The Twilight Circus

by Di Toft

  “I did it all,” said Woody nervously. “I wanted you to like it.”

  “This,” said Nat, beaming, “is brilliant. Even better than brilliant! I thought I’d be sharing with Mum and Dad.”

  “Thought you and Woody would be OK on your own.” Evan appeared in the doorway. “Your mum and I are right next door, so any loud music or loud noises …”

  “We’ll know who to complain to.” Nat grinned.

  Evan glanced at his watch. “You’ve got about an hour before we eat,” he said. “Why don’t you unpack, make yourself at home, and we’ll walk across together?”

  Nat watched as Woody lit the tiny, wood-burning stove, put the kettle on it, and explained how everything worked. There were solar panels on the roof that supplied most of their electricity, which he said was stored in batteries from decommissioned submarines (another cool fact for Nat to savor). Woody lit some candles to give the gas lamp a bit more oomph, and in no time the trailer was warm and cozy. It felt like home.

  After Nat had unpacked the few things he had brought with him, the boys sat down with their drinks to talk properly without being overheard.

  Woody had been having the time of his life, by the sound of it. Nat could see that he had grown since he last saw him, and cleaned up his unibrow. He looked almost human in the candlelight, but Nat thought there would always be a wildness about him that would set him apart from true humans. And while Nat had been recovering from his wound in Temple Gurney, Woody had been either loping around the site in Wolven shape or, when he shifted to human shape, busy helping Evan backstage, learning French from TV commercials, and making more friends.

  Woody listened intently as Nat told him about the changes he was experiencing.

  “These … things that’ve been happening, they’re not all bad. I don’t want my mum and dad to know what’s going on, though,” he explained. “Just after I got the Wolven blood transfusion, my sense of smell went crazy, and I’ve got, like, infrared vision—I can see things miles and miles away, even in the dark. But I get these headaches, ’cause when I’m in a crowd of people, I can’t tune stuff out: It’s like there’s always noise in my head. It’s like watching TV while you’re eating potato chips —”

  “What you need is an earworm,” interrupted Woody.

  Nat stared at his friend askance. He didn’t like the sound of that at all. Was this earworm some sort of parasite that lived in the ear canals of all Wolvens—or his case, half Wolvens? Did it hurt? Was it alive …?

  Woody laughed at Nat’s slightly worried expression. “An earworm isn’t alive, it’s a tune.”

  Nat still looked worried.

  “It’s, like, you think of the most annoying song you can think of, and after a while it kind of lodges itself inside your head,” explained Woody. “Then you can use that to block anyone nosy enough to want to brain-jack your thoughts.”

  “Like you.” Nat grinned.

  “Yup,” said Woody, nodding, “some fings are private. But what else has happened? Have bits of you disappeared, like when my ears don’t always go back to normal?”

  “No, nothing like that.” Nat shivered. “It’s nothing, really; it’s stuff that’s easy to hide. I’m physically stronger; I get these premonitions when bad things are going to happen, and —”

  “But you definitely haven’t shifted?” interrupted Woody again. “’cause the game will be up when that starts. Trust me, I should know.”

  “No,” admitted Nat, “and I don’t think I can, either. But like I hinted in the car, something happened to me at St. Pancras, and then I met this man on the train.” He told Woody what had happened and Woody stared, his topaz eyes shimmering in the lamplight.

  “He wanted us to join this, er … NightShift agency?” he asked, astounded.

  Nat nodded. “He reckons that there’s been an increase in supernatural activity and that the human race is in for a bit of a rough time. He said if we join them, he’d arrange a sort of amnesty—you know, like when people break a law they won’t get punished….”

  “We didn’t break any law,” pointed out Woody. “We didn’t do anything wrong at all. It was Gruber and Scale; they were killers.”

  Nat stared at Woody’s sorrowful face. “Crone knows that,” he said. “He promised to get rid of any stuff on the Internet about us. I didn’t even know we were on World’s Most Wanted. Iona never told me.”

