End of Days (37 page)

I thought about it—what the boy might become if we weren't careful.

It means when he wakes up, we'd better be really, really nice to him.

We stood in the room, the four of us, shoulder to shoulder, not speaking. Even Charlie was dumbstruck. It lasted about ten seconds. That might have been his personal best.

“Sick!” he said. “Did you know about all of this?”

Not exactly.

Luna nudged me.
Out loud,
she reminded me.

“No,” I said. “But I probably should have known it would be here. He had to keep this stuff someplace.”

We were in Montreal, at Iron Spike Enterprises, my uncle's business headquarters. The building was practically a skyscraper. Every floor had its hidden secrets, but this room was pay dirt.

“So all of this is yours now?” Suki asked. She and Charlie were standing side by side, his arm over her shoulder, her arm around his waist. With each passing day she was more like the Suki of old. Confident. Bubbly. Fun. Spending time with Charlie had done her wonders. It might have been the one reason Dr. Abbott let her stay with us. Love cures all ills, as they say. It had done wonders for Charlie, too. I hadn't seen him this happy since last summer.

“Technically, the whole inheritance is in a trust,” I told Suki. “But we can use whatever we need.”

I looked around the room. We'd been doing a tour with Ophelia, floor by floor, room by room. It had ended here, in a weapons depot. All of my uncle's military equipment guns and grenades were here.

“Do you know what all of this stuff does?” Luna was staring at a rack of weighted nets that looked like spiderwebs.

Not all of it. Not yet.

She nudged me again.

I cleared my throat. “It looks like some kind of electrified netting.”

I heard a quiet “Wow!” leak from Charlie's mouth.

If he thought this was impressive, the numbers in my uncle's bank account would have floored him.

Luna was playing with the charm on her necklace. She looked at me and winked.
A rich vampire messiah. Do I know how to pick 'em, or what?

I laughed. But I wasn't rich yet. I'd get my inheritance when I turned eighteen. If I lived that long . . .

Don't be such a pessimist,
she chided.
You have some pretty good help here.

Pretty and good,
I thought.

“Where did Ophelia go?” Suki asked. She was rubbing her neck. I half expected to see some teeth marks there, but both she and Charlie seemed to have agreed that it would be better to wait than risk infecting her now. Hyde was gone, but the danger of the Coven hadn't passed.

“She went to check on Vincent,” Luna said.

Vincent was the detective's son. He was still in a coma. We'd moved him to the second floor of the building. My uncle had a full medical lab there, so he was wired up to an IV and a slew of machines that monitored his heart rate, blood sugar, and oxygen levels. The situation was stable, at least medically, but the rest was a bit messy. Issues surrounded the inheritance of his father's house and belongings, including the contents of the storage shed we'd broken into—the place where we'd found the wolfsbane. And Vincent still had family. Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. Eventually they would have to be informed about his condition, but we thought it best to keep him hidden until we had a better understanding of whether he
would be a danger to them. Or to us. He was in for some bad news when he awoke, and we all dreaded having to tell him. Ophelia was particularly troubled.

“Why the long face, Romeo?” Charlie asked. He'd wandered over to a rack that housed a number of impressive-looking assault rifles, and something that might have belonged on the top of a tank.

Why the long face?
I didn't want to answer this question. We'd just done a tour of my uncle's garage. He had a collection of street racers and a number of motorcycles. And older prototypes of the rocket car that was now our main form of transportation. But I hadn't seen what I'd hoped to find—some construction equipment.

As soon as this thought passed through my head, I felt Luna close herself off. It kept me from hearing her thoughts. Our abilities were evolving. We could still communicate without speaking, but over the last month we'd learned to control what the other could hear. Whatever she was thinking now, she wanted to keep to herself. I understood. She thought I was in denial. They all did. Even Ophelia. I told myself that staying hopeful was better than grieving, but I'm not sure I really had a choice. My heart was just being stubborn. It couldn't accept that Mr. Entwistle and my uncle were really gone. They were vampires. All we needed to do was move a few million tons of rock from a very public provincial park, then give them some of the blood my uncle had pilfered from the Underground. There was enough to fill a swimming pool.

Charlie must have sensed what was on my mind. He looked away. Like the others, he expected me to be sad and thought it was odd that I wasn't, but I still wanted my happy ending.

“Is the body armor ready?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Not yet. A few more weeks.”

“I thought Entwistle's stash was impressive, but this is the mother lode.”

I had to agree. In the days before we came here, the five of us had toured Mr. Entwistle's safe houses in Peterborough. He'd kept extensive files, which included a contact that made specialized military
equipment. We'd ordered suits for everyone. We also found blueprints for an Abrams tank he'd customized. But it was located in a hidden garage we hadn't yet discovered.

“You never answered my question,” Charlie said. “Why the long face?”

I had a lot on my mind.

Luna smiled and slipped her hand into mine.

“Just thinking,” I said.

“Thinking or worrying?”

“A bit of both.”

Charlie surveyed the room. There was enough equipment here to outfit the Rebel Alliance. “How are we going to learn how to use all this stuff?”

“There's a shooting range on the third floor,” Suki said. “You guys were in the gym when we found it. We could practice there.”

I couldn't believe it. A shooting range. Charlie and I had missed that part of the tour. The exercise equipment in my uncle's fitness room was so impressive, we'd stayed behind to try it out when the girls went ahead. This place was like a spy school. The only things missing were the students.

Luna laughed.
Not anymore.

“What is it with you two?” Charlie asked. “Always laughing to yourselves like that.”

Luna raised her hands as if it were nothing. I didn't know what to say.

“All right, keep your secrets.” Charlie wandered over to the far wall. A piece of equipment that might have fallen from space was hanging from the ceiling. “What is this thing? Some kind of photon torpedo?”

It looked more like a futuristic coffin to me, but I had no idea. “The equipment lists and operation manuals are all in the library,” I said.

We'd hit that earlier in the tour. I was anxious to get back. I had noticed among the shelves some notebooks that might have been
journals. If my uncle kept a log like my father, it might have some information about the Coven of the Dragon. It was time to find out how much trouble we were in.

“Well, let's go,” said Suki. “This place freaks me out. I'm afraid to breathe too hard. Something might blow up.” She cozied up beside Charlie and took hold of his hand.

“Where to?” Charlie asked. “There's a home theater on the fourth floor. I wonder what's playing.”

“I was leaning toward a swim,” she answered. “Ophelia says there's a pool on the roof beside a penthouse apartment.”

“I think we should go back to the library,” I said. “Check the catalogs and see what all this stuff does.”

Charlie looked at me in disbelief. “Zack, it will take weeks to read through all that.”

“Yeah, so we'd better get started.”

As soon as I said this, my mind drifted back to the safe house where Charlie and I had been caught by the police. Where we'd found the letter with the prophecies, and the handwritten notes—that the End of Days was coming and that knowledge was our best defense.

Charlie looked at me. He seemed to know what I was thinking. He glanced around the room, then pulled a canister from a crate beside him. It was a thermite bomb. A smile creased his face.

“Knowledge is your best defense, huh? Well, not anymore.”