Creatures

by B. V. Larson

  “I want to know what’s going on,” I whispered to her.

  “If it’s Urdo, she’ll hear us or smell us or something.”

  I blinked in the dark, knowing she could be right. There was more jingling. Someone was fumbling for the right key. At least there was no sign they had any light or any desire to turn one on.

  I broke out of my cover and went to the last window. The moonlight warmed my hands, just slightly.

  I strained and the window crunched open. It was partly frozen shut and didn’t open easily. I trotted back to Beth and yanked her scarf from around her neck. Her hand jumped to her neck, but she didn’t complain.

  I ran back to the window and reached outside, shoving the snow around. Then I tossed Beth’s scarf out on the roof a few feet away. Feeling I had only seconds to spare, I scooted back to our hiding place and fought to control my wild breathing.

  We waited, but not for long before the hallway door clicked and swung open on squealing hinges. We felt the figure approach, but couldn’t see it hidden as we were behind the curtain. It came quietly, almost soundlessly. Still, it seemed like I could feel someone approaching, somehow.

  There was a crack at the bottom of the curtain and a shadow fell over the narrow slice of the floor that I could see. I held my breath. Beth squeezed my hand very hard.

  There was a scraping sound at the window sill. I dared to hope the bait had been taken.

  Then we heard another door open, perhaps at the other end of the hall. Boots stepped firmly toward us. This step I knew. I knew the creaking of those black boots. It was Urdo, it had to be.

  I almost gave up then. I almost opened up the curtains and threw myself on their mercy. I was just a bad kid and I deserved my punishment. But something forced me to hold back. I think it was my thoughts of Beth. I owed it to her to get her out of this.

  “Who approaches me so confidently in my own house?” said the stranger. The voice was deep and it resonated through the room. It was accented strangely.

  “It is Urdo, milord, Daughter of Seth and Ralen.”

  “Ah, granddaughter,” said the voice in a softer tone. “I knew your parents well and I will miss them. The family blood was strong in them.”

  “Thank you, Grandfather.”

  There was a quiet moment, and I wondered if they were shaking hands or hugging. I realized my eyes were squinched tightly shut. Beth was digging her nails into my palm, which was hot and sweaty because we were holding hands so tightly. We both knew now that Vater was less than ten feet away from us.

  “I wish I could say the same for the rest of this sprawling brood. There are far too many half-breeds. The bloodlines have grown faint. Many have been taking mundanes as mates-”

  “-but milord-” Urdo protested.

  “No,” he stopped her. “No excuses. Perhaps it is all my fault. In any case. I’ve been gone for far too long. There will have to be a purge.”

  I heard him force the window open further. I imagined he was scanning the vast frosted roof. “Still,” he said, as he brushed snow about. “Not all of them are weak. Look at this!” he gave a strange laugh.

  “Interesting,” said Urdo.

  I chewed my lip, not liking the sound of her response. I thought right away that she might have a clue who had done it.

  “Imagine, trying to slip away from me in my own house. The cheek of it!”

  “I’m sorry, milord.”

  “Oh no,” he said, suddenly serious. “No, no. Don’t be sorry, be proud. As the good emperor Fredrick often said: ‘Audacity is the rarest of traits to be found amongst the weak!’ There’s a spark of my spirit here, and it’s good to see.”

  “I’m glad you approve.”

  “Indeed, perhaps you’ve not failed completely. I’m going to my suite now, I’m weary after my journey. I do trust you’ve kept it in good order in anticipation of my return?”

  “Of course,” said Urdo. Her voice was smooth again.

  Vater’s footsteps faded away. But Urdo simply stood there. We waited, but she made no move to leave.

  “Your hearts are pounding like drums in my ears,” she said finally.

  I didn’t know what to do, but I felt my stomach falling away in a deep hole. We’d been discovered. Worse, we were trapped in this alcove with nowhere to run.

  There was a pause. I waited for the curtains to be yanked back, but it didn’t happen.

