Night Runner (29 page)

I
have heard people say that religion was invented because people are afraid of death. They can't face the idea of not existing. They need to know that there is something after. Something more.

There is.

Many people have described it. Hearts stop beating and death occurs. Some people remember leaving their bodies. Most remember a tunnel of light. Then the heart starts up again and they come back. And they are never the same.

What I remember most about the tunnel of light is that I was not alone. I became a part of something much greater than myself. And I felt that it was good.

But you know that my second death wasn't my last. I'm not a ghost writer. I left the tunnel of light, or I passed through it, and I woke up in a warm bed. My chest was rising and falling in a comfortable rhythm. I could hear the familiar hum of electric lights. My eyes
were slow to focus, but I saw beside me the faces of those I knew and loved.

Charlie. Then Ophelia.

“Hello,” said Ophelia. There were tears in her eyes.

“Am I in Heaven?” I asked.

“Close,” said Charlie. “You're in Peterborough.”

“Charlie . . . you're alive . . .”

“Not quite,” he said. He was sitting in a chair next to me. I felt the mattress shift when he lifted his feet and rested them on the end of the bed. “I'm undead. You bit me. Remember?”

Parts of that last day came back to me.

“But I killed you. I watched you die. It was awful.”

“You're telling me. Painful, too. But I guess that's how it works.”

He looked at Ophelia. She nodded.

“No one becomes a vampire from a mere bite,” she said. “Even the old stories are consistent in this. The human immune system is too adept at fighting off the disease. Unless you drink a vampire's blood directly, you have to be bitten many times and lose a lot of blood before your system is overwhelmed. In Charlie's case, he was bitten twice. Once by Vlad, and then by you. But you drank too deeply and it was fatal, leaving the pathogen free to take hold and transform him. I suspect when Vlad bit you, it was much the same. Infection followed by extreme blood loss. Then death. Then life.”

“I don't understand,” I said.

Ophelia smiled. “You will, in time.”

I remembered what my uncle had told me—that if you didn't understand something you needed more information, or you had to think about it a bit longer. I think I needed both.

“Why didn't the sun get you?” I asked.

“Who, me?” said Charlie.

“Yes,” I said. “It was still up when I bit you.”

He shrugged. “I guess it takes a while for your body to change. The sun was long gone by the time I woke up.” Charlie had always been a late riser.

“Luna?” I asked.

Ophelia looked at Charlie. A sheepish expression came over his face.

“I woke up hungry—I mean,
really
hungry,” he said. “So, she's one of us now.”

One of us.
I smiled. That meant she wasn't dead. I might see her again.

My lips cracked. I tried to moisten them with my tongue but it was too dry. My head fell to the side. I could see a red tube running into my arm. There was one in the other arm as well. Blood seeped into my charred body. But I needed more. Much more.

I looked at Ophelia. “Why didn't you tell me?”

She smiled, then reached out and put the back of her hand against my cheek. “Oh, Zachary, if only you knew what happens to most of us. There are no good endings. I hoped that you could be cured. I wanted to save you from what is coming.”

I knew what she was referring to. Endpoint Psychosis. The descent into madness. It would happen to me. To all of us. Just as it had happened to the Baron.

“Where is he?” I said.

“Who?”

“The Baron. Did he make it?” I wanted to explain everything, but the right words were still scrambled in my mind. “I tried to save him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I threw him through the secret door into the dark.”

I felt the mattress shift as Charlie lifted his feet off and set them back on the floor. “Why?” he asked.

I didn't know what to say. I suppose I could have offered many reasons.

Maybe because my father believed in redemption. And Mr. Entwistle, too. Forgiveness, he'd told me. That was how you dealt with rogues. If there was even a small chance that they were somewhere watching over me, how could I disappoint them? I couldn't kill the Baron without offering him the choice my father would have. Or maybe it was because I'd spent my undead life in a mental ward. The Baron was mad. You don't judge people like that. You help them. But at the time, there was really only one reason.

“I don't want to hurt anyone,” I said. “Never again.”

I looked at Charlie. The memory of his death was clearer now. I had killed him. And the pain and confusion on his face was something I didn't ever want to see again.

I think they understood me. Ophelia reached up and put the back of her hand against my forehead as though checking my temperature.

“There was no trace of the Baron when I returned,” she said.

I wondered what this meant. Perhaps the Coven of the Dragon took care of their own. Maybe Maximilian had come back for him. Or perhaps he had servants, like the vampires in the movies. The Fallen. Men like Everett Johansson who were ready to die in his service.

“Did I make a mistake?” I asked.

Ophelia checked the tubes running into my arm. “Time will tell, Zachary,” she said, stroking my forehead again. “But for now, you need to rest.”

That sounded like perfect advice. But it wasn't going to happen just yet. Someone was coming into the room. My vision was still too blurry to see all the way to the door. All I could make out was a tall, dark blob. As he approached, I could see he was walking with a limp. Then his face came into focus. What stood out most was the thick, pink scar under his right eye.

I struggled to rise, but Ophelia put a hand on my chest. “Relax . . .” she whispered. “It's okay.”

“What is
he
doing here?”

