by Di Toft
Fish shrugged. “You want the chateau or the grounds?”
“I can run faster than you,” said Nat. “I’ll take the gardens and you find the best way inside the chateau. I’ll find you, OK? Promise you won’t go inside alone?”
Fish nodded. “Good luck,” she said.
Nat wasted no time and was away on his toes. Across the precarious bridge and down into the horrid, dead gardens again. He got his breath back, grateful for the cover of the trees and statues, even if it did stink of sulfur—or fartz, as Woody had described it the first time they were there. Nat smiled slightly at the memory and closed his eyes, wishing that Woody would materialize and tell him what to do now. It was all right for Alex Fish to insist they split up. (What was her fixation about splitting up, anyway?) He was fed up with people like Fish and werewolves like Crescent bossing him about all the time.
While he searched, Nat tried to zone in on Saffi by holding her crucifix tightly in his hand. If she was still here, and he was sure she was, maybe somewhere inside the Black Chateau, they would find her. He tried concentrating on the crucifix, but he couldn’t get anything from it. Satisfied there was nothing worth investigating in the immediate grounds, he ran stealthily into the courtyard. His Wolven eyes searched the darkness for Alex Fish. Where was she? Then he had a thought. The key! I bet she’s used the Egyptian key, and gone in on her own! To make sure, he loped around the other side of the chateau, keeping close to the building, using the shadows to hide himself. Nope—no sign. He tried the nearest door to him. Locked! No surprise there. Scanning the walls, he noticed a narrow glass door leading to a type of glass structure that he thought was called an orangery, or a conservatory, and ran swiftly toward it. As he approached, the door banged open as though the wind had caught it. Forgetting his advice to Fish, he held his breath and stepped across the threshold, allowing his eyes to adjust to the candlelight inside. There was something here, something monstrous, waiting in the shadowy darkness.
Welcome, it said.
Nat felt the voice rather than heard it; it crept into his head like a spider, its eight legs scrabbling through his brain, delving and rummaging, as if choosing what to take first.
He didn’t know what he had expected when he came face-to-face with evil, but the scene in front of him definitely wasn’t it. For a start, there was a lovely smell in the room, like Christmas, all cinnamon and mulberries and hot apple cider. His Wolven senses were screaming VAMPIRE at him, so there was no doubt what now confronted him—but this vampire looked nothing like he had imagined. She—it—was sitting on a squashy, comfy chair dressed in quite ordinary clothes. OK, so Nat didn’t know much about fashion, but the black pantsuit she wore wasn’t his idea of vampire clothing at all. At her throat was an enormous orb of light, which Nat assumed was a ginormous diamond. The candlelight bounced off the diamond, sending rays of light around the room, illuminating the bare windows with a magical golden glow. Nat thought that, despite being a vampire, the woman—Stop thinking it’s a woman, Nat told himself—smiling at him beguilingly, was probably the most beautiful creature he had ever seen in his life.
He swallowed and waited for her to say something else. He had expected to feel different … expected to feel revulsion and fear. But how could such beauty be so evil?
The vampire queen was sewing, her long fingers swiftly passing her needle in and out of the complicated tapestry on her lap.
Nat coughed. If she was going to fly at him, he wished she would hurry up. As if she could read his thoughts, she put her needle down with a little sigh and smiled. She held out her hand regally and, although she was a fair distance away from Nat, her hand seemed disembodied somehow, moving toward him like a snake. He tried to pull away but she was strong, her grip like a vice. She drew him closer and guided him to a chair.
“Master Carver, I presume?” she asked him, her voice smooth and low, and slightly mocking.
Nat opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out.
She smiled warmly. “If you’ll allow me a little joke,” she purred, “I have been undying to meet you.”
Nat didn’t think it at all funny. He still couldn’t speak.
“You and your friend have caused me a great deal of trouble,” she said, still smiling, “and a great deal of amusement.”
“Why did you lock us in?” asked Nat, finally finding his tongue.
The vampire laughed. Her laugh was pretty; it sounded like tinkling little bells.
“I wanted to meet you on my terms,” she replied, “after dark and alone.”
“Who let us out?” asked Nat. “Why didn’t you just finish us off?”
