After Mr. Entwistle left, I lay in bed for a few minutes flipping through magazines and thinking over what I should do. My brain kept taking me back to the vampire problem—about the rogues, the bad ones—as though that was somehow the secret to figuring everything out. I was going to have to ask Mr. Entwistle more about it. And about Vrolok, in particular. If that wasn’t his real name, I had to find out who he was and what powers he had. Talents, Mr. Entwistle had called them. Was he a shape-shifter? Could he walk through fire or breathe under water? It made me wonder what my talents might be. Before long I was out of bed and pacing the room.
Walking up walls. That would be cool. Just like Spider-Man. Maybe I could build my own web-shooters, too. Of course flying would be better, but I couldn’t really imagine how that would work. I mean, if you were light enough to fly, wouldn’t you sort of float around all the time? Maybe there was more to it than that. I’d never even had any flying dreams, so I wasn’t exactly qualified to say. Charlie got them all the time, so if he became a vampire, maybe that would be his talent. Then he’d never have to worry about getting caught. Of course, if I could turn invisible, that would pretty much solve things, too. And getting blood wouldn’t be a problem. I could just sneak into the civic hospital and drink it out of bags.
As I pictured myself gorging on a huge stash of blood, my stomach rumbled. A hollow spasm followed. It was time to feed. I stepped out into the hall to have a look around. I thought there might be a supply of blood hiding someplace. And if not, then at least I was moving. That might take my mind off my hunger.
I started my search in the kitchen, but the only thing in the fridge was wine. The cupboards were empty, too—nothing but dusty plates and a box of light bulbs. I went down into the basement. Three doors opened off a central hall. The first room had padded walls and a padded floor and ceiling. I’d seen a couple of these back at the ward, although I didn’t remember the ceilings being padded. I guess when vampires got put in time-out, they were a little more jumpy than normal people. Next to the padded room was an office. The computer on the desk wouldn’t have been out of place on the Starship Enterprise. Newspaper clippings were tacked to the wall beside it. Most of them had to do with people disappearing. The last room was full of filing cabinets. They were all locked.
I went back upstairs. There was nothing in the bedrooms but magazines and closets. Then I found the library. It stretched the whole length of the house and was lined with wall-to-wall bookshelves. Other volumes were piled in stacks on the floor. The room was practically groaning from the weight of them all. Mr. Entwistle wasn’t kidding—it would have taken centuries to read them all. Most of the books were old. Very old. And even though I’ve heard a lot of people say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, well, you sort of can with an old book, because if it was crummy someone would have thrown it out a long time ago. So you can bet I was pretty excited.
The only light in the room came from a gas fireplace that was set in the wall opposite the door. Two windows sat on either side, and through these I could see the yellow glow of a streetlight outside, and the dark silhouettes of leaves and branches. It was like they were waving to me, begging me to come outside and join them. Plunging into the darkness for a long run would have to wait. Without Mr. Entwistle, I wasn’t going anywhere.
I was just deciding where to begin my search for books about vampires when something fluttered across the window. I caught a glimpse of a dark shape out of the corner of my eye. When I turned it was gone, so I moved closer, to get a broader view of the yard outside. The night air was so thick with fog you couldn’t see the sky. It made the neighbouring houses look hazy and ghostly. Bats were diving under the streetlight in search of food. That must have been what caught my eye. In the shadows below, two green, glowing eyes blinked up at me. It was a raccoon. We stared at each other, then it bolted from its hiding place and disappeared. As I watched the fog roll past, the porch lights across the street faded to a soft white. The street lamp all but disappeared. So did the bats. I thought at first that they were just hard to spot in the haze, but when I listened for them, I couldn’t hear anything. A chill went through me and I shuddered. A cold had settled into the room. And a quiet. I held my breath, but all I could hear was the sound of my heart and the wooden floor creaking under my feet.
I backed away from the window. I probably shouldn’t have been so close to it anyway, in case someone saw me. Then I realized I was being silly. With all the fog, anyone in the yard would have needed X-ray vision to see up here. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. I snuck back to the window and edged one eye past the frame. Something flew past and I jumped back again. It was a large bat. The biggest I’d ever seen.
I hid behind the rocking chair so that the back of it was between me and the window. The flapping of large, leathery wings returned. This time it didn’t go away. And it was much louder than it should have been. I peeked around the edge of the chair. The bat was hovering right outside the window. Wait a minute—hovering? That wasn’t right. I was hardly what you’d call an expert, but I’d spent enough time running the city streets after midnight to know that bats darted. They were always on the move. You’d never see a bat soar like a hawk, that’s for sure. They sort of flopped through the air, instead. They could do it pretty quickly, but you’d never call it graceful. This one just . . . hovered. It was unnatural. And it raised goosebumps on my arms and neck.
