Vlad leaped forward and moved with his amazing vampiric speed, grabbing the dagger before D’Ablo knew what was happening. He jabbed the blade upward, sinking just the tip into the underside of D’Ablo’s chin. “I don’t think so. Now call your cronies off and let my uncle and friend go, or I’ll turn your skull into a pincushion.”
Cold, metallic laughter ebbed from deep within D’Ablo.
Furious, Vlad jabbed the blade in deeper. “Why are you laughing?”
D’Ablo met his eyes with a bemused smile. “Because I’m going to enjoy every second of this.”
D’Ablo gripped Vlad’s hand and the dagger’s handle at the same time. With one powerful thrust, he yanked it to the side, slicing through the flesh and bone of his own jaw. Blood gushed out, coating Vlad’s hand instantly, but D’Ablo didn’t bat an eye. Instead, he snapped his hand back, and hot pain shot through Vlad’s wrist and up his arm. The cracking sound of bone breaking reverberated through his skull. And faster than he could blink, D’Ablo slammed him in the face with the butt of his gloved hand, knocking him backward. Vlad fell back onto the table, where Jasik was waiting. Jasik strapped Vlad’s ankles down, then his wrists. As he tightened the strap on Vlad’s left wrist, Vlad screamed obscenities and then growled at the mastermind of his torment. “When I get free, I’m going to hurt you like you’ve never been hurt before.”
D’Ablo smirked. “Child, I have walked this earth for almost five centuries. I have both caused and experienced levels of pain that you cannot even imagine . . . yet.”
D’Ablo picked up the journal and began to read from the pages of the ritual. His deep voice was rising and falling like a song as he formed the words of the Elysian code. He circled the table over and over as he read, stopping occasionally to touch Vlad’s shoulder, or his foot, or his forehead. Occasionally he would draw a symbol in the air with his finger and then move again.
Vlad squirmed away from his every touch, but it didn’t help. He was trapped. Trapped and scared, and not exactly sure what was transpiring. Worse yet, there was no one who could save him. And no way Vlad could save himself.
D’Ablo finally came to rest at Vlad’s left side. He started to repeat the same phrase over and over again, his voice growing louder with each repetition. He placed his hand on Vlad’s chest, pressing hard into the bone. Vlad struggled uselessly when he saw D’Ablo’s other hand, no longer holding the journal, raised high above D’Ablo’s head. The hand fell with force, and Vlad cried out. A six-inch needle plunged deep into Vlad’s chest.
The pain was like nothing Vlad had ever experienced before. Not even getting staked could come close compared with the agony that ripped through Vlad. He screamed as a fire seemed to blaze to life at his core. It felt like it was burning its way straight through Vlad’s soul.
The syringe filled with a liquid—purple in color, and iridescent, reminiscent of that strange color his eyes changed whenever he touched a glyph—and D’Ablo boiled over with cruel, joyous laughter. “Yes! At long last—the essence of the Pravus has been withdrawn!”
He said something else in Elysian code, and Vlad desperately wished that reading the vampiric language and understanding its spoken form went hand in hand. Without warning, D’Ablo bent down, gnashing into Vlad’s unbroken wrist. He drank deeply, and Vlad’s head swam as he nearly lost consciousness. Once D’Ablo had had his fill, he swallowed one last time and stood, steadying himself against the table as if he were drunk. He whispered, “I’ve never tasted anything like it.”
Ignatius entered the smaller door, his eyes full of an arrogant gleam. At D’Ablo’s nod, he lifted a blade—the metal a strange blackish-gray, as if it were made of hematite—over Vlad’s chest, and Vlad screamed in terror, knowing that his end had come at last. He would never again see his uncle or Henry, never eat Nelly’s cookies or hold Meredith’s hand, never catch snowflakes on his tongue, or read another book. His life would be over as soon as that blade fell. A thousand images flitted through his mind in his final moment—pictures of everything that he had ever loved and would never experience again—and Vlad knew that there was nothing he could do to stop his end. Death had come for him at last, wearing the face of his own grandfather, and all he could do was scream.
With his peripheral vision, Vlad saw Jasik, and in a second his plan was formed. He pushed as hard as he could with his mind, invading Jasik’s thoughts, embedding his own into the vampire’s mind, pushing Jasik to act, act now, stop this horrible moment before it was too late.
