End of Days (33 page)

“Have you ever seen so much blood?”

Only in a nightmare.

We followed the smell, and their footprints. We looped back again and again. Soon our own tracks were everywhere.

“We're going in circles,” Charlie said.

He was panting heavily. So was I. Neither of us had expected to do so much running. I would happily have traded my sword for an inhaler.

“We must have missed something,” I said.

“Yeah. The fight of the century.”

We slowed and tried to follow their footprints more carefully. Still, we wound up back at the same rocky clearing.

Charlie shook his head. “We need to do something. If we take much longer to find them, there won't be time to get back before the sun rises.”

I took out my phone.

“Who are you calling?”

I scrolled until I found Mr. Entwistle's number, then I hit send. Ophelia had said he wasn't answering his cell. It didn't mean it wouldn't ring.

“What are you doing?”

“Just listen.” I tucked my cell into my pocket to muffle the noise.

I didn't hear anything. Neither did Charlie. So I started running. After a few moments, I pulled out my cell phone, hit redial, then started moving again. Charlie followed. I listened. A far-off river gurgled gently. The wind swished through pine and oak, cedar and maple. Crickets buzzed, quieting only when our footsteps drew close. I could hear Charlie's breathing, and mine. Our footfalls. Then I heard it. Electronic notes.
Hallelujah.

Charlie tapped my shoulder. “It's coming from behind that rock.”

We were in a clearing. Just one of the many areas where the rock was exposed. We'd passed this way several times already. A large lip of limestone rose up beside us, walling off the clearing from whatever lay behind. No prints led in that direction, but a leap would have taken Mr. Entwistle over the top. Or he might have been thrown. . . .

Charlie zipped past and scampered up the rock face. It was about twelve feet high. Once he cleared the top, he looked back. “Call again.”

I did, then bounded up after him. The ringing started again. We followed it down a tree-covered slope to the edges of the Indian River. And there, on the bank, chained to a huge stone, was the body of Mr. Entwistle, lifeless and bloodied, just waiting for the sun.

I stuck my sword into the soft earth of the riverbank, then bent to examine Mr. Entwistle. He was chained to the rock so that his hands were stretched out to the sides—as if he'd been crucified. The stone behind him was scorched. Ashes were all over the ground underneath him. His coat was torn in a dozen places. Blood was caked on his face and in his hair. The knife I'd been given by my uncle, the one with the dioxin, was buried right up to the hilt just below his chest. Teeth marks scarred his neck. Were they from Hyde? Mr. Entwistle's words came back to me. That werewolves were blood drinkers, too.

“He's dead, isn't he,” Charlie said.

I nodded. The eyes were dull. Dry. Lifeless. I wondered who had actually died here—Mr. Entwistle or the Butcher.

Charlie handed me something: Mr. Entwistle's lucky top hat. Bloodstained, torn, crumpled. Its luck was spent.

“He'll go up like a Roman candle when the sun comes up.”

“Unless we can move him in time.” To the east, the sky was still dark, but I could tell by the stars that dawn was only an hour or so away. By the look of things, more than a few vampires had been chained here. The rocks on the ground were stained black, the bushes nearby burnt. I reached out and took the pole-arm from Charlie's hand. Then I set about breaking the chains. It was noisy work. And time-consuming. But I was furious, and hammered steel, even the
old stuff, is tougher than poured iron, so the links gave way under my assault.

“We'll never get him back to town before the sun comes up.”

I agreed. “We'll have to find a cave and wait it out.” I handed him the voulge. The blade looked as if I'd taken a can opener to it. Somewhere in Western Europe, a medieval blacksmith was rolling over in his grave.

“This was an antique,” said Charlie.

“It still is.” I lifted one of Mr. Entwistle's arms and drew it over my shoulder, then picked him up. “You still feeling confident about your plan?”

Charlie shook his head. “Not really. I wasn't counting on the mess of tracks back there. I felt like a mouse in a maze. It really slowed us down. And you just made more noise than a five-man electrical band. Unless Hyde's got six inches of wax in each ear, he'll know we're here.”

