by Darren Shan
“I most certainly can.” Mr. Crepsley laughed. “What is your friend to me? You heard him the night he was here: he said he would become a vampire hunter when he grew up!”
“He didn’t mean it,” I gasped. “He only said that because he was angry.”
“Perhaps,” Mr. Crepsley mused, tugging at his chin and stroking his scar. “But again, I ask: why should I save Steve Leopard? The serum was expensive and cannot be replaced.”
“I can pay for it,” I cried, and that was what he had been waiting for. I saw it in his eyes, the way they narrowed, the way he hunched forward, smiling. This was why he hadn’t taken Madam Octa that first night. This was why he hadn’t left town.
“Pay for it?” he asked slyly. “But you are only a boy. You cannot possibly have enough money to buy the cure.”
“I’ll pay in small amounts,” I promised. “Every week for fifty years, or as long as you want. I’ll get a job when I grow up and give you all my money. I swear.”
He shook his head. “No,” he said softly. “Your money does not interest me.”
“What does interest you?” I asked in a low voice. “I’m sure you have a price. That’s why you waited for me, isn’t it?”
“You are a clever young man,” he said. “I knew that when I woke up to find my spider gone and your note in her place. I said to myself, ‘Larten, there goes a most remarkable child, a true prodigy. There goes a boy who is going places.’”
“Quit with the bull and tell me what you want,” I snarled.
He laughed nastily, then grew serious. “You remember what Steve Leopard and I talked about?” he asked.
“Of course,” I replied. “He wanted to become a vampire. You said he was too young, so he said he’d become your assistant. That was all right by you, but then you found out he was evil, so you said no.”
“That about sums it up,” he agreed. “Except, if you recall, I was not too keen on the idea of an assistant. They can be useful but also a burden.”
“Where’s all this leading?” I asked.
“I have had a rethink since then,” he said. “I decided it might not be such a bad thing after all, especially now that I have been separated from the Cirque Du Freak and will have to fend for myself. An assistant could be just what the witch doctor ordered.” He smiled at his little joke.
I frowned. “You mean you’ll let Steve become your assistant now?”
“Heavens, no!” he yelped. “That monster? There is no telling what he will do as he matures. No, Darren Shan, I do not want Steve Leopard to be my assistant.” He pointed at me with his long bony finger again, and I knew what he was going to say seconds before he said it.
“You want me!” I sighed, beating him to the punch, and his dark, sinister smile told me I was right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“YOU’RE CRAZY!” I YELLED, STUMBLING backward. “There’s no way I’d become your assistant! You must be mad to even think such a thing!”
Mr. Crepsley shrugged. “Then Steve Leopard dies,” he said simply.
I stopped retreating. “Please,” I begged, “there must be another way.”
“The issue is not open to debate,” he said. “If you wish to save your friend, you must join me. If you refuse, we have nothing further to discuss.”
“What if I —”
“Do not waste my time!” he snapped, pounding on the table. “I have lived in this dirty hole for two weeks, putting up with fleas and cockroaches and lice. If you are not interested in my offer, say so and I will leave. But do not waste my time with other options, because there are none.”
I nodded slowly and took a few steps forward. “Tell me more about being a vampire’s assistant,” I said.
He smiled. “You will be my traveling companion,” he explained. “You will travel with me across the world. You will be my eyes and hands during the day. You will guard me while I sleep. You will find food for me if it is scarce. You will take my clothes to the laundry. You will polish my shoes. You will look after Madam Octa. In short, you will see to my every need. In return, I will teach you the ways of the vampires.”
“Do I have to become a vampire?” I asked.
“Eventually,” he said. “At first you will only have some vampire powers. I will make you a half-vampire. That means you will be able to move about during the day. You will not need much blood to keep you satisfied. You will have certain powers but not all. And you will only age at a fifth the regular rate, instead of the full vampire’s tenth.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, confused.
“Vampires do not live forever,” he explained, “but we do live far longer than humans. We age at about one-tenth the regular rate. Which means, for every ten years that pass, we age one. As a half-vampire, you will age one year for every five.”
“You mean, for every five years that pass, I’ll only be one year older?” I asked.
“That is right.”
“I dunno,” I muttered. “It sounds sketchy to me.”
“It is your choice,” he said. “I cannot force you to become my assistant. If you decide it is not to your liking, you are free to leave.”
“But Steve will die if I do that!” I cried.
“Yes,” he agreed. “It is your assistance or his life.”
“That’s not much of a choice,” I grumbled.
“No,” he admitted, “it is not. But it is the only one I offer. Do you accept?”
I thought it over. I wanted to say no, run away, and never return. But if I did, Steve would die. Was he worth such a deal? Did I feel guilty enough to offer my life for his? The answer was:
Yes.
“Okay,” I sighed. “I don’t like it, but my hands are tied. I just want you to know this: if I ever get the chance to betray you, I will. If the opportunity arises to pay you back, I’ll take it. You’ll never be able to trust me.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
“I mean it,” I warned him.
