The Twilight Circus

by Di Toft

  Del Underhill got a visitor, too, as he lay fast asleep in the trailer he shared with his brothers, who snored gently in their bunks. Del was having another dream about the cat he used to have when he was a small boy. In his dream, the cat was scratching at the door as she always did when she wanted to be let inside.

  “Go ’way, pussycat,” he muttered in his sleep, but still the old cat scratched at the door. Scratch, scratch, scratch, went her claws, faster and faster, more insistent, until Del couldn’t stand it. I’ll have to let her in, he thought, raising himself up onto one elbow and opening his eyes groggily. He was dimly aware that it must have been a dream, that the old cat had been dead for years and he wasn’t at home, he was miles away, in France, in a caravan. But still he could hear the maddening scratching.

  He looked up and froze.

  There was something on the roof of the trailer. Something with red eyes, which gleamed malevolently, waiting with greedy impatience for Del to open the skylight and let it in.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE SLAYER’S APPRENTICES

  Nat’s dreams often had the habit of turning into nightmares, and this one was a thoroughbred, more like a night stallion.

  In his dream, Nat stood alone in the snow. It was like when you know you’re dreaming and you just know it’s going to turn nasty, but you can no more scream than you can wake up or run, and everything is in slow motion, even noise.

  He knew it was a dream because he still had his pajamas on and his bare feet weren’t cold. The short hairs on the back of his neck rose slightly as he got a sense of danger. The danger was behind and it was close.

  Nat spun around, his fists already raised, his lips drawn back in a kind of snarl. He was dimly aware of two things. One, that his senses were on overdrive—his body was zinging with strength and energy—and two, that Lucas Scale was standing directly in front of him.

  Noooo! Nat blinked hard, as if by doing so the apparition of Lucas Scale would vanish. But no, Scale still stood in front of him, a murderous gleam in his orange eyes and hot drool dripping from his mouth onto the snow, making a slight hiss as the snow melted. Nat stared. Scale didn’t move—he just stood there, drooling. Then he smiled.

  Why aren’t you dead, you monster? Nat asked of Scale with his mind.

  Lucas Scale grinned wider, showing his trademark skanky teeth. He raised his right paw and pointed with a deadly claw to his raddled orange eyeball. Then, still drooling hungrily, he pointed at Nat. Watching you, boy, he mimed.

  Before Nat could react, Scale’s body appeared to ripple and warp in the light of the rancid orange moon. As Nat watched, it faded and flickered until, with a slight popping noise, the image of Scale disappeared. Nat’s body was pumped—he felt cheated—if only he could have grabbed Scale and … then to his dismay he heard a sound riding on the freezing night, a slapping THWACK THWACK of a sound, as if something huge flew overhead. When the stars turned black above the protective canopy of trees, Nat heard himself make a groaning noise of dread. Something was flying above—only this time it wasn’t mosquitoes.

  Nat forced himself to look up to see what was making the air rush around him and the snow swirl around in mad patterns at his feet, as though a helicopter was preparing to land. He felt the cold sting of the snow on his upturned face and he glimpsed the black shadow of something flapping jerkily through the gaps in the trees. There were other black shapes roosting up there, looking down on him with their greedy red eyes and black, shiny wings. Vampires!

  But they were nothing like the vampires Nat had seen in movies or comics. These were true monsters, with leathery batlike bodies and sharp pointed teeth, not aristocrats in dinner jackets with their hair brushed back neatly from their foreheads. He willed himself to run, but his legs were useless—somehow the snow had become thick and heavy like syrup, and while he tried in vain to wade through it, he realized the vampires were closing in. They were slithering and sliding through the branches, and as they hit the snowy ground they were changing shape. They were still black and leathery, but now they had morphed into long human shapes, their faces masks of greed and viciousness, their elongated teeth glinting murderously in the orange glare of the moon. Only their eyes remained the same, fiery red orbs, striking Nat as strangely beautiful.

  “Oh God,” he moaned. “This isn’t just a dream. It’s a premonition!”

  They were surrounding him, he must move … warn everyone … he had to …

  “AAAARroooooooooooooohhhhhh!”

