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He slowed to a halt and bent over, gasping for air.
Crunch.
His head shot up.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
There were footsteps coming towards him! Slow, heavy footsteps. He listened, terrified, as they came closer and closer. Had the monster leapt ahead of him through the trees? Had it climbed down? Was it coming to finish him off? Was …
Crunch. Crunch.
The footsteps stopped and Stanley was able to make out a figure. It was smaller than he’d expected, no bigger than a boy. He straightened up, gathered his courage about him like a cloak, and stepped forward for a better look.
It was a boy! A small, frightened-looking boy, dressed in a dirty suit.
Stanley smiled and shook his head. What a fool he’d been! The wife would have a field day when he told her about this.
“Are you OK, lad?” Stanley asked.
The boy didn’t answer.
Stanley didn’t recognize the youngster, but a lot of new families had moved into the area recently. He no longer knew every child in the neighbourhood.
“Can I help you?” he asked. “Are you lost?”
The boy shook his head slowly. There was something strange about him, something that made Stanley feel uneasy. It might have been the effect of the darkness and shadows, but the boy looked very pale, very thin, very … hungry.
“Are you all right?” Stanley asked, stepping closer. “Can I—”
SNAP!
The sound came from directly overhead, loud and menacing.
The boy leapt back quickly, out of the way.
Stanley just had time to glance up and spot a huge red shape which might have been a bat, slashing its way down through the branches of the trees.
And then the red monster was on him. Stanley opened his mouth to scream, but before he could, the monster’s hands – claws? – clamped over his mouth. There was a brief struggle, then Stanley was sliding to the floor, unconscious, unseeing, unknowing.
Above him, the two creatures of the night moved in for the feed.
CHAPTER TWO
“IMAGINE A man his age wearing a Scout’s uniform,” Mr Crepsley snorted as he turned our victim over.
“Were you ever in the Scouts?” I asked.
“They did not have them in my day,” he replied.
He patted the man’s meaty legs and grunted. “Plenty of blood in this one,” he said.
I watched as Mr Crepsley searched the leg for a vein, then cut it open – a small slice – using one of his fingernails. As soon as blood oozed out, he clamped his mouth around the cut and sucked. He didn’t believe in wasting any of the “precious red mercury”, as he sometimes called it.
I stood uncertainly by his side as he drank. This was the third time I’d taken part in an attack, but I still wasn’t used to the sight of the vampire sucking blood from a helpless human being.
It had been almost two months since my “death”, but I was having a tough time adjusting to the change. It was hard to believe my old way of life was finished, that I was a half-vampire and could never go back. I knew I had to eventually leave my human side behind. But it was easier said than done.
Mr Crepsley lifted his head and licked his lips.
“A good vintage,” he joked, shuffling back from the body. “Your turn,” he said.
I took a step forward, then stopped and shook my head.
“I can’t,” I said.
“Do not be stupid,” he growled. “You have shied away twice already. It is time you drank.”
“I can’t!” I cried.
“You have drunk animal blood,” he said.
“That’s different. This is a human.”
“So what?” Mr Crepsley snapped. “We are not. You have to start treating humans the same as animals, Darren. Vampires cannot live on animal blood alone. If you do not start drinking human blood, you will grow weak. If you continue to avoid it, you will die.”
“I know,” I said miserably. “You’ve explained it to me. And I know we don’t hurt those we drink from, not unless we drink too much. But …” I shrugged unhappily.
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 apart from 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 bit here, a bit 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 body, and were blaming it on imaginary aliens.
Mr Crepsley had knocked the Scout Master out with his breath. Vampires can breathe out a special kind of gas, which makes people faint. When Mr Crepsley wanted to send someone to sleep, he breathed into a cupped fist, then held his hand over the person’s nose and mouth. Seconds later, they were out 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 man, 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 AWOKE 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 fell again, I was free to rise and move about in the daylight world. It was one of the advantages of being only a half-vampire.
I fixed a late breakfast of marmalade on toast – even vampires have to eat normal food; blood alone won’t keep us going – and settled down in front of the hotel television. 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 none of that. I told him straight-up after a week of sleeping rough that I’d had enough of it. He grumbled a bit, but gave way in the end.
The last two months had passed very 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 very strong now. I could lift enormous weights and crush marbles to pieces with my fingers. If I shook hands with a human I had to take care not to break the bones in their fingers. I could do chin-ups all night long, and could throw a metal ball further 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 shorten them was with my teeth: clippers and scissors were no good on my new, tough nails. They were a nuisance: 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 ass!” 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 bit disappointed to hear that. It was one of the things I liked most about those old vampire movies: the vampires had looked so cool when they’d 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 claimed, but they liked us – they knew from the smell of our blood that we were different to 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 about during the day, if he wrapped up in lots of clothes. He’d tan quickly, and start to go red within a quarter of an hour. 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. Loads more. Mr Crepsley said it would be years before I knew everything and was able to get along 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 the toast and marmalade were finished, 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 fell, 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 taken more of that silly Scout-man’s blood. I think I will track down another human.” He looked at me with one raised eyebrow. “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 rumbled. I was a 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 much 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 in the space of 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 ticking over, 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 and snakes.
Mr Crepsley hadn’t told me the names of all the dangerous animals. There were loads, and it would take time to learn which were safe and which weren’t. His advice was to always ask before I tried something new.
Vampires had to feed on humans once a month or so. Most feasted once a week. That way, they didn’t have to take much blood. If you only fed once a month, you had to drink a lot of blood in one go.
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 you were likely to end up killing the person you drank from.
“A vampire who sups 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 best. If you drank from a living human, the blood was full of goodness and you didn’t need to take very much. But blood began to go sour when a person died. If you drank from a dead body, you had 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 mad 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 several bottles of blood stored in his cloak. He sometimes had one with a meal, as if it was 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 curiously, examining one of the glass bottles. It was like a test-tube, only the glass was slightly darker and thicker.
“It is tricky,” he said. “I will show you how it is done, the next time I am filling up.”
Blood …
