One month earlier...
My name's Darren Shan. I'm a half-vampire.
I used to be human, until I stole a vampire's spider. After that, my life changed forever. Mr. Crepsley - the vampire - forced me to become his assistant, and I joined a circus full of weird performers called the Cirque Du Freak.
Adapting was hard. Drinking blood was harder, and for a long time I wouldn't do it. Eventually I did, to save the memories of a dying friend (vampires can store a person's memories if they drain all their blood). I didn't enjoy it - the following few weeks were horrible, and I was plagued by nightmares - but after that first blood-red drink there could be no going back. I accepted my role as a vampire's assistant and learned to make the best of it.
Over the course of the next year, Mr. Crepsley taught me how to hunt and drink without being caught; how to take just enough blood to survive; how to hide my vampire identity when mixing with others. And in time I put my human fears behind me and became a true creature of the night.
A couple of girls stood watching Cormac Limbs with serious expressions. He was stretching his arms and legs, rolling his neck around, loosening his muscles. Then, winking at the girls, he put the middle three fingers of his right hand between his teeth and bit them off.
The girls screamed and fled. Cormac chuckled and wriggled the new fingers that were growing out of his hand.
I laughed. You got used to stuff like that when you worked in the Cirque Du Freak. The traveling show was full of incredible people, freaks of nature with cool and sometimes frightening powers.
Apart from Cormac Limbs, the performers included Rhamus Twobellies, capable of eating a full-grown elephant or an army tank; Gertha Teeth, who could bite through steel; the wolf-man - half man, half wolf, who'd killed my friend Sam Grest; Truska, a beautiful and mysterious woman who could grow a beard at will; and Mr. Tall, who could move as fast as lightning and seemed to be able to read people's minds. Mr. Tall owned and managed the Cirque Du Freak.
We were performing in a small town, camped behind an old mill inside which the show was staged every night. It was a run-down junkyard, but I was used to that type of venue. We could have played the grandest theaters in the world and slept in luxurious hotel rooms - the Cirque made a ton of money - but it was safer to keep a low profile and stick to places where the police and other officials rarely wandered.
My appearance hadn't changed much since leaving home with Mr. Crepsley almost a year and a half before. Because I was a half-vampire, I aged at only a fifth the rate of humans, which meant that though eighteen months had passed, my body was only three or four months older.
Although I wasn't very different on the outside, inside I was an entirely new person. I was stronger than any boy my age, able to run faster, leap farther, and dig my extra-strong nails into brick walls. My hearing, eyesight, and sense of smell had improved vastly.
Since I wasn't a full vampire, there was lots of stuff I couldn't do yet. For example, Mr. Crepsley could run at a superquick speed, which he called flitting. He could breathe out a gas that knocked people unconscious. And he could communicate telepathically with vampires and a few others, such as Mr. Tall.
I wouldn't be able to do those things until I became a full vampire. I didn't lose any sleep over it, because being a half-vampire had its bonuses: I didn't have to drink much human blood and - better yet - I could move around during the day.
It was daytime when I was exploring a garbage dump with Evra, the snake-boy, looking for food for the Little People - weird, small creatures who wore blue hooded capes and never spoke. Nobody - except maybe Mr. Tall - knew who or what they were, where they came from, or why they traveled with the Cirque. Their master was a creepy man called Mr. Tiny (he liked to eat children!), but we didn't see much of him at the Cirque.
"Found a dead dog," Evra shouted, holding it above his head. "It smells a little. Do you think they'll mind?"
I sniffed the air - Evra was a long way off, but I could smell the dog from here as well as a human could up close - and shook my head. "It'll be fine," I said. The Little People ate just about anything we brought.
I had a fox and a few rats in my bag. I felt bad about killing the rats - rats are friendly with vampires and usually come up to us like tame pets if we call them - but work is work. We all have to do things we don't like in life.
There were a bunch of Little People with the Cirque - twenty of them - and one was hunting with Evra and me. He'd been with the Cirque since soon after me and Mr. Crepsley joined. I could tell him apart from the others because he had a limp in his left leg. Evra and me had taken to calling him Lefty.
"Hey, Lefty!" I shouted. "How's it going?" The small figure in the blue hooded cape didn't answer - he never did - but he patted his stomach, which was the sign we needed more food.
"Lefty says to keep going," I told Evra.
"Figures," he sighed.
As I prowled for another rat, I spotted a small silver cross in the garbage. I picked it up and brushed off the dirt. Studying the cross, I smiled. To think I used to believe vampires were terrified of crosses! Most of that stuff in old movies and books is crap. Crosses, holy water, garlic: none of those matter to vampires. We can cross running water. We don't have to be invited into a house before entering. We cast shadows and reflections (though a full vampire can't be photographed - something to do with bouncing atoms). We can't change shape or fly.
A stake through the heart will kill a vampire. But so will a well-placed bullet, or fire, or a heavy falling object. We're harder to kill than humans, but we aren't immortal. Far from it.
I placed the cross on the ground and stood back. Focusing my will, I tried making it jump into my left hand. I stared hard for all of a minute, then clicked the fingers of my right hand.
Nothing happened.
I tried again but still couldn't do it. I'd been trying for months, with no success. Mr. Crepsley made it look simple - one click of his fingers and an object would be in his hand, even if it was several feet away - but I hadn't been able to copy him.
I was getting along pretty well with Mr. Crepsley. He wasn't such a bad guy. We weren't friends, but I'd accepted him as a teacher and no longer hated him like I did when he first turned me into a half-vampire.
I put the cross in my pocket and proceeded with the hunt. After a while I found a half-starved cat in the remains of an old microwave oven. It was after rats, too.
The cat hissed at me and the hair on its neck raised. I pretended to turn my back on it, then spun quickly, grabbed it by the neck, and twisted. It gave a strangled little cry and then went limp. I stuck it in the bag and went to see how Evra was doing.
I didn't enjoy killing animals, but hunting was part of my nature. Anyway, I had no sympathy for cats. The blood of cats is poisonous to vampires. Drinking from one wouldn't have killed me, but it would have made me sick. And cats are hunters, too. The way I saw it, the less cats there were, the more rats there'd be.
That night, back in camp, I tried moving the cross with my mind again. I'd finished my jobs for the day, and the show wouldn't be starting for another couple of hours, so I had lots of time to kill.
It was a cold late-November night. There hadn't been any snow yet, but it was threatening. I was dressed in my colorful pirate costume: a light green shirt, dark purple pants, a gold-and-blue jacket, a red satin cloth around my waist, a brown hat with a feather in it, and soft shoes with toes that curled in on themselves.
I wandered away from the vans and tents and found a secluded spot around the side of the old mill.
I stuck the cross on a piece of wood in front of me, took a deep breath, concentrated on the cross, and willed it into the palm of my outstretched hand.