My FANGtastically Evil Vampire Pet Series, Book 1

by Mo O'Hara

  “Of course you do.” Geeky Girl shook her head and strode off down the trail back to camp with Boris fluttering behind her.

  “Girls just don’t get it, do they?” I mumbled to Fang as I started to scoop her up to take her back to camp. She meowed and swiped me. I honestly think that one was a swipe for femalekind.

  19

  When we got back, I put Fang down behind some logs by the campfire clearing.

  “OK, my little evil cat burglar, can you go and find that Evil Plans Notebook in Sanj’s tent while they’re at dinner?” She purred and slunk off toward the tents.

  It was going to be soooo good when I got that notebook back.

  In the meantime I had to warn Igor. I found him dozing as everyone was lining up to get their food for dinner. He was still in disguise as a sleeping bag and still looked really comfortable. I got sleepy just looking at him. I shoved away another camp kid who was about to sit on him and crouched down on the ground.

  “Hey, Igor,” I said, and shook what I thought was his shoulder, but actually was a leg. “Wake up, man, or you’ll miss dinner.”

  “Urgh,” he said, and nodded.

  “Um, and another thing, um, you might want to stay away from Sanj and Dustin for the next day, until the contest is over. I just heard something. I’m not sure or anything, but I don’t trust them,” I added.

  “Urgh, urgh,” Igor said, and got up.

  We walked to dinner together, and I lined up behind him with my tray. Soon Diablo and Bob fell in behind us.

  “Hey, Mark. We’re gonna put the final touches on our trap tonight,” Bob said.

  “Yeah, you want to help us?” Diablo said. “We’re meeting down by the edge of the woods after dinner.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Our trap is totally under control, so I can help with yours too. No sweat.” Result. Mark the Snake-in-ator is still in demand. I can win with my trap, but still help my evil posse come in second.

  I saw Sanj and Dustin get in line to get their dinner.

  “How’s your little project with Geeky Girl going?” Sanj sneered as he scooped up the evil casserole on offer.

  “It’s totally going to beat any lame trap that you’re doing,” I said. “I’m so far along on our trap that I’m even taking time to help out Bob and Diablo with theirs. That’s how good my trap is,” I said. “And Igor here, his trap is way better too.… It’s … It’s…” I turned to Igor. “What is your trap, anyway?”

  Igor mimed a giant net, then mimed the giant net ripping.

  “OK. Igor’s is broken, but it was a way better trap than yours anyway. So there,” I said.

  Igor nodded. “Urgh.” I noticed he stepped back a little from Sanj and Dustin.

  “You’ll see tomorrow evening.” Sanj smiled. “All will be revealed.” Then he did his evil wheeze and headed off to sit with Dustin.

  “That guy should see a doctor about that wheeze,” Bob said.

  * * *

  After dinner, I went over to the log to give Fang some casserole, but she wasn’t there. So I headed back to the tree house to check on her. As I approached, I could hear breathing coming from inside the hut. I pulled myself up on a low branch so I could peek over the edge. I could just make out a gray tail sticking out from under my sweatshirt. And what looked like the corner of my Evil Plans Notebook under the tail. Result! Fang the super stealer had gotten it. I wanted to grab it right away, but she looked cute when she was asleep. Not that I would ever tell her that or admit it to anyone here. Still, I guess she’d had a long day. She might as well sleep. She was only missing mystery evil casserole anyway for dinner. I’d bring her double sausage in the morning and pocket that evil notebook too. I let myself have a little “Mwhaa-haa-haa” whisper as I headed up to the edge of the woods. It was just starting to get dark when I got there. Bob and Diablo were covering up a place on the ground with branches.

  “Oh, so it’s the old cover-up-a-hole-with-branches-and-the-person-falls-in kind of trap?” I said. “Yeah, I’m not gonna fall for that one.” I walked carefully around the branches.

  Suddenly, the ground beneath my feet gave way and I tumbled into the darkness of their pit trap.

  “Urmph!” I spluttered as I fell backward onto my butt.

  I could hear laughing up at the top of the pit, and then I could see Diablo’s and Bob’s faces looking over the side down at me. “You should have seen your face when you fell, man!” Diablo laughed.

