End of Days (36 page)

“He's alive,” Ophelia said. “But weak.”

“How did you get him out?”

“Hyde held the door.”

My uncle looked surprised. He was about to ask another question, but was interrupted by Charlie. He started to hack and cough. A fine mist of air and blood exploded from his mouth. Then he began to convulse.

“Get your hands on his shoulders,” Maximilian shouted.

Ophelia and Luna took his arms and pinned him to the rock. I steadied one of his legs, my uncle took the other. Then my friend's eyes popped open. His teeth were down. He looked around at all of us.

“What are you doing to me?”

He seemed to be past the worst of it, so the others rose to give him space. He wiped blood from around his mouth. The bruises on his face were clearing. A second later they were entirely gone. He reached for my hand so I could pull him to a sitting position. “What happened?”

I started to answer but he waved for me to stop. “I need more blood.”

“I have more in my car,” Maximilian said.

“Where did you get it?” I asked.

“I stole it.”

I thought about what Inspector Johansson had said. That shipments of blood had disappeared from the Underground. I'd assumed this was Hyde's doing, but my uncle must have been behind it. I guess it was a good thing. I was going to need a few gallons myself.

I felt Luna's hand on my arm.
I have something to give you first.
She took out the necklace. The two parts were attached, the chains woven together. She gently separated her crescent from my silver moon, then slipped the chains apart. I bowed my head and she clasped the necklace into place. I felt her hand on my chest. She was beaming.

Now everything is as it should be.

Not quite,
I thought. I looked down at the boy. He was still unwell. His breathing was shallow. And Mr. Entwistle was still in the cave above.

My uncle moved over beside us, then pointed down the tunnel.

“I came in another way. That direction. It would be faster, unless the path is blocked.”

I looked back the way we'd come, but there was so much dust in the air, I couldn't see far.

“I'm sorry about what happened in there,” he added. “One thing your father and I learned the hard way—nothing ever goes according to plan.”

“We would have made it out if he hadn't taken hold of us so quickly,” Ophelia said. “I've never seen anything so fast. I was certain that cave was going to be our tomb.”

“Well, you wouldn't have been buried long,” my uncle replied. He was looking at her intently. Something was wrong. I'd been so focused on Charlie, I hadn't noticed, but I could see it now in her eyes.

“What is it?” I asked her.

“Can you go back and get Hyde? He might still be alive.”

“Where is he?” Charlie asked. He started to cough again. He tried to stand up but couldn't manage it.

My uncle offered him a hand. Charlie paused, then he took it and rose unsteadily to his feet. I couldn't help but smile. My uncle and Charlie. Both vampires.

Hyde's son stirred. His breathing was still ragged. He looked awful. Pale. Emaciated.

“Do you know what's wrong with him?” I asked.

“Later,” said Ophelia. “You have to save Adam. Quickly.”

“Are you certain that's what we want to do?” my uncle asked. “I know Adam was a good man.”

Charlie turned and nearly fell over. “Adam? You mean Detective Baddon? What are you talking about? What is he doing here?”

“Detective Baddon was Hyde,” I explained.

Charlie looked at all of us. Then at Maximilian. “I'll be
damned . . .” Charlie's surprise quickly turned to alarm. He looked at the dying boy lying on the tunnel floor. “That means he's Hyde's son.”

As soon as he said this, I had my second epiphany of the night. A personal best. I looked at Ophelia. She understood, too. She was crouched over the boy, her finger gently touching his neck. She was taking his pulse.

“Go,” she said.

I turned and started running.

“The whole tunnel is unstable,” my uncle said.

“Then hurry,” I shouted back. We had to save Adam. I started sprinting.

My uncle was right on my heels. “This makes no sense.”

It made perfect sense to me. But I knew the prophecy. And I knew that I wasn't the messiah all the proselytizing vampires were waiting for.

