Night Runner (24 page)

“Keep it on,” he told me. “It will probably heal before we get to my office, but if not, we'll stitch it up there.” Then he pressed a button and a drawer opened up in front of me. He reached inside and pulled out a Kleenex. “Here,” he said, “take some. Your chin is covered with blood.”

I did my best to scrape it off. Once blood dries it's like paint. I'd have needed a chisel to get it all. There was blood on my shoes as well. And my scrubs. His car looked like it had just about every gadget you could think of, but I doubted a sink was one of them.

Uncle Max reached for the dash and started adjusting a dial. “I went back for you at the hospital,” he said, “but I was too late. You'd already run. You can't imagine how relieved I was when I learned that Johansson didn't have you.”

I told him about my trip through the ceiling, and that made him smile.

“You did well,” he said. “But we were lucky, too. I thought Johansson was retired. I didn't expect him to be working so closely with the police. It must give him access to all kinds of information. We'll have to avoid the authorities for now.”

“They can't all be bad,” I said.

He shook his head. “No. You're right. But we don't know what Johansson might have told the others about you. And now . . .” He looked me over. “Now he's free to make up all kinds of nonsense. No, let me clear this up. I'll get you to a safe location, then I'll take care of the rest of this mess.”

After I got as much of the blood off my face as I could, my uncle asked me what happened the night I escaped from the ward. I told him about Mr. Entwistle. About our escape from the police. And about his death.

“You have to find out if he's all right,” I said. It seemed an absurd thing to suggest. Apparently, a whole building had fallen on him. How could he be all right? Unless his body armour was made on the planet Krypton, he'd probably been flattened.

Maximilian coughed quietly, but he kept his eyes glued to the road. “If what they printed in the paper is true, I think you should prepare yourself for the possibility that he didn't survive,” he said. “Vampires are just as vulnerable to fire as normal people. And Entwistle kept some nasty company—”

My uncle stopped talking to have another coughing fit. He smothered his mouth with his sleeve, then cleared his throat. I waited for him to say more about Entwistle and what he thought might have happened, but he was apparently finished. I'd forgotten that the two of them were at odds, to say the least.

“Did you find out anything about Nurse Ophelia?” I asked.

My uncle shook his head.

I closed my eyes and let my head fall back against the seat. So Entwistle was gone. And Nurse Ophelia was still missing. She'd done more for me in the last eight years than everyone else in whole world put together. And I hadn't done a thing to help find her. Instead, I'd spent the last few nights thinking of myself and having fun. She deserved better.

“One thing at a time, Zachary,” my uncle said. “One thing at a time. You can't do a lot for others when you're running for your life.”

“I tried to call you,” I told him. “I left a message at your office.”

“And I got it. I called the number you left as soon as I could. When I didn't hear back from you right away, I started to get nervous. Your face has been all over the news.”

I hadn't realized that he'd called me back. When I told him this, he looked surprised.

“It was later that night,” he said. “About ten after eleven.”

I wondered why Charlie and I hadn't heard the phone ring. We'd had Dan's BlackBerry with us all night. Then I remembered that when I'd left him the message, I'd given him the number for Charlie's cottage. That was the night of the island party, so neither of us would have been around at eleven. And Dan would have been asleep. He must have picked up the message the next morning, figured it was a wrong number and simply erased it.

“Don't be too hard on yourself,” said Maximilian. “You're in good hands now. And I've just secured a deal that should keep us out of trouble. You're going to do just fine. I'm certain of it.”

It was hard not to believe him. He looked like he was ready to storm the Batcave.

“Did you tell anyone?” he asked me. “About your condition?”

I nodded. “I told Charlie.”

“Anyone else?”

“No.”

“Did he believe you?”

“Yes.” Then I told him about our conversation in his kitchen. And how I had stalked the deer. Finally, I told him about the body at Luna's.

“It was one of the twins,” I said. “And he'd been strangled. I think it was Vrolok.”

“What makes you think so?”