“I know you do,” he said. “That is why I want you. A vampire’s assistant must have spirit. Your fighting quality is exactly what drew me to you. You will be a dangerous lad to have around, I am sure, but in a fight, when the chips are down, I am just as sure you will be a worthy ally.”
I took a deep breath. “How do we do it?” I asked.
He stood and pushed the table aside. Stepped forward until he was about a foot away. He seemed tall as a building. There was a foul smell to him that I hadn’t noticed before, the smell of blood.
He raised his right hand and showed me the back of it. His nails weren’t especially long but they looked sharp. He raised his left hand and pressed the nails of the right into the fleshy tips of his left-hand fingers. Then he used his other set of nails to mark the right-hand fingers in the same way. He winced as he did it.
“Lift your hands,” he grunted. I was watching the blood drip from his fingers and didn’t obey the command. “Now!” he yelled, grabbing my hands and jerking them up.
He dug his nails into the soft tips of my fingers, all ten of them at once. I cried out with pain and fell back, tucking my hands in at my sides, rubbing them against my jacket.
“Do not be such a baby,” he jeered, tugging my hands free.
“It hurts!” I howled.
“Of course it does.” He laughed. “It hurt me too. Did you think becoming a vampire was easy? Get used to the pain. Much of it lies ahead.”
He put a couple of my fingers in his mouth and sucked some blood out. I watched as he rolled it around his mouth, testing it. Finally he nodded and swallowed. “It is good blood,” he said. “We can proceed.”
He pressed his fingers against mine, wound to wound. For a few seconds there was a numb feeling at the ends of my arms. Then I felt a gushing sensation and realized my blood was moving from my body to his through my left hand, while his blood was entering mine through my right.
It was a strange, tingling feeling. I felt his blood travel up my right arm, then down the side of m
y body and over to the left. When it reached my heart there was a stabbing pain and I almost collapsed. The same thing was happening to Mr. Crepsley and I could see him grinding his teeth and sweating.
The pain lasted until Mr. Crepsley’s blood crept down my left arm and started flowing back into his body. We remained joined for a couple more seconds, until he broke free with a shout. I fell backward to the floor. I was dizzy and felt sick.
“Give me your fingers,” Mr. Crepsley said. I looked across and saw him licking his. “My spit will heal the wounds. You will lose all your blood and die otherwise.”
I glanced down at my hands and saw blood leaking out. Stretching them forth, I let the vampire put them in his mouth and run his rough tongue over the tips.
When he released them, the flow had stopped. I wiped the leftover blood off on a rag. I studied my fingers and noted they now had ten tiny scars running across them.
“That is how you recognize a vampire,” Mr. Crepsley told me. “There are other ways to change a human but the fingers are the simplest and least painful method.”
“Is that it?” I asked. “Am I a half-vampire now?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I don’t feel any different,” I told him.
“It will take a few days for the effects to become apparent,” he said. “There is always a period of adjustment. The shock would be too great otherwise.”
“How do you become a full vampire?” I asked.
“The same way,” he said, “only you stay joined longer, so more of the vampire’s blood enters your body.”
“What will I be able to do with my new powers?” I asked. “Will I be able to change into a bat?”
His laughter rocked the room. “A bat!” he shrieked. “You do not believe those silly stories, do you? How on Earth could somebody the size of you or I turn into a tiny flying rat? Use your brain, boy. We can no more turn into bats, rats, or fog than we can turn into ships, planes, or monkeys!”
“So what can we do?” I asked.
He scratched his chin. “There is too much to explain right now,” he said. “We must tend to your friend. If he does not get the antidote before tomorrow morning, the serum will not work. Besides, we have plenty of time to discuss secret powers.” He grinned. “You could say we have all the time in the world.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
MR. CREPSLEY LED THE WAY up the stairs and out of the building. He walked confidently through the darkness. I thought I could see a bit better than I could when coming in, but that might just have been because my eyes were used to the dark, not because of the vampire blood in my veins.
Once outside, he told me to hop up on his back. “Keep your arms wrapped around my neck,” he said. “Do not let go or make any sudden movements.”
As I was getting up, I looked down and saw he was wearing slippers. I thought it was strange but didn’t say anything.
When I was on his back, he started running. I didn’t notice anything strange at first, but soon began to realize how fast buildings were zipping by. Mr. Crepsley’s legs didn’t seem to be moving that quickly.
Instead, it was as if the world was moving faster and we were slipping past it!
We reached the hospital in a couple of minutes. Normally it would have taken twenty minutes, and that was if you sprinted all the way.
“How did you do that?” I asked, sliding down.
“Speed is relative,” he said, tugging his red cloak tight around his shoulders, pulling back into the shadows so we could not be seen, and that was all the answer he gave.
“Which room is your friend in?” he asked.
I told him Steve’s room number. He looked up, counting windows, then nodded and told me to hop back up on his back. When I was in position, he walked over to the wall, took off his slippers, and laid his fingers and toes against the wall. Then he shoved his nails forward — into the brick!
“Hmmm,” he muttered. “It is crumbly but it will hold us. Do not panic if we slip. I know how to land on my feet. It takes a very long fall to kill a vampire.”
