End of Days

by Max Turner

  “How did I fail to notice?” he said. “But it makes perfect sense that it would be you.”

  Again she said nothing, but I thought something must have passed between them, because he nodded and a deep hum buzzed in his throat.

  “The only relevant question is, what will you do now?” he asked.

  Ophelia’s hand was still shaking, and when she spoke it was with a quaver in her voice. “I appreciate that you’ve brought them back.”

  I couldn’t remember ever seeing her this way before. Afraid. Uncertain. In the past, even when she was undecided about something and needed more time to think, there was a kind of certainty in her doubt, a confidence that she could work through the problem. Now she just seemed lost.

  “It wasn’t my intention to disturb you,” he said. “I was told you were at your apartment on Clonsilla.”

  Ophelia stiffened. Her voice went cold. “How did you know about that?”

  He reached into his coat and removed his flattened top hat. It looked like a black Frisbee. He started spinning it in his hands. “I’ve been very busy. Little happens in this city now that I don’t find out about.” He snapped his wrist and the top of his hat popped out. “I wouldn’t impose on your hospitality, but I don’t want to leave without some assurance that you can look after these boys.”

  “We’ve always managed.”

  “Things have changed. And they will only get worse. You know this.”

  Ophelia looked at the floor, then at me, then at Charlie. Mr. Entwistle went on, “The Underground has been compromised. It’s unstable. You can’t depend on it. It’s happening across the globe. The Coven has fractured. It is warring with itself. But they haven’t lost interest in any of you. They sent an assassin to kill these two. If I hadn’t shown up, they’d both be dead. And there is a creature out there killing vampires. It is intelligent and determined.”

  He stepped forward. Normally when he moved, it made me think of a wolf. He sort of loped. But now he was standing at his full height. I was surprised how tall he was, and how intimidating. Had I not known him better, I would have thought he was the King of Mean. Ophelia was holding a gun in her hand, but I sensed, as she must have, that the weapon was irrelevant.

  “I am the oldest vampire in the West,” he said. “Veteran of the Balkan Crusades, the Wars of the Roses, of World War II, and everything in between. I have never met anyone, man or beast, who was my equal in a fight. Not your husband. Not Maximilian. Not anyone—until now. This thing, the one I call Mr. Hyde, is positively lethal.”

  Ophelia glanced at me quickly. She must have understood that Mr. Entwistle was the vampire from my dream. The one who had fought—and lost. The corners of his mouth turned up just slightly. It was almost a smile. Then his face flattened out and he spoke with unusual seriousness.

  “I understand that you don’t want me here. But how, in my absence, will you protect them?”

  Ophelia’s eyes were busy—alert. Her voice was quiet, but there was anger in it. “You are reckless. If you care about Zachary at all, about us, you’ll turn around, walk out the door, and leave us alone.”

  Mr. Entwistle took a step forward so that the hall light was directly above him. It cast his face in shadow. His eyes looked like two empty holes. “I have left you alone. And since my little adventure last year with your ward, I have been traveling on my own, seeking answers to important questions. You know who the boy is. Now is not the time to isolate yourselves. Everything I have read and heard and felt and seen is consistent in this one regard—we are balanced on the head of a nail. One false move and we’re finished. Now that Vlad is gone, a long-predicted war has arrived. The End of Days. And the boy has a part to play. We cannot lose him now. You know the price for all of us if that happens.”

  I was starting to feel like an extra in my own life story. Nothing Mr. Entwistle said was making sense to me. I looked at Charlie. He seemed as nervous and unsure as I did. As if the floor were falling out from under us.

  “You have more problems than you can contend with. The Coven won’t be in shambles forever. Once a new order is established, they’ll come in force. For all of you. Not one assassin. An army. They don’t approve of child vampires, or those who shelter them. And you’ve a more immediate problem—Mr. Hyde. Who else can help you? I’m your last best hope.”

  “No.” Ophelia’s voice had a tremor. “I’ll take them away. We’ll hide.”

