The Vanishing Vampire Page 5

  I watched him leave. Then I dropped down from the tree. This man was one more complication in a situation that was already pretty intense.

  I headed toward the warehouse. It was time to talk with the vampire again.

  Fifteen

  A PLEASANT CHAT

  It was the same as before. He was in the chair, reading a book and sipping from a glass. Even at a distance, I had no trouble making out the title. It was A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle.

  He looked over the top of the book and said, “Oh, you again.”

  “Me again. Can I at least get some answers from you?”

  He just stared at me.

  “I have some information to exchange. There’s a threat you don’t know about.” I wondered how much he would tell me in exchange for what I knew.

  “Teridakian?” he asked.

  So much for my bargaining power. “You know he’s here?”

  “Don’t you?”

  That’s when I realized he was right. I could sense, if I wanted, where anyone I knew was at any time. It wasn’t automatic. I had to search out the sensations. But they were there for me. Surely Vladivost would keep track of his ancient enemy.

  “But if you know where he is, why don’t you—?” I left it hanging, wanting to get him into a conversation. The more he talked, the more chance I had of learning something useful.

  “Eradicate him? Remove him? Drain his body of life? Suck the vitality from his pathetic human form? Is that what you are asking?”

  I nodded.

  “He amuses me. And he is not a threat. At least, not to me. He could harm you if he set his mind to it. Do not make the mistake of underestimating our silly little friend.” He smiled. He had fangs. I probed my mouth with my tongue. My teeth seemed normal.

  “They take a while to grow,” he said.

  Good, he was talking. “Are they sharp?” I asked.

  He held up a finger, then touched it to a fang. “Oh, my, I seem to have cut myself.” He wiggled the finger. I could smell the blood. It was as tempting to me as the smell of brownies baking in the oven or pizza fresh from the take-out box.

  He extended his hand. “Want some?”

  I was hungry. But I was afraid that if I were to do this one thing, I would be a vampire forever. I shook my head.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Oh, well—more for me.” He licked the finger, then laughed. “It doesn’t stop until you feed it,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The hunger. It is like a pulse. It will come and go at first. Throb … throb … throb. But it will grow deeper. It will become all you have and all you know and all you care about until you feed it. Then it will leave you in peace for a time. That is our price. That is the toll we pay to travel through the centuries. You had the misfortune to be nearby the last time I hungered.”

  “I don’t want this. I don’t want any of it.”

  He shrugged. “You may have a choice. As I told you previously, it is not my affair. I am just passing through this charming little town of yours. I don’t stay long in any one place. I would return to the old country if I could, but they are too wise to our ways. A few villagers disappear, and the rest start gathering sharpened stakes. A woman wakes with marks on her neck, and the hunt is on. There is no peace in the old country. Thank goodness for the New World.”

  He was talking now. I had to keep him going. “But Teridakian. I heard him say you killed his dog. How could you do that?”

  He spread his hands and gave me an innocent look. “Have you ever gone for a glass of milk and then decided you would prefer grape juice?”

  I shuddered. This was not what I wanted to become. He might act like a guy who was sophisticated and wise, but inside, he was nothing more than a dog-sucking monster. But monster or not, he was the only one who might be able to help me. “Can you tell me anything?”

  “You need to find out for yourself. I see you’ve discovered fog. Have you become a bat yet?”

  “No.”

  “I highly recommend it. The wolf is a wonderful form, too. And here’s something you might not find in any of the stories: You can become a swarm of flies or a horde of locusts. You can become vast numbers of any insect. Now, doesn’t that sound like fun?”

  I shivered at the thought of being even one insect. The idea of being thousands of them was too disgusting to consider. I knew Vladivost was enjoying this. I could tell he wouldn’t give me any information I could really use. He was playing with me. “You’re pretty evil, aren’t you?”

  I expected him to laugh at me or shout at me or toss me against the wall. Instead, he rested his chin on his fist for a moment, as if thinking. Then he spoke. “No one, no man or beast or monster, sees himself as evil. I have never risen and said, ‘Tonight, I will do evil.’ You have much to learn, my young inquisitor. I get very bored, and I find certain things amusing that might cause you to shudder. But no, I am not evil. I can, if I so desire, even be kind. Perhaps what you need is to perform an act of sacrifice. Perhaps there is some deed you can do that is so filled with human kindness, it will help purge your body of this condition you seem so eager to remove.”

  He looked at me with eyes that almost glowed. “But make your choice carefully. Do not try to quickly give away a gift that is so rare. Examine your life. Is this what you were meant to be?” He picked up the book again. He read several pages, then said, “One more thing—after a certain period of time, perhaps three or four weeks, the change reaches a point where it cannot be undone. You are still on the threshold. You have a wavering reflection. You can tolerate daylight. This will pass.”

  I waited to see if there was more. He remained silent. The only sound was an occasional creak from the rotting shelves. I left. But at least, for the first time since I’d been bitten, I had a clue. As fog, I drifted beneath the door.