“Finish you off?” The vampire looked shocked at the idea. “I don’t want to finish you off—you’re no good to me dead … not yet. Your spiky-haired friend, on the other hand …”
She laughed again when she saw Nat’s expression.
“Letting you out was part of the game,” she said. “You humans are funny little persons. So tenacious! Making your futile plans to escape. Tragic, really.”
“You were saying about Fish,” said Nat.
“Fish. Poisson. Curious name.” The vampire smiled. “I’m afraid the little fishy is superfluous to my needs. But … she will be useful in other ways.”
“Like Saffi Besson?” asked Nat, forgetting to be scared.
“So many questions.” She smiled again. “The little mademoiselle, Saffi, is still alive … if a little drained.”
“Is she … is she still human?” asked Nat. “And what about the others?”
“All in good time,” soothed the vampire. “We have all night, after all.”
“But what about Saffi?” insisted Nat.
A momentary flash of irritation crossed the vampire’s lovely face. “I was warned you are still human enough to worry too much about others.”
“Who warned you?” demanded Nat. “What do you know about me?”
The vampire comtesse smiled again and picked up her needle and thread. “Everything,” she said. “I was supposed to destroy you and your little band of gifted friends.”
Nat paled.
“I cannot call him a friend,” said the vampire, concentrating on her needlework, “more of an associate, with whom I share a mutual loathing of the human race.”
“Scale,” whispered Nat. “So why didn’t you? Kill me, I mean?”
“I want you,” said the vampire, still sewing. “I’m not prepared to hand you over to him. You are mine now, Nat Carver. All you have to do is to become my apprentice. In return, everything you ever desired will be yours.”
“Er …,” mumbled Nat, “thanks, but no thanks. I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you. I like being human.”
The vampire raised her eyebrows. “Human?” she said softly. “You are no more human than I am! You have the wolf in you, Master Carver, and the wolf is stronger than the boy.”
Nat was silent. He watched her hands as she sewed. There was dirt in her fingernails, as though she’d been doing some heavy-duty gardening, or perhaps digging herself out of a grave. He shuddered. The empty coffin in the mausoleum had been unsafe for her, too obvious if someone came looking. He had an image of her digging her way out of the frozen earth, and it sickened him.
“Let … let me see Saffi and the other children you took,” he said at last. “If … they’re still alive, then we can talk.”
“Ah, Saffi,” said the vampire, regret in her voice. “She is with the others now.”
“You … you haven’t …?” stammered Nat.
The vampire licked her lips, her tongue flicking in and out of her red mouth like a snake. “Of course they are alive—the Besson girl, too. They have restored my youth. Without them I would not be beautiful.”
Fair enough, thought Nat dreamily. For she was beautiful, even more beautiful than Angelina Jolie. She wasn’t like the other vampires, all scaly and leathery, with their red eyes and skeletal faces. Her quick hands still sewed, the needle moving in and out of the tapestry, in and out,
in and out … He found himself wondering what it would be like to be her apprentice. Would he really live forever? That actually sounded quite cool.
Nat felt his eyes grow heavy as he watched the vampire sew, forgetting about the reason he had come here, forgetting about Fish, Woody …
A tiny familiar sound drew him out of his stupor. It was like a faraway dentist’s drill. The vampire stopped sewing and looked at the source of the noise in annoyance. Nat turned his head toward the sound. A mosquito, just like the ones he and Woody had fled from, was buzzing around the vampire queen’s head. There was a flash of steel as the vampire, faster than light, snipped the mosquito in two with her scissors. The two halves dropped abruptly onto the floor, spilling dark blood. For the briefest of moments the vampire and Nat stared at it as it oozed across the floor. Then she grinned like a velociraptor and the spell was broken.
“You’ve been trying to brainwash me!” yelled Nat.
She was close, too close; he could smell her breath. It smelled as meaty and rank as a fly-blown carcass. He recoiled as her face seemed to ripple like she was under water, and Nat realized he was seeing what was behind her facade of humanity. Beneath the mask she shifted into a raddled old crone, her body twisted and ancient, her vampire teeth yellow and protruding over her chin, and her hair little more than a covering of coarse scrub; and then to something far worse. Nat glimpsed a monster: a great black spider with four pairs of eyes and a squat, bloated body.
