Night Runner (25 page)

I nodded as though I'd understood every word, but between you and me, he didn't seem right in the head all of a sudden. Something about his tone had changed. It was nothing major. He just seemed a little more aggressive than normal. More excited. Like he was about to sit me down to explain his plans for world domination.

“We should have a talk,” he said, and as he moved to sit behind the desk, he motioned for me to sit on the sofa. “You must have some questions. Now is the time to ask.”

I sat back and thought for a moment. There were so many things I wanted to know about the secret world of vampires. Maximilian probably knew as much as anyone about Vrolok. About the Coven of the Dragon. And Endpoint Psychosis. But he wasn't just a vampire hunter, he was my uncle, and so he knew personal stuff, too. About my father and mother. I didn't know where to begin, so I decided to start at the beginning.

“How did they meet?” I asked.

“Who?”

“My mom and dad.”

“They met at Trent University. Your mother studied anthropology, your father archaeology, and so as undergraduates they had a few of the same classes.”

“How did she die?”

“Your father never told you?”

I shook my head.

My uncle looked down at his desk. He seemed uncertain about what to say. Then he reached to a console on his desk and flipped a switch. A light came on behind him. It was mounted on the wall, so his whole body became a shadow. One elbow was propped on his desk, and he rested his chin on his hand, between his thumb and
index finger. I imagined that he must have spent long hours in this pose. I'd seen it before, back at the ward. It was a thinker's pose.

“There is someone who is better qualified to answer that question,” he said, watching me. “Someone who would like to talk to you, if you're feeling up to it.”

I nodded.

My uncle stood and stepped over to the wall behind his desk. He reached up and grabbed the light fixture. I noticed that his hand was shaking. When he pulled the light down, a panel in the wall opened. A secret door. He turned to face the opening.

“We are ready for you to join us now,” he said.

Then the vampire from my nightmare entered the room.

T
he vampire stood just inside the room. Although I had been watching him closely, I never actually saw him move. I would say that he drifted in, but it was more as if the room itself shifted. He was hidden in the corridor one moment, and standing in front of me the next. It left me feeling dizzy and confused. I imagine it's the way someone feels when they drink too much and can no longer trust their own eyes. In place of the fur cloak and gold-buttoned shirt of my dream, he was wearing a suit with long tails that reached past the backs of his knees. Underneath was a lacy shirt with a puffy collar and puffy cuffs. I would like to be able to tell you that it was a Victorian suit in the Balderdash style from 1857, but I don't know anything about that. To me it was just old. Old and purple. To one of his lapels he'd fastened the brooch, the one with the dragon holding a cross in its teeth, the one he'd worn in my dream. He saw me staring at it and a glimmer of amusement flashed in his large eyes. He stroked his
thick moustache, then nodded to my uncle, who lowered his head very solemnly.

Uncle Max raised a hand and gestured towards me. “This is my nephew,” he said. “Daniel Zachariah Thomson, son of the late Dr. Robert Douglas Thomson, famous archaeologist and vampire hunter, and my former partner. Zachary, this is a new business associate of mine. Former Count of Wallachia and the Grand Master of the Coven of the Dragon. His real name is Vlad. Vlad Tsepesh. You know him as the Baron Vrolok.”

The vampire had been watching my uncle as he spoke. Then he turned his eyes on me. I couldn't move. It was as if Mother Nature had forgotten to equip me with any real tools for dealing with trouble. I wondered if this was a human failing. In nature programs, other animals could do all kinds of things when they were threatened. Squids squirted ink and scooted away. Chameleons changed colour. Possums played dead. Hedgehogs rolled into spiny balls. Lambs and rabbits shrieked. Skunks sprayed. Snakes bit. Dogs barked. Cats hissed. Stink bugs stank. The list was endless, really.