I stayed hidden behind the chair until I heard the sound of tires crunching on gravel. Someone was pulling into the driveway. I stiffened at the sound. Then I noticed that the flapping had stopped. A car door slammed. Then another. I didn’t want to risk going to the window to see who it might be, not with that bat outside. It looked big enough to tear the beak off a bald eagle. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what that meant. Not after listening to Mr. Entwistle’s description of vampire talents. Some were shape-shifters. He’d said so himself, and the stories were full of things like that. It seemed crazy, but then again, three days ago I’d been nothing more than a kid with a bad sun allergy. I couldn’t take anything for granted any more.
I quickly tiptoed out of the room. I reached the top of the stairs just as several sets of feet climbed onto the porch. The old planks creaked. I heard whispers. I hesitated. There was no way I was going to go down into the hall. But I had to know who it was. A sinister thought had taken form in the back of my mind. Dracula, the same vampire who could turn himself into a bat, couldn’t enter a stranger’s house without an invitation. That usually meant having a human servant break in first, then open a door or window. Once he’d even got a dog to break in for him, or maybe it was a wolf. I couldn’t remember.
I bent down so I could see through the hallway onto the porch, but there were no windows set in the door and none beside it, either, so there was no way to see who was lurking outside. I did notice that a steel bar had been set across the back of the door, sitting in a pair of brackets. I didn’t remember Mr. Entwistle barring the door when we came home. He must have set it up that way before he left.
I strained to listen, then something crashed against the door. It sounded like a wrecking ball. The whole place shook. A crack appeared in the middle of the door and bits of plaster dropped from the hall ceiling.
The people outside were smashing their way in!
I tore down the stairs just as another crash sounded from the porch. The door broke apart, but the bar remained in place. Through the opening I could see two policemen. They were holding something between them that looked like a small battering ram. Off to one side was a man in an overcoat with a thick, pink scar under his eye. Everett Johansson. Somehow, he had found me.
I ran out of the hall, through the living room and into the kitchen. I had to find a back door. It was on the far side of the stove. I could see another pair of brackets and a steel pipe lying on the counter. Since this door wasn’t barred, I figured Mr. Entwistle must have left this way.
I could hear voices shouting behind me, then a loud clank, which I guessed was the steel bar on the front door falling to the floor. The men were coming inside, only seconds away.
I yanked on the handle of the back door, but it didn’t open.
“Come on,” I shouted. I kept pulling, then noticed it was locked. None of the rooms in the Nicholls Ward had locks, so I’d sort of forgotten about them. I twisted the deadbolt and pulled the door open. Then I grabbed the steel bar, just in case, and darted outside.
Men were entering the kitchen as I cleared the landing. In four steps I was around the side of the house. I coiled my body for a mid-stride leap, then launched myself up onto the lower branch of a tree. I used this as a springboard and cleared the neighbour’s fence. I couldn’t tell if anyone had seen me, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I just kept running through the fog. Full blast.
I jumped another fence, and another. It made me think of men running hurdles at the Olympics, only these were six feet high. When I reached the last property on the block I ditched the pipe. It was slowing me down. Then I tore across the road and into the next yard. I wanted to stay off the streets. There was too much light. I ran through people’s yards instead. Dogs barked. Lights came on. People shouted. I didn’t stop, not for anything. My feet were moving so quickly that, if the earth had opened up below me, I would have run through the air. And the whole time, I had only one thing on my mind.
Vrolok had found me. My father’s killer.
Wasn’t that place supposed to be a safe house? And where was Mr. Entwistle?
I laboured on. All I could hear was my own frantic breathing. I thought it best to hold a straight line and put as much distance between me and the bad guys as I could manage. Soon, it was like I was running in a tunnel. My eyes took in nothing that wasn’t right in front of me. So I didn’t react when I heard a loud roar and a scream. It took me too long to sort out what it was. The roar turned out to be a car horn, and the scream was skidding tires. It was a police van. I’d reached the end of someone’s property and had run onto the street without looking. The police must have been searching for me. They were moving quickly. And so there was little I could do. I just lifted my feet and curled up into a ball so that my legs hit the grille and my shoulder hit the windshield. And then I was airborne.