  At first, Nat didn’t know if he were still in the dream and Woody had come into it, too, or whether it was real and Woody really was howling in terror. With a tremendous effort of concentration, he willed himself out of the nightmare and woke up. He sat up in his bunk, rubbing his eyes, and as they adjusted the first thing he saw was Woody, in human form now, with his eyes bugging out and flashing with terror. Nat gasped when he saw what had terrified the Wolven. A dirty orange light emanated from the top of their dining table. At first Nat had taken it for the weak glow of the lamp, but it was coming from the snow globe that Woody was so fond of. Nat’s eyes bulged in terror. There had been something weird about that snow globe, Nat remembered wildly—hadn’t he felt it, and buried it inside the cupboard? And now Nat realized what horror it contained! The globe shone with a sullen, rabid light, and in the scummy, greasy liquid floated a monstrous eye, an eye that gleamed malevolently, pressing up hard against the plastic, pushing it outward as if the eye was trying to break out. Nat stared at it, transfixed. “Look away!” cried Woody.

  But Nat couldn’t. He could feel the dark, malicious mirth coming from the snow globe and a connection with something he thought he would never have to deal with again. The orange rheumy eye was sickeningly familiar. It belonged to Lucas Scale. Nat’s senses told him that by some force of tainted magic, Scale had sent it there to spy on them.

  Woody sprang from his bunk and grabbed the snow globe. It felt hot and slimy in his hand, as though it leaked oily tears. He pulled open the trailer door and flung it as hard as he could out into the snow, yelping with fear and disgust, wiping his hand frantically on his pajama bottoms.

  “He’s been watching,” cried Nat. “Scale! He was in my dream!”

  “He knows where we are,” Woody whispered, horrified. “You OK?”

  “Think so,” said Nat in a barely audible voice. “It was horrible. Scale was in my dream and then the vampires came. It wasn’t just a dream, it was a premonition!”

  “I had it, too,” said Woody in a flat, resigned voice. “Scale’s set ’em on us. They’re coming, ain’t they?”

  Nat nodded slowly. “I think we need to tell Fish there’s more than one.”

  “The first rule of vampire slaying is that there are no rules,” explained Maccabee Hammer to the gathering of cold and terrified Twilighters. “Like humans, some vampires are stronger than others. I’d just like to remind you folks that us new-age vampires don’t hold with feeding from humans,” he added hastily. “Let’s make that crystal clear—we don’t go around making humans into vampires or sucking their blood.” He shuddered at the thought. “That would be considered bad manners nowadays. But if Fish is right, and we’re dealing with an ancient, then we’re in a heap of trouble. If an ancient has been reawakened, it means that although it was staked, it was asleep in its coffin: That’s usually why its body was able to survive the trauma. It will mean its disciples—the original hive of undead—has woken, too, and just one of these ol’ bloodsuckers can feed off three, maybe even four humans on a good night. Ancient vamps are blood-crazed monsters: They don’t know any better. In the olden days they were hunted down and staked in their coffins. The vampire who attacked Del is a full-on ancient: a vampire who has feasted on the blood of a vampire—usually the head of the hive. If you come face-to-face with one, DO NOT look into its eyes if you can help it. If you let yourself become hypnotized by them and invite it in, you’ve basically had it. The usual remedies for repelling them once you have let them in w
ill be useless. It doesn’t matter how much garlic you eat or how many crosses you wear, you will be defenseless. The vamp can, and will, attack. Questions, anyone?”

  “How do we kill them?” asked Scarlet, her teeth chattering slightly.

  Maccabee Hammer grinned, showing sharp incisors. “A stake through the heart may kill me—might even make me explode, if I’m not in my coffin. It’s quite spectacular. Sunlight will melt me, and I can even drown. Water has a strange effect; it would make my body swell up and burst. But I’ll never really be dead in the true sense of the word. I can be brought back again by a powerful magus or demon. The only way to ensure I will never come back is to burn my body or cut it up into small pieces.”

  There was silence as everyone digested this grisly information.

  “Do you think the missing children are vampires?” asked Jude Carver in a small voice.

