by Darren Shan
He sighed. “Very well. It is hard, especially when you are only a half-vampire and the hunger is not so great. I will let you abstain this time. But you must feed soon. For your own sake.”
He returned to the cut and cleaned away the blood — which had been leaking out while we were talking — from around the man’s leg. Then he worked up a mouthful of spit and slowly let it dribble over the cut. He rubbed it in with a finger, then sat back and watched.
The wound closed and healed. Within a minute there was nothing left besides a small scar that the man probably wouldn’t notice when he awoke.
That’s how vampires protect themselves. Unlike in the movies, they don’t kill people when they drink, not unless they are starving or get carried away and go too far. They drink in small doses, a little here, a little there. Sometimes they attack people out in the open, as we had just done. Other times, they creep into bedrooms late at night or into hospital wards or police cells.
The people they drink from hardly ever know they’ve been fed on by a vampire. When this man woke, he would remember only a falling red shape. He wouldn’t be able to explain why he’d passed out or what had happened to him while he was unconscious.
If he found the scar, he’d be more likely to think it was the mark of aliens than a vampire.
Hah. Aliens! Not many people know that vampires started the UFO stories. It was the perfect cover. People all over the world were waking up to find strange scars on their bodies and were blaming it on imaginary aliens.
Mr. Crepsley had knocked the scoutmaster out with his breath. Vampires can breathe out a special kind of gas, which makes people faint. When Mr. Crepsley wanted to put someone to sleep, he breathed into a cupped fist, then held his hand over the person’s nose and mouth. Seconds later they were down for the count, and wouldn’t wake for at least twenty or thirty minutes.
Mr. Crepsley examined the scar and made sure it had healed correctly. He took good care of his victims. He seemed to be a nice guy, from what I’d seen of him — apart from the fact that he was a vampire!
“Come,” he said, standing. “The night is young. We will go find a rabbit or a fox for you.”
“You don’t mind me not drinking from him?” I asked.
Mr. Crepsley shook his head. “You will drink eventually,” he said. “When you are hungry enough.”
“No,” I said silently behind him, as he turned to walk away. “I won’t. Not from a human. I’ll never drink from a human. Never!”
CHAPTER THREE
I woke up early in the afternoon, as usual. I’d gone to bed shortly before dawn, the same time as Mr. Crepsley. But while he had to stay asleep until night came again, I was free to rise and move around in the daylight world. It was one of the advantages of being only a half-vampire.
I made a late breakfast of butter on a bagel — even vampires have to eat normal food; blood alone won’t keep us going — and plopped down in front of the hotel TV. Mr. Crepsley didn’t like hotels. He usually slept out in the open, in an old barn or a ruined building or a large crypt, but I was having no part of that. I told him point blank after a week of sleeping in the cold that I’d had enough of it. He grumbled a bit, but finally gave in.
The last two months had passed pretty quickly, because I’d been so busy learning about being a vampire’s assistant. Mr. Crepsley wasn’t a good teacher and didn’t like repeating himself, so I had to pay attention and learn fast.
I was really strong now. I could lift huge weights and crush marbles to pieces with my fingers. If I shook hands with a human I had to be careful not to break the bones in his fingers. I could do chin-ups all night long and throw a baseball farther than any grown-up. (I measured my throw one day, then checked in a book and discovered I’d set a new world record! I was excited at first, but then realized I couldn’t tell anybody about it. Still, it was nice to know I was a world champion.)
My fingernails were really thick, and the only way I could cut them was with my teeth; clippers and scissors were no good on my new, tough nails. They were a pain: I kept ripping my clothes when I was putting them on or taking them off and digging holes in my pockets when I stuck my hands in.
We’d covered a lot of distance since that night in the cemetery. First we’d fled at top vampire speed, me on Mr. Crepsley’s back, invisible to human eyes, gliding across the land like a couple of high-speed ghosts. That’s called flitting. But flitting is tiring work, so after a couple of nights we began taking trains and buses.
I don’t know where Mr. Crepsley got the money for our travel and hotels and food. He had no wallet that I could see and no bank cards, but every time he had to pay for something, out came the cash.
I hadn’t grown fangs. I’d been expecting them to sprout and had been checking my teeth in the mirror every night for three weeks before Mr. Crepsley caught me.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Looking for fangs,” I told him.
He stared at me for a few seconds, then burst out laughing. “We do not grow fangs, you idiot!” he roared.
“But . . . how do we bite people?” I asked, confused.
“We do not,” he told me, still laughing. “We cut them with our nails and suck the blood out. We only use our teeth in emergencies.”
“So I won’t grow fangs?”
“No. Your teeth will be harder than any human’s, and you will be able to bite through skin and bone if you wish, but it is messy. Only stupid vampires use their teeth. And stupid vampires tend not to last very long. They get hunted down and killed.”
I was a little disappointed to hear that. It was one of the things I liked most about those old vampire
movies: The vampires looked so cool when they bared their fangs.
But after some thought, I decided I was better off without the fangs. The fingernails making holes in my clothes were bad enough. I would have been in real trouble if my teeth had grown and I’d started cutting chunks out of my cheeks as well!