I told him about my encounter with the bat at Mr. Entwistle's house. And the fog. And how I'd seen them again at the cottage.

“So you've been there?” my uncle asked.

“Where?”

“Entwistle's house.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Would you know how to find it again?”

“I think so.”

My uncle seemed pleased by this. But it brought on another round of coughing. This was the worst bout yet. He actually had to slow down the car. When it was finished, he ran his tongue over his teeth. I could smell blood in his mouth. He must have been really sick.

“Is that the first time you've tasted human blood?” he asked. “Back at the cottage?”

I nodded. “Is that bad?”

He took a deep breath and checked a few of his gauges. Then he let out a big sigh.

“Yes, it is bad,” he said slowly. “It is bad, and it isn't.” And he explained to me how human blood made a vampire stronger, which I knew already. But he also told me that once you drank it, you craved it more and more.

“And therein lies the problem,” he said. “You need it to be strong and so you will come to hunger for it. If you don't get enough, your desire might drive you to desperate lengths. You might even kill for it, if your hunger can't be controlled.”

Well, I had felt the hunger, but I wouldn't kill a human being. Not ever. Or so I thought.

“I didn't kill that boy,” I told him. “I found him like that. Maybe I shouldn't have fed . . . but I didn't kill him.”

My uncle's head moved up and down slowly while he watched the road. “I know, Zachary,” he said. “I know.”

I relaxed when I heard him say this. I put my head back and watched the road.

“Do you think my friends will be all right?”

My uncle didn't have a chance to answer. A yellow light started flashing on the dashboard. He took his foot off the gas pedal and the car slowed just a little.

“What's that?” I asked.

“Someone's using a radar gun up ahead,” he said. “Probably the police. I'll just have to slow down for a few minutes until we drive through their speed trap.”

I checked the electronic map on the dash. Sure enough, a red light had appeared ahead of us on the grid of white lines.

The engine was quieter now that we weren't driving so quickly. I thought I heard something behind me. There was no back seat, just lots of trunk, but I was certain I'd heard a muffled voice.

“Is something wrong?” my uncle asked.

I nodded. “I thought I heard a voice behind us.”

My uncle smiled, then reached up and pulled a wire from his left ear. He'd been listening to something. The earpiece was connected to the dash, and when he pulled it out, the sound of people talking came through the rear speakers.

“Is this what you heard?” he asked, turning up the volume.

I listened. “What is it?”

“A police radio. It's how I found out where you were. It and the radar detector will help us to avoid their patrol cars. I'm not taking any chances.”

About a second later, we passed a police car parked along the side of the road.

“Will they come after us?” I asked.

My uncle looked over and smiled. “You don't need to worry about them.”

“But you wiped that other car right off the road!”

My uncle nodded. “True. But no one saw us. So as far as anyone is concerned, we're just another car on the highway.”

My uncle didn't speed up until the patrol car was miles behind us. Then he turned on an interior light and leaned closer. “Let me check that again, would you?” he said, nodding towards my head.

I lifted my hand so he could get a better look at my gash.

“It looks quite a bit better,” he said. “I think the bleeding has basically stopped. You might want to get some rest now.” He opened a compartment near his elbow that was hidden between our seats. Then he reached in a pulled out a small bottle. “Take one of these. It will help.”

I looked at the bottle. The label said “Zaleplon,” which sounded to me like a city on the planet Venus or something you would use to de-clog a drainpipe.

“They're sleeping pills,” my uncle said. “If you don't feel you need one, don't take one, but I imagine that with all the excitement you've had in the last few days, it might help.”

Had I known that I would die the next day, I would never have chosen to go to sleep. I would have stayed awake and asked questions about my mother and my father and what it's like to hunt vampires. And I would have asked to steer the car. I might even have suggested we stop somewhere along the highway so that I could just run for a while under the moon—run so fast that tears would spill out of my eyes. And I would have called Luna, or at least written her a note or something. But I didn't know. And so I swallowed two pills and fell asleep.