As a kid, I never knew my father was a vampire hunter. To me, he was just Dad. The man who read me bedtime stories, who took me on archaeological digs, who made popcorn for
Saturday Night at the Movies
and did all the other things good fathers do. He was patient. Gentle. Kind. He only yelled at me once in my life—for going into the closet where he kept his gun. But he must have had another side because he was lethal. As a man, and as a vampire hunter, people praised him to the skies, and I never got tired of hearing it. But despite what was said, he couldn't have been the greatest vampire hunter ever. That honor went to Hyde. And his son was a blood drinker, a werewolf. If
he
became an orphan, he would be the one the prophecies spoke of, not me. And if he inherited his father's habit of killing vampires, of feeding on them, we might soon find ourselves on an endangered species list.

A shepherd or a scourge. A saint or a demon. The messiah would be one of these things. I couldn't let him become an orphan.

I rounded the corner with my uncle beside me. The air was thick with dust, the tunnel floor treacherous from all the fallen rocks. We
scrambled to the entrance of Hyde's cave. He was still there, but the rock had slipped farther and forced one of his shoulders to the ground. His knees were underneath him. The rock seemed to have settled. I had no idea how we would get him out.

“Quickly, that rock over there,” my uncle shouted. “Help me move it.”

A large chunk of stone had collapsed from the ceiling outside the chamber. It wasn't in the way. I didn't understand why we should bother with it. I heard more cracking above and the roof fell down a few more inches.

“We'll set it beside him to hold up the stone, then try to slide him out.”

That made sense. I nodded, then put my hands under it to test its weight. I wouldn't have been able to move it on my own, but with my uncle's help, we slid it into place beside Hyde. A few seconds later Luna arrived.

Hyde watched us. He was nearly pinned to the floor. Blood was dripping from his mouth and nose and ears. We were almost there. Then Luna took hold of my arm and yanked me backward. I wasn't expecting it, so I stumbled, arms flailing. Our feet got tangled up and I hit the ground on my back. Air shot from my lungs. Luna landed right beside me, but I didn't hear her. All sound was drowned out by a crack so loud, I'm sure it echoed right down to the earth's core. Then the roof of the tunnel at the entrance to Hyde's den plummeted to the floor.

A cloud of dust shot past Luna and me. Tons of rock continued to fall. She took hold of my arm. She was shouting in my ear. The shock and noise had turned my eardrums into sirens. Nothing could get past their shrill ringing. But her thoughts were clear.

Get moving!

I stood, stunned. We'd come so close. I just assumed we'd get everyone out. That the story would have a happy ending. But that wasn't going to happen. Now my uncle and Hyde were buried together under a mountain of stone.

Luna started hauling me up the passage.
I don't want you to join them!

I kept looking back over my shoulder through the hail of rock and dust and small stones, hoping I might see my uncle emerge, but it didn't happen. There was nothing I could do. We stumbled awkwardly, side by side, while the earth shook and the caves collapsed. We didn't stop until we reached the others. Then Ophelia took the lead. I carried Detective Baddon's son. Luna helped Charlie. The ground lurched. The rock above us cracked. It was as if the world were falling apart.

We hadn't run far up when Charlie stopped. “Entwistle's still up there,” he shouted.

The tunnel roof lurched and fell. We barely got out of the way. I started to turn back, but Ophelia took hold of my arm and dragged me away. Her grip was iron. So was her voice: “I'm not losing you.”

Eventually we reached a more stable section. The noise was far behind us. Then the tunnel roof began to slope downward, forcing us to crouch. We came to a fork. Ophelia reached up and touched the rock, then pointed to the right, where the ceiling hung even lower. She and the others dropped to their hands and knees. I had to do a crab walk with the boy balanced on my chest. I would have scraped my back raw if it hadn't been for Mr. Entwistle's body armor. Then the air grew fresher, and over our ragged breathing I could hear the babble of water. Not a trickle, but the Indian River. A few minutes later, we approached a cave dimly lit with morning light. Everyone stopped.

“Where are we?” Luna asked.

I'm not sure if anyone answered. I was squinting ahead, wondering where we would go. Ahead was daylight. And the river. A bulletproof aquatic car would have been handy.

