End of Days (8 page)

“Are you sure he's dead?”

I wasn't, and I said so.

“When did it happen?”

“Last night. Right after he left Charlie and me.”

“Why do they think it was you?”

“His car was torn apart. And my fingerprints were on the gun.”

“How is that possible?”

I explained how he'd offered it to me because no one was available to watch over the house, and that touching it had caused me pain, so I'd handed it back.

Ophelia started chewing on the inside of her lip. “You are starting to develop a kind of instinct that Vlad had about things. Objects and their feel.”

“Is it my talent?” I asked, surprised. I thought you had to be alive a lot longer for this kind of thing to happen.

“Not exactly.”

I tried to keep my disappointment from showing, but Ophelia didn't miss much.

“It's something I don't really understand, Zachary. I get bad feelings about things, too. Nothing that approaches pain, but I've learned the hard way that these feelings shouldn't be ignored.” She glanced around the children's playground, then down toward the river. “I need to know what happened here. Can you show me?”

“How?”

“Just think about what happened.”

That was easy enough. I started with the rave. Being seen by the first vampire. And the second one that dropped from the roof. Running away. Arriving home and finding blood in the driveway, then again at the river. The torn wolf pen. Following the vampire's trail to the water. As I remembered things, the dreamscape around us changed. Everything I thought took on shape and color. It was
like being in a movie, only it was my life happening around the two of us, unfolding just as it had. The creature emerging from the woods to attack the vampire. When she saw it, Ophelia was so startled she took a step back.

“What do you think it is?” I asked.

She shook her head and started chewing her lip again. “It might be a vampire. The pathogen does strange things in some people. But it's possible he's a lycanthrope of some kind. A shape changer. That is our best hope.”

“A lycanthrope. You mean a werewolf?”

“Yes.”

“I thought werewolves turned into wolves.”

“I think, like vampires, the range of possibilities is broad. Your father once hunted a werewolf, did you know that?”

I did. My father had written about it in his journal. I wished I still had it, but it had disappeared from my uncle's office, along with Vlad's corpse. According to my father's narrative, he and my uncle Maximilian had used bear traps to catch it. In the end, because it wouldn't stop killing, they had to poison it with hemlock.

“Did you tell Detective Baddon about this?”

“It didn't come up.”

“Well . . . He'll find out soon enough.” She raised a hand and started rubbing at her temples again, then stopped to stare at me. “Where is Charlie?”

“I don't know. He ran when we were arrested.”

“You don't know?”

“He ran off.”

“Oh, no,” she whispered. Her hand rose to her forehead. “That means he's alone. With that thing out there.”

I'm ashamed to admit this, but I'd been so concerned about myself—that I was under arrest and in jail—I hadn't considered that Charlie might be in more trouble than me. “Can't you find him on the Dream Road?”

Ophelia's eyebrows rose just a fraction of an inch and she stared
off into space. “It's possible, if he's sleeping. But I don't know him well enough to find him or get inside his mind. You'll have to do that.”

“How?”

“I'll show you.” She tipped her head down the street. “This way. We should hurry.”

We started walking back in the direction of Trent University. “Where are we going?”

“To a window. Do you see it?”

A small patch of landscape was shifting in the air. It looked like shimmering water. That had to be it.

“When you visit someone on the Dream Road, you must leave a window behind, an exit, so that you can leave.”

“That's a window.”

She nodded, then stopped in front of it. The shimmering patch was about the size of her hand.

“So how do we fit through it?”

Ophelia smiled. She reached in with a finger, then pulled her hand down to the ground. It left a seam in the air, like a rip in the fabric of space-time. Stephen Hawking would have jumped out of his chair if he'd seen this. She stepped through as if she were walking behind a curtain.

“Quickly, Zachary, before it closes.”

I followed. A film like a soap bubble passed over me. I reached up to touch my face, but it wasn't wet. A soft, warm glow was around me.