  “If they are, then they are lost,” said Mac. “More likely, they’re being held somewhere. The blood of a child is more potent than adult blood, too precious to waste by making them into vampires, too.”

  “You mean we might be able to save them?” asked Woody, his eyes shining with excitement.

  Maccabee Hammer smiled. “It’s a possibility. All we need to do is to find the hive and kill the head vamp.”

  “And that’s all there is to it,” said Nat under his breath. It’s going to be a flippin’ long night, he thought to himself.

  It was three o’clock in the morning. Those who hadn’t been woken by Paddy Underhill yelling about the vampire his brother had invited into their caravan had been woken up by Woody’s heart-stopping howl. Everyone was bundling themselves into coats over their nightclothes, wondering why all hell had apparently broken loose. After an extended search with the torches and hastily carved stakes, JC and Evan had persuaded everyone that the thing had gone, apparently having got what it had come for: hot, fresh blood.

  When Nat and Woody shared their premonition with Fish, she immediately ordered fires to be lit in a protective circle around the camp, and Evan organized the bravest men to be posted as lookouts. No one was able to get hold of the mayor, Teebo Bon. His wife said she hadn’t seen him, saying he had gone to pick up a pizza, which she suspected was a lie, as there were no pizza parlors in the whole of Marais town.

  In the meantime, Agent Fish and JC were preparing the Twilighters to help fight if their bloodsucking visitor returned with its friends, as Nat and Woody’s premonition had warned. A predawn meeting was held in the second-largest tent for those who wanted to help.

  Del, who was still pale and shaken from his ordeal, shuddered visibly. “I let it in,” he croaked, “it was lookin’ at me with those terrible … but kind of beautiful red eyes, and I wanted to open the skylight and let it in. It … oh God … it bit me!”

  On Fish’s instructions, Jude poured disinfectant into the jagged, ugly wound on Del’s neck. When she had finished dressing it, she turned to the NightShift agent, her eyes enormous in the lamplight.

  “Do you think we have a chance?” she asked.

  “Look at us all,” said Fish, her beady eyes shining. “We’ve all got the skills to fight the vampires and win. Between us, we have werewolves, cryptids, Wolven, and human power. Best of all, we’ve got Mac! C’mon! Let’s kick some vampire butt!”

  CHAPTER 22

  THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS

  Dusk. Agent Alexandra Fish was taking inventory.

  “String?”

  “Check,” chorused the Twilighters.

  “Holy water?”

  “Check.”

  “Stakes?”

  “Check.”

  “Fishing nets?”

  “Check.”

  “Trash bags?”

  “Check.”

  “Electric fences?”

  “Check.”

  “Garlic puree?”

  “Uhh … no, sorry,” answered an apologetic voice from the back of the tent.

  “Why not?” asked Alex Fish testily.

  “Sold out,” replied Scarlet, pushing her way to the front. “Everyone in Marais bought every available bulb of garlic to hang up outside their houses.”

  “We got an alternative, though,” piped up Woody.

  “And this would be?” asked Fish, eyebrow raised challengingly.

  “This would be onion soup.” Woody beamed. “French onion soup.”

  Fish looked less than impressed. “You’re joking, right?”

  “Nope,” said Nat, shaking his head. “It’s even better than garlic: We tried a drop on Mac. Covers more of an area. It works even when we mixed it with normal water, not the holy stuff.”

  “Hmmmm …” Fish considered it for a couple of seconds. “Good improvisation. I’m impressed. Every one know their positions?”

  “Check,” yelled the Twilighters.

  The morning had been spent planning and organizing their defense. Wood was gathered around the trailers and cabins and stacked into neat bonfires. The generator was set up and the electric fences unrolled. Water from the nearby church was blessed hurriedly by a very scared, very fat little priest and dragged into camp in a tank by the Russian horses. Evan and John Carver were in charge of the stake-sharpening outfit, while Jude ran an onion-chopping production line. Nat’s olfactory glands went into overdrive. His enhanced senses couldn’t cope with the smell of the onions; the fumes clung to his clothes and invaded his nostrils. He had to resort to tying a scarf around his nose and mouth, much to the amusement of his mum, who luckily thought he was just trying to get out of chopping the onions. It was at times like this that Nat felt he was being deceitful by not sharing his secret with his mum and dad. He wondered how long it would be before they really noticed he wasn’t quite the boy they thought he was.

