The Vampire’s Assistant. Darren Shan
vampires only age one), but without human blood, we age even quicker than humans, maybe twenty or thirty years in the space of a year or two. As a half-vampire, who aged at a fifth the human rate, I didn’t have to drink as much human blood as Mr Crepsley – but I would have to drink some to live.
The blood of animals – dogs, cows, sheep – keeps vampires ticking over, but there are some animals they – we – can’t drink from: cats, for instance. If a vampire drinks a cat’s blood, he might as well pour poison down his throat. We also can’t drink from monkeys, frogs, most fish and snakes.
Mr Crepsley hadn’t told me the names of all the dangerous animals. There were loads, and it would take time to learn which were safe and which weren’t. His advice was to always ask before I tried something new.
Vampires had to feed on humans once a month or so. Most feasted once a week. That way, they didn’t have to take much blood. If you only fed once a month, you had to drink a lot of blood in one go.
Mr Crepsley said it was dangerous to go too long without drinking. He said the thirst could make you drink more than you meant to, and you were likely to end up killing the person you drank from.
“A vampire who sups frequently can control himself,” he said. “One who drinks only when he must will end up sucking wildly. The hunger inside us must be fed to be controlled.”
Fresh blood was best. If you drank from a living human, the blood was full of goodness and you didn’t need to take very much. But blood began to go sour when a person died. If you drank from a dead body, you had to drink a lot more.
“The general rule is, never drink from a person who has been dead more than a day,” Mr Crepsley explained.
“How will I know how long a person’s been dead?” I asked.
“The taste of the blood,” he said. “You will learn to tell good blood from bad. Bad blood is like sour milk, only worse.”
“Is drinking bad blood dangerous?” I asked.
“Yes. It will sicken you, maybe turn you mad or even kill you.”
Brrrr!
We could bottle fresh blood and keep it for as long as we liked, for use in emergencies. Mr Crepsley had several bottles of blood stored in his cloak. He sometimes had one with a meal, as if it was a small bottle of wine.
“Could you survive on bottled blood alone?” I asked one night.
“For a while,” he said. “But not in the long run.”
“How do you bottle it?” I asked curiously, examining one of the glass bottles. It was like a test-tube, only the glass was slightly darker and thicker.
“It is tricky,” he said. “I will show you how it is done, the next time I am filling up.”
Blood …
It was what I needed most, but also what I feared most. If I drank a human’s blood, there was no going back. I’d be a vampire for life. If I avoided it, I might become a human again. Perhaps the vampire blood in my veins would wear out. Maybe I wouldn’t die. Maybe only the vampire in me would die, and then I could return home to my family and friends.
It wasn’t much of a hope – Mr Crepsley had said it was impossible to become human again, and I believed him – but it was the only dream I had to cling to.
CHAPTER FIVE
DAYS AND nights passed, and we moved on. We wandered from towns to villages to cities. I wasn’t getting on very well with Mr Crepsley. Nice as he was, I couldn’t forget that he was the one who’d pumped vampire blood into my veins and made it impossible for me to stay with my family.
I hated him. Sometimes, during the day, I’d think about driving a stake through his heart while he was sleeping, and hitting off on my own. I might have, too, except I knew I couldn’t survive without him. For the moment I needed Larten Crepsley. But when the day came that I could look after myself …
I was in charge of Madam Octa. I had to find food for her and exercise her and clean out her cage. I didn’t want to – I hated the spider almost as much as I hated the vampire – but Mr Crepsley said I was the one who’d stolen her, so I could look after her.
I practised a few tricks with her every now and then, but my heart wasn’t in it. She didn’t interest me any more and as the weeks passed I played with her less and less.
The one good thing about being on the road was being able to visit loads of places I hadn’t been before, seeing all sorts of sights. I loved travelling. But, since we travelled at night, I didn’t get to see much of our surroundings!
One day, while Mr Crepsley was sleeping, I got tired of being indoors. I left a note on the TV, in case I wasn’t back when he woke, then set off. I had very little money, and no idea where I would go, but that didn’t matter. Just getting out of the hotel and spending some time by myself was wonderful.
It was a large town but fairly quiet. I checked out a few toy stores and played some free computer games in them. I’d never been very good on computers before, but with my new reflexes and skills, I was able to do pretty much anything I wanted.
I raced through levels of speed games, knocked out every opponent in martial arts tournaments, and zapped all the aliens from the skies in sci-fi adventures.
After that I toured the town. There were plenty of fountains and statues and parks and museums, all of which I examined with interest. But going around the museums reminded me of Mum – she loved taking me to museums – and that upset me: I always felt lonely and miserable when I thought of Mum, Dad or Annie.
I spotted a group of boys my age playing hockey on a tarmac quad. There were eight players on each side. Most had plastic sticks, though a few had wooden ones. They were using an old white tennis ball as a puck.
I stopped to watch and, after a few minutes, one of the boys came to size me up.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Out of town,” I said. “I’m staying at a hotel with my father.” I hated calling Mr Crepsley that but it was the safest thing to say.
“He’s from out of town,” the boy called back to his mates, who had stopped playing.
“Is he part of the Addams Family?” one of them shouted back, and they all laughed.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, offended.
“Have you looked at yourself in a mirror lately?” the boy said.
I glanced down at my dusty suit and knew why they were laughing: I looked like something out of Oliver Twist.
“I lost the bag with my normal clothes,” I lied. “These are all I have. I’m getting new stuff soon.”
“You’d want to,” the boy smiled, then asked if I could play hockey. When I said I could, he invited me to play with them.
“You can be on my team,” he said, handing me a spare stick. “We’re six-two down. My name’s Michael.”
“Darren,” I said in reply, testing the stick.
I rolled up the legs of my trousers and checked my laces were tied properly. While I was doing that, the opposition scored another goal. Michael cursed loudly and dragged the ball back to the centre.
“You want to help touch-off?” he asked me.
“Sure.”
“Come on, then,” he said, tapped the ball to me and moved ahead, waiting for me to pass back.
It had been a long time since I’d played hockey – at school,