by Darren Shan
“I’m not turning,” I grunt, angry at myself for being so scared. “It’s after ten.” I check my watch. “Hell, nearly eleven. The moon’s at the height of its powers. If I was going to change, it would have happened by now.”
But maybe it’s the start, a voice within me whispers, a voice I last heard in Slawter many months earlier—the voice of magic. Nobody changes overnight. It’s a gradual process, spread out over a few months. This could be the beginning of the end.
“Maybe,” I agree, refusing to panic. “But I’m not going to turn savage tonight. Nobody has anything to fear from me. So there’s no point dragging Dervish back.”
But if it’s the change… If your time as a human is limited…
“All the more reason to party hard while I can,” I laugh viciously, then make myself go downstairs, smile and act like everybody else—normal.
Midnight comes and goes. So do most of the guests, walking or cycling home, a few collected by their parents. By half past, only those who are sleeping over remain—Loch, Frank, Leon, Charlie, Robbie, Bill-E, Reni, Mary and a few others who’ve begged a bed for the night. (OK, I lied to Dervish about only boys staying, but what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him, right?)
“Do you want me to show you where you’ll be sleeping?” I ask, eager to wind the party down, still feeling sick.
“The hell with sleep,” Frank laughs. “Time for spin-the-bottle!”
While there are good-natured groans, nobody objects, so five minutes later we’re all in the largest of the party rooms, sitting in a nervous circle around an empty bottle. Lots of giggles, nervous looks, licking of lips. I do a quick head count—nine boys, four girls.
“How are we going to work this?” I ask Frank.
“We each take a turn spinning,” he says, rubbing his hands together eagerly. “When it points to a member of the opposite sex—hoobah!”
“But there’s more of us than them,” I object.
“So?” he frowns.
“Well… I mean… at least two of them are going to have to kiss more than one guy.” Worried about Reni kissing anyone other than me.
Frank laughs. “That’s how it works, moron. We all get plenty of action.”
“Only simple kisses,” Mary interjects. “No groping or tongues, not unless both want to. Clear?”
“Of course, of course!” Frank says quickly, leering.
“We mean it,” Reni says. “If one of you breaks the rules, that’s it, end of game, you all miss out.”
“OK,” Frank sighs, rolling his eyes. “We get the message. Now, who first?”
“It’s Grubbs’s party,” Loch says.
“That’s OK,” I cough, getting cold feet. “I think Bill-E should have first shot.”
“I second the motion,” Bill-E laughs, more at ease than I’ve seen him in a long time. He grabs the bottle and spins it madly. It turns… turns… turns…like it’s never going to stop. But finally it does—and it’s pointing at Reni.
Bill-E grins. “Sorry, amigo, but the bottle decides.”
I feel my temper rise as Bill-E and Reni meet in the middle of the circle to a series of whistles and crude remarks. The bile that’s been threatening to bubble over all night forces its way up my throat. But then Reni pecks him on the lips and they both sit down. I relax, swallow the vomit and grin greenly.
The game continues. Great laughs when one of the boys spins and it ends up pointing to another boy. Lewd giggles when that happens to the girls. Most of the kisses are like the first, quick pecks. But a few are stronger, where the pair are attracted to each other—Robbie and Mary, Leon and Nina Duffy.
I get to kiss Mary twice, Nina three times (“This is getting serious,” she says jokingly), before Reni finally spins and the bottle ends up pointing at me.
“Whoo-hoo!” Frank chortles.
“Touchdown!” Charlie cries.
“Easy, tiger,” Loch grunts, smiling tightly.
Reni and I stand and walk towards each other. Reni nudges the bottle out of the way with her left foot. We smile shakily. Then kiss.
Her lips are drier than I thought they’d be, but nice. My hands slide around her back and I lock my fingers together, careful not to hug too hard in case I crack her ribs. The kiss continues. Her lips move and mine follow—this is easier than I imagined. I don’t know why I was so nervous before. I could get used to this very quickly!
Lots of cheers and whistles. I drown them out, eyes closed, feeling so happy I could burst. A warm fire grows within me, burning away the feeling of sickness, spreading rapidly through my body, squeezing out of my pores like steam. I lose myself in the hot, hypnotic kiss, unaware of anything else.