  Fish directed all activities with aplomb, much to Crescent’s disgust and annoyance. To anyone who would listen, she’d been voicing her opinion about Fish’s certain inability to conduct a successful campaign against vampires as she was, after all, a mere human.

  Unfortunately, Fish herself had heard.

  “Well, you know, Crescent,” she said in a syrupy, condescending voice, “you can always take over if you think you’re qualified, but I think you’d better leave this to NightShift, sweetheart. Vampires are slightly harder to kill than ickle furry guinea pigs and meerkats.”

  A few Twilighters stifled giggles while Crescent flushed, her eyes flashing. She flounced off in a huff, and for once Nat felt a bit sorry for her. It looked like Crescent had met her match in Alex Fish.

  “Who died and made her queen?” he heard her mutter to Otis, who wisely kept his mouth shut.

  Later, Crescent loped sulkily between the rows of caravans, listening to the sounds of activity as the rest of the Twilighters worked in teams to prepare their attack. Not only had John Carver given her a final, final warning after nearly scaring the horseshoes off poor Rudi (Nat hadn’t even fallen off!), Alex Fish had shown her up in front of everyone, and Crescent had glimpsed Nat Carver’s expression of sympathy. Well, she thought to herself, kicking up the snow in temper, he can stick his stupid pity, thanks very much.

  Her mood was dark. Her stomach churned and her werewolf senses were reeling. Her head ached and, worst of all … she felt like hurting someone. Hurting and biting… ripping … She shook her head, making it ache more, but at least the murderous thoughts receded into the dark part of her werewolf brain. The part you trained yourself to hide if you were a lycan.

  Something gripped her brain like a vise. Crescent fell to her knees in the snow from the sheer force of it. There was something stuck half in, half out of the snow in front of her, something pushing its way out, like a hand scrabbling from a grave. The snow globe! Seeing it again made her feel weird—sort of thrilled, but at the same time ashamed and guilty and frightened. The snow globe had made her forget the things it had told her to do, but she knew they were BAD and if she did them she would be CURSED. She had made herself put the globe back on the table and leave the
Silver Lady. But she had done something bad—not a really big thing—but she could remember how wonderful it felt when she had made Nat Carver’s horse bolt, how good it had felt to see the look of terror on his face!

  Still kneeling in the snow, Crescent looked around furtively. Although her senses were screaming at her, warning her off, she wanted it. She wanted to pick it up and shake it again, watch the snow swirl around. And then … she wanted to see the eye again, although it both revolted and frightened her. She wanted to feel its power and strength creep inside her. It called to her silently, insistently, cajolingly. She made her fingers pick it up—part of her still wanted nothing to do with it—and she held it, causing the snow to fly around the scene inside: a tiny family of reindeer and fir trees. As the confetti snow cleared beneath the plastic shell of the globe, the eye of Lucas Scale opened again.

  “Nat Carver has set everyone against you,” wheedled a syrupy voice in her brain. “John Carver hates you for what you did to those animals; he wants you gone. Everyone hates you, Crescent, and you smell very bad: That’s why you had to keep away from the horses.”

  After a while, Crescent got to her feet, her face set in an ugly leer. Her body was trying to morph as part of her tried to repel Scale’s presence from her body. Her hair stood up on her head and fell in matted clumps around her face. Her hands had changed into twisted paws, her claws unsheathed. When she opened her eyes, they were changed.

  The Twilighters were as ready as they would ever be. They were prepared for any eventuality, an aerial attack or ground invasion by their bloodsucking visitors, with three lines of defense facing out in a semicircle around the camp. Nat Carver, who was crouched in position with Woody, felt vulnerable and exposed as they waited for the inevitable attack. Nat had learned to trust his premonitions, and with Woody having the same awful dream, their senses were on Wolven overdrive. In the brief and unsettling silence in the still and frozen night, Nat felt Woody clutch the soft flesh at the top of his arm.