by Max Turner
“I’ve wondered that too. But they weren’t. It was you. Ophelia was right. So was Luna.”
I took a tired breath and let it out slowly. Their faith hadn’t been rewarded. My eyes started watering. “I sometimes wonder if everything that happened, all the fights and escapes and disasters, if it was all just a juggling act. If Baoh didn’t really care about me or anyone else, just the results.”
“What do you mean?”
I had to take a minute to think my way through it. “I mean that he helped me, and resurrected Vlad, and used Istvan, and did all that other stuff just to keep both sides in fighting shape. That way, enough people would be killed to get the pathogen under control. He might have been content to leave anyone in charge.”
“What does Entwistle say about it?”
“I didn’t mention that last bit to him, but I think I know what he’d say. That we should get comfortable with the fact that we’ll never know. And that it doesn’t matter anyway, because we’ve got work to do.”
“Yeah. We do.” His shoulders slumped. He looked ready to pass out. “Was it worth it?” he asked. “All of this. Being the Messiah. Beating the Changeling. Getting to run the show.”
“I don’t know if we had a choice about most of this, Charlie.”
“No. We didn’t. But if you did have a choice, would—?”
“No. I would trade all of this for five minutes …” at Stoney Lake with the girls. The words got stuck in my throat.
“I hear ya,” he said, staring at the wall. “I never imagined it would be like this. I thought, if we lived, that it would be a triumph. Or at least … I don’t know, a relief maybe. But this … I think this must be how Endpoint Psychosis starts. The minute I slow down, I get angry. Or sad. I just think, what the hell was the point?”
I shifted beside him. He started. “I hate it when you do that.”
“Sorry. It seems to happen when I want to move quickly, when I don’t think about it.” I reached out and helped him off his stool. “The secret is to stay busy, because there is a point to all of this. There’s a boy in Shanghai who needs looking after. He’ll be hungry and confused. And there are vampires in Amsterdam and Paris who need us too. So you’ve got to hold it together, because I can’t do this without you.”
He didn’t smile. Neither did I. But he understood. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Yeah.”
We exited the old lab and entered the modern one. The New Order had destroyed all of the equipment that was there. We were waiting for new stuff—microscopes, centrifuges, refrigerator units. That kind of thing. I would stock blood from Min and Hassan and the other vampires who would help us form the next government. The League of Vampires. Different from Vlad’s Coven or the New Order. Less a hierarchical secret police and more an open, democratic body. John was working on the details. With his help, we’d also study the pathogen, with the added bonus that any blood stored here would be at my disposal, should our work require me to make use of other talents—although, with the Changeling’s blood in my system, it wasn’t necessary at the moment. Perhaps it never would be, if I discovered a way to parasitize Baoh without bringing him out of undeath. It was an idea I would explore later.
I walked over to our only refrigerator and took a small stoppered test tube out of a rack. “I need to run this up to Vincent.”
“I can do that,” Charlie offered.
“We’ll both go. I want to see how he’s doing. Do you know where he is?”
“Top side, with the twins.”
I held the liquid up to the light. It was an extract from wolfsbane. It would keep him from turning into the beast. Without Vlad’s secret serum, Vincent was either a young man or a health hazard. He spent most of his time playing with Miklos’s twin daughters. It helped him fill the void, with Suki, Luna and Ophelia gone.
We climbed until we reached the top of the stairs. The large stones Vlad had used to block the entrance had been moved. Castle Dracula was being rebuilt. It would be a fortress again. We were also constructing a war memorial. A wall of names and a simple pair of statues. And so Suki Abbott and Commander James Rutherford would soon be standing vigil over a list of the innocent dead, a monument to Charlie’s love and despair.
Vincent and the girls were on the scaffolding. One of them was perched on his shoulders, swinging a stick in the air. Charlie and I stood, transfixed, as they laughed and played amongst the ruins.
“Life goes on, doesn’t it,” he said.
“Yeah. Ready or not.”
One of the girls spotted us. “Will you play?” she asked. “We’re killing dragons.”
