First Bites

by Darren Shan

  “Nonsense,” Tanish said. “That’s the way Generals think. You’re Cubs now, free of the dictates of the clan. As long as we don’t break the laws–by killing, for instance, or taking slaves–they leave us alone. Remember, many of the Generals have been in this position themselves. It’s common for vampires to take a few decades to experience the pleasures of the human world. Think of these as your adolescent years.”

  “Maybe that’s true,” Larten said. “But we still do not know what to do next.”

  “That’s simple,” Tanish said, and stood up. “Follow me.”

  He swept from the inn, and since Wester and Larten didn’t have much choice, they stumbled after him. The fresh air revived them, but they weren’t out in it for long. Tanish led them to a dark, smoke-filled tavern, where lots of women were pouring drinks for men and laughing at their jokes.

  Tanish found a couch and made himself comfortable. Larten and Wester sat stiffly beside him. Several eager women flocked to their side as soon as they were settled.

  “Who are your friends?” one of the women crowed, perching herself on Larten’s lap. He blushed a deep red and froze.

  “Men of distinction and fine tastes,” Tanish said loftily. “Bring us your best wine and finest dishes.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Wester muttered, blushing too as a woman whispered in his ear. “I think I’ll go back to—”

  Wester started to rise but Tanish pushed him down. “You’ll stay and dine with me,” he growled. “I’m your host tonight. If you refuse my hospitality, you’ll insult me, and I don’t forget an insult in a hurry.” His eyes flashed dangerously, and he held Wester’s gaze.

  Wester gulped, then said meekly, “As you wish, Tanish.”

  “Very good,” Tanish purred. “That’s what I like. I can see we’re going to—”

  Wester was on him before he could finish, the nails of his fingers pressed to the vulnerable flesh of Tanish’s throat. Larten appeared on the vampire’s other side, his nails aimed at Tanish’s stomach.

  “If you ever threaten me again,” Wester snarled, “I’ll finish this. Understand?”

  Tanish smiled. “Congratulations. You passed.”

  “Passed what?” Wester snapped.

  “The test I always set to determine whether or not I’ll accept a man as a true friend.” The women around them were staring at the trio uncertainly. Tanish crooked a finger at one of them, then pointed to a bowl of dates on the table. The woman passed him the bowl, and he flipped a few dates into his mouth without attempting to push Larten or Wester away.

  “My friends must be men of good character,” Tanish said calmly. “I lead a wild, frenzied life, but I try to live honorably, and I prefer to spend my nights in the company of honorable men. I will drink with the greatest of rogues, but when I travel, I only travel with men whom I respect.

  “I insulted you in order to test you. For that, I apologize unreservedly. If you can forgive me, we will be the best of friends from this time on. If I went too far, I will bid you all of my best wishes as you take to the road without me.”

  Wester blinked and glanced at Larten. The orange-haired vampire shrugged to let Wester know that this was his call. Wester considered his options, then drew his nails away from Tanish’s throat and sat again.

  “How about that food?” Tanish asked, as if nothing strange had happened. “Can I tempt you, or are you truly too full to eat?”

  “I could probably manage a few mouthfuls,” Wester said.

  “And wine?” Tanish asked Larten.

  “Why not?” Larten smiled crookedly as someone poured a very large glass of wine for him.

  At first Larten didn’t say much. Tanish spoke at length about the pleasures the world had to offer, the great cities they would visit, the wars worth checking out. Women swept around them, offering dates, other food, wine, ale, and more. A few tried to kiss Larten when they realized how shy he was, and ran away giggling when Tanish roared at them and pretended to lose his temper.

  Wester was a bit braver than Larten and was soon chatting to the ladies as if this was something he did all the time. He passed compliments, bought wine for them, even sang a couple of old vampire songs as the night progressed.

  Tanish tried to involve Larten, but he kept shaking his head and hiding behind a mug of ale or a glass of wine. Tanish eventually lost interest in the moody young vampire. When Larten was left alone on the couch–Wester had disappeared with a couple of girls who wanted to show him where the best wine in the tavern was stored–he felt like an outcast. Since he hadn’t bought any drinks or entertained them in any way, the ladies were ignoring him. Nobody sat beside him or tried to talk to him.