  Sixteen

  INTERLUDE

  I stood outside the warehouse, going over his words in my mind. There was a lot to think about, and I couldn’t seem to sort it all out. I needed to clear my head. I needed to spend some hours free of worry. I could become fog and just drift for a while. But that idea scared me—it would be easy to drift into nothingness. Then I thought of the bat.

  How to do it?

  For fog, I simply let myself go. This was different. I remembered a friend who played golf. He was always saying, Be the ball.

  I would be the bat.

  I thought of the bat.

  As I thought, I became a bat.

  It was that easy.

  I took the form in midair, hovering, flapping. I kept all my heightened senses and gained others. Sound now became a form of sight. I called out, and the buildings answered me. Everything that was solid showed up by returning my call. Even the sky responded, revealing itself by its silence. I pushed my wings against the air. I flew above the buildings.

  Unlike rising, flying took effort. But it was good effort. It reminded me of running that first lap around the track in gym class, running when I was full of energy, running for the pleasure of feeling the track move beneath my feet. Now, the world moved beneath my wings.

  I flew away from town and toward the woods.

  My mind was empty of everything except the wonder of the night around me. I was the night.

  My skin was leather. My hands were claws.

  I was still Sebastian, but Sebastian was a bat. Life is simple for bats.

  I flew.

  And I hung from a tree by my feet and thought of nothing.

  And I flew.

  For that time, that countless stretch of night, there were no problems. Bats have no cares, no worries.

  I flew high above the trees. I swooped and soared.

  But night was beginning to give way. I hurried home and went to bed.

  That morning, before I left for school, Dad came up to my room, looking worried. “Sebastian, your mom and I have been talking. We’re concerned about you.”

 
; “I’m fine,” I told him, trying to sound normal.

  “Look, there’s no easy way for me to do this. I hate to ask, but all the signs are there. You’re heading for some serious trouble.”

  Seventeen

  SAME OLD ROUTINE

  My stomach dropped toward my feet. How had he figured it out? Was it the crosses? The garlic? What had given me away? Had he noticed that I never went near a window during the day?

  “Son,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder.

  “Yes?” At least he didn’t seem afraid of me.

  “Are you letting other kids talk you into doing things you shouldn’t?”

  I was so relieved, I almost laughed. I stopped myself in time, realizing that laughter would definitely not make him feel better. This was a serious question. “Dad, I don’t hang out with those kids. I stay away from them. Honest.”

  He looked as relieved as I felt. “You understand that I had to find out? If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t ask.”

  “Sure, Dad, no problem.”

  “I better go tell your mom that she can stop worrying, too.” He gave my shoulder a squeeze and headed toward the door. As he reached the hall, he stopped, turned back, and asked, “So what is it, then? Are you getting goofy over some girl?”

  I shrugged. That seemed to satisfy him. It was good that he cared. But what could I say? Well, Dad, since you’ve asked, I’m a vampire. If you’ll excuse me now, I’d like to change into a bat and fly around town, looking for a blood donor. No, that would not make him a proud parent.

  I headed out to school a short time later. Except for bundling up in the scarf, it wasn’t so bad. But I knew I couldn’t keep it up forever. When I got near the school, I saw something that worried me. Teridakian was standing by the front entrance, talking with Lud and Bud Mellon. Not a promising combination.

  I ducked in through the side door by the cafeteria and unwrapped the scarf. Of course, I ran right into Dawn.

  “Hi, Sebastian,” she said, walking over to me. “How are you?”

  “Fine. Uh, sorry about that blood thing. I guess I got a little queasy.”

  She smiled. “Oh, that’s nothing. Forget about it.” She seemed to be waiting for me to say something. The silence grew awkward. I hunted for anything mindless to blurt out.

  “Nice dress,” I said.

  “Thanks, I wanted to look good for the class picture.”

  “That’s today?”

  “Sure. Don’t you remember?”

  I nodded. Oh, boy. I could just see it now—the usual ridiculous assortment of poses. One kid with his eyes closed, one kid making a stupid face, one kid sneezing at the wrong time, and one kid who wasn’t in the picture, because he was a vampire. The bell rang. Dawn ran off. I stood for a moment, trying to figure this one out.

  When they led us into the gym for the picture, I made sure I was on the end of a row. If there was a gap in the middle, everyone would notice. If I was at the end of a row, nobody would even miss me or realize that I wasn’t there.

  Other than that, the day was pretty normal. I hung out by my locker for a while after school, letting everyone else leave ahead of me. I really didn’t want to attract attention when I walked home wrapped up in the scarf like a woolly mummy or the invisible man.

  I was beginning to have a new respect for the monsters in the movies. All of a sudden, Dracula didn’t seem like such a bad guy. I paused at the exit. Teridakian was out there again, talking to the Mellon brothers. He’d obviously been listening and asking questions, looking for any unusual incidents that could lead him to a vampire.

  “Yeah,” Bud was saying, “a green jacket. And a scarf. He looked like a real jerk. But he was pretty strong.”

  “You’d know him if you saw him again?” Teridakian asked.

  “Sure.”

  They were looking for me. They didn’t know who I was, but they knew I was out there. Teridakian, for all that he appeared to be a fool or an idiot, had a suitcase full of sharpened stakes. Who knew what else he might be carrying? I was a beginner. I wasn’t even fully a vampire yet, and I certainly didn’t have the powers or experience of Vladivost. Teridakian could probably hurt me.