I
woke up feeling like a bag of cement. I was lying on a sofa. The room I was in could have fit neatly into an art or history museum. It was as big as the common room in the Nicholls Ward. Oil paintings and masks covered the walls, and busts and statues and carvings stood along the edges. There was even a suit of armour. And weapons, too. When I sat up and rubbed my eyes, I caught a glimpse of two crossed halberds. The wooden shafts were about six feet long, and the iron heads—a wicked blend of axe, hook and spear—had been polished to a deadly shine. When I looked more closely, I could see they were actually on the wall behind me, reflected in a mirror that hung on the opposite side of the room. And I guess I ought to mention that I could see my reflection, too. Because of the movies, some people think a vampire can't see himself in a mirror. It's a neat special effect, and I guess it ties in with this idea that a vampire doesn't have a soul. Well, I don't know anything about that, but I can
tell you that I saw myself, and I looked like I'd been attacked by Mr. Entwistle's hairdresser. While I patted down my bed-head, I got up and looked around some more.

The room, long and rectangular, was obviously an office. Adjacent to the sofa was a desk that faced the expanse of the room. Sitting on one corner was a golden cup that must have been worth a fortune. On the wall just behind it was a large painting of a battle scene. Men in red with iron breastplates, long pikes and fin-like helmets were fighting against a bunch of men on horseback. There were muskets and cannons, and it looked like total chaos. I had seen it once before, but I couldn't remember where.

Then I spotted the windows. They sat on either side of the mirror on the wall opposite the sofa. The panels of glass were enormous, running from the floor to the ceiling. Even though no light was coming through them, I could somehow feel the sun shining from behind. I walked over to inspect them and noticed that they were covered with a thick layer of black paint. The only light in the room was coming from two candles, on either side of the couch.

I heard a knock and looked around. There was a door in the far corner of the room opposite the desk. It opened and my uncle came in. He was wearing a suit and looked the way he had when he'd first come to see me, like a man in charge of a bank.

“Just checking in,” he said. “I trust you're feeling better?”

I nodded and told him I felt fine.

“Do you need anything?” he asked.

I was a bit dopey, and after getting tossed around in the back of a police car, my body wanted a little blood for repairs. “Something to drink?” I said.

“I suspected as much, but I don't have anything here at the moment. Once the sun goes down, we'll see what we can do.”

I asked him where all the stuff in the room had come from.

“Oh, no one place, of course,” he answered. “Some items were
gifts. That bust of Napoleon, for example. And this cup.” He held up the golden chalice I'd noticed earlier. “I received this just yesterday. A present to seal a new contract.” Then he raised his hand to indicate the rest of his pieces. “Some I bought overseas while your father and I did our work. That painting I inherited from my parents.” He nodded at the battle scene hanging above the desk, the one that was familiar to me. “It used to hang in their living room. You must have been there a few times as a young boy. And truthfully, some of this stuff your father and I took.”

He looked at me and smiled. He must have seen the surprise on my face.

“Some vampires are old, Zachary. Not many, but those who survive the first few months of infection can live decades, even centuries beyond a normal human lifespan. And they collect things, as people collect things, to stay connected to the past.”

I thought of Mr. Entwistle and his empty house. He was an exception, and he'd wanted me to know it. It made me wonder if a vampire's best hope of survival was to not be connected to anything at all.

Maximilian was looking at me carefully. When he knew he had my attention, he continued.

“Sometimes your father and I found ourselves in possession of old artifacts and paintings, things that once belonged to vampires. Since they technically weren't ours, we gave most of them away to universities or libraries or museums. But we also kept some for ourselves as a payment of sorts, because no one had any idea about the work we did. No organization paid us. No government. We were a secret to all but a few, and our operating costs were very high, so we took artifacts from time to time in order to sell them or keep them as a reward. I hope that doesn't sound inappropriate. I would hate for you to think of your father and me as thieves, just because we sometimes kept what belonged to those we killed.” He crossed his arms and looked over the artifacts in the room as though he'd made
them all himself. “Perhaps it would help if you thought of these as the spoils of conquest.”