Well, if I could have chosen any response at that moment, standing face to face with my father's killer, I would have gone with the mountain gorilla. They go berserk and kill everything that moves. Unfortunately, that isn't what I did. I guess I was just too surprised. I'd never been betrayed before. I understood the word, but there is a huge difference between knowing a word and living it. This was terrible. I was cornered. My uncle was on one side, the Baron was on the other, and the sun was at my back. And it had all happened at a moment when I'd thought I was safe. So I was sort of frozen with disbelief. Like—how did I get here? Then I realized it didn't matter. Unless I tossed myself through the window, there wasn't going to be an easy way out.

The Baron looked me over without speaking. There was a power in his eyes that made it impossible to look away. He seemed to grow
taller, more ominous. Then he spoke to my uncle, although his eyes still held me paralyzed. His voice was deep and seemed to come from inside my own head.

“My necklace, does he have it?”

“Yes,” my uncle replied.

The Baron reached under his shirt and pulled out a necklace of his own. It was a golden crescent moon. Even though I had never seen it, I recognized it right away. It was the matching piece to the charm around my neck. And just like that, I knew how my mother had died. The Baron must have killed her—killed her and taken the necklace. The instant my mind zeroed in on this truth, a part of me just turned off. Sound disappeared. It was as though I was suddenly deaf. My vision started to narrow, as if I was seeing both my uncle and the Baron through a long tunnel. They were the only two things in the room. A surge of anger made my fists shake. I wanted death. To kill. In ancient times, they called this “blood lust.” And that's when I ripped the halberd from the wall above the sofa and started swinging.

I would like to tell you that my first fight was a smashing success—that I was a mountain gorilla and didn't stop until everything around me was kaput, but that isn't what happened. The truth is, I was exhausted, still smarting from the car accident, and up against a true vampire, a creature who had fed for centuries on the blood of humankind and was stronger and faster than anything you've ever seen. So I didn't start a fight so much as I initiated what was to become a dreadful beating.

Vrolok became the kind of evil creature you'd expect to see in a horror film, a being unmoved by the suffering of others. He was fast. I could barely see his ghost-like movements. He took the halberd from me before I could even scrape the dust from his old purple coat. Then he tripped me to the ground, put a hand on my chest and pushed all the air from my lungs.

Through it all, my uncle watched with a face like a statue. I don't think he blinked even once. His eyes were focused on the two of us as though he needed to memorize everything that happened. But it was like he was watching us and
not
watching us, because his face just stayed blank.

When I said at the beginning of the story, way back at the Nicholls Ward, that my uncle had come to the right place, that he was nuts, well, I was right on the money. He really was crazy. He must have been. He'd just rescued me from the Taser-happy police, then looked after my injuries. Why? So I could get flattened in his office? It didn't make a bit of sense. And he didn't seem to care a pinch about what was happening. He didn't lift a finger.

The fight ended seconds later. I fastened both hands around Vrolok's wrist and tried to pry his arm away, but without any air, it was as if someone had flicked a switch and turned off the power. My strength vanished. The room started spinning and my eyes couldn't focus properly. Then I blacked out.

I
don't know how long I lay on the floor. I drifted in and out of consciousness, and you can't really keep track of time when that happens. Some time later, my uncle came back into the room. He stood over me with his hands on his hips. I still couldn't see well. My eyes were watering and everything looked blurry.

“Get up,” he said. Then he turned his back on me and walked behind his desk. There was a cigar in his hand, which he lit with something that looked like a miniature cannon. He took a big puff and turned to face the painted windows.

“Get up,” he said again. “We don't have much time.”

I wanted to tell him to leave me alone, but I was too tired, and when I opened my mouth to speak, the pain of moving made me gasp.

He looked down at me with the same blank expression he'd worn during my fight with the Baron. “In life, the only person you can
really count on is yourself. Others will abandon you, betray you, disappoint you. You have to learn to depend on yourself. GET UP.”

I couldn't believe that he was shouting at me after what had happened. It made me so furious I did stand up. Then I coiled myself for a charge. He probably had a gun handy, so I'd have to be quick.

