Vampire Blood Trilogy

“What do you mean?” Steve asked. His voice was trembling.

“You are evil!” Mr Crepsley shouted. “I can taste the menace in your blood. You are savage.”

“That’s a lie!” Steve yelled. “You take that back!”

Steve ran at Mr Crepsley and tried to punch him, but the vampire knocked him to the floor with one hand. “It is no good,” he growled. “Your blood is bad. You can never be a vampire!”

“Why not?” Steve asked. He had started to cry.

“Because vampires are not the evil monsters of lore,” Mr Crepsley said. “We respect life. You have a killer’s instincts, but we are not killers.

“I will not make you a vampire,” Mr Crepsley insisted. “You must forget about it. Go home and get on with your life.”

“No!” Steve screamed. “I won’t forget!” He stumbled to his feet and pointed a shaking finger at the tall, ugly vampire. “I’ll get you for this,” he promised. “I don’t care how long it takes. One day, Vur Horston, I’ll track you down and kill you for rejecting me!”

Steve jumped from the stage and ran towards the exit. “One day!” he called back over his shoulder, and I could hear him laughing as he ran, a crazy kind of laugh.

Then he was gone and I was alone with the vampire.

Mr Crepsley sat where he was for a long time, his head between his hands, spitting bits of blood out onto the stage. He wiped his teeth with his fingers, then with a large handkerchief.

“Children!” he snorted aloud, then stood, still wiping his teeth, glanced one last time out over the chairs at the theatre (I ducked down low for fear he might spot me), then turned and walked back to the wings. I could see drops of blood dripping from his lips as he went.

I stayed where I was for a long, long time. It was tough. I’d never been as scared as I was up there on the balcony. I wanted to rush out of the theatre as fast as my feet would carry me.

But I stayed. I made myself wait until I was sure none of the freaks or helpers were about, then slowly crept back up the balcony, down the stairs, into the corridor, and finally out into the night.

I stood outside the theatre for a few seconds, staring up at the moon, studying the trees until I was sure there were no vampires lurking on any of the branches. Then, as quietly as I could, I raced for home. My home, not Steve’s. I didn’t want to be near Steve right then. I was almost as scared of Steve as I was of Mr Crepsley. I mean, he wanted to be a vampire! What sort of lunatic actually wants to be a vampire?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#ulink_7be14be2-2fcb-5a81-a7f5-18903d8fb634)

I DIDN’T ring Steve that Sunday. I told Mum and Dad we’d had a bit of an argument and that was why I’d come home early. They weren’t happy about it, especially my having walked home so late at night by myself. Dad said he was going to dock my pocket money and was grounding me for a month. I didn’t argue. The way I saw it, I was getting off lightly. Imagine what they’d have done to me if they knew about the Cirque Du Freak!

Annie loved her presents. She gobbled the candy down quick and played with the spider for hours. She made me tell her all about the show. She wanted to know what every freak looked like and what they’d done. Her eyes went wide when I told her about the Wolf Man and how he bit off a woman’s arm.

“You’re joking,” she said. “That can’t be true.”

“It is,” I vowed.

“Cross your heart?” she asked.

“Cross my heart.”

“Swear on your eyes?”

“I swear on my eyes,” I promised. “May rats gnaw them out if I’m telling a lie.”

“Wow!” she gasped. “I wish I’d been there. If you ever go again, will you take me?”

“Sure,” I said, “but I don’t think the freak show comes here that often. They move about a lot.”

I didn’t tell Annie about Mr Crepsley being a vampire or Steve wanting to become one, but I thought about the two of them all day long. I wanted to ring Steve but didn’t know what to say. He would be bound to ask why I didn’t go back to his place, and I didn’t want to tell him that I’d stayed in the theatre and spied on him.

Imagine: a real-life vampire! I used to believe they were real but then my parents and teachers convinced me they weren’t. So much for the wisdom of grown-ups!

I wondered what vampires were really like, whether they could do everything the books and films said they could. I had seen Mr Crepsley make a chair fly, and I’d seen him swoop down from the roof of the theatre, and I’d seen him drink some of Steve’s blood. What else could he do? Could he turn into a bat, into smoke, into a rat? Could you see him in a mirror? Would sunlight kill him?

As much as I thought about Mr Crepsley, I thought just as much about Madam Octa. I wished once again that I could buy one like her, one I could control. I could join a freak show if I had a spider like that, and travel the world, having marvellous adventures.

Sunday came and went. I watched TV, helped Dad in the garden and Mum in the kitchen (part of my punishment for coming home late by myself), went for a long walk in the afternoon, and daydreamed about vampires and spiders.

Then it was Monday and time for school. I was nervous going in, not sure what I was going to say to Steve, or what he might say to me. Also, I hadn’t slept much over the weekend (it’s hard to sleep when you’ve seen a real vampire), so I was tired and groggy.

Steve was in the yard when I arrived, which was unusual. I normally got to school before him. He was standing apart from the rest of the kids, waiting for me. I took a deep breath, then walked over and leaned against the wall beside him.

“Morning,” I said.

“Morning,” he replied. There were dark circles under his eyes and I bet he’d slept even less than me the last couple of nights. “Where did you get to after the show?” he asked.

“I went home,” I told him.

“Why?” he asked, watching me carefully.

“It was dark outside and I wasn’t looking where I was going. I took a few wrong turns and got lost. By the time I found myself somewhere familiar, I was closer to home than to your house.”

I made the lie sound as convincing as possible, and I could see him trying to figure out if it was the truth or not.

“You must have got into a lot of trouble,” he said.

“Tell me about it!” I groaned. “No pocket money, grounded for a month, and Dad said I’m going to have to do loads of chores. Still,” I said with a grin, “it was worth it, right? I mean, was the Cirque Du Freak superb or what!”

Steve studied me for one more moment, then decided I was telling the truth. “Yeah,” he said, returning my smile. “It was great.”

Tommy and Alan arrived and we had to tell them everything. We were pretty good actors, Steve and me. You’d never have guessed that he had spoken to a vampire on Friday, or that I had seen him.

I could tell, as the day wore on, that things would never be quite the same between me and Steve. Even though he believed what I’d told him, part of him still doubted me. I caught him looking at me oddly from time to time, as though I was someone who had hurt him.

For my part, I didn’t want to get too close to him any longer. It scared me, what he’d said to Mr Crepsley, and what the vampire had said to him. Steve was evil, according to Mr Crepsley. It worried me. After all, Steve was prepared to become a vampire and kill people for their blood. How could I go on being friends with someone like that?

We got chatting about Madam Octa later that afternoon. Steve and me hadn’t said much about Mr Crepsley and his spider. We were afraid to talk about him, in case we let something slip. But Tommy and Alan kept pestering us and eventually we filled them in on the act.

“How do you think he controlled the spider?” Tommy asked.

“Maybe it was a fake spider,” Alan said.

“It wasn’t a fake,” I snorted. “None of the freaks were fake. That was why it was so brilliant. You could tell everything was real.”

“So how did he control it?” Tommy asked again.