  Depressed and lonely, Larten drank more quickly than before, a mix of wine and ale. Remembering what Tanish had said, he ordered absinthe, but the barman had to show him the correct way to drink it, and even as a vampire he found it a bit too strong for his liking.

  Larten decided he’d had enough. He got up and tried to leave, determined to go after Seba and beg his pardon. But he had drunk more than he realized, his legs wobbled, and he couldn’t find his way to the door. As he staggered around, blinking dumbly, he spotted Tanish sitting at a table, playing cards with a group of serious-looking men. Larten’s eyes swam back into focus and he grinned, seeing a way to be part of the good time that everybody else was having.

  “Do you mind if I join you?” Larten asked, stepping up beside Tanish.

  Tanish squinted at the woozy-looking vampire. “We’re playing for high stakes,” he warned. “This is no game for a beginner.”

  “That’s all right,” Larten smiled, taking a seat. “I have played before.”

  “Do you have much money?” one of the other men asked.

  “No,” Larten said. “But I will soon.”

  As the others laughed, he held out a hand for the pack of cards. Tanish passed them across, not sure whether he should let Larten play. As soon as the cards were in his hands, Larten started shuffling swiftly. As the other men stared, he shuffled at an almost impossible speed with his right hand, then passed the cards to his left hand and shuffled equally fast with that one.

  “You have hands like quicksilver,” Tanish murmured, finding it hard to follow the movement of the cards, even though he was a vampire.

  “Aye,” Larten chuckled. “I know a few tricks too.” Still shuffling one-handed, he let an ace slip from the pack onto the table without pausing, then another, the third, and the fourth. He stopped and passed the pack to the man next to him. “But you have my word that I will not resort to trickery tonight. I will play fairly, and if I win, I will buy the most expensive drinks for everybody in the house.”

  The men cheered, and a few of the ladies who were nearby came to sit close to Larten and admire his card skills. When he won his first hand, he passed a stack of coins to a beautifully dressed lady and told her to buy champagne for all of them.

  “Now, there’s a man with style!” Tanish exclaimed, slapping Larten’s knee, delighted by this unexpected change in the previously solemn vampire. “You were slow to begin with, but I think you’re getting the hang of fine living now, aren’t you, my quick-handed friend?”

  “Aye,” Larten smiled, settling down for a long night of wine, women, gambling, and whatever else came his way. “I think I might be cut out for this.”

  Across the room, in a particularly dark corner, a small man heard the boast and lifted his head. He was smartly dressed in an unusual yellow suit, and he had white hair, rosy cheeks, and an amusingly styled pair of spectacles. From a distance he might have looked like a kindly grandfather, but up close nobody would have made such a mistake. There was something deeply unsettling about him, and although the tavern was busy, nobody drifted close to the short man’s table.

  “Cut out for fine living?” the man in the yellow suit purred. He cocked his head and his eyes went distant, as if he was looking at something a long way off. “Yes,” he whispered. “And cut out for more too, if I
’m any judge. I have been spying on Tanish Eul for some time now, but I think I will be keeping my eye on you instead from this point on, Master Crepsley. Is it coincidence that our paths crossed tonight?” He grinned twistedly and stroked a heart-shaped watch that hung from his breast pocket. “Or is it destiny?”

  To be continued…

  BEFORE

  CIRQUE DU FREAK…

  HEAD VAMPIRE

  LARTEN CREPSLEY

  WAS A BOY.

