The Twilight Circus

by Di Toft

  “Ow,” whispered Nat. “Put your claws away!”

  Woody was in the middle of a shift. His hands had already morphed and his sharp claws were sticking into Nat’s arm.

  “Sorry,” Woody growled, and the hairs went up on the back of Nat’s neck. No matter how many times his friend shifted, he couldn’t help feeling chilled. Woody was always weird when his change was neither here nor there. Half boy, half Wolven, his amber eyes shone out like beams of light and his voice sounded inhuman and scary. “Listen,” growled Woody.

  When the vampires came, they came fast. The THWACK THWACK sound of their leathery wings reverberated in the still, frozen night. Nat’s keen hearing picked up what Woody had already heard: great wings forcing air away as they flapped nearer and nearer.

  “Ready?” whispered Fish.

  Nat and Woody both flashed her ghostly grins.

  “Can you see anything?”

  Nat struggled to answer. His mouth was too dry to talk.

  Woody answered for him. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Look.”

  Fish peered up to where Woody was staring.

  “Oh … oh no,” she breathed.

  Fish was used to fighting the unknown. She had been responsible for staking a whole hive of bloodsuckers, hadn’t she? But these were different. These would be awake! How could she ever have thought she would be able to take this on and win? There were at least fifty of them. Winged horrors with red eyes and black scabrous wings, roosting silently at the tops of the trees, waiting to attack.

  Had the Twilighters done enough to ensure a victory? It was time to find out. She gave the signal.

  The team members on lights duty turned the headlights on the trucks and cars to high beam. Woody had fully shifted by now, and he leaped forward in the front line with the werewolves, teeth bared, hackles standing up on his shoulders like a demented porcupine.

  The vampires’ first mistake was that they approached the camp through the trees, planning to take the Twilighters by surprise. They had no idea, until they tried to climb down through their cover, that Fish had designed a cunning cat’s cradle of string throughout the entire network of branches. Maccabee Hammer and his aye-ayes had spent the day up in the treetops, until the semicircle of conifers was crisscrossed with hundreds of yards of hairy green string. And it had worked! Designed to slow their inevitable climb down into camp, the Twilighters had a good idea of what they were up against as the harsh halogen lights from the trucks illuminated the creatures trying to disentangle themselves, and watched in fascinated horror at the struggling vampires, who shrieked abominably as their wings and feet became caught in the string. They were just as Nat had described them from his premonition, black leathery devils with burning coals as eyes.

  The first line of defense waited while the vampires descended. Dark shapes crashed to the floor as the string lost its strength and snapped.

  “Prime the hoses!” yelled Fish as the first vampire crashed through. It rose to its feet as if lifted by an invisible force, its black wings morphing back into its body as it stood up and reached out for Nat with a ragged red grin of triumph.

  “Nat! Look out!”

  Nat was dimly aware of his mum screaming. He ducked just in time as the vampire shot out an impossibly long, thin arm, and turned to run. But the vampire was too quick. This time it managed to grab him roughly, making Nat lose his balance and fall over. It was strong, stronger than Nat, even with his Wolven blood. It tightened its hold around Nat’s neck, and he was dimly aware of a reddish-colored wolf shape moving forward close by. Crescent! Thank goodness! Why wasn’t she helping him? WHAT THE FLIPPIN’ HECK WAS SHE WAITING FOR? A WRITTEN INVITATION? To Nat’s horror, she cringed away from him, her lush red tail tucked firmly between her back legs. Nat couldn’t believe it. Crescent had punked out! She was running away! And the vampire was inches away from Nat’s face, its vicious features frozen in a ferocious snarl. He was helpless. Why hadn’t they turned on the hoses? If he could only move his arms, he could smack the vampire a good one, but his arms were pinned by his sides. Sensing he didn’t have long, he pulled his head back as far as he could from the horrific teeth that were trying to latch on to him, and SMACK! He head butted the vampire hard enough for it to loosen its grip. Although the vampire looked like it had a headache, it was still hanging on to Nat, moving in again with its fangs.

  Then, there was a sudden jolt, like an electric shock, a muffled BANG—and Nat found himself covered in black, sticky goo. The vampire had disappeared, and Fish, also covered in black gore, pulled Nat from the ground.

