End of Days

end of days

 

 

 

 

 

ALSO BY MAX TURNER

 

Night Runner

 

MAX TURNER

 

 

 

 

 

ST. MARTIN
'
S
G
RIFFIN

NEW YORK

 

 

— CHAPTER 1: BEING A TEEN VAMPIRE

— CHAPTER 2: PARTY CRASHER

— CHAPTER 3: RUNNING SCARED

— CHAPTER 4: SURPRISE ATTACK

— CHAPTER 5: INSPECTOR JOHANSSON

— CHAPTER 6: THE SAFE HOUSE

— CHAPTER 7: PROPHECIES

— CHAPTER 8: ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

— CHAPTER 9: THE DREAM ROAD

— CHAPTER 10: CATCHING UP

— CHAPTER 11: VISITATIONS

— CHAPTER 12: ESCAPE

— CHAPTER 13: MR. ENTWISTLE

— CHAPTER 14: WEED WORLD

— CHAPTER 15: BY ANY OTHER NAME

— CHAPTER 16: REVELATIONS

— CHAPTER 17: THE PROPHET

— CHAPTER 18: THE PROPHECIES EXPLAINED

— CHAPTER 19: AN UNEXPECTED GUEST

— CHAPTER 20: A TRIP TO THE HOSPITAL

— CHAPTER 21: AGENT X

— CHAPTER 22: ABOVE THE TILES

— CHAPTER 23: SICKBED

— CHAPTER 24: THE BEAST THAT NONE CAN WAR AGAINST

— CHAPTER 25: REUNION

— CHAPTER 26: SECURITY

— CHAPTER 27: THE HUNT BEGINS

— CHAPTER 28: ON THE ROOFTOP

— CHAPTER 29: OF VILLAINS AND VAMPIRES

— CHAPTER 30: FAMILY PORTRAIT

— CHAPTER 31: THE TRAIL ENDS

— CHAPTER 32: MONKSHOOD

— CHAPTER 33: INFIGHTING

— CHAPTER 34: PARTING WAYS

— CHAPTER 35: THE VAMPIRE'S KISS

— CHAPTER 36: MISSING IN ACTION

— CHAPTER 37: HOMECOMING

— CHAPTER 38: SCORCHED EARTH

— CHAPTER 39: HYDE'S LAIR

— CHAPTER 40: HELL HATH NO FURY . . .

— CHAPTER 41: THE WEREWOLF

— CHAPTER 42: CAVE-IN

— CHAPTER 43: THE PROPHECY REVISITED

— CHAPTER 44: BLOOD DEBT

— CHAPTER 45: IRON SPIKE ENTERPRISES–ONE MONTH LATER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

END OF DAYS.
Copyright © 2010 by Max Turner. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

ISBN 978-0-312-59252-3

First Edition: October 2010

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end of days

I'm told vampires are popular in books these days. I'm not surprised. The perks of infection are pretty sick. Awesome physical power. Highly tuned senses. The ability to recover from almost any injury. Good dental hygiene. A simple diet. And that immortality thing—very impressive on a résumé.

My name is Daniel Zachariah Thomson and I'm living the dream. I have been for over nine years. Having said that—the first eight of them weren't what you might imagine. I was orphaned, living in a mental ward, and sick all the time from medications that would never cure me. Then I found out what I was, met a girl, fell in love, and died.

For a while afterward, I'd say life was almost perfect. Then I discovered that every silver lining has a cloud. Does this sound like a complaint? I guess it does. But being a vampire isn't a free ticket to Boardwalk. Those perks I mentioned earlier come with a heavy price tag. If you don't believe me, just think of all the wonderful things you did growing up. How many of them were outside on a beautiful day? For a vampire, the UV index never drops below
deep-fry,
and they don't make sunscreen for that, so once you get infected—no more warm, tingly skin on the beach, no more ocean sunsets, no more afternoon road hockey games, and no more sneaking into your mother's room to look at her Victoria's Secret catalogs. Actually, I guess you could still do that, but it would have to be at night. Still, you get
the point. Life without the sunshine is tough. Just look what it did to Gollum.

And the sun is just the tip of the iceberg. I'm sure you've seen the movies. There are lots of ways for us to die, and some are pretty nasty. Forget about holy water and silver bullets. Water of the regular kind scares me, and bullets don't need to be silver, they just need to be airborne.

Then there's the angry mob. Scores of people armed with sticks and pitchforks and torches. They got the Werewolf. And Frankenstein's monster. And the Phantom of the Opera. They almost got Homer Simpson, too. For a vampire, fear of discovery, fear of the mob, is constant. It's why we work so hard to stay hidden. Vampire hunters are another reason. And they aren't all as cute as Buffy. In fact, most of them aren't human. They're vampires, which means most of us are killed by our own kind. Does this seem wrong? It certainly does to me. But if I understand it correctly, it's a matter of necessity.

