Birth of a Killer. Darren Shan
whispered. “You can’t help him. He’s dead.”
Traz cocked an eyebrow at Larten and laughed. “Help him? Didn’t you hear me? I’m going to hang him from a hook and teach you all a lesson.”
Larten gawped at the burly foreman.
“Go home to your father,” Traz huffed. “Tell him he’s lucky I let you live. I could have killed you too for attacking me. But because I’m a merciful man, I’m letting you go.”
Larten didn’t move. He had been crying, but the tears dried up now and a cold fire ignited at the back of his eyes.
“Go on,” Traz said, picking up Vur and slinging him over a shoulder as if he was a sack of cocoons. “You can have the afternoon off. But be back here first thing tomorrow. And tell your father he can pick this one up on Friday — I want to hang him for a few days like a pheasant.”
As Traz turned away, Larten calmly picked something off the floor. He would never remember what he’d grabbed. The area was littered with every sort of cast-off — nails, old spools, broken knives and more. All he knew was that it was sharp and cool, and it fitted perfectly into his small, trembling hand.
“Traz,” Larten said with surprising softness. If he’d screamed, maybe the foreman would have sensed danger and jerked aside. As it was, Traz simply paused and looked back, half smiling the way he would if an old friend hailed him in a park on a Sunday.
Larten stepped forward and drove his hand up. The boy’s eyes were flat, as devoid of expression as Vur’s, but his mouth was twisted into a dark, leering grin, as something vile and inhuman inside him rejoiced at being set free.
When Larten lowered his hand, whatever he’d picked up was no longer in his palm. The object was now buried deep in Traz’s throat.
Traz stared at Larten through a pair of wide, bulging eyes. He didn’t drop Vur. Indeed, his grip on the boy tightened. With his free hand he tried to pull out the object that was stuck in his windpipe. But there was no strength in his fingers and the flesh around his neck was slippery with blood. His arm fell by his side. He opened his mouth and tried to say something, but only blood gurgled out.
Still staring at Larten, Traz fell to his knees, swayed for a moment, then slumped. He lost hold of Vur and the boy’s body rolled away from him.
The silence in the room was more frightening than any bellow of Traz’s had ever been. The children were transfixed. Vur’s death had been unexpected, but it hardly counted as a cataclysmic event in this factory of misery. But the slaying of Traz had shaken their world to its core. Nothing could be the same after this.
Larten licked his lips and began to lean forward. The hateful thing inside him wanted to retrieve the object from Traz’s throat and use it to stab out the dead foreman’s eyes. But as his fingers stretched out before him, he shuddered and blinked, then took a step backwards, shocked by what he had done and had been planning to do.
Feeling sick and bewildered, Larten took a couple more steps away. As he was backing up, his gaze flickered from Traz to Vur, and realisation of what he’d done struck him like a lightning bolt. He had killed a man. And not just any man, but Traz, the darling of the owners. Nobody in the neighbourhood liked Traz, but he had been respected. Larten would have to answer for the foreman’s death, and he knew what form that answer would take — a carefully knotted hangman’s noose.
Larten didn’t try to appeal to the other children, to ask them for help or to lie on his behalf. They owed him nothing. If they stood by his side or tried to hide his identity, they would suffer too.
Turning wildly, fighting against a wave of bile, Larten searched desperately for the door — he had become disoriented and didn’t know where it was. As soon as he sighted it, he ran for his life.
As if the children had been waiting for this signal, one of them raised a finger, pointed at the fleeing boy and screeched, “Murderer!”
Within seconds they were all screaming Larten’s name, pointing, howling like banshees. But they did nothing except scream. No one tried to follow him. There was no need. Others would take care of that. A full, fearsome mob of righteous executioners would soon be hot on Larten’s trail, each member of the pack eager to be the first to string up the cold-blooded, orange-haired killer.
CHAPTER FIVE
Larten ran without any real sense of direction. He hadn’t explored much of the city beyond his own neighbourhood, but he knew every last inch of the area around the factory, all the alleys, roads, ruins and hiding places. If he had been thinking straight, he could have slipped away quickly and cleanly, or found a spot where he could hide until night.
But Larten was in a panic. His best friend had been murdered in front of him and he’d killed a man in response. His heart was pounding and he fell often, scraping his legs and hands. His head was a bedlam of noise and terror, his only clear thought, “Run!”
If a mob had formed swiftly, they would have found Larten flailing around the streets outside the factory, losing his way and backtracking, an easy target. But the adults who answered the calls of the children were thunderstruck. They pressed the witnesses for detailed descriptions of Traz’s last moments. If anyone had thought to give chase, others would have immediately joined them. But in the chaos, everyone assumed that a group was already in pursuit of the boy, so precious minutes passed without anybody making a move.
Outside, Larten had turned down a dead-end alley. He was looking behind him for pursuers, so he ran into a wall and fell with a cry. As he picked himself up and rubbed his head, he spotted a girl no more than four or five, sitting on a step and studying him.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Larten shook his head.
“You’re hurt,” the girl said.
Larten didn’t know what she was talking about. When she pointed at his head, he rubbed it again, looked at his fingers and saw that he was bleeding. Now that he was aware of his wound, pain kicked in and he grimaced.
“My mummy can fix you,” the girl said. “She fixes me when I get hurt.”
“That’s all right,” Larten croaked. “I’ll be fine.”
“She gives me a cup of tea with sugar,” the girl said. “Sugar,” she repeated boastfully. “Have you ever had sugar?”
“No,” Larten said.
“It’s lovely,” she whispered.
Larten stared around. The worst of the panic had passed. He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t feel so afraid any more. He was still a long way from normal, yet he began thinking of what he should do and where he could go. He had to get away quickly, but he’d only be able to do that if he held his nerve.
“Thank you,” he said to the girl and headed back up the alley.
“For what?” the girl asked.
“Calming me down.”
She giggled. “You’re silly. Come back and play.”
But Larten had no time to waste on play. There was only one game of any interest to him now — beat the hangman.
From the alley he took a right turn and had soon left behind the neighbourhood where he’d spent all his life. Though he wasn’t sure of the surrounding area, he had a vague idea of the shape of the city and moved in an eastern direction. That was his quickest route to the outskirts. He didn’t run, but walked briskly, head down, not making eye contact with anyone.
Nobody paid attention to the thin, dirty, bloodied, trembling boy. The city was full of lost, wounded strays just like him.
At the factory, someone finally asked what had become of Traz’s killer. When people realised the boy had escaped without even a half-hearted challenge, they were outraged — nobody had liked Traz, but a rebellious brat like Larten Crepsley couldn’t be allowed to stab