  “Where’d it go?” cried Nat. “What the —”

  Fish grinned, her teeth white against her grubby face.

  “Exploded,” she replied, handing Nat a sharp wooden stake. “Here,” she said. “There’s plenty more where this one came from.”

  More vampires were breaking through the trees. As they advanced on their prey they quickly smelled out the fruity scent of humans, but there was an underlying odor—a meaty, savage whiff of … werewolves! The vampires were caught on the back foot again, because they hadn’t expected any resistance from the humans, let alone werewolves. They hadn’t bargained for the Twilighters to be forewarned by Nat’s nightmare, much less on being met by this hostile crowd with their stakes and their rather infantile string traps. And what was this? Again, something they hadn’t bargained for.

  “Sooooooouuup! FIRE!”

  They didn’t have a chance to retreat. The vampires in the front row met the full force of the onion soup. Gallons of foul-smelling, flesh-burning gunk shot out of a dozen hoses, making the vampire lieutenants shriek and sizzle as the French onion soup ravaged their vampire skin. Encouraged by their success, Natalie and her team reloaded with more soup and holy water, ready for the next lot. “FIRE!” When it hit the vampires full in the face it hissed horribly, burning off their flesh, and giving them the appearance of melted candles as they writhed on the snowy ground and evaporated. The vampires who escaped this undignified method of vampire-slaying were caught by the three Surrealias as they rose gracefully up into the night sky with a fishing net held in their clawlike hands. Flying high above the camp, they pulled the net taut and dropped it onto the fleeing creatures, for Fish, Evan, and JC to finish off with wooden stakes.

  “Is this going to work?” shouted Evan Carver. “I’ve only ever seen this part in movies!”

  “Trust me!” shouted back Fish, “it works. Watch and learn!”

  But it was horrible to watch. Alex Fish raised her arm in an arc. She swung it down and staked the nearest vampire trying to bite through the net with razor-sharp incisors. It was as though the stake were a lightning rod. A blue flame sprang out of the vampire’s chest, and then it exploded with a muffled BANG, covering Fish again with a mixture of vampire innards and French onion soup. After the smoke cleared, all that was left of the deadly beast was an acrid black stain on the pure white snow. The smell was appalling.

  “We need to get them all!” Fish commanded. “Don’t let any get away!”

  “There’s too many!” Nat yelled back.

  The scene on the ground was horrific. If Nat had been able to watch instead of fighting for his life, he would have seen Woody and the three Howlers dragging the vampires from the trees, leaping up as they broke through the string and mauling them until Fish could stake them. Her tried-and-tested method of shoving trash bags over their heads proved useful for disorienting the vampires, and staking them wasn’t so messy, as most of the gore was contained inside the plastic, but it took too long. The vampires who got the full force of the onion soup were taken out quickly, but staking the others as they landed was a bit hit-or-miss. There had to be a quicker way!

  NAT! STABLES!

  “Uh … Woody?” Nat caught Woody’s message and flung the hose down. “Back in a minute!” he shouted to Scarlet. “Keep it coming!”

  He caught a glimpse of white fur as Woody flashed ahead toward the stables. As he ran, Nat was forming a pictur
e in his mind. Woody was showing him the electric fence and … Wait a minute, he was showing him Titus the bull!

  Woody was in the stable with Titus when Nat arrived, out of breath and running scared.

  In his mind, he saw Woody and the bull lower their heads toward each other, as if they were having some sort of silent conversation. Nat wasn’t able to pick up any stray thoughts, so he had to be patient. At last, Woody jumped out of Titus’s stable and turned to Nat.

  NAT! OPEN IT!

  “I hope you know what you’re doing!” muttered Nat grimly as he opened the stable door. The great black bull walked hesitantly to the open doorway, and Nat stood behind the door as Titus blew steam through his impressive nostrils. He looked mad and bad. His eyes gleamed blackly and his great body trembled as he waited.