  I went out the back door of the school and took the long way home.

  Eighteen

  AN ACCEPTABLE STEAK

  “How would you like your steak?” Mom called up the stairs.

  “Rare!” I shouted down. “Very rare!” The hunger was worse than ever. I wondered if a slab of rare meat might hold my craving off awhile longer. I could almost feel my fangs growing at the thought of a red, dripping piece of beef. The scent of it pulled me down the stairs to the table.

  “That’s dead and bleeding,” Angelina said when we were all seated and digging into our food. “How can you eat it?” She shuddered.

  “Leave your brother alone,” Dad said.

  “He’s an animal,” Angelina muttered, picking at a plate of broccoli and carrots.

  I ignored her. I was enjoying the steak. But I wondered whether it was human enjoyment or if it meant I was just one step closer to becoming a vampire forever. But right now, it didn’t matter. I held every morsel in my mouth, slowly biting into each moist and tender piece, feeling the warm juices trickle down my throat.

  If only it had lasted.

  The hunger returned soon after I left the table. Rare steak, it seemed, was no answer.

  I told everything to Norman later that evening at his house. “Maybe you can think of something,” I said.

  “It’s pretty bad?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Remember when you were real little? Did you ever get stuck somewhere, like in the car or on a bus, and you were thirsty or hungry and there wasn’t anything for you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Now that we’re older, we can handle that. But a little kid just feels the hunger and wants it to end. That’s how I am right now. I just feel the hunger.”

  Norman looked down at the floor for a while. Then, quietly, he said, “If you really can’t stand it…”

  I waited.

  “You can have some of mine.”

  At first, I couldn’t speak. Finally, I shook my head and said, “I can’t do that.”

  He looked up at me. The room, without me, was reflected in his glasses. “I mean it. Maybe, if you just took a sip, you’d feel better and nothing would happen to me. And if something did, that wouldn’t be so bad. We’d be in this together.”

  He was a better friend to me than I ever was to him. “Thanks, but it won’t come to that.”

  He almost looked disappointed. Then he brightened. “I know, let’s try to find something to take the place of blood. I mean, the steak helped you for a little while. Let’s analyze the situation and try to determine the relevant factors that reduced your reaction. Then we can amplify the essential elements. Wait right here.”

  He ran off downstairs, leaving me alone to figure out what he had just said. Below, I heard the refrigerator open and close. Then I heard the blender. He came running back, looking real proud, carrying a glass full of thick, brown glop. “Good thing Mom just stocked up for her next catering job. Here, let’s start with this.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “No, no.” He shook his head. “This is like a clinical study. If you know, it might skew the results. Just try it.”

  I took a sip. The hunger flickered. But it remained. I drank the rest.

  “Well?”

  “It helped for a minute. What was it?”

  Norman grinned. He pulled out one of his yellow writing pads. “Liver. Actually, there were two elements in the test. One is the blood content. The other is the endothermic transformation.”

  I felt like I’d suddenly landed in Paris. English wasn’t the main language spoken here. “The what?”

  “The change brought about from the exposure to heat. The steak you had for dinner was rare, but it was cooked. That has to change the structure of the proteins. So, for starters, we remove that element.” H
e looked like he had just discovered something important, like gravity or popcorn.

  “Heat…” I let it sink in. And then I almost threw up. “You fed me raw liver?”

  Norman shrugged. “Your body should be immune to any latent bacteria. Okay, that wasn’t the answer. What should we try next?”

  “You fed me raw liver!” I wiped my tongue with my sleeve.

  “I think we need to isolate the key components. Blood is extremely complex in some senses, but nearly trivial in others. I know! Wait here.”

  He ran off again. The refrigerator opened and closed again. The blender whirred. The evening wore on. Norman tried everything he could think of, which was a lot more than the average person could think of. Much to my surprise, cat food isn’t all that bad, except for the little jellylike bits and the occasional crunchy part.

  None of it got rid of the hunger for more than a moment. That wasn’t great. But something even more disturbing happened. At one point, as he was racing into the room with a glass of blended chicken lungs, Norman stubbed his toe hard against the leg of his desk.

  I watched him hopping around in pain, and it wasn’t until a few minutes later that I realized what was missing. Part of me was missing. I was just watching, as if the whole thing were happening on a movie screen. I didn’t feel any concern. I didn’t feel any need to ease his pain.

  I didn’t feel anything human.

  It was the first clear sign that I was losing the battle.

  Nineteen

  LOSING THE GRIP

  The night welcomed me as I left Norman’s house. It would be so easy to slip into darkness and leave the day world. I could see myself living as a creature of the night. I would find a place where I was safe during the day, safe and undiscovered. Then I would rise with the night.

  Nearby, I heard steps. I knew them. Like Vladivost, I also had an old enemy to deal with. I ran through the night. I ran toward the steps. As I started to move, I was on two feet. By the end of the block, I had dropped into the sleek form of a wolf. I moved like an arrow through the darkness, silent, speeding toward my victim.