At first, he wasn’t certain that his mind control had worked, but then Jasik closed a hard hand over Ignatius’s wrist and twisted the dagger in his grasp. Jasik’s fist fell into Ignatius’s elbow, bending his arm and forcing the blade into his stomach. Ignatius staggered back, throwing Jasik a wild-eyed look of confusion. Jasik jumped high into the air, meeting Ignatius’s temple with a roundhouse kick, knocking him out cold.
Vlad glared at D’Ablo, the burning sensation within him finally subsiding. “Give it up, D’Ablo. It’s over.”
Jasik’s lips moved, his voice low, echoing the words Vlad had spoken. “Give it up, D’Ablo. It’s over.”
D’Ablo looked back and forth between them, his confusion slowly dissipating. He shook his head, snarling at Jasik. “You fool! He’s controlling your mind.”
At Vlad’s mental command, Jasik pointed the dagger at D’Ablo with one hand and undid his straps with another. When Vlad’s left hand was free, he undid his right. “Know this, you overgrown mosquito. Whatever sick fixation you have with me ends here today.”
Vlad unstrapped his feet and climbed down off the table. “I want you out of my life for good. If I have to kill you, I will.”
Jasik’s muttering caught up, echoing Vlad. “. . . If I have to kill you, I will.”
Vlad stood, making certain that Jasik remained between him and D’Ablo at all times. As Vlad made his way closer to the door, clutching his broken wrist to his chest, Jasik sidestepped at his command.
D’Ablo snarled, “You won’t get far once I’ve dispatched your puppet.”
Vlad held D’Ablo’s gaze as he moved. The door was only a few yards away. “You’re assuming I’m not going to make him take your life.”
Jasik’s voice followed, sending a chill into the air with his muttering. “. . . make him take your life.”
“We’ve both made assumptions.” The corners of D’Ablo’s mouth tugged upward slightly. Then without warning, he lunged forward and grabbed Jasik, throwing him to the side. With his fangs gleaming in the candlelight, he rushed toward Vlad, a hungry look in his eyes.
Vlad struggled to make Jasik stand, but couldn’t make him move fast enough. In a blind panic, he grabbed one of the lit candles from the table and thrust the candle toward D’Ablo, tossing hot wax into his open eyes.
D’Ablo roared in pain, clutching his face and thrashing about the room.
Finally Vlad coaxed Jasik back onto his feet, causing him to leap onto the still-blind D’Ablo with the blade in his hand. As D’Ablo struggled to keep the blade from entering his chest, Vlad bolted from the room.
It took him a second, but soon he recognized where he was and hurried through the next door to the corridor of prison cells. Vlad pushed hard and reached out, locating Otis in the cell at the end, astonished at his ability to take on two mind-focused tasks at once. What he saw when he reached the cell jolted his entire being.
Henry’s head was bent to the side, and Otis’s mouth was firmly fixed to his neck. Henry’s eyes were closed—it looked like he was sleeping . . . or dead. Oblivious to anything else around him, Otis drank, swallowing greedy mouthfuls of Henry’s blood.
Vlad felt his control over Jasik waver slightly, distracted by the horror he was witnessing.
Otis was feeding on Henry.
A single tear escaped the corner of Vlad’s eye and traced a line down his cheek, before falling to the floor with all of his hopes for the future.
24
A DIFFICULT DECISION
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OTIS, NO!” Otis pulled away, and Henry winced as Otis’s fangs slipped out of his neck. Vlad breathed a brief sigh of relief that Henry wasn’t dead, but he was still horrified at the scene before him. “What have you done?”
Otis stood, strong once again, his wounds completely healed. “Your drudge saved my life.”
Then he met Henry’s eyes. “ Thank you, Henry. I am indebted to you.”
Henry nodded weakly and said, “Hey, you needed blood. I couldn’t let you starve to death. Besides, you could barely move and, not that I don’t have faith in Vlad’s abilities, but something tells me we’re going to need your help getting out of here.”
Otis replied, but Vlad was too distracted to hear it. His breathing had picked up in panic, his eyes blurring with tears. But these things hadn’t come from him. He focused on the part of his mind that was still controlling Jasik, pushing a bit more until he saw through Jasik’s eyes.
D’Ablo was beneath him, holding the blade at bay, his eyes fierce. “You’re weak, Jasik. Letting a boy control you like this. You deserve what fate awaits you.”