  “That was classic,” Bob said in between heaving laughs.

  “OK, you got me,” I said. “That’s a good fake-out on the classic pit trap.”

  “Oh, that isn’t the only catch with this trap,” Bob said.

  “We asked you to help out with this ’cause we knew you wouldn’t be freaked out by the next bit,” Diablo said. “Snake-in-ator.”

  Then I heard the hissing. In the dark, behind me in the hole. I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear it. “Hhhhiiisssssss.”

  20

  “Fang…?” I whispered, hoping that somehow it was my evil little kitten and not some big bitey snake that was really unhappy about being put down in a pit with people nearly falling on him.

  Then I saw the eyes. A glow of two yellow slits in the darkness.

  “What is that? Guys, come on. Let me up now,” I said, keeping my cool—barely.

  “Dude, it’s just another snake,” Diablo shouted down. “You totally took care of the one in the tent, no problem.”

  “Yeah, we want to see how long it will take you to fight off the snake and escape the trap so we can see how well it works before tomorrow,” Bob said. “No big deal. It’s just a snake, right?”

  “Yeah, just a snake,” I said, backing away from the glowing eyes in front of me. I tried to reach up and grab for a root or a branch or something. “It’s too easy, guys. Ya know? Might as well pull me up now, right?”

  “Come on, Mark, we need to know how long it takes you to fight the snake,” Bob said.

  “Hey, you know, maybe we should have put two snakes in there,” Diablo started to say, just as the snake flicked its tongue out toward me and stretched its mouth open wide.

  “OK, your trap wins. Just let me up now. The snake is for real!” I hollered up. I had to get out of there. I tried to climb up the dirt walls of the pit, but it was too slippery, and I kept sliding down. My palms were sweating so much that the dirt was forming into sweaty mud cakes on my hands as I clawed at the walls.

  I landed with another thud in a puddle at the bottom of the pit, splashing into the darkness where the eyes lurked. I don’t think the snake liked being splashed. It slithered out and circled me.

  “Get me out, guys! This isn’t funny!” I shouted, but they just laughed.

  Then there was another splash and something joined me in the pit.

  Fear gripped my body as my eyes adjusted to the dark. Was it another snake? But then I saw two more eyes. These ones were green and bright with a distinctly evil flash in them. Fang!

  I could hear Bob say, “The raccoon just jumped straight in. Weird.”

  Fang darted through the puddle and jumped straight at the snake.

  “Be careful, Fang!” I shouted to her.

  “Are you talking to the raccoon?” Diablo shouted. Then I heard, “I think maybe he knocked his head when he fell in.”

  Fang and the snake were rolling around in the mud. I could hear her hiss and meow, and the snake hissed right back.

  “That doesn’t sound like a raccoon. That sounds like a cat,” Diablo said.

  “And that hiss sounds like a cat’s hiss. That was the hiss from the tent the other night,” Bob said. “It wasn’t a snake at all. It was a cat in the tent!”

  I should have been worried that they had just uncovered my whole snake fake-out plan, but I was too worried about Fang being swallowed whole by an angry viper.

  “Fang, watch out!” I shouted as the snake tried to bite her tail.

  She was fast, though, as she dashed under and around the coi
ls of the snake. Maybe she was trying to tire it out. Maybe she was waiting to get a good bite in somewhere. I don’t know what went on inside that evil-kitten head, but whatever she was doing, she seemed like she had a plan. That is, right up until the snake started to squeeze.

  I could see that it had wrapped itself around her and gotten her tail in its coils. Something snapped in me, and I reached out to pull at the wriggling snake, to try to pull Fang free. It was too strong, though. The snake turned its head toward me and snapped just as I pulled my arm back. In that moment, Fang had rolled herself and the snake into the puddle. With a squelch of muddy fur she managed to slide her tail out of the slippery coils.

  She turned on the snake, and with a fierce kitten meow she jumped behind it, then to its left, its right, under and over she ran. The snake followed the kitten’s movements, trying to grab her tail with its open mouth. She was always one inch ahead of the jaws. Just as the snake twisted to follow her and attack, it suddenly stopped.