“Don't be foolish,” he said. He had a small black box in his hand. There was a switch on it. “One false move and I blow out the windows. And you know what that means.”

I did. The sun would stream in and I would go up like gunpowder, so I straightened up as best I could.

“That's better,” my uncle said. “Now, take a seat.” He nodded towards the couch.

I shook my head. I wasn't sitting down. I wasn't going to do another thing he told me.

“Fine,” he said. He took a haul on his cigar. The end of it glowed an angry orange. It lit up his face, and for just a split second he looked more like a devil than a person.

“That was incredibly foolish, what you did earlier. Reckless . . . mindless . . . stupid . . . I can't imagine what would have happened if I hadn't been here.”

He paused. I knew he was giving me a chance to respond, but I had no idea where to begin. For starters, he was making it sound as if he'd saved my life, when he hadn't done a thing. And he was angry. I was the one who was half dead. What did
he
have to be so mad about? Had he forgotten that the Baron killed my mother and father? What was I supposed to do when I met him, snuggle up for a cozy hug?

“I didn't rescue you from Johansson to watch you get flattened in my office,” my uncle said. “Another mistake like that, and it might be your last.”

He took another puff on his cigar. The smoke brought on a series of coughs that shook his broad chest. Once he'd fought them down,
he reached into the drawer of his desk and pulled something out. It took me a moment to recognize my father's journal. He stepped out from behind the desk and walked over to where I was standing.

“You left this in your friend's boat. The Baron brought it here. I flipped through it while you were sleeping. I've found some interesting passages I think you should read.” He handed me the notebook.

I snatched it away and stumbled into the sofa. “You don't deserve to touch this,” I said.

He blew smoke out through his nostrils. I guess he didn't care.

I stared at him. He stared back.

“Do you want me to read it for you?” he asked.

I looked down at the journal. There were yellow sticky notes marking several of the pages. I opened it to the first and glanced over the writing until I found a passage that had been underlined with a pencil. This is what my father had written.

 

Max is a true evolutionist . . .

 

And later, on the facing page, was this passage.

 

Because of his belief that the fittest will survive, and the confidence he has in his own abilities, he is willing to place himself in the most dangerous situations. I fear for him. At times, he shows a total disregard for his own safety. And yet, if he were not like this, we would never have achieved so many victories over those carriers who have fallen into darkness, who refuse redemption. And so, indirectly, he has saved hundreds, if not thousands of lives . . .

 

I shook my head. What was this supposed to tell me? Was I supposed to forgive him or something? Did he think it would explain why he had betrayed me and given me over to my father's killer?

I read the rest of the page and the one following.

“Why am I doing this?”

“Just keep reading,” Maximilian said.

I found the next passage.

 

Max put forth the suggestion today that instead of merely monitoring those carriers to whom we have granted amnesty, we use them to hunt other carriers. I am reluctant to endorse this strategy. It seems a dangerous risk, given that we know so little about Endpoint Psychosis and what triggers its onset.

 

And that was it. He'd marked only those three entries. Well, perhaps my brain had been bruised, or maybe it was still disconnected from my wrestling match with the Baron, but I didn't get it. I looked up at my uncle. His eyes were dark and focused.

“Your father was a very conservative man, Zachary,” he said. “Perhaps too conservative. The truth is, the best vampire hunters in the world are other vampires. You have the potential to be counted among them. But you must be able to prove that your mind is healthy. Uncorrupted by the pathogen. Another ridiculous stunt like the one you pulled earlier, and I won't be able to do a thing for you.”

He went on to say other things, about Endpoint Psychosis and suicide and spreading the infection, but I wasn't really listening. I was thinking of my father. That he wouldn't have wanted me to bite Maximilian, which is what I wanted to do most at that very moment. I wanted to kill him. I'd like to think it was my hunger that made me think this way. I was a little short of juice, and after tasting human blood for the first time at Luna's cottage, my desire for more was making me furious.