  The gory and compelling prequel to the New York Times bestselling series Cirque Du Freak

  Birth of a Killer (Book 1)

  Ocean of Blood (Book 2)

  Palace of the Damned (Book 3)

  Brothers to the Death (Book 4)

  For:

  Bas—my demon lover

  OBEs (Order of the Bloody Entrails) to:

  Caroline “pie chart” Paul

  D.O.M.I.N.I.C. Kingston

  Nicola “schumacher” Blacoe

  Editorial Evilness:

  Stellasaurus Paskins

  Agents of Chaos:

  the Christopher Little crew

  LORD LOSS

  Lord Loss sows all the sorrows of the world

  Lord Loss seeds the grief-starched trees

  In the center of the web, lowly Lord Loss bows his head

  Mangled hands, naked eyes

  Fanged snakes his soul line

  Curled inside like textured sin

  Bloody, curdled sheets for skin

  In the center of the web, vile Lord Loss torments the dead

  Over strands of red, Lord Loss crawls

  Dispensing pain, despising all

  Shuns friends, nurtures foes

  Ravages hope, breeds woe

  Drinks moons, devours suns

  Twirls his thumbs till the reaper comes

  In the center of the web, lush Lord Loss is all that’s left

  RAT GUTS

  DOUBLE history on a Wednesday afternoon—total nightmare! A few minutes ago, I would have said I couldn’t imagine anything worse. But when there’s a knock at the door, and it opens, and I spot my Mom outside, I realize—life can always get worse.

  When a parent turns up at school, unexpected, it means one of two things. Either somebody close to you has been seriously injured or has died, or you’re in trouble.

  My immediate reaction: Please don’t let anybody be dead! I think of Dad, Gret, uncles, aunts, cousins. It could be any of them. Alive and kicking this morning. Now stiff and cold, tongue sticking out, a slab of dead meat just waiting to be buried. I remember Grandma’s funeral. The open coffin. Her shining flesh, having to kiss her forehead, the pain, the tears. Please don’t let anyone be dead! Please. Please. Please. Ple—

  Then I see Mom’s face, white with rage, and I know she’s here to punish, not comfort.

  I groan, roll my eyes, and mutter under my breath, “Bring on the corpses!”

  The principal’s office. Me, Mom, and Mr. Donnellan. Mom’s ranting and raving about cigarettes. I’ve been seen smoking behind the bike shed (the oldest cliche in the book). She wants to know if the head’s aware of this, of what the pupils in his school are getting up to.

  I feel a bit sorry for Mr. Donnellan. He has to sit there, looking like a schoolboy himself, shuffling his feet and saying he didn’t know this was going on and he’ll launch an investigation and put a quick end to it. Liar! Of course he knew. Every school has a smoking area. That’s life. Teachers don’t approve, but they turn a blind eye most of the time. Certain kids smoke—fact. Safer to have them smoking at school than sneaking off the grounds during breaks and at lunch.

  Mom knows that too. She must! She was young once, like she’s always reminding me. Kids were no different in Mom’s time. If she stopped for a minute and thought back, she’d see what an embarrassment she’s being. I wouldn’t mind her harassing me at home, but you don’t march into school and start laying down the law in the principal’s office. She’s out of order—big time.

  But it’s not like I can tell her, is it? I can’t pipe up with, “Hey! Mother! You’re disgracing us both, so shut yer trap!”

  I smirk at the thought, and of course that’s when Mom pauses for the briefest of moments and catches me. “What are you grinning at?” she roars, and then she’s off again—I’m smoking myself into an early grave, the school’s responsible, what sort of a freak show is Mr. Donnellan running, la-di-la-di-la-di-bloody-la!

  BAWring.

  Her rant at school’s nothing compared to the one I get at home. Screaming at the top of her lungs, blue bloody murder. She’s going to send me off to boarding school—no, military school! See how I like that, having to get up at dawn each morning and do a hundred push-ups before breakfast. How does that sound?

  “Is breakfast bacon and eggs or some cereally, yogurty crap?” is my response, and I know the second it’s out of my mouth that it’s the wrong thing to say. This isn’t the time for the famed Grubbs Grady brand of cutting-edge humor.

  Cue the enraged Mom fireworks. Who do I think I am? Do I know how much they spend on me? What if I get kicked out of school? Then the clincher, the one Moms all over the world love pulling out of the hat—“Just wait till your father gets home!”

  Dad’s not as freaked out as Mom, but he’s not happy. He tells me how disappointed he is. They’ve warned me so many times about the dangers of smoking, how it destroys people’s lungs and gives them cancer.

