Night Runner (11 page)

He walked over to the table and drained the glass. I stared at him dumbly.

“Oh, sorry,” he said. “Did you want some?”

I shook my head and raised my hands so he wouldn't bring it any closer.

Mr. Entwistle sat down, then he kicked the other chair over to where I was standing. The echo was loud in the empty room.

“Most vampires can't take anything but blood,” he said. “The instant you're infected, a rapid metamorphosis takes place in your body. The pathogen isn't well understood, so no one knows exactly what happens. But you know the results. Most things you can do better—run, hear, see, smell, heal. But some things you can't do at all. Eating is one of them. Cells can no longer make digestive enzymes to break food down into substrate. It takes about thirty years to reactivate those portions of your DNA that produce enzymes for metabolizing alcohol.”

I didn't know what he was talking about and I didn't ask. Half his words sounded made up. He bent over and retrieved the bottle from the floor. Then he peeked down the neck to see if anything was left. Apparently there was enough. He tipped the neck over the glass and a thin red stream dribbled out. Less than a sip.

“Thirty years, so you've gotta be committed.”

He offered the sip of wine to me. I took the glass and sniffed at it. The smell made me think of mouldy fruit, rotten and sour. The expression on my face made him laugh. I handed it back. There was no way I was putting that stuff in my mouth.

“Thirty years to be able to drink wine again. Thirty years . . . seems like a short time to me now. But not back then.” He snorted. It might have been a laugh had there been any trace of humour on his face. “Those were the plague years. The time of the Black Death. Took my wife. My son, too. But not my daughter. She lived—for about another ten years. Soldiers killed her. Burned her as a witch. Edward's men. Edward III. Ever heard of him?”

I shook my head.

“Well, that's not terribly surprising. He wasn't very popular by the end. But things were different back then. Life had no value.”

He looked at me, and his eyes were smouldering.

“The place is pretty empty, isn't it, boy?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Surprised?”

I nodded, then shrugged. “I guess.”

“Well, I've learned not to get mired in the past. I don't collect things. I don't need things. I have faith, and I have a purpose, and that's what matters.”

He held up the last mouthful of wine so that the crimson liquid glistened in the moonlight streaming in through the back windows.

“To finding purpose,” he said.

He upended his glass while I stepped over to the chair across from him. My shoes were still a bit damp and they made squelching noises on the floor.

I sat down and felt myself drifting away. I had never concerned myself with purpose. I'd spent most of the last eight years wondering what might be wrong with me and whether anyone could make it better. I had been waiting to be fixed. And while I'd waited, my
only concern had been how to spend my time so that I didn't die of boredom. I tried to explain this as best I could, and I think he understood me.

“The biggest problem was that you didn't know yourself. But you're on track now that you've discovered the truth.”

He looked at his empty wineglass with a sad expression. Then he stood and walked into the kitchen. When he came back he had another bottle in his hand.

“What is
your
purpose?” I asked him.

He used his teeth to pull the cork from the wine bottle and poured himself a glass.

“I help vampires,” he said.

“Only the good ones, I hope.”

He laughed and raised his drink. “Not usually,” he answered. “It's the bad ones that need the most help.”

Mr. Entwistle sat and stared at his glass of wine. After seeing him all paranoid in the nuthouse, it was odd to see him so relaxed. Odd and reassuring. Of course, he could have used a few hours in a hair salon and about a gallon of Miracle Glow shampoo. And with his mismatched gloves and overstuffed overcoat, he still looked the part of the crazy motorcycle man. But it didn't matter now. I trusted him.

“You know that my father was a vampire hunter?” I said.

“No,” he answered. “But I can see another lesson in irony tucked away there someplace. God has quite a sense of humour.”

He seemed to doze off for just a second or two, then his head jerked up. “So he's gone, your father? Or retired?”

“He died.”

“I'm sorry for your loss,” he said. “But perhaps it will prepare you for your life as a vampire. You will outlive everyone you know. It isn't easy.”