  “You’d best be getting back to your rooms now, children,” Urdo said at last. Her bootsteps moved away rhythmically.

  Beth and I let out a long sigh of breath like swimmers coming up for air after a long trip to the bottom of a lake. We drew the curtain open, half-expecting to see them standing there, having tricked us somehow, but the passage was empty. We ran all the way back to the attic access and down the ladder to our rooms. We didn’t even bother putting the stairs back up. What was the point?

  That night, I laid awake for a long time listening to Chris Anderson’s snoring. I went over everything in my mind. What did it all mean? Things seemed so complicated now. I’d expected an old man’s birthday party, not anything like this.

  And what exactly had he meant by a purge?

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Secrets

  “I’ve been thinking,” I said in a hushed the voice to Jake the next morning over breakfast. “I’ve been thinking a lot.”

  “Uh-oh. You’re going to ruin this lovely breakfast, aren’t you?” said Jake. He said it around the strip of crispy bacon in his mouth. It was a heavy breakfast, and seemed unusual to me since I was used to just getting a bowl of cereal in the morning. We had thick bacon slices and scrambled eggs with lots of cheese baked in. I didn’t really like it that way, but it tasted okay if you put the eggs on drippy buttered toast. My mother would have called this breakfast a “heart-stopper”.

  “Do you want me to tell you what I saw up there or not?” I asked him seriously.

  Jake looked at me with raised eyebrows. His expression was a mixture of curiosity and resignation. We both knew I was going to tell him anyway.

  “I saw Vater, or at least I heard him,” I said.

  Jake looked at me and pushed the rest of the bacon into his mouth. He eyed me for a few seconds, probably trying to figure out if I was joking or not. “Okay,” he said finally. “You’ve got me. Spill it all.”

  So I did. While we munched on that heavy, heart-stopper breakfast I filled him in on the whole story.

  “Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

  “You were snoring when I got back. Louder than Chris Anderson, even. Besides, I had to think about what I was going to tell you.”

  “A purge?” whispered Jake. “What does that mean? Isn’t that what adults call vomiting sometimes? I don’t like the sound of that.”

  I shrugged.

  “So, they are going to run us losers out of town, or kill us all and bury us in the woods, eh?” said Jake, chuckling.

  I shrugged again.

  Jake eyed me. “That’s not what you’re really thinking is it?”

  “He wanted just our class to come here, just the youngest newest generation who are going through the change. He wants to see how strong we are.”

  “So?” asked Jake. He fished a bagel out of the basket in the center of the table and slathered it with cream cheese. “Maybe he’s a Hussades fan. Maybe he’ll have us all run the course to prove who’s good and give us a medal.”

  “Maybe you ought to slow down on the food if we are going to be running for our lives later today.”

  He looked at me with a frown, took just one bite of the bagel then stared at it for a moment and put it down on his plate. It was perhaps the first time I’d ever seen food left on his plate.

  As we were finishing up, Beth finally showed up and joined us.

  “Uh-oh,” said Jake, catching sight of the big frown on her face. “More doom and gloom from your partner in crime here, eh?”

  He picked up the bagel on his plate again, and seemed to be thi
nking about the next bite.

  “I’ve been in the library. They’ve got a computer in there hooked to the Internet.”

  “What’d you find out?” I asked her.

  “It’s not good. Purges are never good things in history. I checked into the web browser history to see what people have been looking up on that machine. I read some disturbing things. Have you guys ever heard of Vlad the Impaler?”

  Jake and I both shifted in our seats. Jake put his bagel down again.

  “Oh, don’t tell me!” she said, staring.

  Jake and I didn’t meet her eyes. “Don’t talk about him with the adults,” I told her.

  “He’s like a relative or something, isn’t he?” she hissed. “You have got to be kidding me! I thought you said you were from Switzerland not Transylvania.”

  I shushed her with my hand. “Look,” I told her, glancing around nervously. “It’s something we learn about in history class, but are told never to bring it up with others. Keep it down.”