  Woody looked stricken with guilt. “I’m sorry,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “What?” cried Nat. “And miss all this? Anyway, if it hadn’t been for you, I’d be dead.”

  “You’d be normal,” pointed out Woody.

  “Yeah, normal but dead!” Nat laughed.

  “You can do the two-way thing—Crescent can’t,” said Woody, brightening.

  “Sometimes,” agreed Nat, “although it looks as though we’re limited by distance.”

  “Can you read my mind?” asked Woody.

  “No,” admitted Nat, “not as much as you can read mine. And it’s like … when other voices butt in, I sometimes miss stuff that’s more important.”

  Woody nodded. “That happens to me sometimes. Still got a lot of practicing to do, I s’pose. But I still haven’t met anyone else who can do it yet, apart from you.”

  “Me and —” began Nat.

  “Lucas Scale,” whispered Woody.

  They were silent for a few moments as they remembered the hideous creature that still haunted their nightmares. For a split second Nat wondered if he should tell Woody what Quentin Crone had told him. That Scale’s body had never been found. He decided not to tell; after all, it didn’t really mean anything. Or did it? He glanced at Woody’s face and tried to block his fears by thinking of something else. He didn’t want Woody to read his thoughts.

  “What about you?” asked Nat, changing the subject well away from Scale. “How’s the shifting?”

  “Coolio.” Woody grinned. “Doesn’t hurt at all—seems like I got the knack most of the time. I tried shifting specially today, in case the two-way thing didn’t work, but the shifting worked first time!”

  “Still prefer to be Wolven shape, then?” asked Nat curiously.

  Woody hesitated. “I dunno … yeah … I guess. It’s a lot easier—simpler—being Wolven. It’s like putting on baggy pajamas when you’ve been wearing tight an’ itchy pants.”

  Nat nodded. He thought he could understand that feeling.

  “It’s like … a rest,” continued Woody. “It’s hard work being human.”

  Nat smiled. “What about your ears?”

  “Still got a mind of their own,” admitted Woody. “I want to be able to do it properly for when I meet the rest of my clan.”

  “If you meet them, you mean,” pointed out Nat.

  “When I meet them,” said Woody firmly.

  “Let’s hope,” Nat said, and the pair were quiet for a bit, lost in their own thoughts.

  The place where the professor and Iona had first found Woody’s Wolven clan was close to where the circus would make their winter quarters. But no one knew for sure whether there were any of them left now, or whether Woody was the last of the King’s Wolven. While Nat was eager for Woody to find his clan, he had to admit to himself that it was bound to change things between them as friends. Worse still, it was all Woody had thought about since they met. Nat didn’t like to think what would happen if they weren’t successful.

  “Anyway, seems like while I’ve been holed up with Iona and the prof at Meade Lodge, you’ve been having a great time,” said Nat after a while.

  “Yeah,” said Woody, smiling. “I tried to tune you in a few times, but Temple Gurney was just too far away to get any reception. It worked at the train place, though.”

  Nat nodded. That had been soooo cool. It was hard to believe that, just a few months ago, Woody had had trouble stringing a few words together. And who’d have thought that choppy haircuts would have become fashionable? With his coo
l hair and his neatly plucked eyebrows, he was like a different Wolven.

  “The Crone man,” said Woody seriously, “can we trust him to keep his promise?”

  Nat nodded. “He said even if we didn’t join NightShift, he’d, like, look out for us.”

  “I don’t like the sound of it.” Woody shivered. “Anyway, thank goodness we’re done with all that dangerous stuff.”

  CHAPTER 8

  THE PEOPLE UNDER THE ICE

  In the wild region of Salinas, the ancient vampire was restored; its cheeks glowed with vitality and evil cheer and its body grew stronger. It had been called out in the darkness; something had summoned the creatures of the night with their sharp rodent teeth to sacrifice one of their own and reanimate the empty vampire husk. The vampire wasted no time thinking about why it had been freed from its coffin after a century and a half—it didn’t care.

  Revenge is a dish best eaten hot and rare, it thought to itself spitefully. Presently it would be time for the sniveling peasants in the town below to pay for its incarceration. And ooh … how they would pay!