  What’s he waiting for? thought Nat, as he peered into the distance. Then suddenly Titus started to paw the ground. Woody raced off into the darkness. Titus bellowed loud enough to make Nat leap into the air, and then shot off after Woody. Nat followed just in time to see Titus run amok, scattering and confusing the remaining vampires—he was taking no prisoners. With the vampires outsmarted again, they weren’t quick enough to morph into their wings. As Titus chased them down and gored them with his devastating sacred horns, they exploded until they were nothing more than splatters of black, undead gore. The ones that managed to get off the ground flew off-course, straight into the electric fence, perishing in a flash of blue fire and black guts.

  “D’you want some more?” screamed Fish at the retreating vampires. They were off the ground, flying up again into the trees, apparently beaten for tonight.

  “They’ll be back,” she said grimly to the exhausted Twilighters. “We need to find the hive, and quick.”

  CHAPTER 23

  MACCABEE HAMMER

  Agent Alex Fish wasted no time in organizing a special vampire-slaying workshop in the candlelit black tent.

  “So, what have we found out about our vampire friends?” asked Fish, thoroughly enjoying the tutorial she was giving with Maccabee Hammer. This is more like it! she thought to herself as she addressed the sea of weary faces before her. What a blast! She was only sorry that the boss would be oblivious to her triumph, as she had no way of contacting him.

  It wasn’t over, though. There was only so much string and onion soup that would keep the vampires away, and eventually everyone would be defenseless against them. And that—Fish shuddered—would be the end.

  “What we know about real, undead vampires is that they aren’t like the ones in the movies,” said Fish to her pupils. “The undead in movies are usually middle-aged guys in dinner jackets and shiny shoes, or hip, drop-dead gorgeous ones—no offense, Mac,” she added hastily to the vampire magician. He raised a skeletal hand as if to say, None taken.

  “We outsmarted them.” Fish grinned. “They suffered all the casualties. The only injuries our side suffered were minor. Apart from Del, of course, who is showing some unfortunate signs of vampirism. If I’m right and we destroy the entire hive, he’ll soon go back to being a normal faun again.”

  “Come on, people,” said Maccabee Hammer impatiently. “What did we learn from the vampire hive?”

  “They were butt ugly?” Scarlet shivered.

  “Apart from that?” asked Fish. “What else did you notice about them? Did they give any clue as to where they might be holed up?”

  Everyone looked at each other, hoping that someone would come up with the answer.

  “They had really bad hair?” piped up Natalie.

  Crescent was strangely quiet. She appeared to have nothing to suggest. She hadn’t spoken to Nat to apologize for her wimpy behavior, and was keeping a low profile, probably for the first time in her entire life. She listened to their plans intently, her hand unconsciously stroking the plastic snow globe in her pocket.

  “Nat? Woody?” barked Fish. “Anything unusual about them?”

  Woody, now back in human form, pondered this for a second, then grinned wolfishly.

  “They stank,” he said. “They stank really, really bad.”

  “OK,” said Fish wearily. “So we’ve got a bunch of smelly bloodsuckers with bad hair, anything else?”

  “I’ve got a question for Mac,” said Nat suddenly.

  The vampire magician got to his feet. His face was whiter than usual, his sad expression sadder. “Nat, what can I tell you?”

  “C … can you do that thing …,” stammered Nat, “the changing into a monster thing?”

  “What do you think?” asked Mac softly.

  “I mean … are all vampires the same?”

  Mac’s face was expressionless. “It’s a part of me I am ashamed of,” he said. “Like Scarlet said, it’s ugly.”

  Scarlet looked at the floor, slightly embarrassed. No one had ever seen Maccabee Hammer look any different from how he did tonight.

  “I guess we could turn this into a show-and-tell session,” joked Mac halfheartedly, “but I warn you, it won’t be pretty.”

  Oh my God, thought Nat, he’s going to show us! His friend Mac was going to turn himself into a monster for the sake of their education! They had all seen the vampires roosting in the trees above camp. The red eyes, strange skeletal faces, how they could morph into their wings when they needed to.