“I've been here before.” My voice echoed through the light. I was walking, but nothing was under my feet but a hazy white glow. No walls were around me. Nothing above. Just the same pale glimmer. It was coming from a long way away, in every direction. I tested the air with my nose, but smelled nothing. It was like having a cold.

“Yes, you have been here,” said Ophelia. “But not since you were a child. This is the Nexus of the Dream Road.”

She was beside me. Shining, as I was. My skin and clothes were luminescent. We were two glow-in-the-dark ghosts.

“What is it?”

“The Dream Road? It's a series of conduits. Like highways that connect the minds of all sentient beings. The Nexus is where they all come together.”

“I don't get it.”

She smiled. “You don't have to. Just like the waking world, you are part of it, whether you understand it or not.”

“This is some talent.”

She laughed. Then she answered the question I was getting ready to ask. “You will discover your true talent in time, Zachary. Be patient. You're still young. It might be years before it is fully manifest.”

Years? I didn't think I was going to last the week.

“So how do we do this?” I asked.

She looked away and closed her eyes. “Listen.”

I strained to hear. My heart was beating. My lungs slowly expanded. Air rushed in through my mouth and nose, then rushed out again. Eventually I heard them. They were faint at first. Voices. Thousands of them. Their words were overlapping and impossible to separate. “Who is it?”

I heard Ophelia sigh quietly. Even with my eyes closed, when she spoke, I could tell she was smiling. “These are the Dream Roads, Zachary. Everyone who sleeps and dreams has a voice here.”

“Are they all vampires?”

She shook her head.

“Is Luna's in here?”

“Stay focused, Zachary. Charlie is the one in trouble right now. Keep your mind on him.”

I wasn't going to start a debate. Instead, I listened to the voices. Together, they sounded like hundreds of radio stations playing all at the same time. Everything overlapped. “How do you separate them?”

“You don't have to. We simply need to find one voice. Charlie's. Then you can follow it to his dream and speak with him.”

“How?”

“Think of him, and listen.”

“That's all?”

“I'll handle the rest.”

I closed my eyes again and imagined Charlie as if he were standing in front of me. A bit shorter. Dark hair. Serious, but silly. Eyes intense. Smiling. I pictured the two of us at Stony Lake, bombing around in his tin boat. Nothing happened.

“I'm not having any luck,” I said.

“Perhaps he's not asleep. Give it one more try.”

I pictured the two of us with the girls, Suki and Luna, sitting around a campfire at their old cottage.

I heard a voice. It was faint. My mind zeroed in on it and I started floating away, don't ask me how. Ophelia was speaking behind me. She told me to wait, but I didn't. I felt a strong pull and let it carry me away. Ophelia's voice faded, and the one I was following got louder, clearer, more defined. And more feminine. The white light began to change and I passed through the soap bubble again. Everything was blurry, but I could see colors now. Like a scene through a film of water.

Window . . .

The word jumped quietly into my head. I almost missed it. Then I heard someone else.

“I didn't know there was a test today!”

Panic. I could sense it. I was in a classroom, right in the middle of a row of desks. A teacher was telling people to sit down. He had a suit vest on, and bifocals. A patch of hair was missing right on the dome of his head.

“Young man,” he said to me. “Would you please show some consideration for your classmates and take your seat so that we can start the test.”

I'd never been in a high school before. It seemed tense. No wonder
Charlie had skipped so often. I glanced in the direction the teacher was nodding. An empty seat was waiting beside me. Beyond that, a wall covered in inspirational posters was taking shape. I remembered I had to leave a window, so I stuck my hand in the colors and shapes as they solidified. It felt as if I were touching the soap bubble again. It left a clear, shimmering patch in the wall. My exit.

“Please hurry. We need to get started,” the teacher said.