  “Oh geez,” she said, putting her face in her hands. “Okay, so at least tell me that Vater isn’t Vlad. I mean, the things I read…”

  “No, no,” I said urgently. “Nothing like that. Look, don’t you have some cousins somewhere that you aren’t proud of? Someone in the distant family that is famous, but not in a good way? Someone who went to jail or something?”

  “Yeah,” she answered slowly. “There’s my Uncle Bobby. I think he forged checks or something.”

  “Well, it’s the same way for us. There are bad cousins in every family. We don’t associate with their sort. We might have some distant connection, but we don’t get along and haven’t for centuries.”

  Her mouth hung open while she flicked her eyes back and forth between the two of us. “Let me get this straight now, you guys are talking about vampires aren’t you? Because Vlad the Impaler, a real guy in history, was thought by some to be a vampire.”

  I felt like clamping my hand over her mouth. Instead I reached over and grabbed her shoulder and pulled her close and whispered in her ear. “Don’t use that word out loud, not ever. That’s not a good word around here.”

  “What? Vampire?”

  I winced.

  “That’s a very rude word,” said Jake. “It’s like a dirty word for us.”

  She looked at me with wide eyes, an open mouth and curled lips. She was very pretty even when alarmed, and she smelled good up close to me like that.

  “Okay…” she said.

  I felt eyes on us and turned to see Sarah two tables away. She had been watching Beth and me closely. From her point of view, it might have looked like I’d grabbed Beth and kissed her cheek. I felt a flush of red go up my face and gave Sarah a weak smile and a nod. I let go of Beth and took up another piece of bacon, even though eating was the very last thing on my mind. Sarah gave me a frosty stare in return. She tossed her head and her ponytail-like spray of hair flipped behind her head. I thought I saw a blue feather float away from her head, a sure sign she was upset.

  “Okay,” said Beth finally. “Maybe that explains why there were searches about, um, Vlad on the computer.”

  Neither one of us looked at her. We’d learned the history of Vlad Dracula, a lord who lived in the 1400s in Europe. He’d been an evil and terrible man.

  “But you guys aren’t telling me the whole story, are you?” asked Beth, leaning close so that only the three of us could hear. “He’s related to you somehow… So that’s why you feel the moonlight. That’s why it almost burns your skin.”

  I took this moment to look up at Sarah again. Sarah jerked her eyes away from me the moment I looked up, pretending she hadn’t been staring.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I put as much innocence in the question as I could.

  “Because you guys are like werewolves or something.”

  Jake dropped his fork.

  It was all I could do to not grab Beth’s pretty little head again. I leaned close to her instead, and whispered. “The word werewolf is even more offensive to us than the word vampire.”

  She nodded and gave me a tiny smile. “Okay. Makes sense, I suppose. No one likes to be reminded of distant relatives that did very bad things.”

  My eyes slid back to Sarah, who was staring back, but trying not to look like she was staring back.

  I realized right then that having two girlfriends was worse than having just one and probably worse than having none at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The Game

  We were finishing up breakfast when a chime went off and Urdo walked into the dining room. Everyone stopped their chatter. She hopped onto the table and walked calmly to the middle of it, her boots causing plates to slide and clatter.

  “There will be an assembly to meet the lord of the house in the great hall at ten am sharp. Do not be late, children,” she said.

  She hopped from the table to the floor with a single flap of her arms, which I noticed for the first time had become folded wings under her cloak. Everyone gasped, it was rare to see any adult shift in front of us.

  Urdo walked out of the dining room without giving us so much as a nod. When she had gone, everyone fell to whisperings and wild speculation.

  “I’ve heard he’s a bird-type too,” said one voice, I thought it was Sarah’s. “She’s showing off her wings to impress him later.”

  “They’ve rounded us all up here for a reason,” said another voice. “We’re all to get awards. We’re the best crop of shifters Vater’s ever seen.”

