disappeared behind a bench. I heard a crunch, like bones breaking, then Charlie went flying through the air and collapsed into a heap near the fireplace, knocking a row of idols off the mantel. Vlad shifted behind the bench where the Changeling was waiting. I jumped over, too, Luna at my side, but instead of the prophet, we saw Charlie lying on the ground, his neck twisted at an impossible angle. I spun to the fireplace, realizing that Baoh had jumped free in the guise of my friend. Four Baohs rose up from the shadows to surround me. Any one of them could have been real.

  “There,” Mr. Entwistle said, pointing to Vincent. The apparition behind him had a stinger in place of a hand. The barb glistened with poison. Instantly, the hands of the other apparitions changed. They converged on Vincent. He slashed at two and bit a third, but they were ghosts. Then he roared as the real Baoh slammed a poisoned barb into the back of his leg.

  Vincent spun. He caught the Changeling on the chin with a backhanded uppercut. It would have sent anyone else through the roof, but Baoh turned to mist and disappeared into a shadow behind a ceiling joist.

  All of the apparitions disappeared again, then emerged around Vlad. One put an arm around his neck and pulled him backwards. “Do you really have an antidote, Vlad?” he asked.

  “One dose,” the Prince answered.

  “We shall see how effective it is.”

  The Changeling jabbed Vlad’s neck with his stinger. The Prince stiffened, then growled. It quickly became a cry of pain. Luna and I raced towards him, but Mr. Entwistle stepped in the way and held us back. At the same time, Vincent collapsed to the floor.

  The skin of Vlad’s neck started turning grey. Seven Baohs circled him. Vlad started to smoke, then he self-immolated. None of the apparitions around him were affected by the heat—save one. Vlad shifted so the two were face to face, then took hold of Baoh in a bear hug and turned up the heat. The rest of us had to back away, but Baoh’s skin didn’t so much as blister. The prophet was centuries older, and in the world of vampires, seniority was everything. He put a hand on Vlad’s throat and raised him off the ground. One by one, the apparitions merged with the original until only one remained. He forced Vlad to his knees.

  “There is no antidote for the Changeling,” he said.

  Vlad’s eyes were pinched shut. Grey spread over his face. The flames sputtered and died. Somehow, he managed to force his eyelids open just a sliver. There was a wicked grin on his face, all teeth and anger.

  “The antidote is working just fine.”

  He took hold of Baoh’s wrists and hung on. It was the last thing he did before he died. Then Vincent attacked. I’d been so focused on Baoh, I’d neither seen nor heard him. No one had. Nor had anyone suspected that Vlad had given the antidote to him. But there was no mistaking the tiny vial that dropped from Vincent’s hand as he sprang across the room. It shattered when it hit the floor. Empty.

  Baoh shifted to his left, but Vincent followed him like a bloodhound, his claws whistling through the air in a blur. He caught Baoh in the face and the prophet’s skin tore open. Before his next blow landed, Baoh turned to mist. Vincent jumped right in the middle of it, just as he had with Tamerlane, his claws swinging wildly.

  “Here,” Mr. Entwistle shouted. He handed me two lighted candles from a shrine to the Buddha. Luna already had a pair and was thrusting them into the shadows. It took me a moment to figure out what she was doing, then I followed suit. So did Mr. Entwistle. We surrounded the cloud of mist, causing all of the shadows around it to jump. Each was a portal to the Shadow Road, but none stayed in place long enough for Baoh to leave. Sooner or later he’d have to solidify. Then Vincent would rip him apart.

  But Baoh had other plans. He solidified behind Luna, his arm around her waist, her body like a shield between him and Vincent. “Stop or she dies,” he said. Then he raised his poisoned barb to her throat.

  CHAPTER 62

  STALEMATE

  INSIDE A HEARTBEAT, Vincent was rock still. Nobody moved.

  “That’s better,” Baoh said. “This would have been much easier if you’d simply agreed to my terms.”

  Mr. Entwistle turned his back and walked to where Charlie’s body was lying in the centre of the floor. He carefully set my friend’s neck. “Your terms were unacceptable. You knew we’d never agree. So, what will it really take to end things?”

  “I will settle for nothing less than what I ask. There are still too many vampires in Ophelia’s line. And this one,” he glared at Vincent, “is a lycanthrope. It isn’t to be tolerated.”

  “I swore an oath to his father,” I said.

  “Yes, the Beast of the Apocalypse. If the prophec
y is correct, then this thing might be the Messiah. Where do you think he will lead our kind? To death and damnation. I will not allow it.”

