End of Days (2 page)

I'd never been out dancing before. My best move would have
been to find the closest chair. “I don't know how to dance, Charlie. You know that.”

“Then it's a perfect night to learn.” He smiled and headed for the stairs. “And you're going to love the scenery.”

“Um . . . okay.”

“You don't sound too keen.”

I guess I didn't. I was worried that if he lost his temper, he'd have a fairly large audience. And I wasn't exactly thrilled at the prospect of dancing for the first time with a bunch of people watching. But this was what he needed—to get out and mingle.

“Come on, chowderhead. Fortune favors the bold. Get your boogie shoes on. This will be fun.”

Well, it would be for him, and that was the main thing. I followed him upstairs and through the kitchen.

“Where's Ophelia?”

“She's gone to meet someone.”

“Who?”

I shrugged. “She didn't say.”

He didn't look surprised to hear it. Ophelia was a private person, and I wasn't one to pry.

We slipped out the front door and took off down Hunter Street. It was where we were living now—one of Peterborough's old west-end neighborhoods with huge trees and houses that were each different from the next. Some big. Some small. Some palatial. Some set back so far from the sidewalk it was a workout just getting to the door. Our place was a modest brick bungalow, the house on the block you were least likely to notice. Not too large or too tiny. Nothing fancy, but not uncommonly plain, either—or its plainness would have made it stand out. Around here, it was all about blending in.

“How far is it?” I asked.

Charlie set out at an easy jog. I let him set the pace so he'd be comfortable. “Close,” he answered. He was right. Sort of. Maybe you know this, maybe you don't. Vampires are a lot stronger than normal people. We see better, hear better, move faster, heal faster.
We do everything better except suntan. So the two of us were across town and past Trent University faster than a Greyhound bus. About four miles. For us, it was barely a warm-up.

The rave wasn't quite what I expected. Speakers, lights, artificial smoke, the air so thick with body spray it was a wonder anyone could move. But people did. Perhaps a hundred. Maybe more. They jumped and danced and collided to music that thumped right through my chest. So much energy was in the place, even my hair was tingling.

I wasn't used to crowds, so I stood off to the side and watched for a few minutes while Charlie disappeared into the writhing mass of dancers. He was smooth. No herky-jerky. Like a normal person caught with a slow-motion camera, only he was moving at regular speed. Other people around me noticed, too, those on the periphery who were resting, or refueling, or looking for friends. A girl a few feet away was staring so intently I wondered if she'd forgotten how to blink. This happened often. It was the same way with Ophelia. When we went out shopping at night, even the blind gawked.

In little time, Charlie was surrounded by a group of people, mostly girls that I guessed were either friends or hopefuls. He looked at me and waved me over. I shook my head. I wasn't ready to brave the dance floor. Not yet, even though it didn't seem all that difficult. By the looks of things, the music and the crowd sort of pushed you around. Still, if there was a way to look ridiculous, I was sure I'd find it.

I pressed the charm of my necklace between a finger and thumb. It was a full moon fashioned of silver, etched and polished to a perfect shine. My father gave it to me when I was seven. I could still picture him bending down to fasten it around my neck. He pressed it against my chest, messed my hair, and stood. Then he left. And died. It was the day I became an orphan. And a vampire. Aside from a few old photographs, the necklace was the only thing of his I still had. There was another piece to it, a golden crescent that fit along one side, but that part was with Luna.

I thought of her and felt a smile creep up my cheek. Pretty soon my whole face was involved. I'd say I thought of her often, but it was more like I thought of her constantly and just got interrupted by other things. I wondered what she was doing, and if she was thinking of me. I pictured the two of us dancing. Would she have liked it here? I wasn't sure. Like me, she was comfortable when other people took the spotlight. It was even more true now that she was a vampire. Sadly, she was in New Jersey. A million miles away.

My smile faded. Then someone touched my arm, a tall woman with dark hair and black lipstick. She was carrying a tray of drinks. Her eyes wandered over me, then she offered me one. I raised my hand and shook my head. My drinking habits stayed at home. She wasn't gone a second when a strange feeling came over me. An absurd amount of body heat was being generated in the room, but for all that, I felt a chill. I was being watched.