“I will trade the children for you,” said the vampire, regaining its human shape. “You will stay with me and I will show you everything. In return, you will bestow me with your Wolven gifts.”
“Like I said,” said Nat, coldly brave, “show me the children and maybe we can do a deal.”
The candles started to flicker as though a sudden wind threatened to extinguish them. The room grew dark and the vampire queen laughed: a horrible, cracked cackle.
“I deal in illusion just like your grandfather,” it said, as all humanity left it and it stood in front of Nat a blackened, leathery horror. The glass conservatory shuddered and shook. To his horror, it started to crack, splinters of glass falling from the ceiling. He felt in his pocket to where Saffi’s cross glowed warmly, but it was too late. The vampire enveloped him in darkness, and Nat was lost.
CHAPTER 30
COCOON
Where is he? thought Alex Fish. It had been ages. Nat had told her not to go inside the chateau on her own, but he was nowhere to be seen. Surely he must have finished searching the gardens? Fish had waited by the chateau and when he hadn’t turned up she had gone to find him. They must have passed each other. Tarnation!
Just about everything had gone wrong that could go wrong. They’d been cooped up in that horrible mausoleum all through the daylight hours, and now it was the vampires’ time. It was a whole lot easier staking them in their coffins than chasing them around. Fish waited at least ten more minutes, then, almost frozen solid and fed up with being battered by the wind, she made a decision. The moon had disappeared behind the raging blizzard, and without the benefit of supernatural eyesight she had trouble picking her way back to the courtyard. She considered using her flashlight, but was worried the beam would be seen by someone. Fish felt vulnerable and alone, although tons better now that she was on the move again, and she could feel the comforting shape of the little Egyptian key nestling in the pocket of her ski jacket.
Where would the vampire queen be? Fish asked herself as she moved in the shadows around the back of the vast building. There was a door by a small plot of land, which Fish thought could be a kitchen garden. She rummaged in her pocket and pulled out the little silver key, hearing the satisfying click as the lock yielded. Opening the door slowly, she found herself in a narrow hallway lit by a single ugly lightbulb: nothing like you would expect in a medieval chateau, thought Fish, disappointed. She had two stakes in each hand and backup stakes sticking out of the top of her boots; she looked like a walking cactus. There were two choices. One steep set of stone steps led upward, one equally steep set led down, a black hole yawning at the bottom. Fish grimaced. Neither set of steps looked very inviting. She drew a coin out of her pocket and flipped.
Heads up, tails down. Tails!
Nat’s world had turned upside down again. The glass room had shattered along with the rest of the vampire queen’s clever illusion, and someone had trussed him up like a Christmas turkey.
He had no idea where he was. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious—or if he had been unconscious at all. All he knew was that it was freezing cold and still dark. He sensed he had been moved to another part of the chateau. He was alone, tied up, and his chances of surviving the night—unless he agreed to the vampire’s demands—were approximately nil. He tried looking for Fish with his mind, but he couldn’t feel her anywhere close. Nat tried to look at his watch, but the rope had been tied so tightly he couldn’t free his arm. He forced himself to breathe deeply and consider his options. He thought about his Wolven gifts first. Strength. He flexed his muscles and tried to break the rope by bursting out of it. He had to give up when his eyeballs threatened to burst out of his head with the effort. OK, so that didn’t work, Nat told himself calmly, when his heart rate had slowed down. His new senses were no help in this. Dismally, he looked down at the thick rope wrapped around his chest. Bite it. Nat rested his head on his chest and gripped the thick rope in his teeth. Eurgh! It made him want to gag. He bit down hard, his jaws aching with the effort. At this rate he’d be free just before next Christmas! I can’t stay here, he thought to himself. I can’t just sit here and wait for that … that thing to come near me again. He closed his eyes and thought of Woody. Then with all his remaining strength he let rip a desperate mindhowl and sent it out to find Woody…. AAAAAAaaarooooooghhhhh!WOODYCOMEQUICKHWOODYNEEDYOUPLEEEEEEAASEAooooooooowwwwwwww!
For centuries, French nobles had come to Salinas from as far as Versailles to sample the fine wines stored deep in the bowels of the Black Chateau.