Most of the old vampire stories were untrue. We couldn’t change shape or fly. Crosses and holy water didn’t hurt us. All garlic did was give us bad breath. Our reflections could be seen in mirrors, and we cast shadows.
Some of the myths were true, though. A vampire couldn’t be photographed or filmed with a video camera. There’s something odd about vampire atoms, which means all that comes out on film is a dark blur. I could still be photographed, but you wouldn’t get a clear photo of me, no matter how good the light.
Vampires were friendly with rats and bats. We couldn’t turn into them, as some books and films said, but they liked us — they knew from the smell of our blood that we were different from humans — and often cuddled up to us while we were sleeping, or came around looking for scraps of food.
Dogs and cats, for some reason, hated us. Sunlight would kill a vampire, but not quickly. A vampire could walk around during the day, if he wrapped up in lots of clothes. He’d tan really fast and start to go red within fifteen minutes. Four or five hours of sunlight would kill him.
A stake through the heart would kill us, of course, but so would a bullet or a knife or electricity. We could drown or be crushed to death or catch certain diseases. We were tougher to kill than normal people, but we weren’t indestructible.
There was more I had to learn. A lot more. Mr. Crepsley said it would be years before I knew everything and was able to function by myself. He said a half-vampire who didn’t know what he was doing would be dead within a couple of months, so I had to stick to him like glue, even if I didn’t want to.
When I finished my bagel, I sat and bit my nails for a few hours. There wasn’t anything good on TV, but I didn’t want to go outside, not without Mr. Crepsley. We were in a small town, and people made me nervous. I kept expecting them to see through me, to know what I was and to come after me with stakes.
When night came, Mr. Crepsley emerged and rubbed his belly. “I am starving,” he said. “I know it is early, but let us head out now. I should have t
aken more of that silly Scout-man’s blood. I think I will track down another human.” He looked at me with one eyebrow raised. “Maybe you will join me this time.”
“Maybe,” I said, though I knew I wouldn’t. It was the one thing I’d sworn I would never do. I might have to drink the blood of animals to stay alive, but I would never feast on one of my own kind, no matter what Mr. Crepsley said, or how much my belly growled. I was half vampire, yes, but I was also half human, and the thought of attacking a living person filled me with horror and disgust.
CHAPTER FOUR
Blood . . .
Mr. Crepsley spent a lot of his time teaching me about blood. It’s vital to vampires. Without it we grow weak and old and die. Blood keeps us young. Vampires age at a tenth the human rate (for every ten years that pass vampires only age one), but without human blood, we age even quicker than humans, maybe twenty or thirty years within a year or two. As a half-vampire, who aged at a fifth the human rate, I didn’t have to drink as much human blood as Mr. Crepsley — but I would have to drink some to live.
The blood of animals — dogs, cows, sheep — keeps vampires going, but there are some animals they — we — can’t drink from: cats, for instance. If a vampire drinks a cat’s blood, he might as well pour poison down his throat. We also can’t drink from monkeys, frogs, most fish, or snakes.
Mr. Crepsley hadn’t told me the names of all the dangerous animals. There were a whole lot, and it would take time to learn them all. His advice was to always ask before I tried something new.
Vampires have to feed on humans about once a month. Most feast once a week. That way, they don’t have to suck much blood. If you only feed once a month, you have to drink a lot of blood at one time.
Mr. Crepsley said it was dangerous to go too long without drinking. He said the thirst could make you drink more than you meant to, and then you were probably going to end up killing the person you drank from.
“A vampire who feasts frequently can control himself,” he said. “One who drinks only when he must will end up sucking wildly. The hunger inside us must be fed to be controlled.”
Fresh blood was the best. If you drink from a living human, the blood is full of goodness and you don’t need to take very much. But blood begins to go sour when a person dies. If you drink from a dead body, you have to drink a lot more.
“The general rule is, never drink from a person who has been dead more than a day,” Mr. Crepsley explained.
“How will I know how long a person’s been dead?” I asked.
“The taste of the blood,” he said. “You will learn to tell good blood from bad. Bad blood is like sour milk, only worse.”
“Is drinking bad blood dangerous?” I asked.
“Yes. It will sicken you, maybe turn you crazy or even kill you.”
Brrrr!
We could bottle fresh blood and keep it for as long as we liked, for use in emergencies. Mr. Crepsley had a few bottles of blood stored in his cloak. He sometimes had one with a meal, as if it were a small bottle of wine.
“Could you survive on bottled blood alone?” I asked one night.
“For a while,” he said. “But not in the long run.” “How do you bottle it?” I asked, examining one of the glass bottles. It was like a test tube, only the glass was darker and thicker.
“It is tricky,” he said. “I will show you how it is done, the next time I am filling up.”
Blood . . .
It was what I needed most, but also what I feared most. If I drank a human’s blood, there was no going back. I’d be a vampire for life. If I avoided it, I might become a human again. Maybe the vampire blood in my veins would wear out. Maybe I wouldn’t die. Maybe only the vampire in me would die, and then I could go home to my family and friends.
It wasn’t much of a hope — Mr. Crepsley had said it was impossible to become human again — but it was the only dream I had to hold on to.