I figured as much. But the sun was certain death, so we had to get underground. “Don't forget my sword,” I said. The tip of the blade was still stuck in the earth. It made the arms and the pommel of the hilt look like a cross. More like a grave marker than a weapon.

Charlie pulled it out and wiped the blade clean in the long grass by the water. “Okay,” he said. “Let's see if we can find that boy and scram.”

The area around the river was dotted everywhere with caves. It didn't take long for Charlie to find one.

“What do you see?” I asked.

He was peering down a hole that looked wide enough for us to hide in. “Ice.” Then he got on his stomach, slid the weapons down in front of him, and crawled into the darkness.

It wasn't at all what I'd expected. I'd only seen caves on television. It turns out Bruce Wayne's Batcave was the Hilton compared to the dump we found ourselves in. It was cold. Moldy. Wet. The
ceiling was three feet high, so it was impossible to stand. White ice covered the floor. Within seconds of crawling in, I was soaked.

“Should we leave him here?” Charlie said.

I nodded. Without a system of mirrors, the sunlight wasn't going to get in. And I didn't want to move him farther underground. It would have been too difficult in such a cramped space.

“These weapons are going to be useless in here.”

True enough. There wasn't enough space to swing a flashlight, let alone a five-foot sword.

Charlie was eyeing the knife still protruding from Mr. Entwistle's chest. “We should take that.”

I felt a bit squeamish about removing it, but he was right, so we worked the blade free. It was wedged between two plates in Mr. Entwistle's armor. I examined the blade. No trace of the dioxin was on it.

Charlie stared the slender wound the knife had left. “You know, you're about the same height as him. A little shorter, maybe, but I bet that armor would fit.”

I hadn't considered it. It seemed wrong to take the clothes from a dead man.

“He'd want you to have it.”

I nodded. “Yeah, he would.”

It wasn't easy stripping down on an icy floor with a roof three feet overhead. And the armor was a bit tight. It amazed me that Mr. Entwistle could move so smoothly with it on. By the time I was finished, my fingers were frozen. Not a good sign. It meant I was tired.

“I've never had more sympathy for penguins than I do right now,” said Charlie. He was shivering, “What happens now?”

We had to find the detective's son. We couldn't look outside; the daylight was arriving. That left only one option.

“Let's move,” I said. “Maybe we'll find a clue down here.”

So we began to crawl. Eventually, we hit a dead end. Charlie started swearing. It poured out of him like gangster rap. I didn't recognize half of the words he used.

“Did we miss something?” he asked.

It was too tight in the cave to turn around, so we had to creep our way backward. It was a good thing neither of us was claustrophobic. There was barely enough room for a mole rat.

“This is worse than a coffin,” Charlie said.

Then he found what we had missed. There was a scrape along the rocky floor where an enormous stone had been moved. I would have needed Yoda's help just to lift it. A faint odour of wet fur clung to its surface. Judging by the smell, Hyde had dragged the rock away some time ago, perhaps several days. It exposed an opening barely large enough for us to snake through. The way the wall was angled, the hole was hard to spot when you were approaching from the front.

Charlie looked at me, then down into the shadows below. I knew what he was thinking. We were wet, cold, tired, and underarmed. Anyone with a lick of sense would have stayed put.

“Do you think that boy's still alive?” he asked.

I didn't know. But it didn't matter. If there was even a chance, we had to keep going.

“I'll go first,” I said. But Charlie was already ahead of me.

We squeezed through the hole and emerged in a cavern. It was long, as if a giant worm had plowed its way through the solid rock. At least now we could comfortably stand.

“This is more like it,” Charlie said. A trickle of water ran along a groove in the rock floor down the center of the tunnel. He put his hand in it, then shook the droplets from his fingers. “Freezing.” Then he looked around. “Must have been bigger at one time.”

“What do you mean?”

“This little stream. It must have been a full-blown river at one time to have carved this out.”

I nodded.

“Can you smell that?”

I could. Like leather and wet dog. It was much stronger here.

“I think it's coming from that way.” The tunnel led in two directions. Up to the right or down to the left. He was pointing down.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

He held up the knife. The blade looked purple against the black cave walls. “Yeah,” he whispered.