  Mr. Entwistle’s head tipped sideways just a hair. Pity was in his expression. “You can run, that’s true. But where? And for how long? Sooner or later they’ll find you. Then they’ll kill him, and his friends. Unless Hyde devours them first. He exists only to kill our kind. We have to make a stand. As time goes on, the situation here will only get worse.”

  Get worse? Unless we moved up north where there were twenty-four hours of daylight at a stretch, I couldn’t imagine how things could get worse.

  Ophelia was still holding the gun. She looked as if she might set it down, but she didn’t. “You are asking me to trust you, and I don’t. You might have changed your name and your clothes, but you are who you have always been.” More certainty was in her manner as she spoke, but she was still a long way from the indomitable person who showed up to save my friends and me from Vlad.

  Mr. Entwistle pressed his lips together and turned them up in a smile that had no humor or mirth. It expressed loss and disappointment. “Trust is irrelevant, Ilona. You can’t protect him. There is only me.”

  Ilona. I’d never heard the name. But Ophelia’s expression changed when she heard it. Her fear remained, and there was sadness, too. And what else? She was so practiced at hiding everything, I couldn’t tell.

  “Like you, I have reinvented myself. I am John Entwistle now. And I walk in the light. Well—in a manner of speaking.”

  Ophelia looked at me. Her expression softened. I smiled. Then she looked back at Mr. Entwistle. Her face could be an iron mask when she wanted, but not tonight. She was still shaken.

  “I am not a trusting person. This is not a habit I plan to change. If you are being honest, time will bear you out. But until I am certain, I will not have you here.”

  Mr. Entwistle placed his top hat on his head. “I suggest you tell the boys everything. Now is not a time for secrets. Or for us to be isolated. Alone, the Beast will destroy us, one after the other.” He nodded in farewell, then turned and walked out the door. I heard his footsteps on the back step, then the soft grass. A moment later he had vanished.

  I glanced at Ophelia. Much of their conversation had been over my head, but it didn’t change the fact that I owed him my thanks. If not for him, I’d still be stuck behind bars with the charming Officer Lumsden for company. This felt wrong. He shouldn’t have left. My instincts told me he was right, and that we needed to stick together.

  Ophelia must have sensed what I was thinking. “Let him go, Zachary.”

  “Why can’t he stay here?”

  “Give it a night. We can discuss matters. The situation is more complicated than you know.”

  Only because you never tell me anything, I thought to myself. I should have screamed it in her ear. But I couldn’t. I was a bit old for tantrums. “I think you’re wrong about him.”

  She let go of my arm. “He isn’t who you think he is.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She wiped her eyes again, then took a deep breath. “It is a common thing for a vampire to change his name.”

  “Is that why he called you Ilona?”

  She looked at Charlie, then at me. “It was a name I used once, a long time ago, but it was never really mine.”

  I thought she might say more, but she didn’t.

  “Why don’t you trust him?”

  She looked at me, then at the floor, then pinched her forehead between her fingers and thumb and began massaging her temples. “Things are worse than you can imagine.”

  Since I could imagine the sun exploding and destroying all life on earth, this was sayin
g quite a bit. “Then shouldn’t we accept Mr. Entwistle’s help?”

  “Well, that’s the rub, isn’t it? Mr. Entwistle isn’t really Mr. Entwistle.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She fixed me with a sad stare. “When I knew him, his name was John Tiptoft. He had many titles. Earl of Worcester, Treasurer of the Exchequer, Deputy of Ireland, Constable of England.”

  A constable. Wasn’t that like a police officer? It didn’t sound so bad. None of it did. Ophelia must have sensed my doubt because she finished with a whopper.

  “As a constable, he was essentially an executioner. The people hated him for his cruelty. They called him the Butcher of England.”