Johansson barked a laugh but didn't say anything. He just hobbled over behind Ophelia and looked down at me.

“You don't need to worry about Everett,” Ophelia said. “He and I have been working together for many years.”

I couldn't believe it.

“How's our patient?” he asked. His voice sounded like sandpaper. “Blood supply okay?”

“We should be all right,” Ophelia answered.

Johansson grunted, nodded once to me, then hobbled towards the door.

“My uncle said Johansson was one of the Fallen,” I told her. “That he served vampires.”

Ophelia smiled. “He does. He works for me.”

This took a moment to register.

“But they kept shocking me,” I said. I thought of the Taser the police had used the night they captured me on Stoney Lake.

“You must forgive the police for their excesses,” Ophelia said. “After seeing you feed on that boy's corpse, can you blame them? It is not an easy thing, controlling a crazed vampire.” She pressed her lips together in an arrangement that might have been a smile had it not been so full of regret. “I just wish you hadn't run away from him. I sent him to the ward to get you.”

“Where were you?”

“Avoiding your uncle. He was getting dangerously close to me. And I didn't want to lead him to you. Not until I knew his intentions. I was also trying to get in touch with my husband. Not an easy thing, given that he and Maximilian started working together shortly after you ran off. In the end, I decided to risk a confrontation. I guess I arrived just in time. I should have come to the ward myself, but I didn't want to put you in danger. And it didn't occur to me that you would run from the police. As a rule of thumb, they're the good
guys.” She stood and smoothed out the front of her uniform. “But we're all here now. For better or worse.”

She then excused herself and crossed the room.

“I need to have another word with Everett,” she said at the door. “I'll be back in a minute.”

I thought about what Maximilian had told me about Johansson. I'd assumed he served Vrolok, but he'd really been working with Ophelia the whole time. So my uncle had basically turned my life upside down to save me from a woman who was practically my mother. I was beginning to understand the whole
irony
thing.

I turned back to Charlie. He was a vampire now, a carrier, like me.

“Have you told your parents?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Nope. Not looking forward to that conversation.” Then his face brightened up a little. “But on the plus side, at least it will explain why I lost my job.” He laughed. Then he sighed and looked around the room. “What am I supposed to tell them? They can barely deal with me as it is.”

I had no idea what to say to this. My instinct was that he should just tell them the truth. That it wouldn't stay hidden for long. But offering advice was beyond me at the moment, and I had other things on my mind.

“Tell me what happened,” I said.

“When?”

“After I died. How did I get here?”

“Luna. She dragged you under the desk. I found you two after the sun went down.”

“So she was still alive?”

“Barely. She was bleeding to death. There was only one way to save her. I had to kill her. So I drank. Man, the hunger . . .” He shook his head.

I understood.

“Then Ophelia showed up and took care of things.”

“But I died,” I said.

“Yes, you did.”

“So how am I here?”

Charlie stood and leaned on the metal rail that ran along the side of the bed. “You were pretty crispy on the outside, but on the inside, you were still medium rare. Ophelia brought you here and gave you a blood bath. It seemed to do the trick. You started to heal right away. You still look like you've been sleeping in a sauna, but it shouldn't take too much longer to get you back to normal.”

“How long have I been here?”

“Two days. Not even. A day and two nights.”

“I don't understand how it's possible,” I said.

“How is any of this possible? I can see in the dark now. And run all night. I'm faster than a rabbit. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.”

“I know all about the iceberg.”

“Oh, right.”

“What happened to my uncle?” I asked. “What happened to Maximilian?”

“He's still a loose end waiting to be tied up.”

“A loose end . . . ?”

“I wouldn't worry too much about it. Ophelia and Johansson are quite a team. And I'm a sailing instructor, remember? Tying knots in loose ends is supposed to be my specialty.”

I didn't think tying up Maximilian was going to be that easy for anyone.

“Charlie,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“You're a good friend.”

“So are you.”

“I mean it.”

“So do I.”

I tried to sit up in the bed so I could look at him more closely. I wanted to see if he had changed, but that was going to have to wait. It was all I could do to keep my eyes open.

“Oh,” he said. “I almost forgot.” He dug into his pocket and took something out. It was my necklace. He put it in my hand.

“Where's the rest of it?” I asked. The part that had belonged to my mother, the golden crescent, was no longer attached to my full moon.

“Where do you think, you goofball? Luna has it.”

My heart went into overdrive when he said that.

“I'd like to see her.”

“And she wants to see you, too,” he said. “I'm sure Ophelia can arrange something.” Then he looked me over. “On second thought,” he added, “I'd recommend waiting a few days. Love may be blind . . .”—he shook his head—“but it's not
that
blind!”

T
hank you to Janet Shorten for her early edits; Mark Swailes; Kathie Stevenson; my brothers, Charlie and Jake; my father, Robert Douglas; my wife, Joanna Richardson; and especially my mother, Julia Bell, for many invaluable contributions. Thanks also to Sharon McKay and her husband, David, for their interest and support; Catherine Marjoribanks for a fantastic copy edit; and to Lynne Missen, Patricia Ocampo, and HarperCollins Canada Ltd. for this wonderful opportunity.