“Maybe tomorrow night,” I answered.
She frowned. “You always say that.”
I always hoped it would be true. “Ask me again tomorrow. The sun will be up soon. I need to get underground.”
Vincent set her down and walked over, a boy trapped in an adult body. I handed him the extract. He forced a smile. Things were still a bit strained with us. Luna was at the centre of it. Maybe the prophecy was, too. I had no idea what Vlad had told him while I was a hostage of the Changeling’s. That seemed to have been the time when Vincent came into his own. It was certainly when he fell for Luna. I’m not sure if he blamed me for her death, or himself, but he missed her terribly. I felt sick about it, in part because it made us rivals of a sort, but also because he now thought of himself as ugly and useless. I would have to change that.
“We’re going to have a meeting now. Would you join us?”
“I don’t know,” he said. His head was turned so the worst of his burns would be hidden. He looked much better than he had two weeks ago, but he didn’t regenerate as quickly as we did. It would take another few months for the scar tissue to disappear. At the rate he aged, he’d look like a man in his thirties by then.
“May I?” Charlie asked.
Vincent nodded. Charlie reached up and turned his head so we could inspect the burns.
“They’re getting better.”
“Yeah, slowly.”
“How are your lessons with Hassan going?”
“Good,” he said. “But I’m slow now. And weak. I couldn’t beat a mosquito.”
“We have to work on an antidote for Luna,” I said. “But once we have it, we’ll get busy duplicating the formula Vlad made for you. Be patient. It will happen in good time.” I rapped his chest with my knuckle, right over his heart. “You’ve got it where it counts, Vin. That was very brave, back in the temple, going after the Changeling the way you did.”
We’d talked about this before. I knew what he would say even before he spoke.
“I let him go … he caught fire and I let go.”
“No, Vincent. You held him just long enough. And you were willing to die for your friends. For Luna. Your parents would have been proud.”
Charlie put a hand on his head and playfully pushed him back towards the girls. “You’ll be the top of the food chain in no time. We’ll buzz you when the meeting’s ready to start.”
“Okay,” Vincent said, then looked away, smiling.
AFTER THE MEETING, Charlie and I headed down to the room we shared one level above the lab.
“Did Vinny seem okay to you?” he asked.
“I guess.”
“You still think the prophecy is about him?”
I opened the short, iron-bound door and stepped to the side so Charlie could go through. “Vlad must have thought so. He’s a good match. Orphan. Blood drinker. Died and came back. Son of a vampire hunter.”
“The vampire hunter,” Charlie said, ducking under the lintel. “Hyde was in a league all his own.”
“Exactly. And Vinny could see through the Changeling’s disguises.”
“Smell through them.”
“Same difference.” I closed and latched the door, then opened the lid to my coffin. The beds we’d ordered hadn’t arrived yet. “Baoh couldn’t read his mind, either.”
Charlie sat on a stool and started shedding armour.
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, and he was the only one immune to the Changeling’s venom.”
I was too tired to get undressed. My eyes were closed before my head hit the satin liner.
“He wasn’t the only one,” Charlie said.
“Only one what?”
“The only one immune to the Changeling’s venom.”
My mind was already half asleep. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so exhausted. I opened my eyes, but I’d lost the thread of our conversation. “What were we talking about?”
Charlie yawned and lay down. “Vincent,” he said. “He wasn’t the only one immune to the Changeling’s venom.” His breathing slowed.
“Was someone else immune?”
“Hmmm?”
“Was someone else immune?”
“Yeah … of course.”
I waited for him to finish, but he’d fallen asleep. I looked for something to throw at the side of his coffin. Nothing was in arm’s reach so I pulled off a boot and chucked it at the lid. The first one missed. The second one sounded like a canister shot.
Charlie sat up in alarm. “What was that? Was that a bomb?”
“No, it was my boot,” I said. “Who else was immune?”