  — CHAPTER 16

  REVELATIONS

  I knew Ophelia as well I knew anyone. She was a serious person. She laughed often, but rarely made jokes herself. She didn’t kid people. What she said you could write in stone. She’d just told me that Mr. Entwistle was the Butcher of England. Mr. Entwistle, who preached forgiveness. Who believed even the worst vampires should be nurtured back from madness. Who had just saved me from the police and a murder charge.

  I looked at Charlie. He was as shocked as I was. “What did you call him?” he asked.

  “John Tiptoft. But that is not his name. Not the first. Who he was in the beginning only he can say. But he was John Tiptoft, the executioner for the House of York, when I learned of him. He was ruthless, Charlie. Ruthless.”

  I wondered how all of this was possible. I thought she might explain, but her eyes were staring at the back door, unfocused. She suddenly looked like a stranger to me. I realized I knew almost nothing about her. Where she came from. Her family. Even her real name. It wasn’t Ilona. Did that mean it wasn’t Ophelia, either? She might have been born centuries ago. From an age vanished in time.

  She looked at me and smiled. There was warmth in it. And love. No, my mind told me, this is no stranger. People can have secrets, but they can’t hide who they really are. This was the person I trusted more than anyone else in the world. Her name was Ophelia and she was the only reason I was still alive.

  “I had hoped to talk to you earlier about things,” she said. “It was why I asked you to come back with Charlie. I didn’t expect things to get so out of control, so quickly. And I didn’t expect to see John.”

  “I think you’re wrong about him,” I said. “I think we can trust him.”

  “He was a monster, Zachary.”

  “Wasn’t Vlad?”

  “At times. But he was never as bad as history would have you believe.” She let out a tired breath. “He was a product of his time.”

  I wasn’t sure what that meant. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  She laughed. “I’d tell you if I knew.” She looked at me, then at Charlie, who I’m sure was feeling as confused as I was.

  “There are clean clothes upstairs. And a laundry hamper. Why don’t you two get cleaned up. I’ll wait down here.”

  It didn’t take long for Charlie and me to get our bearings. With Ophelia around, everything was always well ordered—fresh towels in the closet, beds turned down, clothes laid out, as if she’d been expecting us.

  “This place is like a hotel,” Charlie said when he saw new jeans and a T-shirt folded at the foot of his bed. “You don’t suppose there’s room service?”

  I didn’t think we should push our luck. I called dibs on the shower and left him in his room. He was making a call when I closed the door—probably to Suki. If I was lucky, I would have time to call Luna after I talked to Ophelia. So after the shortest, most painful shower in the history of personal hygiene, I hobbled down the stairs to the living room, where she was standing near the front window, her eyes far away. Light from a streetlamp filtered in through a thin white curtain, filling the room with a soft glow. I walked over so we were standing side by side, her head near my shoulder. It almost always surprised me how much smaller she was when we stood this close. In my mind, she filled the room.

  “Thanks for the new clothes,” I said.

  She took hold of my arm with both hands and rested her head on my shoulder. “I hope you weren’t attached to the old ones. I don’t think they can be salvaged.”

  I didn’t care and said so. “I’m sorry about Inspector Johansson. I know he was a good friend.”

  She didn’t answer. She just wiped at her cheek with one hand. I hadn’t noticed, but she’d been crying. I’d never seen her do this. Not in nine years.

  “Is Charlie coming down?” she asked.

  “No. I think he wants to talk to Suki. Things aren’t too good for her right now.”

  A quiet hmmm escaped her lips—as if she understood. “That will change. She needs more time.”

  Or to become one of us, I thought. I knew that was how Charlie felt. I didn’t want to mention it, knowing Ophelia would disapprove. At least until we were clear of trouble. If we were ever clear of trouble.

  “I don’t feel right about Mr. Entwistle,” I said.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t think I ever forgave him for taking you away.”

  “From the Nicholls Ward?”

  “Yes. Putting all that fear into your head so that you ran off. You can’t imagine how scared I was. I searched for days. In the end, I was so desperate, I turned to Vlad for help, and so I found you entirely by accident. All this time, in the back of my head, I’d blamed him for all that worry. If he hadn’t shown up . . .”