  “Smoking’s dumb,” he says. We’re in the kitchen (I haven’t been out of it since Mom dragged me home from school early, except to go to the toilet). “It’s disgusting, antisocial, and lethal. Why do it, Grubbs? I thought you had more sense.”

  I shrug wordlessly. What’s there to say? They’re being unfair. Of course smoking’s dumb. Of course it gives you cancer. Of course I shouldn’t be doing it. But my friends smoke. It’s cool. You get to hang out with cool people at lunch and talk about cool things. But only if you smoke. You can’t be in if you’re out. And they know that. Yet here they stand, acting all Gestapo, asking me to account for my actions.

  “How long has he been smoking? That’s what I want to know!” Mom’s started referring to me in the third person since Dad arrived. I’m beneath direct mention.

  “Yes,” Dad says. “How long, Grubbs?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Weeks? Months? Longer?”

  “A few months maybe. But only a couple a day.”

  “If he says a couple, he means at least five or six,” Mom snorts.

  “No, I don’t!” I shout. “I mean a couple!”

  “Don’t raise your voice to me!” Mom roars back.

  “Easy,” Dad begins, but Mom goes on as if he isn’t there.

  “Do you think it’s clever? Filling your lungs with rubbish, killing yourself? We didn’t bring you up to watch you give yourself cancer! We don’t need this, certainly not at this time, not when—”

  “Enough!” Dad shouts, and we both jump. Dad almost never shouts. He usually gets very quiet when he’s angry. Now his face is red and he’s glaring—but at both of us, not just me.

  Mom coughs, as if she’s ashamed of herself. She sits, brushes her hair back off her face, and looks at me with wounded eyes. I hate when she pulls a face like this. It’s impossible to look at her straight or argue.

  “I want you to stop, Grubbs,” Dad says, back in control now. “We’re not going to punish you—” Mom starts to object, but Dad silences her with a curt wave of his hand “—but I want your word that you’ll stop. I know it won’t be easy. I know your friends will give you a hard time. But this is important. Some things matter more than looking cool. Will you promise, Grubbs?” He pauses. “Of course, that’s if you’re able to quit…”

  “Of course I’m able,” I mutter. “I’m not addicted or anything.”

  “Then will you? For your sake—not ours?”

  I shrug, trying to act like it’s no big thing, like I was planning to stop anyway. “Sure, if you’re going to make
that much of a fuss about it.” I yawn.

  Dad smiles. Mom smiles. I smile.

  Then Gret walks in the back door and she’s smiling too—but it’s an evil, big-sister-superior smile. “Have we sorted all our little problems out yet?” she asks, voice high and fake-innocent.

  And I know instantly—Gret told on me to Mom. She found out that I was smoking and she told. The pig!

  As she swishes past, beaming like an angel, I burn fiery holes in the back of her head with my eyes, and a single word echoes through my head like the sound of ungodly thunder…

  Revenge!

  I love garbage dumps. You can find all sorts of disgusting stuff there. The perfect place to go browsing if you want to get even with your annoying traitor of a sister. I climb over mounds of garbage and root through black bags and soggy cardboard boxes. I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to use, or in what fashion, so I wait for inspiration to strike. Then, in a small plastic bag, I find six dead rats, necks broken, just starting to rot. Excellent.

  Look out, Gret—here I come!

  Eating breakfast at the kitchen table. Radio turned down low. Listening to the noises upstairs. Trying not to chuckle. Waiting for the outburst.

  Gret’s in her shower. She showers at least twice a day, before she goes to school and when she gets back. Sometimes she has one before going to bed too. I don’t know why anybody would bother to keep themselves so clean. I figure it’s a form of madness.

  Because she’s so obsessed with showering, Mom and Dad gave her the en suite bedroom. They figured I wouldn’t mind. And I don’t. In fact, it’s perfect. I wouldn’t have been able to pull my trick if Gret didn’t have her own shower, with its very own towel rack.

  The shower goes off. Splatters, then drips, then silence. I tense with excitement. I know Gret’s routines inside out. She always pulls her towel down off its rack after she’s showered, not before. I can’t hear her footsteps, but I imagine her taking the three or four steps to the towel rack. Reaching up. Pulling it down. Aaaaaaaaannnddd…