But something else was stored there now. The doorway to the cellars was barred by a gross curtain of thick spiderwebs, thickened with the bodies of small unfortunate insects, rodents, and filthy dust. The stone walls were strewn with the same thick webby shroud. On first inspection the cellar appeared empty, but if you were to look closely, you would see something you hoped you would never see again. But then if you had got this far, it was unlikely you would make it out alive to see anything again anyway.
Suspended within the walls were a dozen or more cigar-shaped cocoons. Each cocoon contained the body of a child, their noses and eyes just visible. The younger children had been stricken dumb, almost catatonic with blood loss and shock, for this was Madame Vampire’s larder.
In her own uncomfortable cocoon, Saffi Besson still lived. While her own blood still flowed through her veins, while her heart kept beating, Saffi still hoped the boy she had seen at the lake would come back. Although her voice was fading, she sang the songs her mother had sung to her when she was little, hoping her muffled, off-key voice would give some comfort to the others.
Drifting in and out of consciousness, Saffi had no idea if it was day or night. The only way to tell was if the vampire came to feed. She closed her eyes again, hoping to fall asleep and dream of home.
An almost imperceptible sound made her eyes snap open and her frail body stiffen within its cocoon. Something was coming! The sound she had heard was the heavy door opening in the kitchens above. Saffi knew the layout of the lower floors from her brief moment of freedom. The door creaked and moonlight bathed the cellar floor as it opened.
She held her breath as the outline of a girlish figure stepped lightly into the room. Whoever it was had a flashlight in their mouth and spiky hair. Sharp sticks stuck out of their pockets and boots, and in each hand they carried two more. Saffi realized with mounting joy that the sharp sticks were stakes! Stakes to kill vampires! She couldn’t see the person’s face clearly because of the flashlight, but armed with
the stakes, the mystery slayer looked like a cross between Van Helsing and a large hedgehog. Saffi opened her mouth and screamed. All that came out was a tiny rush of stale air. The spiky-haired person didn’t hear, too busy pointing the flashlight into all the corners of the cellar. Saffi was terrified the person would leave. She struggled inside her cocoon, trying to break out, but she was too tightly wrapped in the disgusting web. She thrashed inside her tight bonds. Please, God, she prayed. If you can hear me, please help me!
Saffi Besson was so dehydrated she couldn’t even cry. What came out was a desperate, dry sob. But perhaps God had heard her at last, for it was enough to make the spiky-haired person stop and shine their precious light up toward Saffi’s cocoon.
“Aide-moi. Help me.” Saffi managed one last cry for help. It was all she had. Blinded by the powerful beam of the flashlight, Saffi could hear the person exclaim in horror.
“Hello?” It was a girl’s voice. She was shining her flashlight, searching around the cellar, suddenly seeing for the first time the extent of the vampire’s greed and cruelty. Saffi watched as the girl put out her hand to steady herself and swallowed hard as though to stop herself from vomiting. Then she reached up and gently pulled away the threads covering Saffi’s mouth.
“Merci,” whispered Saffi through swollen, parched lips.
“Saffi? Saffi Besson?” asked her rescuer.
Saffi managed to nod her head slightly.
“My name is Fish. Alex Fish,” said the girl with spiky hair and a sharp little face. “Saffi, you must listen very carefully, I hope you can understand me.” She held Saffi by her shoulders and spoke very slowly to make sure the girl understood. “I’m going to get you all out of here, I promise.”
CHAPTER 31
MINDHOWL
AAAAAAaaarooooooghhhhh!WOODYCOMEQUICKOHWOODYNEEDYOUPLEEEEEEEEEAASE Aooooooooowwwwwwww!
The desperate mindhowl for help smashed through Woody’s brain. He had been thinking about Nat, feeling guilty he had left without a word. He felt split between Nat and his clan—the two worlds they inhabited were so different that Woody didn’t know where his true path led. Until he had met Nat, he would have said his place in the world was with his clan. Now he wasn’t so sure. He had been running with them, getting used to being one of them, when Nat’s mindhowl had blasted him, catching him right between the eyes at about ninety miles an hour and knocking him clean off his feet. He hit the snow tail-first and rolled backward, over and over, until he looked like an enormous ball of snow with four legs and a head. Woody shook the snow from his fur and led his clan back to the frozen waterfall. Something huge had happened. Nat needed him!