  21

  I stared at the snake as it strained and pulled, but it was stuck. Fang leaped far out of reach of the snake, looked on and purred a massively smug purr. She had managed to get the snake to tie itself up in knots.

  It rolled around trying to undo itself.

  I think I breathed for the first time since Fang had pounced on that snake. She was OK.

  Fang jumped up into my arms. She was soaked through from the puddle water and all the charcoal markings had washed off. She looked like her normal gray kitteny self. For a second I forgot that my friends were about to see that I was a fake, that my whole time at camp was probably over and that I would never get to wear that stupid nonexistent emperor crown. I just stroked her head and took another breath.

  Bob and Diablo looked over the side and shone a flashlight in my face. “It’s a kitten,” Bob said. “You saved us from a hissing kitten the other night?!”

  “Yeah, some Snake-in-ator, man,” Diablo said.

  Then I heard Geeky Girl’s voice as a rope was dropped down into the hole and fell on my shoulder. “Grab it and climb up!” she shouted.

  Fang climbed into my pocket, and I heaved us up the side of the pit by the rope, which Geeky Girl had tied to a nearby tree. When I got to the top, I pulled myself over the side.

  “Wait till the rest of the campers hear that Mark the Snake-in-ator had to be rescued by a tiny kitten!” Bob laughed.

  “I didn’t need to be rescued. I was just kidding with you guys. I nearly had that snake just where I wanted him, if that stupid kitten hadn’t gotten in the way…!”

  I knew it as soon as I said it. You know how sometimes you can almost see the words leaving your mouth and you wish that you could catch them as they fly out. It was like that.

  It was like those words were flying out and all hitting Fang in the face as I said them.

  She jumped out of my pocket and bolted for the woods.

  The boys just laughed again.

  “I think you lost your kitten now, dude,” Bob said. Then he said something else, and Geeky Girl said something to them too, but I stopped listening. I took off after Fang. “Wait, Fang!” I shouted into the darkness of the woods. “I didn’t mean it. Wait!”

  * * *

  I headed to the tree house first and was so relieved when I heard the breathing inside and saw the gray tail sticking out of my sweatshirt like before. But hang on. This tail had definite raccoon markings on it, and the charcoal markings on Fang’s tail had been all washed off in the puddle. This wasn’t Fang. I shook the edge of my sweatshirt, and an actual, non-charcoaled raccoon face peered out from under it.

  “Arrrrraaaahhhh!” I screamed.

  “RRReeeeaaaaol,” it screeched, and scratched its claws on my sweatshirt and did what raccoons apparently do when you scare them in the middle of a nap. It peed all over the tree house. Then it scrambled past me, out of the tree house and back into the woods.

  I looked at my shredded raccoon-pee-soaked sweatshirt and my shredded raccoon-pee-soaked Evil Plans Notebook. Today couldn’t get any worse. But it could. Fang was still missing and she still hated me.

  I had to find her. I looked everywhere I could think of for her. In the woods, then in the kitchen tent, by the campfire area, by the pier, by where Geeky Girl had been a shrub this afternoon. But Fang wasn’t anywhere. She wouldn’t have gone back to the tent, and now neither could I. By breakfast, every kid in camp was going to know that I had made up the whole snake-fighting thing and that I was a fake.

  Worse, they probably figured out that Fang was my pet, and I would be thrown out before I had a chance to win the contest or stop Sanj. But worst of all—Fang hated me.

  I went to the base of the tree house in case she came back that way, wrapped my Evil Scientist coat around me and tried to get some sleep.

  22

  The next day, I was woken up by the same evil Darth Vader music, but this time it was played on a piccolo. It’s pretty hard to make anything sound evil on a piccolo, really.

  I opened my eyes, and Geeky Girl was standing next to the tree. She held out a cold bacon sandwich.

  “I picked it up at breakfast,” she said. I took it and started to sit up.

  “Igor said you didn’t go back to the tent last night,” she added.

  “Igor actually said that?” I asked.

  “Well, not exactly. But he urghed and pointed, and I got what he meant.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t want to be laughed at all night,” I said. “Besides, I had to look for Fang.”