Then gasps of amazement wreck the moment.
“What the—?”
“How the hell—?”
“Oh my god!”
My right eye opens an angry fraction—what’s everybody getting so worked up about? Then I spot it. The bottle, spinning again, but not on the ground—about a metre above the floor, suspended in mid-air, floating upwards as it spins.
The bottle rises smoothly. Everyone (with a single exception) is on their feet, backing away, alarmed. Reni realises something’s wrong. She breaks off the kiss, takes a step back, sees the bottle. Her expression freezes.
Bill-E’s the only one not moving. He’s staring at the bottle intently. I think for a second that he’s controlling it, using one of Dervish’s spells. I huff myself up to roar at him. But then I catch the alarm in his eyes and realise he’s trying to stop it. I’m the one making it rise.
The bottle reaches a point about half a metre above my head, then levels out. It’s spinning faster than ever, making a small whirring sound.
“What’s happening?” Robbie shouts. “Grubbs, are you doing this?”
I don’t answer. My gaze is on the bottle. Although it’s spinning too quickly for the eye to follow, I find that I can slow the action down. The world seems to go into slow-motion around me. People’s mouths move infinitely slowly. Words reach me as though dragged through a pipe from a long way away.
“Grrruuuubbbssssss! Whaaaaattttt’sss… goooiiiinnngggg oooonnnn?”
The bottle explodes and the world speeds up again. Shards of glass shoot at me, Reni, everybody in the room, at our faces and eyes. Instinctively I bark a word of magic. I don’t know what the word is or where it comes from. But it freezes the shards in place. They hang in mid-air, dozens of tiny pieces of glass, pointing at us like a flight of mini arrows.
“No way!” somebody shouts, more excited than afraid. My friends start lowering the hands which they’d instinctively raised to protect themselves.
Bill-E stares at the bits of glass—then at me. His eyebrows are furrowed. He knows this is magic but he can’t understand how I’m doing it. He saw me do more than this in Slawter, but that enclosed area was crackling with magical energy. Many of us could perform amazing feats there. In the real, normal world, he thought—like Dervish—that I had all the magical ability of a duck.
“Grubbs,” Reni says uncertainly, touching my right elbow. “Are you OK?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Do you know what’s happening?” Scared, looking for reassurance, gazing at the shard nearest her face, worried it might shoot forward again.
“Yes,” I smile. Without knowing how I’m doing any of this, I wave a hand at the glass and several pieces turn into flower petals, which drop slowly, beautifully to the floor. I wave my other hand and more shards turns into butterflies. They flap away, zoning in on the light overhead. One last wave and the rest of the glass is transformed, a mixture of butterflies and flowers.
I grab one of the falling petals and present it to Reni. “For you, my lady.”
Then everybody’s cheering, clapping my back, grabbing for petals and butterflies, demanding to know how the trick was performed.
Only Bill-E knows there was no trick. Only he realises this was real magic. And only he can possibly understand and share in my sense
of bewilderment and gut-stabbing fear.
Later. Everyone but Bill-E and me has gone to bed. I’m at the door of my room, still holding a petal. Bill-E’s facing me, eyes steady and serious. “How’d you do it?”
“Dervish has been teaching me.”
Bill-E shakes his head. “Bull. Dervish told me you don’t want to learn magic. He’s cool with that. But even if he was teaching you, that’s way beyond anything I’ve ever seen him do. Apart from in Slawter.” He looks around nervously. “Are demons breaking through? Did you tap into their power?”
“No. We’re safe here. Demons can’t cross in Carcery Vale.”
“Then how did you do it?” he presses. “Where did the magic come from?”
I shake my head miserably. “Forget about it. This doesn’t concern you.”
“I might be able to help if I—”
“I told you it’s none of your business!” Bill-E looks hurt and I feel sorry immediately. “It’s no big deal,” I lie. “This has been building up for a long time. I haven’t spoken with Dervish about it, but after tonight I guess I’ll have to.”
