End of Days (5 page)

“She mentioned she wanted to talk to Charlie and me about something. Do you know what it was?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “A few things. The Coven was one of them.”

The Coven
. . . He meant the Coven of the Dragon, a team of powerful elders who were like the secret police of the vampire world. An invisible network of executioners. They were the most dangerous organization on the face of the earth, at least for Charlie and me, because they were the ones who were most likely to come after us. I didn't know much about them, only that their seat of power was overseas in Europe somewhere. Vlad had been their Grand Master. With him gone, I didn't know who was in charge.

“We weren't sure if the Coven were behind these disappearances,” the inspector continued, “but I had my doubts, even before you saw that thing at the zoo.”

“Why?” Charlie asked.

The inspector took out his cigar. “The Coven always impale their enemies. They cut off the head, stuff the mouth with garlic, cut out the heart, burn it, and put the corpse on display as a deterrent to others. The vampires who have died lately, they just disappear. Nothing is left but a stain on the sidewalk. And they were all stable. Discreet. That's not the way the Coven operate. They only go after the crazies. Or the ones who don't stay incognito. You were an exception. Vendetta. And an age thing. The Coven don't permit child
vampires. But you knew that already.” He grunted, then spoke with the cigar pinched at the side of his mouth. “And the Coven are in disarray right now. Infighting. Vlad is still missing. Even if he comes back, and let's pray he doesn't, he'll have a hell of a lot of reorganizing to do.”

“What do you mean
reorganizing
?” I asked.

“Vlad's underlings are all fighting to see who gets to be the top dog. Vlad would have a lot to do to bring them back under control. Ophelia and I thought their lack of leadership would keep you out of trouble for a while.”

Obviously not.

“So what happens now?” Charlie asked. He made his way over to the game console under the television.

“You two stay out of sight,” the inspector said. “There's a phone by the bed, but I don't want you calling out. And don't answer it unless it's me. When I call, I'll let it ring twice, then I'll hang up and call again. Two rings, pause, pick up on the next one.”

“Don't we have caller ID?” I asked.

“Yes, you do. But someone else might be using my phone. You never know. . . . Two rings. Pause. Then pick up the next call. Got it?”

“Yeah. I got it.”

He grunted, then looked us over again. His head tilted forward a bit. I'd seen his expression on a lot of adult faces.
Be careful,
he was saying. Well, how much trouble could we get into in a one-room basement? I nodded back and he turned to go. Then he remembered something.

“One more thing. The alarm. It'll be on upstairs. If you try to leave the house, it will go off. So stay put. Is there anything else you'll need?”

“Yeah,” said Charlie. “Could you send for some backup? Someone to watch the place from outside—raise the alarm if trouble arrives. We aren't going to see anything from down here. And once the sun comes up, we're toast if someone breaks in.”

The inspector grunted a negative. “We're out of backup. Every cop
I know in the Underground is dead or missing. And I can't get anyone else involved on short notice. I have to keep you guys off the radar.”

He walked over to me and reached into his coat. From the holster around his shoulder he took out his gun, a semiautomatic. He handed it to me. “The clip is full. The safety's on. You ever fire one of these things?”

I took the gun and shook my head. I'd never even held one before. Then a jolt of pain ran down my arm. It took root in my chest. My heart began to burn. I pinched my eyes shut, and when I opened them, everything was an agonizing haze. All I could see were spots. It was a few seconds before I could speak.

“Take it back,” I whispered.

“I'll take it,” said Charlie.

The inspector glanced down at the gun and removed it from my hand. Instantly, the pain began to ebb. Nerves stopped burning. My blurry eyes cleared.

I watched him reholster it. He was watching me intently. “You okay?”

I didn't know how to answer that, so I didn't. After a few seconds, he grunted a good-bye and started hobbling to the stairs.

“Two rings, pause, pick up,” he reminded me.

I nodded and he closed the basement door. Then his footsteps clumped across the floor above. The back door opened and closed. The house shuddered. Dead bolts followed. A minute later, I heard his car roar. I could picture every animal in the neighborhood running for cover.

“What was that all about?” Charlie said.

“What?”

“With the gun. Your face . . .”

I rubbed my arm. It was still pins and needles. “It didn't feel right.”

“You should have given it to me!”

I had no answer for this. I trusted my instincts. Something about that gun was just wrong.

“You want to play some?” Charlie turned the game console on. Then he started opening drawers in the TV cabinet, no doubt looking for games.

I wandered over to the desk. It was covered with open books. Loose-leaf pages were scattered everywhere. “There's a note here.” A yellow sticky was pressed to the bottom of the computer keyboard:
Knowledge is your best defense.
The writing was tight and neat. I recognized it as Ophelia's right away.

“What does it say?” Charlie didn't look up from the drawer he was sorting through. “Man, all these games are old. We've finished them already.”

I read him the message. “It's Ophelia's writing,” I added.

“How long ago did she write it?”

“Beats me.” He walked over and I handed it to him. He glanced at it, then down at the desk, and froze. I followed his gaze to the open book. There, staring at us from the page, was Vlad Dracula.

Charlie and I stared at a picture of the vampire who had almost killed us.

“A little light reading, I guess,” Charlie said. “Man, that dude is scary-looking.” He closed the book.

Underneath was another note. The handwriting was larger than Ophelia's. Messier. More frantic.