He lay back down. “You woke me for that? Man, for a genius, you’re a real dim-wit.” His voice slowed. “The Changeling … he must have been immune. You think he’d run around with his stinger dripping like that if it could kill him?”
I hadn’t thought about it, but of course Baoh was immune. Why hadn’t it occurred to me? “Do you know what this means?” I asked. I had the Changeling’s blood in me. If he was immune, then I was, too. And blood could be shared …
Charlie answered with a gentle snore.
I put my hands on the sides of the coffin, or I meant to, but I was too tired. Sleep claimed me before I could rise.
In the next moment I was falling over the edge of a ship. Charlie was watching from the deck. John was beside him, dressed in Death’s cowl, the hood pulled down. A top hat was in one hand, a sickle in the other. I landed in a river and got swept away. I fought to stay above the plumes of white water and got washed, breathless, onto a small beach not unlike the one at Luna’s cottage, where she’d taught me to swim. My armour and weapons were gone. I was wearing running shoes and hospital scrubs—the same ones I’d had back at the Nicholls Ward. I stood. There was no one around. Just the bats and chirping insects. The night was clear and fresh. I started running.
The beach turned into a pine forest. It grew so thick with undergrowth that after a time I couldn’t see where I was going. Branches and leaves slapped at my face as I called out Luna’s name over and over again. My foot got caught in something. I pitched forward and crash-landed in a clearing of granite, moss and juniper. I looked up to see Ophelia standing there. She was smiling, eyes soft, her hand outstretched to help me to my feet. I stood and smiled. The warm, comfortable light of the tunnel surrounded her with its familiar glow.
She put a finger over her mouth, then pointed towards the shore. I turned to look, saw the pines along the beach. A half moon rising over the water. Ripples of light glimmering on the granite rock. And a flash of copper-coloured hair.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I imposed on many friends in getting this project off the ground. My thanks go out to Charles Marriott, Mark Swailes, Shawn Mowry, Chris Spicer, Erin Brady and Gail Ladouceur; my brothers, Jake and Charlie; my daughter Bea; and my mother, Julia Bell, for reading early drafts and providing invaluable feedback. New Order passed through many iterations before taking on its present shape. For the staff at HarperCollins, and to those they commandeered to help get this book ready, your effort and patience is much appreciated. Thanks to reader Colin Thomas and proofer Natalie Meditsky. Greg Tabor and Alan Jones did a great job on the cover. Thanks also to Melissa Zilberberg for her advice and support through all three novels. Although my original editor, Lynne Missen, left while this project was still in its infancy, she helped nudge it gently in the right direction. Catherine Marjoribanks, whose keen eyes helped steer me from disaster in my first two novels, came through again with another fantastic copy edit. Thanks also to Maria Golikova for her assistance down the stretch, to Catharine Chen for her insight through the final drafts and to Hadley Dyer, who came on board midstream and had to make sense of the nonsensical—this would not have happened without you.
About the Author
MAX TURNER writes urban fantasy books and is also a science and physical education teacher. His first novel, Night Runner, was a Red Maple Award honour book and a finalist for the Sunburst Award. Its sequel, End of Days, was shortlisted for the Ottawa Book Award. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and three children.
Max Turner Author
@authormaxturner
www.maxturner.ca
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PRAISE FOR NIGHT RUNNER AND END OF DAYS
“Night Runner is a fast-paced page-turner, full of surprising twists and clever turns that’ll have you on the edge of your seat wondering what could possibly happen next!”
—Alyson Noël, New York Times–bestselling author of Evermore
“Night Runner is a fast-paced struggle against fate that had me cheering for Zack at every turn of the page. Max Turner has created an exciting addition to the vampire genre that left me guessing and hoping every step of the way.”
—Brian James, author of Zombie Blondes
“Filled with mystery and danger… . Zack’s witty and sarcastic humour makes [End of Days] a very enjoyable read.”
—School Library Journal
Copyright
New Order
Copyright © 2015 by Steven Maxwell Turner.
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EPUB Edition January 2015 ISBN 9781443406321
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x Turner, New Order