The patter of padded feet echoed up the tunnel. Long strides. Hyde was coming.

I swallowed. “Is it too late to discuss strategies?”

“How about you attack him, and I slip out the back?”

“That's not funny.”

“Or you could distract him somehow. Why don't you try dancing? You might as well do it once before you die. Or—die again.”

I shook my head. This was no time for jokes. I needed Charlie to put his gladiator face on.

“I think you should try to get around him,” I said. “See if you can find the detective's son. I've got the armor. I'll do my best to keep Hyde off your back.”

Charlie nodded, then turned to look me squarely in the eyes. His teeth were dropping. “Zack.” He didn't bother keeping his voice down. “You can't make him good.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know you. You want to make everyone good. You can't. Do you understand? This thing is going to kill us unless we kill it first. All that talk of Entwistle's about villains and evil. I don't care about that stuff. This is about Hyde and us. You can't hesitate. You can't wonder if you're doing the right thing. Attack, attack, attack. Like a berserker. Like Alexander.”

I nodded. We were both big on Alexander the Great. Attack, he believed, even in defense. It seemed reasonable. But I'd only been in two fights before. In one I got trounced. In the other I died. Not a great track record. And I remembered clearly what Baoh had told me:
Do not do to others that which is harmful to yourself.
It didn't seem like the best fight strategy. But I had no more time to consider it.

Hyde had arrived.

The darkness around us was complete. There is no light underground. Not unless you burrow right through the crust to the molten rock below. Hyde was a shadow. A black shape against a black background. But Charlie and I could see him. Our eyes were built for it. He stood to his full height and stepped forward. He looked like a demon. Huge. Taloned. Emanating anger. One eye was swollen shut. The other looked like a hollow pit. A tooth was chipped, and he walked with a slight limp. Mr. Entwistle had done some damage. But for all this, Hyde still smiled. I heard his throat rumble—it might have been a laugh. Then he spoke. This time, the word came out like a raspy gargle. I understood clearly.

Welcome. . . .

Charlie shifted beside me. We were shoulder to shoulder. I understood his strategy. Be like a berserker, those Viking warriors who charged fearlessly into battle. No thoughts of self-preservation. No hesitation. Just relentless assault. Well, that wasn't me. I had no idea who Hyde was. What he wanted. Why he'd done the things he'd done. A part of my mind insisted on understanding.

“Where is the boy?” I asked.

Hyde stopped. His head snaked forward, his good eye narrowed. He squinted at me, then at Charlie. He must have seen something he didn't like. He attacked. I expected a lunge. A charge. Something similar to what Charlie and I had witnessed that first night at the
zoo, when he'd ambushed Mr. Entwistle. But Hyde must have understood the value of unpredictability because he did the last thing I'd expected him to do. He jumped straight up. His arm snaked out and he smashed off a stalactite, one of those cone-shaped rocks that was hanging from the top of the tunnel. Then he wound up and hurled it at me.

I twisted and the chunk of rock shot past. It was moving with the speed of a bullet. In the meantime, he closed the space between us. After watching him limp down the tunnel, I hadn't expected him to move so quickly. He pushed Charlie aside, then hit me flush on the chest with his fist. The punch lifted me cleanly off my feet. An instant later, I smashed headfirst into the rock wall behind me. I felt a shock wave run down through my spine. Pain followed, and the kind of paralysis you feel when your nerves are on fire. My eyes swam. I was on my back. A few seconds passed before I could move. I rolled over and pushed myself slowly up to my knees.

I could see Charlie. He was attacking Hyde with reckless abandon. Like a berserker. No thoughts of self-defense. The knife swung back and forth in wild arcs. Had it still been poisoned with dioxin, he might have had a chance. But his opponent was stronger. Faster. And patient.

Hyde backed up, circled, waited. Charlie swung again and again. Then he overextended himself. Hyde shot forward, caught my friend around the wrist with his long fingers, twisted the knife loose, then slammed him against the wall. Bones snapped and Charlie sagged to the ground.