Jasik was panicking and struggling to regain control—Vlad could sense that much. But he couldn’t. Vlad, for once, was too strong—something that pleased Vlad more than he would ever admit to.
But still Jasik struggled, pushing with his mind against the part of Vlad that lurked within him. It was more than Vlad could allow, and he pushed back with all of his might, harder than he ever had before. Jasik lowered the knife momentarily, dazed. Something warm and wet dripped from his nose. It was only when a drop of crimson landed on D’Ablo’s hand that Vlad realized Jasik’s nose was bleeding. What’s more, Jasik seemed dazed, as if Vlad had caused him physical harm, all from pushing with his mind.
In an instant, D’Ablo had wrenched the blade from Jasik’s hand and shoved him across the room. Jasik stumbled and fell, only to find D’Ablo atop him with the blade, growling to Vlad through Jasik’s ears, “You’ll be next, Vladimir Tod.”
He shoved the blade forward hard, piercing Jasik’s chest and sinking the blade as deep as he could. Jasik struggled to pull it out, but it was too late. Blood poured from his heart, and Jasik’s vision blurred, then darkened.
Sharp, horrible pain crashed through Vlad’s mind. He staggered, and Otis caught him. “Vladimir, what’s wrong?”
But Vlad couldn’t speak. The pain . . . the pain of death was too much to bear. He could feel the blade in his own chest, though nothing was there. He could feel his life aching and ebbing from his limbs. He was alive, and apart from his wrist, which was already beginning to heal, in good health, yet he hurt as if it were he who was dying.
And then . . . the emptiness came.
Vlad weakened in Otis’s embrace. He could almost feel himself going paler. It was over. Jasik was dead.
But the pain remained, coupled with the terrifying shadow of death that shrouded his being. Vlad was a living zombie now, an echo of what his living self had been. There was no going back. This was penance for what he had done to Jasik, and he deserved every nightmarish bolt of pain. He coughed, the feeling of blood pooling in his throat, and Otis whispered, “You were in his mind. He . . . died before you could withdraw.”
Vlad still couldn’t make a sound, only nodded feebly. Unbelievably, the pain went on and on, and only Otis’s presence brought him any comfort.
Otis blanched, but spoke in a commanding tone—one that he’d never used with Vlad before. “You have to block these feelings, Vladimir. Or they will haunt you until the end of your days. Now stand up. If Jasik is dead, then D’Ablo will be here shortly. I need you. So stand up.”
Vlad stood, because Otis told him to. But it was the only thing that could have made him move through the agonizing sensation of death. Otis needed him.
Otis again spoke in a commanding tone, all business now. “We need to get out of here, and fast. Unfortunately, the escape tunnel we used in the past has been blocked off, so we’ll have to leave through the lobby. Stay behind me. Henry, you remain between Vlad and me for protection—I know your ankle hurts, but keep up and move quickly. When I stop, you stop. And don’t make a sound.”
“Vladimir.” Otis met Vlad’s gaze, then finished his sentence with his thoughts. “Sunrise is in twenty minutes, and we are without sunblock. We need to get out of this building and into the cover of darkness as soon as we can. If anyone gets in your way, kill them quickly. We don’t have time to be merciful. And we do not want to be in this building when the council members arrive.”
After a moment, Vlad nodded slowly. He’d had enough of death today, but apparently, death hadn’t yet had enough of him.
Otis nodded in return. “Through the door now. Follow me.”
Otis led the way and Henry followed. Vlad, very much on guard and fighting to keep the pain of Jasik’s death at bay, stepped in behind them. They moved quickly down the hall and through the open door. Otis led them through several dark corridors, always whispering before they determined which direction to take. “Left . . . now right . . . left again . . .”
As quietly as possible, they descended a long set of stairs that led to a small, dark room. They crossed the room, then Otis listened carefully at the door at the other end. “Here. This way.”
The door opened into another small room, this one full of copiers and a fax machine. As he followed Otis and Henry into the room, Vlad paused. Something wasn’t right. He reached out, wondering where D’Ablo might be, and then he saw him, actually saw him. The gloved hands, the cane he held, the sinister, sneering face, the curled lip, the fierce fangs. He saw D’Ablo with his mind, as he’d seen Otis earlier this year standing in front of Mr. Craig’s old house. Pulling away from his vision, he called out in a whisper, “Otis, don’t . . .”