  One word kept coming up in a constant, bubbling fashion, always spoken with reverence and in a hushed tone: “ Vater. ”

  Beth and I exchanged glances. Jake caught the gesture.

  “What do you guys think will happen?” he asked.

  “He said something about a purge,” said Beth.

  “A purge? ” questioned Jake. “That doesn’t sound positive.”

  We agreed. By the time lunch had ended we were all in a tight huddle, discussing what we could do about it. Really, there wasn’t much to be said. We did determine we should be among the early birds at the meeting.

  When the assembly time approached, all of us were there ten minutes early. Even Danny and Thomas looked concerned and attentive, although Danny took the occasion to rub his nose with his middle finger after catching my eye. I returned the subtle gesture with one of my own.

  “I taught him that one,” I said to Beth, who watched our interplay. “He’s a slow learner, but he shows promise.”

  Beth grimaced at me, unimpressed. Jake gave a hoot of laughter.

  All of our messing about was cut off suddenly, as Urdo entered the room followed by Waldheim, who flipped at his clothes and wrapped his hands together as if he didn’t know what to do with them. It had to be the first time I’d ever seen Waldheim look nervous about anything.

  The last figure strode in behind the other two. He was tall with broad shoulders. His hair was dark and wild-looking. I’d expected an old man, but he didn’t look particularly old. There was an odd light in his eyes as he slid them over the group. Those glinting, intelligent eyes seemed unusual. They were the eyes of a nocturnal animal, the eyes of a creature you might see watching your campfire in the woods at night.

  He stood while everyone else was seated. He put his hands on his hips like I’d seen Urdo do countless times. Perhaps this was part of the family heritage, a swaggering posture.

  “Children,” he said a deep, resonating voice. I heard his accent from the very first word. “Your principal has told me everything about you. And I do mean, everything,” he eyed us all to let that sink in. We shifted in our seats. Somehow, he didn’t make you feel at ease. It was like watching a tiger behind glass at the zoo. He made you feel as though he might be hungry, and you might just look like dinner.

  “At this moment you are to be judged. By me. I will warn you, that most fail to meet my standards. Many of you might be thinking of how to explain yourselves. Excuses for mistakes, guilty secre
ts and other nonsense. Strike those thoughts bubbling in your minds! Excuses are worse than nothing on this day.”

  Jake looked at me and I gave him the tiniest shrug. Whatever we’d both expected, this wasn’t it.

  We turned our attention back to Vater, and were shocked to see him approaching us. There was an angry hunch to his shoulders. His brows beetled and his teeth showed in a snarl.

  “You boys!” he said. With two incredibly long arms that ended in strong overly-large hands, he reached out and took us each by a shoulder. He drew us forward into the center of the floor. “Exactly, just so,” he said, as if speaking to himself.

  He lowered his face to look at each of us in turn. His voice and demeanor softened suddenly, becoming almost gentle, but I knew he wasn’t in a gentle mood.

  “Perhaps, boys, I’ve bored you?” he asked. His breath puffed out into my face smelling faintly of coffee. “Perhaps I owe you two an apology?”

  “No sir,” we both stammered out at the same moment.

  “No?” he asked, almost sweetly. The large hand on my shoulder became very heavy and the fingers sunk into my flesh. He looked first into my eyes, then Jake’s. Jake winced. I stood firm, staring back at him.

  He nodded at me and pushed Jake. Jake fell to his knees. I thought maybe he would cry, and reached out my hand toward him. I glared at Vater, who watched me closely. I managed to control my expression and make my anger vanish, but it was too late. He’d noted it.

  “I see,” he said, releasing me. He stepped forward away from Jake and I, we were now behind him, forgotten. I helped Jake to his feet.

  Vater approached the other children. He eyed them carefully. I looked at them, trying to see what he might see.

  “Children,” said Vater, his voice filled with the infinite patience of a parent that has caught naughty kids for the hundredth time. “We are going to play a game today. A very serious game. The world is a harsh place for our kind. One weak link is all it takes to break a chain, you see.”