  “Did you find her?” Geeky Girl asked.

  “No,” I said, “she’s gone.”

  “I can’t find Boris this morning either. I’m worried,” she added.

  “What’s the point?” I mumbled as I bit into the bacon sandwich. “Mmmfhng mand mai mare maonna meacet kicmmeout manyllmay.”

  “What?” Geeky Girl was staring at me as I chewed and talked.

  “I said, Fang and I are going to get kicked out anyway—not that Fang will ever want to see me again—so what’s the point? Bob and Diablo will tell the camp counselors that I have a kitten at camp and we’ll be sent home.”

  “They don’t know Fang is your kitten,” Geeky Girl said. “I told them last night after you ran off that people had spotted this kitten roaming around the camp, but it didn’t belong to anyone. It must be a stray.”

  “So they won’t tell everyone about how scared I was of the snake and how Fang rescued me either?” I asked hopefully.

  “Oh, no, they already told everyone that. Like everyone.” She grimaced. “I think they are calling you Mark the Fake-in-ator now.”

  I slumped back against the side of the tree house. “I’m ruined.”

  “Hey, why did you make up that story about Fang being a stray?” I said.

  Geeky Girl pushed back her hair from her face. “You know. If they find one pet, they’ll look out for more. I’m protecting Boris…,” she started to say.

  “I get that you want to protect your pet, but if it was to be nice to me, then I don’t get it,” I said. Then I breathed in and looked at the dirt, because ya know, I’m mostly evil and hate ever saying nice stuff. “I was beyond evil to you, like, most of the time, but I’m sorry about saying whatever to Sanj at the campfire, and I’m sorry I ditched you too. Even if they find out about Fang, I promise I won’t snitch on Boris.”

  “Overt Niceness will not be tolerated.” She smiled at me. “Rule Number 2 of the Evil Camp Code … You’re gonna get kicked out for that now.”

  “Never call me nice,” I said.

  “OK, you’re back to normal,” she added. “Look, they won’t find out about Boris or Fang,” she said. “And we can still win this contest. Then you can actually say you won this for real and not because you faked it,” she said. “I have the 3-D goggles all programmed. I’ve even sewed the goggles into one of my beanies so, you know, whoever wears it will still look cool. We just need to set the trap. But first, we have to find Fang and Boris.”

&nb
sp; * * *

  As we headed back to Geeky Girl’s tent to get all the equipment, an announcement blasted out of the speakers.

  “Attention, campers. Zhis is zee last morning to work on your traps. The remaining teams vill show zeir projects zis afternoon to the group by the campfire grounds.”

  “What does he mean, remaining teams?” I asked.

  “To update you on zee missing teams. We have picked up the SOS from zee submarine trap made by Meagan and Sven. We have tracked them down to a point off the coast and are sending out a ship to intercept zem. The team with the balloon has been spotted just over zee next mountain range, so we’re hoping to bring zhem down later zhis morning.

  “Zee exploding bubble in the trumpet trap went badly wrong, but we are hoping to free both the team members and the trumpet by tomorrow,” Trevor continued.

  “Ah, that explains the piccolo this morning,” Geeky Girl and I both said at the same time.

  “Good luck—or should I say ‘evil luck’?—with your traps, and may the most evil team win. Mwhaa-haa-haaa-haaa.” The announcement ended.

  Igor stomped over to us and grunted.

  “Hi, Igor,” I said. “So you’re still talking to me even though I’m now a Fake-in-ator?”

  “Urgh,” Igor said, and nodded.

  “Hey, Igor,” Geeky Girl said. “Did you happen to see a small green budgie and a little gray kitten anywhere around this morning?”

  “Not that they have anything to do with us or anything, but we were just wondering,” I added.

  Igor stared at us with a look that said “What?” and then shook his head.

  “Urgh, Urgh Urgh!” he added, though, and started pointing toward the woods.

  “You saw something else this morning?” Geeky Girl asked.

  Igor acted out a longish mime that involved tossing back his hair like he was in a shampoo commercial and wheezing a very poor “Mwh-urgh-Mwh-urgh-Mwh-urgh” laugh.