But Otis and Henry were already out the door. Vlad ran to catch up with them just as they reached the lobby doors. He cried out, “Otis, D’Ablo is—”
Otis stopped suddenly, and Vlad caught up. D’Ablo was standing just as Vlad had seen him in his mind, in front of the lobby doors, their exit. “—right there. . . .”
Otis sighed, sounding weary. “So he is.”
D’Ablo tilted his head slightly, eyeing them with utter disdain. In stark contrast, he kept his tone light. “Yes. Yes, he is. And he’s grateful that you chose to come to him instead of making him come after you.”
Vlad saw Otis’s jaw tighten. Something told him there was a dark history between them that he knew nothing about. Otis growled, “Even you can’t be stupid enough to face two vampires alone, D’Ablo. The odds are against you, powerful as you may be. Let us pass and you can go back to whatever it was that you withdrew from my nephew.”
D’Ablo’s eye twitched, and Vlad couldn’t help but wonder how Otis knew what had transpired during the ritual. Most likely, he guessed, Otis had been lurking around in D’Ablo’s thoughts from the moment he had tasted Henry’s blood.
Otis took a bold step forward, and Henry followed. Vlad felt a surge of pride. His best friend knew when to follow orders, that was for sure.
“ That”—D’Ablo gripped the handle of his cane and twisted, withdrawing a long sword from the belly of the cane—“can wait.” The ritual dagger was nowhere to be found—Vlad guessed that a psycho like D’Ablo had deemed its purposes too holy for the likes of killing Otis. D’Ablo stood there, eyeing Otis. Vlad wondered how much of their conversation was occurring in telepathy.
“ Then leave them out of this. I’d be happy to take your life on my own.”
D’Ablo tilted his neck one way, then another, cracking it. “ Then take it. If you’re vampire enough.”
All Vlad saw was the corner of Otis’s mouth twitch, and then Otis flew across the room. D’Ablo swung the sword, slicing a button from Otis’s shirt in half, but Otis changed directions before the cold metal could pierce his skin.
D’Ablo moved in a blur, slashing the sword toward Otis, who ducked it, but just barely. Then D’Ablo snarled, his fangs drippi
ng with saliva.
Vlad turned to check on Henry, but he seemed to have disappeared. He wondered if Henry had had the wits to get out while he still could. After all, being a human in the middle of a vampire battle was not a good way to foster one’s promising future.
Otis kicked D’Ablo in the chest, and D’Ablo stumbled back. But once D’Ablo regained his composure, he swung the blade around again, catching Otis’s cheek.
Otis cupped the gash in his face with a trembling, surprised hand. The look in his eyes was fierce and daring. “I’ll heal in but a moment, but you’ll always look the fool. What vampire needs a weapon to take down a foe?”
D’Ablo hesitated before throwing the sword across the room. He hissed, “I may look the fool for now, but it is the victor who writes the history books. And you’ll be lucky to end up as a footnote.”
With dizzying speed, so fast that Vlad almost missed it, D’Ablo darted to Otis, picked him up, and threw him toward the receptionist’s area. Otis slid over the desktop, catching its edge with his fingertips, and pulled himself up, so that he landed on the desk in a perch. He grinned at his attacker, the cut in his cheek healing closed. “You’re playing with me now. Surely you can’t think that maneuver is enough to keep me down.”
D’Ablo laughed. “Not at all. But it was enough to put you farther from your dear nephew.”
Otis’s eyes darted to Vlad, and before Vlad could blink, Ignatius gripped him by the throat from behind, the blade of his knife poised to plunge into Vlad’s chest. Ignatius squeezed hard, and Vlad felt his air supply cut off. After a moment, he could no longer tug at the hands that were suffocating him, could no longer fight. All sound seemed very far away. Even the color began to bleed from the room. He thought he heard someone scream, and then Ignatius released his grip. Vlad fell to the floor in a heap, coughing and gasping until air returned to his lungs.
Ignatius was on the floor to his left. Otis was on top of him, swinging his fists so fast they were a blur. Ignatius gnashed his teeth forward at every swing, biting with his fangs into Otis’s knuckles. But Otis kept punching, despite the pain. Blood flew from his hands, and the knuckles healed over until Ignatius bit them again. Finally, Ignatius managed to push Otis off him and they were both standing again, circling each other, like territorial felines. The two circled closer as the sun began to rise, shrinking the shadows of the room. Otis’s voice was harsh. “ The next time you touch him will be your last.”