by Tim Collins
Ryan just called round at our house! I can’t believe he came here! Mum was really concerned when she saw him, and asked if he was Chloe’s ex-boyfriend. I told her he was a school friend who’d come round to help me revise French, but she wasn’t convinced.
Ryan came up to my bedroom and searched in the wardrobe and under the bed for Chloe. I told him I didn’t know where she was, but he insisted that her scent was all over the room. Then I admitted that she’d called round, but pretended I’d refused to speak to her because of her disloyalty to the pack.
He looked like he was about to attack, but then he slapped me on my shoulder and said he knew I was one of the good ones.
Then he showed me the ancient scroll Vlad had sent him:
I pretended to be shocked by Vlad’s announcement and said it had made me more determined than ever to slash some vampire heads off.
Ryan said he knew Chloe was responsible, and he intended to tear her limbs off and stuff them down her throat in front of the rest of us to show what happens to traitors. I told him this was better than she deserved.
Then Ryan got down on his hands and knees and followed Chloe’s scent out of our house. He won’t get further than the train station, but at least it got rid of him.
I asked Mum to help with my French revision so she wouldn’t see Ryan crawling away down the street. She said that I shouldn’t worry about it because when she went to Calais on a booze cruise, most of them spoke English anyway. Great, so I’ll just write that on my exam paper, shall I?
Friday 1ST June
Okay, well that could have been worse. My French exam, I mean. Not the situation between the vampires and werewolves. That couldn’t really be worse. But I’ve got over a week until my maths exam, which should be ample time to get all this nonsense sorted out.
I’ve just called Chloe, and she’s staying in a cheap bed and breakfast in the seaside town of Southpool. I’m going up there on Monday so we can work out how to stop the battle.
In the meantime I’m going to train with Ryan again, so he doesn’t suspect I’m still part of the resistance.
Chloe mentioned that Nigel’s also going to do his best to help. I’m not sure I want him to. If last time is anything to go by, his help will probably result in an army of flesh-eating ogres joining the battle on the side of the vampires.
Saturday 2ND June
I’ve just got back from Lunar Hall. Ryan’s going mental with all this war stuff now. Sometimes when he talks about vampires, he gets so angry that he turns into a wolf and doesn’t even realize he’s barking instead of speaking, which is hardly a sign that he’s dealing with things rationally.
I asked Ryan how his plans had changed now we’re fighting an official battle that’s registered with the vampire and werewolf councils. He said it means we have to observe supernatural law, which forbids the use of wooden stakes and silver bullets. The battle will last for the three nights of the next full moon, and if neither side is victorious during that time, it will continue a month later.
I asked him what would happen if he used wooden stakes and he said that full war would be declared, and every werewolf pack and vampire coven in the world would be obliged to join in.
Then a strange look came into his eyes and he asked if it would be such a bad thing if the war did start again. After all, why should we rid the world of just one vampire coven when we could rid it of the whole lot?
Then he confessed his true plans. He’s going to fight the first two nights in accordance with the law. But if we haven’t won by the third night, he’s going to fetch his secret stash of wooden stakes from Richard’s boat and finish off as many vampires as he can. He even claimed that as a fellow alpha, it was my duty to join in with this shocking act of vampicide.
I tried to convince him to fight an honest and legal battle, but he was having none of it. He asked me to consider immortality for a moment. He said that at first it would be a blast. You could cross the road without looking, insult hard people and ignore the safety demonstrations on planes. But after a couple of centuries, the weariness would set in and you’d be craving oblivion.
He said that even though vampires might not admit it to themselves, the truth is they all want to die. That’s why they spend so long moping around in graveyards and listening to funeral dirges. He’ll be doing them a favour when he brings out the stakes. They’ll probably be flinging themselves on them and thanking him for ending their obscene existences.
I pretended that he’d convinced me, and vowed to continue my training at home. He’s getting so obsessed with his hatred for vampires that I doubt he’ll notice when I don’t come back.
Sunday 3RD June
I’m all packed and ready to set off for Southpool first thing tomorrow, but there’s something I need to do before I leave. The guilt of lying to Mum has finally caught up with me. I’m going to tell her the truth and I’m going to do it now. What if I end up getting killed by a vampire? She’ll never know what happened to me. This is the least I owe her.
Well, that didn’t work. I went into the living room and announced to Mum that I wanted to tell her about my true nature. Without waiting for another word, she hugged me and said she couldn’t be happier that I was gay. She said she couldn’t wait for us to go clothes shopping together and have a good old natter about men.
I told her that she’d got the wrong end of the stick entirely, so she asked what I wanted to tell her.
I tried to force out the words, ‘Mum, I’m a werewolf,’ but I just couldn’t. She’s been through so much since Dad left that I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that her only child is a throat-chomping monstrosity.
Instead, I told her that Chloe and I were in love and that we’d decided to go youth hostelling in Scotland together. She said she was very happy for me, and gave me twenty quid. I said I’d do my best to call her when I had reception.