  Loud screams interrupted the vampire’s thoughts of glorious and bloody revenge, and it grinned delightedly at the sound of human suffering, for a good vampire’s assistant needed to be trained like a dog. The human girl in the north tower was proving a difficult vein to tap, but once she calmed down she would see the benefits: She’d get to live forever, never say sorry, travel the world, and earn power and a fortune beyond her wildest dreams. In time, she would be made a half vampire, and then, if she passed the vampire initiation, she would take the blood of a vampire and be complete. For some reason (and the vampire couldn’t for the unlife of it understand what it was), this wonderful career opportunity seemed repulsive to the girl in the tower. Still grinning, its teeth giving it a wolfish leer, the vampire inserted ear plugs into its slightly pointed ears and fell into a bloated and dreamless sleep.

  The screaming girl in the north tower was called Saffi Besson, and she had been yelling and screaming on and off since the sun rose and the vampire had left her to sleep the sleep of the undead. Until four days ago she had been blissfully unaware that vampires were actually real. Her terrifying captor fed and hunted from dusk to dawn and then it would disappear for the day, leaving her alone and waiting in terror for its return when the dark came again. On the fourth day, confident that the pattern would be the same, Saffi had decided to escape the room. Whether she would manage to get outside the chateau would remain to be seen, but leaving the cheerless, freezing prison would be a start. The vampire hadn’t shackled her—there was no need. The room in which Saffi had slept fitfully for the last three days had a window, but the jump from it would have killed her—although when the vampire had shared its plans for the future with her, Saffi had vowed to die from the fall rather than become a vampire. The thick oaken door was locked, but on the first day of her imprisonment, Saffi had spotted a possible escape route. A plan had formed in her practical mind, but she had been too scared to try it at first in case she woke the ugly old bloodsucker. To test her theory she had screamed her head off. The vampire had not appeared. Then last night, when it had revealed its dreadful plan, Saffi couldn’t afford to wait any longer. She had to get out now, before the daylight disappeared.

  If she had been equipped with a toolbox and a strong assistant, her plan would have worked within about half an hour. But because she had neither, she estimated it could take all day. On that first day of her imprisonment she had noticed that the door hinges stuck out, slightly proud of the wood, where the old wooden door had expanded and shrunk many times over the centuries. It became a fixation and she had to stop herself from looking at them in case the vampire noticed. If somehow she could remove the hinges before it was too late, she could escape.

  Taking a deep breath, she knelt at the old door with its three hinges. One part was pinned to the door, the other to the door frame, the two parts fitting together like puzzle pieces. There was a third part to the hinge, like a long nail that was threaded through, holding it all together. Taking off her boot, Saffi used the heel as a makeshift hammer. At first, the hinge didn’t seem to want to budge, but she worked on the theory that if she kept at it, the vibration would shift it slightly. The process was painfully slow. Three hours later, her body oily with sweat, her fingers swollen and bloody, she managed to push one pin up and out of its hinge. One down, two to go! The blood was making her hands slippery and she wiped them on her filthy jeans, leaving bloody handprints. Her face set in a grimace of pain and exertion, she set to work again, trying not to notice how the shadows had shortened in her small prison, indicating that the time left was short.

  Just before dusk, Saffi released the hinges and jimmied the door open with her ruined boot. A really bad moment followed her initial triumph. She found her legs were so numb from kneeling they wouldn’t work. Rubbing them fiercely, she managed to get the blood circulating again. She staggered over to the window—the weak winter sun was just about to dip below the horizon. It would be waking up!

  Saffi didn’t know her way out—she had been unconscious when her captor had brought her here—but she half fell, half ran down the stone staircase, which led to a vast room with austere, ancient furniture. It looked as if no one from this century had ever set foot inside. It was frozen in time. But the good news was that no one was there! Saffi had never seen anyone else apart from her captor, but she had sometimes heard footsteps, maniacal laughter, and the voices of others while the vampire was asleep. But no one ever answered her desperate cries for help. She looked wildly around for a door that would lead her to freedom. Saffi knew she was being held in a large castle, a chateau, for her room had been in a tower, looking across a great roof with turrets, but she had no idea where she was. All around her lay the desolate salt plains covered in snow, with no sign of a house or farm anywhere. Worst of all, she had not seen so much as a glimpse of any other living creature, either human or animal. Never before had Saffi felt so alone. But the act of escaping the awful room and running down the staircase had made the adrenaline kick in.