I quickly located Charlie and his friends. They were in a tight circle, each taking turns dancing through the center. The guy in the middle, who might have been a lineman from Charlie's old football team, was doing something that I could only describe as the Cyborg Chicken. I scanned the rest of the floor. A guy with blue hair was jumping up and down like a spawning salmon. In another corner, a group of girls were dancing so close together it was a wonder their jewelry wasn't tangled. Farther on were a bunch of guys, some with spiked hair, others with shaved heads, who were all jumping up and slamming into one another. It was all alien to me. But certainly no cause for concern.

Then my eyes drifted upward. I thought I saw something in the lights. It was hard to tell. Even if you're from the planet Krypton, your eyes aren't much good with strobes flashing in them. But my instincts told me I was getting warm, so I made my way onto the dance floor to get a better look. I was staring up at the ceiling, not watching where I was going, when I bumped into a girl. Her red hair was cut like a lampshade and she was wearing high-heeled boots that went right up
past her knees. Before I could reach out, her drink spilled. I started to apologize.

“That's fine,” she said. She moved closer so we were almost touching. “Don't worry about it.”

I offered to get her another drink, but she smiled and shook her head. She seemed cool with things. Her boyfriend wasn't. I hadn't noticed him at first. He stepped toward me with a scowl on his face. His hair was gelled down the center like a giant fan and he was wearing a Ramones T-shirt. The people around us backed away just enough that I could tell there was going to be trouble. Then Charlie slid in beside me. His eyes had the same look I imagine Roman gladiators wore when they went into the Colosseum. A kind of focused intensity that was a three parts anger and one part crazy.

“Back off, Romeo,” he said. His teeth were starting to drop.

I felt the bottom fall out of my stomach. This was the last thing we needed. A free-for-all that would make the
National Enquirer. Teen Vampire Starts Riot at Small-Town Rave.

“It's fine, Charlie,” I shouted in his ear. “It was my mistake.”

I think we could have made it out cleanly at that point if the girl I'd bumped into hadn't been staring at Charlie with a look of dazed euphoria. Whatever cologne he was wearing, it was working overtime. Charlie smiled at her. She smiled back. Then her boyfriend stepped closer so the two of them were chest to chest.
Here we go,
I thought. Charlie's eyes were like two black disks. I hadn't seen anything like it since Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.

Then something bizarre happened. A shadow fell to the floor on the far side of the hall. It happened quickly. With the lights doing a kooky flash dance above, I wasn't sure if I'd actually seen anything, but then the people on that side of the floor began to part. They were staring at a man who was moving toward us. With the light behind him, all I could see was a tall silhouette, but it was enough. His movements were fluid. Effortless. Perfectly balanced. Driven by tremendous strength. There was none of the stiffness you see with
normal people. It was another vampire. He'd obviously spotted us. If he was one of those elders who didn't like kids, we were going to go straight from rave to grave.

I wasn't about to take any chances. “Charlie, we've gotta go.” I grabbed the sleeve of his jacket and started pulling him to the door.

“That's right, pretty boy, take a walk,” the guy with the fan-shaped hair said.

I'd hoped Charlie would just fall in step, but I should have known better. He resisted. Fortunately, I was a lot stronger and jerked his shoulder back. He shot me an angry look, but when he noticed I was staring past the guy with the fan-shaped hair, he turned and saw what I did. Right in front of him, the girl with the red lampshade hair was smiling and waving. Her boyfriend was smirking. Then the tall vampire, little more than a shadow, shouldered past a guy just behind them, spinning him like a turnstile.

Charlie looked back at me, panic all over his face. “Zack, that's a vampire.”

“I know!”

We raced for the door.

“How did he know we were here?”

I had no idea. But it didn't matter. We'd been spotted. So we ran.