CHAPTER FIVE
Days and nights passed, and we moved on. We wandered from towns to villages to cities. I wasn’t getting along very well with Mr. Crepsley. Nice as he was, I couldn’t forget that he was the one who’d pumped vampire blood into my veins and made it impossible for me to stay with my family.
I hated him. Sometimes, during the day, I’d think about driving a stake through his heart while he was sleeping, and running away. I might have, too, except I knew I couldn’t survive without him. For the moment I needed Larten Crepsley. But when the day came that I could look after myself . . .
I was in charge of Madam Octa. I had to find food for her and exercise her and clean out her cage. I didn’t want to — I hated the spider almost as much as I hated the vampire — but Mr. Crepsley said I was the one who’d stolen her, so I had to look after her.
I practiced a few tricks with her every now and then, but my heart wasn’t in it. She didn’t interest me anymore, and as the weeks went by I played with her less and less.
The one good thing about being on the road was being able to visit a whole bunch of places I hadn’t been before and see a lot of cool sights. I loved traveling. But, since we traveled at night, I didn’t get to see many of our surroundings — bummer!
One day, while Mr. Crepsley was sleeping, I got tired of being indoors. I left a note on the TV, in case I wasn’t back when he woke up, then left. I only had a little money and had no idea where I would go, but that didn’t matter. Just getting out of the hotel and spending some time by myself was wonderful.
It was a large town but pretty quiet. I checked out a few arcades and played some video games in them. I’d never been very good at video games before, but with my new reflexes and skills I was able to do pretty much anything I wanted.
I raced through all levels, knocked out every opponent in martial arts tournaments, and zapped all the aliens attacking from the skies in the sci-fi adventures.
After that I toured the town. There were plenty of fountains and statues and parks and museums, all of which I checked out with interest. But going around the museums reminded me of Mom — she loved taking me to museums — and that upset me: I always felt lonely and miserable when I thought of Mom, Dad, or Annie.
I spotted a group of guys my age playing hockey on a cement playground. There were eight players on each side. Most had plastic sticks, though a few had wooden ones. They were using an old tennis ball as a puck.
I stopped to watch, and after a few minutes one of the guys came over to me.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Out of town,” I said. “I’m staying at a hotel with my father.” I hated calling Mr. Crepsley that, but it was the safest thing to say.
“He’s from out of town,” the boy called back to the other guys, who had stopped playing.
“Is he part of the Addams Family?” one of them shouted back, and they all laughed.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, offended.
“Have you looked at yourself in a mirror lately?” the boy said.
I glanced down at my dusty suit and knew why they were laughing: I looked like something out of Beetlejuice.
“I lost the bag with my normal clothes,” I lied. “These are all I have. I’m getting new stuff soon.”
“You should.” The boy smiled, then asked if I played hockey. When I said yes, he invited me to play with them.
“You can be on my team,” he said, handing me a spare stick. “We’re down, six–two. My name’s Michael.”
“Hey. I’m Darren,” I replied, testing the stick.
I rolled up the cuffs of my pants and made sure my shoelaces were double-tied. While I was doing that, the other team scored another goal. Michael swore loudly and dragged the ball back to the center.
“You ready to go?” he asked me.
“Sure.”
“Come on, then,” he said. He tapped the ball to me and moved ahead, waiting for me to pass back.
It had been a long time since I’d played hockey — at school, in gym, we’d usually had to choose
between hockey and soccer, and I never passed up a chance for a game of soccer — but with the stick in my hands and the ball at my feet, it seemed like only yesterday since I’d played hockey.
I knocked the ball from left to right a few times, making sure I hadn’t forgotten how to control it, then looked up and focused on the goal.
There were seven players between me and the goalie. None of them rushed to stop me. I guess they felt they didn’t need to since they were five goals ahead.
I started running. A big kid — the other team’s captain — tried blocking me, but I slipped around him easily. I was past another two before they could react, then dribbled around a fourth. The fifth player slid in with his stick at knee level, but I jumped over him with ease, faked the sixth, and shot before the seventh and final defender could get in the way.
Even though I hit the ball pretty softly, it went a lot harder than the goalie was expecting and flew into the top right-hand corner of the goal. It bounced off the wall and I caught it in the air.
I turned, smiling, and looked back at my team-mates. They were still back near the other goal, staring at me in shock. I carried the ball back to the center line and set it down without saying a word. Then I turned to Michael and said, “Seven–three.”
He blinked slowly, then smiled. “Oh, yeah!” he cheered softly, then high-fived his teammates. “I think we’re going to enjoy this!”
I had a great time for a while, dominating play, rushing back to defend, picking players out with pinpoint passes. I scored a couple of goals and set up four more. We were leading 9–7 and coasting. The other team hated it. They made us give them two of our best players, but it made no difference. I could have given them everybody except our goalie and still kicked their butts.
Then things got nasty. The captain of the other team — Danny — had been trying to foul me for a while, but I was too quick for him and easily dodged his raised stick and stuck-out legs. But then he began to punch my ribs and stand on my toes and slam his elbows into my arms. None of it hurt me, but it annoyed me. I hate sore losers.