“This isn’t the first time it happened?” Bill-E asks.
“There have been signs but nothing this obvious.”
“Do you think…” He can hardly bring himself to say it. “Do you think you might be a magician?”
“No. Dervish would know if I was. But maybe I’ve got more potential than we thought. I might be a latent mage. If so, Dervish will know what to do.”
Bill-E nods, starts to leave, looks back. “You won’t be able to turn away from it anymore,” he says softly. “Magic, I mean. You’ll have to learn now, so you can control it. If you hadn’t been able to stop that glass tonight… if you hadn’t turned it into butterflies and flowers…”
“I know,” I sigh.
“You’ll really tell Dervish? You won’t try to keep it a secret?”
“I’ll tell him. I’m not a fool. I know what magic can do if it isn’t properly channelled. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Bill-E smiles, says goodnight and leaves.
I slip into my bedroom, lie on top of the covers fully clothed and stare at the ceiling, listening to my heart pound and my blood swoosh through my body, trying to make sense of whatever the hell is happening inside me.
Later. Slowly coming awake. Sluggishly realising I must have fallen asleep on top of the bed. Then I click to the fact I’m not on the bed anymore. I’m standing by the round stained-glass window in my bedroom, listening to howls outside. No, not outside—in here!
My head whips round in panic. Fully awake now. I can’t see anything in the room but I can hear the howls of a werewolf! Where is it? It must be close. It’s so loud. Where…?
With a jolt, I realise he’s in the glass in front of me. At least, his reflection is.
My face is darker than earlier. A wicked glint to my eyes. Lips pulled back over my teeth. Raising a hand, I see that my fingers are curling inwards, claw-like. I start to howl again, stepping into the coloured rays of the moon.
I stop. Focusing on my reflection, I feel the same warmth that I felt when I was kissing Reni, just before the bottle started to rise. I study my face, the sharp lines, the wild eyes. Directing the warmth towards it, I wish the mask away, wanting my normal face back, telling this vision of a man-wolf to go.
And it does. Even though it shouldn’t, my skin resumes its ordinary shape and colour. My lips droop back down over my teeth. My fingers unclench. The howl dies in my throat and becomes a dry cough.
Moments later I’m me again, standing by the window, bathed by the tinted light of a moon which for some reason is no longer affecting me. The warmth is still there. I hold on to it like a security blanket, take it to bed with me and sustain it, keeping it alive through the rest of the long, weary night, too terrified to close my eyes, afraid of what I might turn into if I drop my guard and give myself over to unprotected sleep.
TREASURE HUNT
I sneak a few hours of shut-eye post-dawn, when the sun’s chased the moon off and I’m safe. But it’s an uneasy sleep, filled with nightmares of werewolves and a body in revolt. I imagine myself doing awful things, causing chaos. Only it’s not entirely me. It’s a beast with my shape and form, but with a twisted face, fangs instead of teeth, claws instead of nails, blood-soaked hair.
Grubbs Grady—monster extraordinaire.
When I stumble down the stairs a little after noon, most of the cleaning has been taken care of. Loch tells me Reni had them all up at ten and working like demons. (His choice of phrase is unfortunate.) She had to leave at eleven but left him in charge to make sure nobody slacked off.
“That was some trick you pulled,” Leon says, sweeping up petals from the living room floor. “I’d love to know how you did it.”
“It was magic,” Charlie says, shooing a butterfly out through an open window.
“A magic trick,” Leon corrects him.
“No, real magic,” Charlie insists. “It was, wasn’t it, Grubbs? I’ve seen the books lying around, about wizards, witches and wotnots. It was real magic, right?”
“No.” I force a thin smile. “Just a trick. There’s no such thing as real magic.”
“But the books—” Charlie exclaims.
“—are just books,” I finish tiredly, then go see what state the kitchen’s in.
As I’m leaving, I hear Leon mutter, “Magic! You’re a real ass sometimes.”
“I don’t care what he says,” Charlie sulks. “I know what I saw. It was real magic. I’d bet a million jelly beans on it.
