My uncle was right. Some truths could not be ignored. Not when they rolled over you like the dinner trolley.
I was a vampire. How could I have not known? It was the only thing that made sense. I couldn’t go out in the sun. I needed fresh blood every few months. My body didn’t like food. It made me wonder what Nurse Ophelia had been putting into those brain cocktails. I began to doubt it was strawberry syrup.
It also made me wonder how much of this she knew. I probably should have asked my uncle about it, but another thought had come to mind—something of much greater concern. After all, this man was a vampire hunter.
“Are you here to kill me?” I asked.
He smiled. His hard features softened and he looked down at the ground for just an instant. “No,” he said. “I came here for an entirely different reason. I came here to take you away from this place.”
“But don’t you kill vampires?”
He shook his head once, slightly, with his lips pressed together. “Not always. In some cases your father and I left vampires alive because they agreed to help us, and because we were convinced they posed no immediate threat to humanity. You must understand, Zachary, vampires aren’t very different from normal people. They have choices to make, just as you will have choices to make. They can choose to be good, or to be something that is less than good. I suppose the hunger for blood makes the choice more difficult for vampires, but it remains a choice.”
Well, I had no doubt in my mind what I would choose. I would be good. I certainly wasn’t a threat to anybody. I didn’t even believe in mousetraps. But I was thinking that maybe there was another way out of this.
“Can I be cured?” I asked.
My uncle took a deep breath and put his hands on his knees. Then he pushed himself up and got ready to leave. In a second, an umbrella was hanging over his arm and a briefcase was in his hand.
“There is no known cure for vampirism. Your struggle here is proof enough of that. But there are ways of coping, obviously. You have done a remarkable job of it here, and you ought to be congratulated. In the meantime, I have set about the business of trying to adopt you. It won’t be easy. Because medical science can’t make sense of your condition, it will be difficult for me to prove that I am capable of taking care of you. But we will find a way . . . assuming that is what you want. You don’t have to make your mind up right away. I’ll come back, and we can spend some more time talking. I have an appointment right now and I can’t be late. I’m on the trail of another vampire, but I’ll be back to see you tomorrow. In the meantime, don’t do anything to put yourself at risk. I noticed the police outside. I’m assuming there was an accident of some kind?”
“A man crashed through the doors with a stolen motorcycle,” I said. Then I told him the rest.
When I was finished, my uncle stared at me for about ten seconds without saying a word. It was as if I’d just disconnected his brain. Then he snapped out of it.
“Tell me again, what exactly did he say?”
I ran through it as best I could.
My uncle looked down at the floor. He was whispering, “Thank heavens . . . Apocalypse . . .” Then he looked up at me with the same intense expression I’d seen on his face before. As though this was the most important thing in the world.
“What exactly did he look like? Describe him to me.”
I started with the old man’s hair and his top hat and overcoat, and finished with his eyes, but apparently I missed a lot, because my uncle asked me a lot of questions I didn’t have clear answers for. Like the shape of his nose and his cheeks and how thick his neck was.
“And his voice, was there anything unusual about it?”
I shrugged. I didn’t think so.
“And they shot him twenty times?”
“More or less. It was a lot. There was blood everywhere.”
“Did he mention any names?”
I shook my head.
“Well,” my uncle concluded, “I think I might know who the culprit is. I’ll do some digging and find out for certain. It isn’t Vrolok, that’s the good news. And the police are here now. I recommend never straying from where they can help you.”
“He told me to stay away from the police,” I said. I’d forgotten to mention this.
My uncle smiled. “I think you can ignore that part, Zachary. They’re usually the good guys.” Then his smile tightened and he nodded a quick goodbye. “I’ll try to be back before the sunrise. If not, I’ll contact you tomorrow.”
I suppose I should have stood up and shaken his hand, or said thank you, or done something like that, but I didn’t. I’m not sure why. I guess I was still pretty shocked. And truthfully, I wasn’t used to that kind of good news—that I might soon be living in a real home with a real uncle. It wasn’t as though my life was bad—I wasn’t starving in some war-torn country with flies buzzing around my eyes—but it wasn’t a bowl of cherries, either. So I just said goodbye.
The moment he was gone I felt a great emptiness inside. I almost jumped up and chased him down the hall. A zillion questions popped into my head. Things I should have asked him. My mother—what was she like, and how had she died? My father and his work. And about Vrolok. Was he really looking for me? Is that why the crazy old man had shown up on a stolen motorcycle? Did he know about Vrolok, too? I felt a bit ridiculous. There was so much to find out and I hadn’t really asked him anything. But at least I’d met a person who might have some answers. Maximilian. Uncle Max. I liked the sound of it. And he looked tough enough to survive an alien invasion. I liked that, too.