Then he stood, removed his overcoat and held it up so that the
silver moonlight shone through many finger-sized openings. They were bullet holes. When he tossed the coat to the floor, I saw what he was wearing underneath. It wasn't ten layers of clothing. It was like something out of a video game.

“What's that?” I asked.

“Body armour,” he said. “Platinum.” He thumped his chest. “Sewn inside a double Kevlar weave. Cost me more than my car, but it's worth it. Stops most small-arms fire. A bullet still feels like a sledgehammer, but it keeps the blood where it belongs.”

That explained it. I'd watched him get shot so many times that all the wine in his stomach should have been streaming out onto the floor.

“Do you have another set?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“So, what do we do now?”

Mr. Entwistle looked around. “You don't have to decide on anything at the moment. Just relax. You're in a safe house. No one knows you're here. You can rest and get used to being a vampire. It's no small thing. Then, once you're ready, you can start testing yourself. See how strong you are. How fast. What it takes to exhaust you. How well you recover. How quickly you learn. What your strengths are. And your talents.”

“What do you mean by ‘talents'?”

“That's a loaded question.” He picked up his wineglass and spun it in his hand, then he put it under his nose and inhaled deeply. “All people have talents. Things they're naturally good at. But when it comes to vampires, that word has a special meaning. You know, most people who get infected, they don't become vampires. The body's immune system fights it off, as it would any other disease. I think that's why, in all the old stories, people had to be bitten so many times.”

I remembered that from
Dracula
. It seemed to take three bites.
And you had to lose a lot of blood too, which I guess made you weaker. It made me wonder: if you were healthy, how many times could you get bitten and still stay human?

“I only got bitten once,” I said.

Mr. Entwistle's eyebrows rose in surprise. Then his face relaxed. “But you were young. Maybe that had something to do with it. Vampires don't usually bite children.”

I nodded.

“You are the only child vampire I've ever seen who has survived,” Mr. Entwistle continued. “But that's not what I'm getting at. The whole talent thing has to do with the pathogen. From what I can tell, it's like a kind of retrovirus. Do you know what that means?”

I shook my head.

“It means it's a kind of virus that alters the DNA of the host. Sometimes the results are bizarre, the sort of stuff that fills fantasy stories. Witches. Wizards. I've met vampires that could breathe underwater, walk through fire, pass through walls, make themselves as light as air, rip steel, travel out of their bodies, change their shape, read people's thoughts. There are as many talents as there are vampires. We are unique, after all, like the rest of God's creatures.”

“What's your talent?” I asked him.

“I can drink,” he said, and laughed. Then he stopped abruptly and cleared his throat. “Well, that's more of a hobby than a talent, really. No, I see things. Visions. Snippets of the future, the past, the present. That's what led me to you. I had a vision of a boy. Oh, it was months ago now. A child vampire. I was amazed at first. Then saddened. He was starving and lonely. Then I had one again last month. And another. And another. Just about every night, come to think of it.”

“What did you see?”

“I saw you alone most of the time. Reading. Running. Boy, for a young blood, you've got some speed.”

I looked away, a bit embarrassed, but the tone of his voice drew me back.

“I saw you chased from your room by the cops. And I saw . . .” He stopped to clear his throat. “I saw what is hunting you.”

M
r. Entwistle let out a deep breath. His head tilted sideways but he kept his eyes on me. “You mentioned a name earlier,” he said.

“The Baron Vrolok.”

He shook his head. “That can't be real.
Vrolok
is the Slavic word for vampire, or werewolf. Centuries ago, they were thought to be the same creature. Perhaps they are. But Vrolok is an assumed name. An alias. No one would be called ‘Baron Vampire.'”

“But you've seen him?”

“Yes, if we're talking about the same vampire. Glimpses of the past, mostly. Atrocities we won't speak of. He's old, boy. And insane. They call him ‘the Impaler'—for good reason. I have a book on him upstairs. Grim reading. When I saw that your paths were destined to cross, it nearly undid me. I couldn't sleep. For weeks I was haunted because I knew the danger, but I didn't know where to find you. I got frantic. Then I had another vision. You were talking to a nurse,
the same one you were standing with a few nights ago. Pretty little thing.”