We were just outside when I heard a sound like a flag rippling loudly in the wind. I looked up to see a second shadow drop from the far corner of the building, about a hundred feet away. He was wearing something that might have been a cape, or a loose cowl. It snapped in the night air as he fell.

“There's two of them,” I said.

Charlie put it into high gear and I followed. Neither of us spoke. We were both terrified. Our lives were at stake, no pun intended. Our fear was so strong I could smell the sharp tang of it in the warm night air.

To avoid being seen, we didn't follow the road, but stuck to the banks of the river. When we reached the Riverview Park and Zoo, we stopped.

“Are they following us?” Charlie whispered. “Do you hear anything?” He pushed so little air past his lips that it made less noise than a pair of moth wings, but to my ears, it was crystal clear.

I tested the air. Smelled sweat. Charlie's cologne. Zoo animals and rotting straw. Our strained nerves. The wind in the trees was loud. So was the babble of the river. I heard nothing else and didn't expect to. Vampires are predators. Fast, silent, and lethal. We wouldn't hear them until it was too late. Not if they were elders. Over time, the pathogen responsible for making us vampires changed us in ways that stretched the imagination. Talents, they were called, but they were more like the special powers you'd expect to read about in comic
books and fantasy novels. Turning into mist. Blending into shadows. Reading people's thoughts. Shape-shifting. Even flying.

I scanned the treetops overhead, then started running again. In minutes we were downtown. We headed for the rooftops. Up and down, block to block. Trees, fire escapes, phone poles, and fences, we scampered over all of them, sticking to the shadows, jumping store to store, row to row, house to house. We were two foxes who knew the hounds were right behind.

We never made it home. About a block from our house, I stopped. Charlie was looking over his shoulder and nearly plowed into me. I tested the air with my nose.

“What is it?” he whispered.

I could smell blood. Normally, it has a distinctive odor—much like everything does. But because it's our only food, we'd never confuse it with anything else. It always set off a chain reaction, in me at least, that usually started in my mouth and spread like a jolt of electricity to every muscle in my body. But I wasn't reacting this way because the odor was a bit off. My mind took a few moments to sort out the reason why.

Charlie poked me in the shoulder. “Wake up, Sleepy Dwarf. Why have we stopped?”

“Can't you smell that?”

He tested the air. Then his eyes widened.

“I think it's from a vampire,” I said.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Smells wrong.”

The wind changed and the odor grew even stronger. I raced to the tallest house nearby, scampered up the wall, pulled myself up onto the roof, then perched on the chimney. Our place was just down the street. Ophelia's car wasn't there. Did that mean she hadn't returned? I was hoping so, because the odor of blood was coming from our driveway. A telltale crimson smear covered the asphalt.

I heard Charlie below me. He was climbing up the side of the house. I waved him off, then dropped as quickly as I could to the ground. Once I was hidden in the shadow of a tree, I pulled out my
cell phone and called Ophelia. Her number was at the top of my call list, right under Charlie's. I hit send and waited. The ring sounded louder than a church bell. I figured every vampire from here to the moon could hear it.

“Can't you set the volume lower?” Charlie asked.

I shook my head. Then Ophelia's voice mail came on. “Call me immediately,” I whispered. I nearly snapped the phone in half folding it up.

“Let's get home,” Charlie said. He started off toward the house.

I grabbed his arm and pulled him the other way. “We can't,” I said. “That's where the blood is coming from. I think they might have arrived ahead of us.”

“What? Those vampires? How would they know to come here?”

I had no idea.

“Perfect. I knew this night was too good to be true. We were finally having a bit of fun.” Charlie was starting to raise his voice. I waved for him to be quiet. The wind picked up and the smell of vampire blood intensified. “You don't think it might be . . . ?”

He didn't finish, but I knew where he was going. That the blood might be Ophelia's.

“I don't think so,” I said. “Her car's not back. And I don't think she was planning to come home this early.”

“Let's hope that's not wishful thinking.” He stared up the block, then checked over each shoulder. What now?”

I had no idea, but standing still wasn't an option. I turned toward my old neighborhood, where I'd once lived with my father.