  The night seemed to grow colder, if that was possible. It was freezing already. A thin mist had appeared from nowhere. Mac stood in the middle of the clearing, half hidden in shadow from the trees. It was dead quiet. No one spoke; everyone watched as the mist grew denser, rising up, twisting and weaving around Mac’s skinny legs. Nat could see Mac’s eyes were closed as he concentrated on his monster metamorphosis. The mist was clinging to the vampire’s body, and Nat’s eyes watered as a sulfurous smell hung in the air. When the mist reached the vampire’s head it turned a dirty yellow, and then black. Mac’s body seemed to grow and expand. Then, shocking in its speed, the mist disappeared, leaving behind something else.

  The thing that stood before the scared Twilighters bore no physical resemblance to Maccabee Hammer, vampire magician, who, although not the most handsome individual in the world, possessed a certain lived-in charm and raffishness. The figure that stood beside the fire had made everyone back away from it in undisguised horror, and Nat was sad about that; Mac didn’t deserve to be treated with revulsion. The blackened countenance of the vampire was strange, like a primitive bird. It—he, Nat tried to tell himself—reminded him of some sort of flying reptile. Its body was bound with thick, ropelike muscles, no doubt formed to be able to bear the weight of its wings when it flew. As if the vampire had read Nat’s mind, a pair of wings spread from its shoulders and shone blackly in the light of the fire. Nat heard everyone take a deep breath. Although undeniably scary, the vampire’s wings were beautiful, like those of a dark angel. And when Nat made himself look at his friend’s face, he saw that Mac was not like the others. His face—if you could call it a face, thought Nat—was turned slightly away, as if ashamed. Nat could see his eyes were red, but not with the greedy malice of the hive. Everyone else had noticed, too, that although he was different, he was still Mac.

  Nat was the first to move closer again. He put his hand up and touched the space below the vampire’s eyes. Mac flinched away, but Nat had felt how cold and unyielding it felt beneath his fingers, like stone. Then Mac faced them properly, gazing at them with his ruby eyes, and tried to smile.

  Mac’s show-and-tell was over. The mist enveloped him again and the vampire magician was back to his old self.

  Nat broke the silence. “Wow. That was awesome!”

  Woody was curious. “How d’you get to hang on to your cloves?” he asked. “I spend most of my time trying to find mine when I change. How come you’re not naked?”

  “Vampires transform by dark illusion and magic,” Mac explained. “The change from man to wolf, or vice versa in your case, Woody, is supernatural, but physical. That’s why it looks so uncomfortable. I guess I’m just a big old fr
eak.”

  Woody grinned. “I guess you’re in good company.”

  CHAPTER 24

  HIVE

  Snug and smug in his cave den beneath the snow-covered ruins of Helleborine Halt, Lucas Scale rubbed his misshapen paws together with hectic glee.

  What a turn up for the books! The she-werewolf had been an unexpected triumph. She was perfect as a host for his sight: resentful, angry, and frightened; her senses had been ripe for the taking. Lucas Scale leaned back in his chair, congratulating himself on his cleverness. The female werewolf was the perfect spy. His powers were growing. He no longer needed the plastic snow globe. He could see through her eyes now!

  Back in the Carvers’ cabin, Nat was trying to rest. If there was to be another vampire attack tonight, as Alex Fish had predicted, he would need all his strength again.

  “Nat,” came his mum’s voice from the tiny kitchen, “how about a sandwich? I think we need to have a chat.”

  Oh great, groaned Nat to himself, here we go. His body ached with the exertion of the previous night’s slayings, and he was so far down in the doldrums that he didn’t want any lunch, but he couldn’t sleep, either. In Wolven form, Woody could sleep anywhere at any time, as he was now, dozing at Nat’s feet.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen, thought Nat gloomily. He had accepted the fact that since he had met Woody his life would never be quite the same again, but this vampire thing was taking over their entire holiday! Not only that, but it had been hard work fighting them off, and he wasn’t looking forward to another session tonight. And now his mum would want to ask him loads of questions about what he had dreaded: his Wolvenness.

  He pulled himself from his bunk and forced a wan smile.

  “Come on, Nat,” Jude prompted. “You must eat, especially after all the slaying you’ve been doing lately.”

  Nat met her blue gaze with his own and suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to confess everything. “Sorry I didn’t tell you,” he said awkwardly. “I didn’t know how to start. I mean, about the changes and peculiar stuff I can do now.” “Can you stop it?” asked his mum softly. Nat shook his head.