I remembered the expression on his face when he saw Nurse Ophelia that first time—a flicker of recognition.

“Well,” he continued, “once I knew you were in a medical facility, it was enough to start a search. And so it has ended.” He smiled, but there was something in his eyes that made me doubt my troubles were over.

“What is going to happen to me?” I asked.

His hands moved apart just a bit. It was a kind of shrug. “Who knows?” he said.

Was he drunk already? He'd just told me he could see the future.

“I thought you said you have visions.”

This made him laugh. “Yes, but I don't get to choose. I only see bits and pieces of what might happen. Possibilities. The future is never set. It moves. It changes. Most of what I see never comes to pass . . . thankfully.”

He leaned forward and his head tipped up, as though what he was about to say was particularly important. “You have my protection now, which is no small thing. You'd have to dig your way to China to find another vampire as old as I am. Don't worry about the future just yet. Do what is right, for the right reasons, and the rest will take care of itself.”

He got up and walked towards the stairs in the front hall.

“Time for sleep now,” he announced. “I haven't done this much talking since the Nuremberg Trials.”

He waved for me to follow him up the stairs, then led me to a guest room. Inside was a canopied bed. The window beside it was boarded over. A pile of magazines sat on the floor.

“You'll be safe in here,” he said. Then he turned to go.

“Wait,” I said.

“What is it?”

“My uncle was supposed to come and get me,” I said. “That's why I ran outside when I did. I thought you were him at first.”

“He'll be worried, no doubt.”

I nodded. “He was coming to break me out.”

Mr. Entwistle turned his head just slightly, as though he needed to look at me differently to see if this was true.

“To break you out?”

“Yes. He was worried, just like you were. He told me about Vrolok. And about Johansson.”

“Who's Johansson?”

“One of the Fallen,” I said. “He's with the police. I was running from him when you arrived.”

“And who is your uncle?”

“Maximilian,” I said. “He's a vampire hunter. Like my dad.”

Mr. Entwistle looked at me with an expression of disbelief on his face. He put a hand against the wall as if to steady himself.

“Maximilian is your uncle?”

“You know him?”

“Know him? Know him! He's like the Boogeyman to us.
Maximilian
. And I practically kidnapped his nephew. Great. Just great.” He pushed his hair back from his forehead and looked down at the floor. “Wait a minute,” he said. “He must know you're a vampire.”

“Yes. He was the one who told me.”

“And he didn't kill you for it. Well, that's promising.” He walked to the hall window and looked outside. “We'll need to get in touch with him. But not right now.”

“Why not?”

He raised his hand and gestured towards the backyard. “The sun will be up soon. If I've learned anything in the last six hundred and fifty years, it's this: don't tempt fate. Your uncle is a vampire hunter. The most feared man in the western world. He has contacts everywhere. And he kills people like us. You'll have
to forgive me for not inviting him into my house just before the sun rises.”

I was surprised to hear him talk this way. And embarrassed. I'd always thought I read people very well. I trusted my uncle. Truth is, I trusted most people. But in his case, I believed he had a genuine interest in my safety. If he'd wanted me dead, I'm sure he could have managed it quite easily by now.

“Sorry,” Mr. Entwistle said. “We can talk more about it tomorrow night. There will be a way to get in touch with him, but I'd rather err on the side of caution. For vampires, this is a sanctuary. No one can know about it. Especially not people like your uncle.” He leaned forward and raised his eyebrows. “Or it won't be safe.”

I nodded. Then we said good night.

A few minutes later I was stretched out on the guest bed. It was the first time in recent memory that I'd spent a night outside of the ward. I wasn't exactly nervous, but it did feel a bit weird. And not just because the room was different. My mind was muddled. Mr. Entwistle's comments about my uncle had made me see things differently. I guess I couldn't blame him for being worried. I hadn't really seen Maximilian from a vampire's point of view. Things were obviously more complicated than I'd thought. My life had been so simple before. And easy. But not any more.