He climbed up the wall, digging his nails in, moving a hand forward, then a foot, then the other hand and foot, one after the other. He moved quickly and within moments we were at Steve’s window, crouching on the ledge, gazing in.
I wasn’t sure of the time, but it was very late. Nobody was in the room except for Steve. Mr. Crepsley tried the window. It was locked. He laid the fingers of one hand beside the glass covering the latch, then clicked the fingers of his other hand.
The latch sprang open! He shoved the window up and stepped inside. I got down from his back. While he checked the door, I examined Steve. His breathing was more ragged than it had been and there were new tubes all over his body, hooked up to menacing-looking machines.
“The poison has worked rapidly,” Mr. Crepsley said, gazing down at him over my shoulder. “We might be too late to save him.” I felt my insides turn to ice at his words.
Mr. Crepsley bent over and rolled up one of Steve’s eyelids. For a few long seconds he stared at the eyeball and held Steve’s right wrist. Finally he grunted.
“We are in time,” he said, and I felt my heart lifting. “But it is a good thing you did not wait any longer. A few more hours and he would have been a goner.”
“Just get on with it and cure him,” I snapped, not wanting to know how close to death my best friend had come.
Mr. Crepsley reached into one of his many pockets and produced a small glass vial. He turned on the bedside lamp and held the bottle up to the light to examine the serum. “I must be careful,” he told me. “This antidote is almost as lethal as the poison. A couple of drops too many and …” He didn’t need to finish.
He tilted Steve’s head to one side and told me to hold it that way. He leaned one of his nails against the flesh of Steve’s neck and made a small cut. Blood oozed out. He stuck his finger over it, then removed the cork of the bottle with his other hand.
He lifted the vial to his mouth and prepared to drink. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“It must be passed on by mouth,” he said. “A doctor could inject it but I do not know about needles and the like.”
“Is that safe?” I asked. “Won’t you pass on germs?”
Mr. Crepsley grinned. “If you want to call a doctor, feel free,” he said. “Otherwise, have some faith in a man who was doing this long before your grandfather was born.”
He poured the serum into his mouth, then rolled it from side to side. He leaned forward and covered the cut with his lips. His cheeks bulged out, then in, as he blew the serum into Steve.
He sat back when he was finished and wiped around his mouth. He spat the last of the fluid onto the floor. “I am always afraid of swallowing that stuff by accident,” he said. “One of these nights, I am going to take a course and learn how to do this the easy way.”
I was about to reply, but then Steve moved. His neck flexed, then his head, then his shoulders. His arms twitched and his legs started to jerk. His face creased up and he began to moan.
“What’s happening?” I asked, afraid that something had gone wrong.
“It is all right,” Mr. Crepsley said, putting away the bottle. “He was on the brink of death. The journey back is never a pleasant one. He will be in pain for some time, but he will live.”
“Will there be any side effects?” I asked. “He won’t be paralyzed from the waist down or anything?”
“No,” Mr. Crepsley said. “He will be fine. He will feel a bit stiff and will catch colds very easily, but otherwise he will be the same as he was before.”
Steve’s eyes shot open suddenly and focused on me and Mr. Crepsley. A puzzled look swept across his face and he tried speaking. But his mouth wouldn’t work, and then his eyes went blank and closed again.
“Steve?” I called, shaking him. “Steve?”
“That is going to happen a lot,” Mr. Crepsley said. “He will be slipping in and out of consciousness all night. By morning
he should be awake and by afternoon he will be sitting up and asking for dinner.
“Come,” he said. “Let us go.”
“I want to stick around a while longer, to make sure he recovers,” I replied.
“You mean you want to make sure I have not tricked you.” Mr. Crepsley laughed. “We will come back tomorrow and you will see that he is fine. We really must go now. If we stay any —”
All of a sudden, the door opened and a nurse walked in!
“What’s going on here?” she shouted, stunned to see us. “Who the hell are —”
Mr. Crepsley reacted quickly, grabbing Steve’s bedcovers and throwing them over the nurse. She fell down as she tried to remove the sheets, getting her hands stuck in their folds.
“Come,” Mr. Crepsley hissed, rushing to the window. “We have to leave immediately.”
I stared at the hand he was holding out, then at Steve, then at the nurse, then at the open door.
Mr. Crepsley lowered his hand. “I see,” he said in a bleak voice. “You are going to go back on our deal.” I hesitated, opened my mouth to say something, then — acting without thinking — turned and made a dash for the door!
I thought he would stop me, but he did nothing, only howled after me as I ran: “Very well. Run, Darren Shan! It will do you no good. You are a creature of the night now. You are one of us! You will be back. You will come crawling on your knees, begging for help. Run, fool, run!”
And he began to laugh.
His laughter followed me through the corridor, down the stairs, and out the front door. I kept glancing over my shoulder as I ran, expecting him to swoop down on me, but there was no sign of him on the way home, not a glimpse or a smell or a sound.
All that remained of him was his laughter, which echoed through my brain like a witch’s cackling curse.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I ACTED SURPRISED WHEN MOM GOT off the phone that Monday morning and told me Steve had recovered. She was excited and did a little dance with me and Annie in the kitchen.