After that I went to the cashpoint and took out all my birthday money, so overall I should have enough for the next week or so. I was going to save up for a new laptop, but I suppose I won’t need one if a full supernatural war kicks off and the world is plunged into medieval chaos, so this takes priority.
Monday 4TH June
I arrived in Southpool a couple of hours ago and Chloe was very pleased to see me. I suggested that we should share a room to save money, but she wasn’t keen on the idea, so I’ve booked into a single room.
It wasn’t very expensive anyway. It’s surprising how empty this town is in the height of summer. There must be no one at all here for the rest of the year.
Not that there’s very much to do. There are a couple of cafes, a couple of amusement arcades and a derelict fairground but that’s about it. The beach is nice, though the sea’s very brown.
Chloe just told me that Nigel has agreed to join our anti-war group. Apparently, he’s sailing here tomorrow in his dad’s fishing boat to help us plan our resistance activities.
I can’t believe I’m going to meet an actual vampire! I wonder if I’ll be freaked out. I’ve met so many werewolves now that you’d think I’d be used to the whole mythical creatures thing. But the idea of vampires, with their fangs and capes and pale skin, still gives me the collywobbles. I hope he doesn’t try and drink my blood. I’ve always hated injections, and I bet vampire bites are ten times worse.
We’re putting off the next meeting of the peace front until Nigel gets here, so I suppose this would be a good chance for some maths revision. I might draw up an agenda for tomorrow’s meeting first, though. You can’t be too prepared at times like this.
Tuesday 5TH June
Nigel arrived in Southpool just after lunch. He paid for a room in the bed and breakfast, even though he doesn’t really need one because he doesn’t sleep. He just thought it would help us look more like a casual group of school friends and less like a bunch of Scooby Doo villains.
I wasn’t freaked out at all when I finally met him. You’d never guess he was dead if you saw him walking down the str
eet. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt rather than a cape and he seemed to have normal teeth rather than fangs. He had pale skin, and his hand was really cold when I shook it, but he looked less like a vampire than most goths. Ryan had warned me that vampires smell of evil and decay when you meet them, but Nigel just smelled of Lynx Africa. (24)
I waited for him to speak in case his voice was seductive and mesmerizing, but our conversation was more awkward than hypnotic. I asked him if he’d had a good journey, and he said the sea had been fairly calm. Then he asked me about my train journey and I told him I’d missed my connection at Westchester and had to wait in Costa Coffee, but I didn’t mind because I got a sofa. As far as conversations between werewolves and vampires go, it probably wasn’t up there with the classics.
After that I broke the news to them about Ryan’s scheme to use wooden stakes on the third night of the battle. I think Nigel might have gone even paler than usual when I revealed this, though I can’t be sure. He then disclosed that Vlad was planning to use silver bullets on the final night of the battle. Nigel had pointed out that this would lead to full supernatural war, but Vlad had said he’d welcome a chance to prove vampire superiority once and for all.
It sounds like Ryan and Vlad deserve each other. I wish we could just arrange an arm wrestle between them so they could leave the rest of us to live in peace. But it’s all gone too far now. They’ve stoked up their armies, a battle is coming, ancient laws will be broken and the most deadly conflict of all will return, unless we act.
With this in mind, we moved onto the first point on my agenda, which was the renaming of the Werewolf Peace Front to reflect its new diversity. I liked ‘The Werewolf and Vampire Peace Front’ while Nigel preferred the ‘The Vampire and Werewolf Anti-War Movement’. In the end Chloe insisted we call ourselves ‘The Alliance of Peaceful Supernaturals’ and have done with it.
Looking back, this wasn’t a great use of our time, but it seemed incredibly important. Whenever I see politicians arguing on the TV, I get angry that they can’t put their differences aside and actually do something about the problems of the world, but now I see how easy it is to be distracted by trivial discussions. Even after we’d agreed that the movement’s new logo should be a werewolf and vampire shaking hands, it took us over an hour to agree which hand should appear on the left.
At one point in our discussion, I saw that Nigel’s teeth extend into fangs. He took a flask out of his bag and sipped from it, and they shrunk right back up again. I tried not to stare, but I couldn’t look away, like that time I saw a woman breastfeeding on the train.
I suppose Nigel must have human blood in his flask, which is pretty horrible. I know I eat live animals and everything, but sipping cold blood must be absolutely minging. I don’t even like tasting my own blood if I get a nosebleed.
Wednesday 6TH June
The Alliance of Peaceful Supernaturals reconvened early this morning to move on to the third point on my agenda, which was the election of president and treasurer. Chloe pointed out that we should probably jump ahead to point twenty-seven, preventing the battle, as the full moon was only two days away.
We both agreed and I got the ball rolling with the suggestion that we hide here in Southpool until the whole thing’s blown over. Nigel was very open to this, but Chloe said it was out of the question. If we allow the battle to go ahead, it could lead to a devastating war that could see the extinction of the vampire, werewolf and human races. Fine, I was just blue-sky thinking. It was supposed to be brainstorm, after all.
Next, Chloe suggested that we form a third army and declare war on both sides, forcing them to bond together to kill us. Nigel and I weren’t keen on this idea as it involved our brutal murder.