  I never knew this. Of course, we never talked about it. We’d both assumed Mr. Entwistle was dead, so there seemed to be no point in blaming him for anything. “I think his intentions were good,” I said. “I think they are now.”

  “I can’t risk it, Zachary. I can’t. . . . I’m sorry. There is an evil in some men, and no matter how hard they try to bury it, to cover it with new clothes and good manners, it stays.” She looked me straight in the eye. “And I ought to know.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. She’d once been married to a man who’d impaled people by the thousands. I never understood how she could have loved him, but I wasn’t going to ask now. I was hardly an expert when it came to relationships. I’d fallen for Luna so fast, I’m still not sure what really happened.

  “The sun is going to be up soon.” She raised her head from my shoulder and walked over to a sofa that was sitting adjacent to a gas fireplace. We sat. “I need you to understand the trouble we’re in.”

  “With this thing—Mr. Hyde.”

  “That is part of it.” She drifted away again, chewing the inside of her cheek. Her eyes were deep and unfocused.

  “Would you rather wait?”

  She shook her head. “I just don’t know where to start.”

  I was going to recommend the beginning, but I held my tongue.

  “When Vlad disappeared last summer,” she began, “it sent shock waves around the world. Before him there was nothing. No order. No law. No safety. Not for our kind. You can’t imagine how terrible it was. . . . But he changed all that. The Coven of the Dragon changed it. And now that he is gone, all the jackals he chased into the shadows are free to run amok, and his generals—the elder vampires—are fighting amongst themselves.”

  “What does this have to do with us?”

  She took a deep breath. “Everything.”

  That didn’t tell me much. I waited. She sat thinking. I knew our time was short. The sun would be up in less than half an hour. “Have you learned anything about that creature?” I asked.

  “Not enough. I wondered at first if he was an agent of the Coven, but I think not. I have spoken with other vampires who agree. They are all scared. Or they were.”

  I didn’t know Ophelia was in touch with other vampires. “Can’t we team up with them? Get more help?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s killed them all.”

  She looked at me with a flat expression on her face. But underneath, I could see she was trying hard to keep herself level. I re
membered what Inspector Johansson had said, that other vampires had disappeared—good ones. No wonder she was so rattled. It was all the more reason to get help from Mr. Entwistle.

  “Do you think we can beat it?”

  Ophelia reached down and straightened the folds of her dress. “I don’t know if it matters.”

  That made no sense to me, and I said so.

  “Have you read The Book of Revelation?”

  “From the Bible?”

  “Yes.”

  I shook my head.

  “It predicts that two Beasts will emerge, who, along with Satan, form an unholy trinity that will try to usurp control of the earth from God, His son, and the Holy Ghost. The Bible predicts that good will triumph in the end. That God will reestablish Himself as the absolute holy sovereign. Many vampires believe a similar cycle will occur in our world, but the ending isn’t so certain. Order will fall into chaos and a new order will emerge. This creature you call Mr. Hyde is a being likened to the Beast of the Apocalypse, and so whether we beat it or not, many have taken it as a sign that the destruction of the old order is upon us.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  She looked at me, thinking, then gazed out the window. “It is hard not to believe it because it is happening. When Vlad was nearly destroyed last year, and disappeared, it was the first sign that the old order was failing. Now, his Coven is infighting and impotent, and the Underground is falling apart as a result. The appearance of Mr. Hyde is a sign to many that the destruction of the vampire world as we know it is at hand. Already, he is international news in the vampire world.”

  “Is this what Mr. Entwistle meant when he said a war has arrived? The End of Days?”

  Ophelia nodded. “Vlad held the Coven together with an iron fist. Now that he is gone, the others are fighting for control. Most of this is happening overseas, so we’ve managed to stay clear of it. But the Coven has an interest in you. John is right. They will come for us.”