“I guess we'll have to wait things out down here,” Ophelia said. She retreated to a darker corner. We all followed. I lay down and practically sank into the cold stone. Relief calmed every nerve. Then I felt a warm presence beside me—Luna.

We made it.

We had. But others hadn't. Mr. Entwistle. My uncle. I wondered if there was some way we could dig them out. Heal them. But not Hyde. He was finished. A few days ago, this would have been cause for celebration. Music. Fireworks. Dancing in the streets. But his death seemed more like a tragedy now. Adam Baddon was a good man who loved his son. Now his boy was an orphan.
Perhaps the orphan.
The one who would control the future of our kind.

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

Ophelia was sitting up against the cave wall, staring at me. At the boy in my arms. “We're going to survive,” she said.

Adam's son stirred again. His breathing came in short gasps.

“Do we even know his name?” Charlie asked.

Luna shook her head. “He doesn't sound so good.”

I glanced at Ophelia. Her eyes were intense. Nervous.

“Can you help him?” I asked.

“I don't know.” Something in her voice was off.

The words were barely out of her mouth when the boy stopped breathing.

I looked around at everyone. “What do we do?”

No one answered.

I grabbed his wrist. I'd seen doctors do this on television. I searched for a pulse, but couldn't find one, so I put my head on his chest. His heartbeat was weak. Irregular. It sped up to a frantic pace. Then it stopped.

“Is he dead?” Charlie asked.

I wasn't sure.

Luna was right beside me.

Do something!

But she didn't know what to do. Neither did I. I looked over at Ophelia. She hadn't moved. Her face was a blank mask. I stared into her eyes. They were out of focus.

“What do we do?” I asked.

She didn't respond.

“What do we do?”

My voice brought her out of it. She looked at me. Her face was uncertain. Scared.

“He's just a boy,” I said.

“He's more than that,” Ophelia replied. “We'll pay for this.”

We'd already paid. Three lives had just been lost. And we had promised Hyde we'd look after his son. It was the price of our freedom.

Ophelia handed me the knife. She'd had a bad feeling about it. No wonder. It had killed Mr. Entwistle. It had almost killed me.

“It's fitting that it would be you,” she said.

I steadied my hands and pulled the blade across my open palm. I gasped and made a fist, then moved my hand until it was overtop of the boy's mouth. Beads of scarlet blood dripped down inside.

“Don't touch him,” Ophelia warned. “If he bites you, or infects you, you'll die.”

After a few seconds, she put her hands over his heart and compressed his chest. She did this several times, then moved my hand away from his mouth and started pressing on his diaphragm.

“You need to breathe into his mouth,” Luna said.

I agreed. I'd seen CPR on TV before. That was always what they did—blew oxygen straight into the patient's lungs.

“Don't go near his mouth,” Ophelia snapped.

She continued to press down on his trunk, forcing the air out of his chest. Then she went back to compressing his heart. While she did this, I dribbled more of my blood into his mouth. While I watched and bled, his teeth lengthened. Then he tried to bite me. His movements were so sudden, Luna shrieked. I jerked my hand away. The boy was still unconscious. He'd done it in his sleep.

Ophelia moved back. I kept my eyes on the boy. His breathing strengthened. His face started to change. His blond hair lengthened. His forehead stretched back. His ears sloped to two sharp points. He looked almost elflike. Tiny, with fine features. A few breaths later, he started to change back.

“What is happening?”

Ophelia shook her head. “I don't know.”

“Was he dead?” Luna asked. “Did he just die and come back?”

I nodded. He had. Just like me. Like the messiah.
A saint or a scourge . . .

Charlie stumbled over. He was still unsteady on his feet. “Your blood did that? Does this mean he feeds on vampires, like his father—like Hyde?”

It appeared that way.

My best friend was incredulous. “Why did you save him?”

What could I say? For lots of reasons. Because he was an orphan, like me. Because I had failed to save his father, Adam. But mostly because Hyde was right, none of this was the boy's fault. I put my
hand near the side of his neck and felt his pulse with the back of my fingers. It was strong now. Steady.

What does this mean?
Luna asked me.