Imagine a berserk gorilla. Now take off some of the hair and give it rabies. That's the future of every vampire in a nutshell. My father called it Endpoint Psychosis. The stuff of horror movies. No one really understands it. Some vampires get it right away, and others put it off for centuries. But eventually the stress of change, of hunger, of fear, and the loss of light and normal relationships—it unhinges us. Death is never far behind. A small number choose suicide, but as I said before, most are murdered by other vampires. Older ones who've lived for centuries and want our existence to remain a secret. They can be ruthlessly efficient at removing those who might give them away—or who might spread the infection carelessly. To top it off, they really have it in for child vampires: at least, they did before The End of Days. I guess the theory was, a young vampire was pretty much guaranteed to do something stupid and give himself away. And young vampires had a history of spreading the infection too quickly. Given that I turned my friend Charlie
last year, and he did the same to a girl named Luna on the same night—well, it would have been hard to argue our case.

Everyone imagines being a vampire would be cooler than joining the Justice League, and it is. You're practically a superhero. But you have to be able to cope with what you lose. It's a kind of culture shock. You need lots of support from family and friends. Sadly, when Charlie turned, he didn't have that. At the time, his father lived in Halifax and his mother was in rehab, his friends were still in school, and his girlfriend, Suki, lived with Luna in New Jersey. Without me, he would have been a hermit. He got angry often and it made him careless about keeping his condition a secret. I had hoped he would keep it together for a few more centuries, or at least until someone invented the jet pack, but at the rate he was going, a ride on the crazy train was just around the corner. Of course, you could argue he was a crackpot even before he turned, but guys can be loo-loo in a lot of different ways. He was giving up fun-loving-reckless for angry-young-man, and it had me worried. If he didn't get himself under control, someone was going to notice and take the
un
out of his undead. What he really needed was a
Chicken Soup for the Vampire Soul
. Something to calm him down and help him come to terms with what he'd given up. The sunshine. Safety. Sports. And school.

I know what you're thinking.
He had to give up school? What a heartbreaker! What could be worse, winning the lottery maybe?
Well, he didn't exactly love the place, it's true. But he was popular there. He was a great athlete, so he got to be in the spotlight often. He'd given that up for the shadows. And so Charlie Rutherford, Detention King of Adam Scott Collegiate, now talked about school as if it were the Land of Chocolate. If that's not a sign a guy's gone mental, what is?

I wasn't sure what to do to help him. Fortunately, I still had Ophelia in my corner. She was a vampire, too, and for nine years after my father died, she was the closest thing I had to a family. The
night this story started, she was leaving to meet someone. I didn't ask whom. With Ophelia, if she wanted you to know, she told you up front.

Before she headed out the door, she reached up, pinched my cheek, and smiled. “You can't fix his problems overnight. Just try to help him reconnect with people. Take his mind off of things. But don't put yourselves at risk. If you sense he's getting a bit hot under the collar, get him home. I'll be out for a while, but I need to talk to you both before sunrise. It's very important.”

I understood, so after I said good-bye, I wandered down to Charlie's room in the basement so we could work out a plan. Right after that, things started to go haywire, although as I look back, our problems really began long before that—with two murders in Toronto. Like a pair of dominoes, they set off a sequence of events that led to Peterborough and pretty much flattened everything in sight. But we didn't know that was coming so, for us, the End of Days started with a rave.

Charlie was on his cell when I knocked on the door and stepped into our room. He'd been living with Ophelia and me for a few weeks now, ever since his mother checked into the clinic. She'd been fighting with the bottle and losing. After drinking herself into the drunk tank for the upteenth time, Children's Aid had given her two choices—quit the drink or lose custody of your son. She made the right decision and entered a rehab program. While she was away, Charlie was rooming with me.

“Sounds great,” he said into his phone. He looked at me and quickly pointed to his bed. A black T-shirt was lying there, so I tossed it over. He slipped it over his head, then said, “Yeah . . . See you later,” and hung up.

“What's going on?” I asked.

He turned and started sifting through his clothes. Like mine, they were in mixed piles all over the floor. I caught the smell of leather and looked up as he slipped his coat over his shoulders.

“There's a rave on River Road out past Trent,” he said. “You feel like taking in some local wildlife?”

“You wouldn't rather go later?
A Fistful of Dollars
is starting in a few minutes.” It was a Clint Eastwood duster. One of Charlie's favorites.

“Those old spaghetti westerns are on all the time. You'll like this better. You can work on your dance moves.”