  Mr. Entwistle’s hat had come off in all the action. On the way over to me, he scooped it up, then set the candles down so he could take a sip of his whisky. “You don’t have to kill this boy.”

  “He is unclean.”

  “That wasn’t his choice.”

  “It matters not. His kind are a threat.”

  “But he isn’t,” I said.

  “That is not for you to judge. His bite is lethal. What if he makes others like him? Our people will not be long for this world.”

  Baoh took hold of Luna’s hair and pulled her head back. The poisoned barb glistened in the candlelight.

  “You two should take Charlie and go,” Vincent said. His yellow eyes bounced from John to me, then back to Baoh. “My life for Luna’s. Seems like a bargain to me.”

  Baoh looked skeptical. Does he mean that? he asked me.

  His question told me something important: he couldn’t read Vincent’s thoughts, or he’d have known.

  It doesn’t matter, I answered. I promised his father I’d look after him. I’m not going back on my word.

  Even if it kills you?

  I was glad that Luna couldn’t sense my thought—that I didn’t expect anyone to get out of the room alive. Then I saw what Vincent saw. The knife that Charlie had thrown, the one that had struck Luna’s throat, was tucked up against her forearm. Her eyes were furious.

  “Zachary,” she said. “If Vlad made an antidote, then so can we. Stop dithering and do what you have to do.”

  Mr. Entwistle took another pull of whisky and picked up a candle. The bouncing flame bathed his face with a sinister light. He might have been John Entwistle now, but I could see in his eyes that a part of the Butcher remained. “Luna has a point. And there are three of us.”

  “Four of us,” she said.

  He smiled, but not with humour. It gave me chills.

  And that settled it. I rubbed my tongue over the bottom of my teeth. “I love you,” I said to her.

  She answered by jamming the knife into Baoh’s thigh. That was when we moved.

  CHAPTER 63

  THERE IS NO ANTIDOTE …

  OF ALL THE things I’ve ever had to do, watching Luna die was the hardest. To this day, I’m still not sure if the Changeling meant to do it or if his hand moved involuntarily when she buried the knife in him. He gasped in surprise and the barb grazed her neck. She didn’t stiffen the way Vlad had, so I didn’t notice at first. I was too focused on Baoh.

  Vincent reached him first. Baoh swung with his poisoned stinger but missed badly. Then he turned to mist and rose out of striking range. As the knife in his leg clattered to the floor, John took a swig of whisky, then held up the candle in his other hand and spat the booze out in a fine mist. When the alcohol made contact with the flame, it combusted in a bright orange and blue cloud. The fire burned through the fog. It also caused the shadows to shift, so Baoh wasn’t able to escape to the Shadow Road.

  Baoh solidified, smouldering, near the ground in front of Vincent, who grabbed his arms, hauled him off his feet and snapped his jaw forward in a vicious bite. It would have ended things right there had the Changeling not been a Shaolin monk. His whole body was a weapon. He kicked a foot into Vincent’s chin, pulled his arms free, stepped off Vinny’s chest with his other foot and did a perfect backflip. Vinny’s teeth broke. His eyes were suddenly wide. In all the time I’d known him, I don’t think he’d ever been hurt.

  Fortunately, Mr. Entwistle was on his wing, and when he started swinging, Vincent moved forward to re-engage. I would have followed their lead, but I stalled when I saw Luna. Her skin was turning grey. She fell to her knees.

  I was at her side in an instant. I took her in my arms, but there was little comfort I could offer. Her death was coming and she was scared. She tried to speak and couldn’t. Grey crept up her neck, spread over her cheeks and surrounded her pale green eyes. I stared, helpless, as the light within them faded, then vanished.

  An intense heat blasted my face and hands. Vincent howled in pain. Baoh was a dark shadow in a column of flame. He had self-immolated, just as Vlad had done earlier. Vincent must have been holding him when it happened. Mr. Entwistle hauled him backwards, but the damage was done. There was little he could do but try to smother the flames with his coat.

  I set Luna gently on the floor and rubbed a hand through her hair. Then I closed her eyes. My skin began to burn. I stood and walked towards Baoh. He saw me approaching and the heat intensified. I’m not sure what he was expecting—that I was going to back away because he was on fire? No amount of pain was going to stop me. He’d just killed Luna. There was only one answer for that.