I angled myself sideways to slip into the chair beside me, then realized I was being ridiculous. I wasn't here to take a test. I tried to imagine what Charlie would do. Believe it or not, it helped immensely. I looked the man square in the eyes and told him I'd take the zero. He made a face. I turned and walked to the other side of the class. Luna was sitting there. I was supposed to be in Charlie's dream, but my mind obviously had other plans.

Luna had a pile of books open in front of her on the desk and was frantically turning pages. “I didn't even know I was in this course.” She was talking to a girl beside her with a blond ponytail and braces.

I closed Luna's books.

“What are you doing?” Then she looked up. “Oh, Zack. Thank God. Do you know what this test is on?”

I started to laugh.

“Young man,” the teacher said again. “What exactly are you doing here?”

I had no idea what to say to this, but it was just a dream, so it didn't really matter. “I need to borrow this woman. She has information that is critical to national security.”

Luna had gone back to flipping through pages. I turned back to her. “It's the summertime, you know? You aren't supposed to be here.”

The pages began to turn more slowly.

“And you're a vampire now. You don't go to school anymore.”

That hit a button. She looked at me. Her emerald green eyes were clearer than I remembered. This time last year, they'd floored
me. She tucked one of her copper curls behind her ear. She looked stunning. I smiled. She smiled. We were smiling together. It was wonderful.

“How did you find me here?”

I waved a hand at the door. “Let's get out of here and I'll explain.” Then I took one last look around. The faces were pure stress. It was exactly the way Charlie described it. “Man, why do people do this to their kids? It feels just like jail.”

I did my best to describe the Dream Road to Luna.

“I don't believe it,” she said afterward. “This is incredible.”

I didn't really believe it, either. But there we were. She reached up and cupped my face in her hands. I closed my eyes and pressed her fingers closer. I would have been happy to just stand like this for weeks. Then she changed the dreamscape. We were suddenly back at her old cottage. Her parents had sold it after
that night.
But it was exactly the way I remembered it, the last time we were all together. A porch swing was creaking behind us. Luna took a seat, then pulled me down beside her. She started playing with the charm on her necklace. The golden crescent. It fit alongside the silver moon I wore around my neck. The two pieces made one necklace, her slender, golden chain lacing through my thicker links of silver. I'd only seen them together once, the day Vlad had tried to kill us. They were old heirlooms and had once belonged to Ophelia. She'd gifted them to my parents. When they died, the two pieces passed to Luna and me.

“You seem anxious,” she said.

I didn't know where to begin. “I was supposed to be looking for Charlie.” I gazed out over the waters of Stony Lake. Near the dock, the image was clear. But farther from the shore, the dreamscape got blurry. Formless.

“Is he okay?” she asked.

I didn't know.

She squeezed my hand. I watched her do it, but the sensation wasn't quite right. Then I remembered we were in a dream.

“It can't be that bad,” she said.

Our eyes met. My expression must have set her straight because she glanced away, nervously, then tried to force a smile. She knew Charlie had been struggling. We spoke about once a week, and it came up often. We used to text each other constantly, but her parents found out and took her phone away.

“He's missing,” I said. This required a bit of an explanation. I should probably have started at the beginning and just told the whole story, but conversations don't really go that way. They sort of jump all over. We hit all the major topics. The rave. The zoo. The battle by the river between the vampire and the other creature. My arrest and interrogation. The Underground. Inspector Johansson's death. Even the letter Charlie and I had found with the prophecies. It took all day, and as I said before, the conversation bounced around like a rubber ball. She held my hand the whole time. She only had to ask me if I was serious about a hundred times. In the end, she was visibly shaken. She looked over the water, stood, then sat, then stood again.

“I guess this means I won't be able to come and visit. I was hoping my parents would let me go in a few weeks.”

When she saw the look on my face, she reached down and touched my cheek again. “I'm sorry. I know we talked about it all year. Maybe you could come here?”

I wasn't going anywhere.

“Is there some way for me to get in touch with you? Get you a lawyer?”