  Come on! she told herself sternly. You’re free, Saffi! Run! Her senses fueled, she spotted a door and opened it without hesitation. Behind the door was a stone corridor that took Saffi into what looked like a kitchen scullery. At the end of the scullery was another huge door. Unaware she was sobbing, she prayed it would be open. She didn’t have much time before … Don’t think about it, just do it.

  She rattled the latch and put her shoulder to the door. Locked! But then she saw a large ornate key sticking out. In her panic, she had been so sure she wouldn’t get out, her eyes had somehow missed the key!

  Hope gave Saffi strength as she turned the key in the lock and burst out onto the treacherous, rock-strewn path outside. She daren’t risk a look behind her in case she lost her footing; if she fell now, she wouldn’t have the strength left to get up again and … She tried not to think about what would happen to her then. Her hot breath plumed out of her body in ragged bursts, turning to crystals as it hit the freezing air. Her blood pounded in her ears as she ran down the steep path, mercifully blocking out the caterwauling wail of the wind shifting and snaking across the deserted plains.

  Reaching the bottom, Saffi stopped to catch her breath. Everything around her—the pockets of swirling snow, the trees far ahead in the distance, and the frozen expanse of water at her feet, which she hoped would deliver her to freedom—was drawn lividly against the black canvas of the night. A young moon glared down at her, its fierce light hurting her sore eyes, which had become used to the dark. There was no evidence in the eerie frozen landscape of another living soul.

  Saffi allowed herself a backward glance. If she had stayed up there, she would have been a life support system for the old bloodsucker and become “one of them” herself. When her soul finally left her body, it would be fit only for the fires of hell. “GO!”

  Saffi’s head snapped back at the sound of the voice. She listened for it aga
in, her head held high and still, her eyes wide, nostrils flaring slightly like those of a frightened deer. Now she was hearing voices!

  “RUN, SAFFI!”

  It was coming from under the ice.

  That’s impossible, she reasoned with herself. After all she had been through, was it any wonder her mind was playing tricks on her? It must be my own subconscious telling me to get a move on.

  Pulling herself together, she put one foot on top of the ice to test its strength, knowing it could be thinner and more liable to crack in the middle of the water. She leaned forward as far as she could without toppling over and lowered her right foot toe first. Then, satisfied it would hold, she placed her heel down gingerly and stood for a second.

  “RUN!”

  Louder now, but oddly muffled, the voice was underneath her. Saffi froze, peering down at the ice through long, frosted lashes. She gasped as she looked closer. Somehow, impossibly, there was a person down there. Someone was calling from below the ice!

  Dropping to her knees, Saffi brushed away the thin layer of snow, making a window into the frozen lake. More shapes clamored and pressed upward against the underside of the ice crust, their unformed faces oddly fluid and ghostlike. Saffi sensed that the people trapped under the ice had been human once, but no more.

  The faces staring up at her were eerie, but not frightening. Somehow, she knew they held no danger for her. A sense of loss and sadness swept over her as she stumbled awkwardly to her feet again, tears blurring her vision. There was nothing she could do for them. They were revenants—the lost souls of the vampire’s dead.

  “RUN, SAFFI! RUN!”

  She looked down again at the ghostly faces pressed up against the ice, then took off, her feet in their scuffed boots gripping the frozen water surprisingly well. The moon lit her way to the edge and to the sanctuary of the trees. To her astonishment, someone stood on the edge, waving frantically. A boy! A boy about her own age, with dark hair and a concerned expression. As she lifted her right foot to take her final step off the ice toward the boy, she stumbled and fell, her frozen cheek pressed to the hard surface.