  He tried to hit me. Had he not been self-immolating, it would have been the beginning of the end, but I knew from observing Vlad that it took great reserves of energy to keep those fires burning. Baoh couldn’t do it and mount an effective attack at the same time.

  I slipped under his punch, pushed his stinger away, grabbed his arms and pulled him close. Surprise lit up his face. He hadn’t anticipated that. Were my thoughts buried? Had I emptied my mind? No. It was just luck. My flesh was melting. I was screaming. There was nothing inside my head but pain. And instinct.

  I sank my teeth into his neck.

  His energy began to wane instantly, then his blood went to work on my system, healing burns and firing my muscles to Herculean levels. He was an elder. His power was phenomenal. And then it was mine. I squeezed. His ribs cracked. He was caught like a mouse in the coils of a constrictor. He couldn’t breathe. As I stole more of his blood, he began to age, slowly at first, then rapidly so that he soon took on the familiar appearance of an elderly man, though his eyes remained intact. His strength began to fail. It forced him to decide: try to escape or keep himself alight. He couldn’t do both.

  He chose escape. I knew it before he moved. I could read his thoughts as easily as I could with Luna after we shared blood. He thrashed his arms and tried to kick free, but I wasn’t budging. My arms were hardened steel.

  He started turning into mist. I couldn’t stop him. He drifted through a crack in the floor. I heard John shouting, “No! Noooo!” first in alarm, then in frustration.

  “He’s not getting away,” I said.

  As Baoh sublimated, the entire process was laid out for me, step by step, his thoughts as clear to me as my own. I let myself drift apart until I was nothing more than a cloud of disconnected molecules, all held together by my consciousness. Moving was tougher. Each particle, once freed from its neighbours, wanted to separate completely and drift away. I had to pull at the edges of myself so that I wouldn’t expand and disappear. It took a moment to get the hang of it, but eventually I managed to herd myself through the same crack and into the darkness under the temple.

  Baoh was hiding. When I appeared, his fear rose so that it seemed to fill the whole space we were sharing. Some light filtered down through the cracks above, enough to form shadows. He used one as a portal and slipped through. I peered into the realm of Lú-Yíng, saw my reflection in the darkness beyond and moved towards it. With his mind open like an instruction booklet, I might just as well have been following tracks he left behind in the sand.

  Baoh was a thin black cloud in a colourless world. There was barely enough energy in his essence for him to move. I enclosed him in a sphere as dense as lead. He spun and rolled and twisted, searching for a chink in my armour, but there was none. I pulled him back into the world of light and matter and literally squeezed him back into his body. As he solidified, so did I. He would have fallen over had I not reached out and taken hold of him by the scruff of his neck.

  “There is no antidote for justice,” I said. Then I held him off the ground and started to throttle him.

  CHAPTER 64

  THE PUPPET MASTER

  I SQUEEZED UNTIL I felt Baoh’s windpipe begin to collapse, then I forced him to
his knees and let go.

  “You have some explaining to do.”

  He tipped back against the temple wall, gasping. His hands rose to his neck and he touched it gingerly, the indentation of my fingers still clearly visible in his skin.

  “Are you calm enough to listen?” he asked, his voice old and crackling once more.

  I folded my arms over my chest.

  “And is this truly necessary? You should have enough pieces of the puzzle by now to discern my grand design.”

  “I don’t want puzzles. I want answers.”

  “Apparently.” He hacked several times, cleared his throat, then stood unsteadily, his hand against the wall. “Did I not preach about your rise to power as the Baptist? Have I not, directly or indirectly, guided you through every phase of your journey here? When we were in the Prince’s Church, I told you that, with my help, you could become the perfect instrument.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you, and the various personae I assumed to help you on your path to this eventuality.”

  I started at him, stupefied. He was making it sound as though I was his pet project. Then I considered his words more carefully. As the prophet, he had warned me on the Dream Road about the New Order, and later, outside of Budapest, removed me from the grave Vlad and I had dug. In the guise of the Baptist, he’d tried to save me from Death on L’Esprit Sauvage. Had I taken his leap of faith, I would have made it to safety. Later, in the courtroom, he’d helped tip the scales just far enough that Vlad, Ophelia and I could escape. Was it possible that he’d orchestrated events so that, at the end, we’d be standing here like this, face to face?

  I couldn’t believe it. “You put a bounty on my head!”

  “And yet you survived, with my help. That bounty and your numerous escapes were essential in establishing your credibility as the Messiah. The danger had to be real, your accomplishments fantastic, for you to earn the reverence of those who have survived.”