Then Nigel suggested we write down a list of our skills and think about how we could apply them to the problem, which I thought very sensible.
We had to discount strength and speed, as all vampires and werewolves have these, so they aren’t really an advantage. But I think we came up with a good plan using our other skills.
We’ll sail up to Hirta on Friday, and wait for both armies to gather. Then, just as they’re about to clash, we’ll run out into the middle of the battlefield carrying placards and loudhailers. Nigel will read out a poem about peace, Chloe will sing a new protest song, and I’ll give an impassioned speech entitled: ‘This house believes that war between werewolves and vampires is wrong.’
I’ll convince both sides of their fundamental similarities and shared values, so the wolves can return home and Vlad can withdraw his formal declaration of battle. Then everyone can shake hands and I’ll get back home with two full days to revise maths.
Now all I need to do is write a speech so powerful it makes these sworn enemies look upon each other as brothers. I can only hope that the debating skills that won me the regional trophy last year haven’t deserted me, because now the safety of the whole world is riding on them.
Thursday 7TH June
We were supposed to be preparing our contributions to the peace protest today, but Nigel called round to my room just after lunch to ask if I wanted to come to the arcade. He’d noticed that we’d both put computer games on our skills list and wanted to challenge me to a game of whatever they had. I was getting quite stuck with my speech, so I took him up on the offer.
It turned out to be one of those arcades with more gambling machines than games, but we managed to find one called Sega Rally. It was quite old, and the graphics were worse than the ones on my phone, but it was fun to race against Nigel. I thought I was good at games, but he sped off after just one lap, and got so many continues from one coin that the owner of the arcade came over to check the machine.
After that we tried Whack-a-Mole, where you had to hit these brown plastic things with a foam rubber hammer. I tried my hardest, but Nigel completely pwned me again, and got right to the top of the scoreboard on his first go. He won fifty tickets, although that wasn’t quite enough for a pencil topper. If even a creature with supernatural speed can’t win the Buzz Lightyear doll, you know it’s a rip-off.
I complained that I could have whacked a lot more moles in wolf form, but I could hardly do so in an arcade with so many CCTV cameras.
Nigel said that if we wanted a fairer comparison we should have a stone-throwing contest under the pier, where I’d be out of sight and free to transform. I thought this sounded like fun, so we made our way onto the seafront and under the rotten wooden structure.
Nigel picked up a huge rock and threw it out to sea. It flew right past the end of the pier and splashed into the sea like a depth charge. I went over to an even bigger rock and made myself transform.
As soon as I was in wolf form I forgot all about the rock. I couldn’t focus on anything but the foul undead monster standing next to me. Rather than a fifteen-year-old boy, Nigel now appeared as a decrepit old man with razor-sharp teeth, saggy white skin and soulless black eyes. And rather than Lynx Africa, he smelled of mouldy graveyards and rotting flesh. All my instincts told me to claw his head from his shoulders and rid the world of his hateful presence.
I shrank back into human form and told Nigel we should forget the contest as my back hurt. I might be liberal enough to accept vampires when I’m in human form, but as soon as I switch into primitive form, the old prejudices come right back out. It’s a bit like Uncle Derek when he’s had too many pints.
After that, we walked along the promenade and I chatted to Nigel about vampire life. He was only fifteen years old when he was transformed, but that was eighty-six years ago now, which means he’s actually 101. No wonder my wolf self thought there was something strange about him.
I tried asking Nigel what the Second World War and the swinging sixties were like, but he said they weren’t that different really. That’s not hard to believe around here. It looks like the last time anything got a fresh coat of paint was 1975.
Friday 8TH June
I’m writing this in the fishing boat on the way up to Hirta. It’s qui
te a small boat, with a cabin at the front, where the three of us are currently perching. There’s an open section behind where the fishing equipment should be, although the floor seems to be covered in flasks like the one Nigel was sipping from the other day. I’m guessing that what Nigel’s dad really uses this boat for is travelling over to the mainland and harvesting human blood. It’s pretty disgusting, but I don’t want to dwell on that right now. I want to focus on the positives about both our species so I can finish my speech.
We’ve been travelling on the open sea for ages now and we’re still nowhere near Hirta. It must be miles away from mainland Scotland. No wonder Ryan is so keen to win it back for the werewolves. You could do what you like out there and no humans would ever know. And if anyone curious ever ventured out, you could lock them in the basement and add them to the menu for the next full moon party.
No, I mustn’t think that way. I can triumph over my base instincts.
Nigel just asked me to fetch him a flask of type AB+ from the back, and when I couldn’t find one, he said he’d have to settle for type B+ instead. I found the idea that Nigel had a favourite flavour of blood especially horrible, but I tried not to let it show. Drinking human blood is part of his culture and I mustn’t judge him for it.
We can see the island now. On one side there’s a sheltered bay leading up to a large plain where the battle will be fought, and on the other side is the castle where the coven lives. There’s a graveyard at the back of the castle, which is weird because I thought vampires lived for ever. I hope they haven’t built it especially for us.