Charlie picked up the note, read it over again, then handed it to me. “What kind of gobbledygook is this? The
End of Days
—isn't that an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie?”

It was. Not his best work. I started leafing through the other open books. One showed a page full of ideograms.

“Is that Chinese?” Charlie asked.

I shrugged. It might have been Martian. I couldn't read it, but Ophelia obviously could. Notes were in the margins. The writing was hers. I looked at the shelves. There were hundreds of other books. And more open on the desk,
Geschichte der Moldau und Walachei
The book beside it had a passage underlined:
i nu este revelat omul nelegiuirii . . .

It meant nothing to me. I started looking at the others. I needed to know what the note meant. What the End of Days referred to.

“Oh, no, you don't,” Charlie said.

“What?”

“Zack, it would take you ten years to read through this stuff.”

I sighed. “Then I guess I'd better get started.”

I didn't have much luck at first. Of all the volumes on the desk, only one was in English—the phone book.

After a couple of minutes, Charlie started walking back to the television. “I need to get doing something or I'm going to start gnawing on the furniture.”

I gathered up Ophelia's notes. “Just wait a second. Give me a hand. I have a feeling . . . There's got to be something here.” Charlie turned back and I handed him half of the pages.

“What am I doing, exactly?”

“Just look for something useful,” I said.

“Like what? A recycling bin?”

I started flipping through the sheets. Charlie held his first one up. The page was covered in curvy letters that wound all over one another.

“What is this? Snake?”

“I don't know. Persian maybe.”

Charlie gave me a look. “Zack, I'd have an easier time translating a Klingon war manual. Let's do some gaming.”

“No. Wait wait wait.” The words came out like machine-gun bullets. “I've found something.”

Charlie reached over and pulled the top page down. The words on it were in English. Typed. A letter. It started in midsentence. I set it flat on the desk so we could both read it.

 

“. . . bears a shocking similarity to 2 Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 3, “for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed.”

 

The man of lawlessness
. . . Who could that be?

Charlie nudged me. I read on silently.

The verse goes on to say that this man, presumably the Antichrist, is doomed to destruction, which is missing from Baoh's prophecy. The chapter continues by suggesting that the Antichrist will claim to be God, which Vlad has never done.

I hit the name Vlad and stopped again. So did Charlie. He looked at me. “Does this make sense to you?”

Not yet, so I kept going.

Regarding the other symbols, I have taken great care to translate them. I see definite parallels with the Revelation of Saint John the Divine, but there is no doubt in my mind that the prophecies of Baoh do not concern the Great Beast, the Antichrist, or the End of Days.

“Who is Baoh?” Charlie asked.

I shook my head. I'd never heard of him. But he sounded like a kind of prophet. Maybe he was a friend of Ophelia's.

Charlie pointed to the text at the end of the last sentence. “There's ‘the End of Days' again.”

I nodded and kept reading.

 

. . . but there is no doubt in my mind that the prophecies of Baoh do not concern the Great Beast, the Antichrist, or the End of Days. Not as it pertains to the human world and the Second Coming of the Messiah. Rather, I think these prophecies concern the fate of carriers, and more specifically, your ward.

 

Carriers.
That was the word my father used for “vampires.” Carriers of the pathogen. Those who were infected. My eyes gobbled up the rest of the text.

I have included my translations below. They are in no way complete. Even with the help of modern recording
devices, we have been unable to decipher most of what Baoh said. I will forward more should we manage to transcribe them.

“The great hunter shall be sacrificed and make his son an orphan. The sun shall be given the power to scorch him with fire.”

“The orphaned son who is and was and is to come shall not be hurt by the second death, though the sun will beat upon him.”

“The Lamb will be their shepherd [indecipherable muttering follows] . . . a scourge. He will lead them to springs of living water . . . to destruction. Behold, he is coming soon.”

And that was it. Charlie finished. We looked at each other.

“Are there other pages?” he said.

I started looking.

“We need to find more.” He searched around the desk. On the floor.

I rifled through the stack one more time to be sure I hadn't missed anything. I came up empty. Charlie didn't. He found another from the mess I'd handed him. He waved the page like a winning scratch ticket.

“It must come right after.” He spread it on the desk.

 

All of our far eastern agents are aware of Baoh's disappearance. Given his power and resources, it is unlikely we will find him. Rather, he will emerge at a time of his own choosing, though the Coven may possess the power to drive him out of hiding and compel his service. Whether they can do this without Vlad is doubtful. His whereabouts remain a mystery. No sign of him has been seen by any of our agents, in any corner of the world. If he has
risen from his most recent death, he has chosen not to reveal himself.

The future of the Underground is uncertain. This would seem a prudent time to seek out those carriers with the power of prophecy and those who travel the Spirit Planes.

Be careful. You are now the rock upon which our future rests.

May God's blessings be upon you.

 

The name at the bottom was handwritten and difficult to read.

“What does it say?” Charlie asked. “Who's it from?”

I lifted the paper. Turned it sideways. Squinted. “I think it says Mutada.”

“Mutada? Isn't that from
The Lion King
?”

“No, that's Mustafa. This is one of my father's friends. They hunted vampires together in Afghanistan. My father mentioned it in his journal.”

“And this Mutada guy knows Ophelia?”

“It looks that way. We need to find the first page.” I flipped through the rest of my pile. “I can't find it.”

“Maybe she has it with her. Or it's in one of these books.”