When everything’s as clean as we can get it, my friends say goodbye and make their way home to recover before school on Monday. Bill-E and Loch stay on—they’ve arranged to spend the day here. Bill-E waits till Loch’s in the toilet, then asks how I’m feeling.
“Fine,” I lie as my brain throbs with a splitting headache and my stomach gives a sickly rumble.
“I heard howling last night,” Bill-E says. “After we’d gone to bed. It woke me. A few others too. There was some talk of it this morning but not much—most people were still trying to figure out how you pulled off the trick with the bottle.”
I grunt, saying nothing.
“Grubbs,” Bill-E says hesitantly, “I know we’ve never discussed the family curse. You filled me in on the basics in Slawter, but you’ve never offered more information and I haven’t pushed.”
For a long time Bill-E thought Dervish was the one who’d almost changed into a werewolf. I finally told him the truth in Slawter, neglecting only the part about Dervish being his uncle, not his father. I’ve never told Bill-E that we share the same dad. I want to, but he feels a special bond with Dervish, believing him to be his real father. I’ve never had the heart to shatter his illusion.
“Well,” Bill-E continues after an uncomfortable pause, “I know I almost turned into a werewolf and that you and Dervish saved me. You faced Lord Loss and won back my humanity. But is the cure definitely permanent?”
“Yes.”
“I’m safe? For certain?”
“One hundred per cent,” I smile.
“What about…?” He hesitates again. “Your magic… the howling… Are you safe too?”
I don’t answer for a second. Then, quietly, I lie. “Yes.”
“I won’t have to lock you up in the cage in the secret cellar?”
“No,” I laugh edgily. I hate that cellar. I’ve only been there once since we defeated Lord Loss, when Dervish’s nightmares were threatening to destroy his sanity. “I’m fine. That wasn’t me howling. Probably just a big dog that got loose. Now stop worrying—you’re getting on my nerves.”
Loch returns, wiping his hands dry on his trousers, and the questions stop, though I sense Bill-E doesn’t fully believe me. He knows something’s wrong, that I’m not coming clean. But he doesn’t suspect the worst or anything near it. He trusts me. Thinks of me as his closest friend. Doesn’t believe I’d lie point-blank to him about something th
is serious.
How little he knows.
A long, anticlimactic Sunday. Lounging around the house, all three of us bored, flicking through TV channels in search of something decent to watch, sticking CDs on, turning them off just a few tracks in. Loch makes cutting remarks about Bill-E, winding him up. I worry about lycanthropy and magic.
“This is crap,” Loch mutters, switching the TV and CD player to stand-by. He jumps up and rubs his hands together. “Let’s wrestle.”
“I’m not in the mood.”
“C’mon!”he prods, slapping my face lightly, trying to sting me into action.
“No,” I yawn.
Loch scowls, then switches his attention to Bill-E. “How about you, Spleenio?” He grabs the shorter boy by the waist and swings him round.
“Let go!” Bill-E shouts, kicking out.
“We’ve got a live one,” Loch laughs. He throws Bill-E to the ground, then falls on him and starts to tickle.
“No!” Bill-E gasps, face red, slapping at Loch like a girl, half-laughing from the tickling, half-crying.
“Leave him alone,” I mutter angrily—the noise is worsening my headache.
Loch stops and stands. “Sorry, Bill-E,” he says. “Let me help you up.” He lowers his right hand. Bill-E reaches for it and Loch whips the hand away. “You’re the sultan of suckers, Spleen,” he chortles, strolling towards the kitchen, shaking his head with amused disgust.
Bill-E glares daggers at Loch, then at me. “Gossel’s scum,” he hisses. “I don’t care if he is your new best friend. He’s the scum of the earth. Shame on you for hanging out with him.”
“Don’t take it out on me,” I snap. “You want to get Loch off your back? Then face him like a man, not a little girl. He bullies you because you let him.”
“No, he bullies me because he’s a bully,” Bill-E retorts, furious tears in his eyes.
I shrug, too exhausted and sore-headed to argue. “Whatever.”
Loch returns and Bill-E shuts up, but he glowers like an old man whose pipe’s been stolen, then storms off and returns with his coat.
“Going home?” I ask as he buttons it up.
