AS I STIFFENED HELPLESSLY, my life in the hands of whoever had hold of me, Mr. Crepsley leaped with the fingers of his right hand outstretched like a blade. He sliced the hand over the top of my head. My assailant released me and ducked in the same movement, dropping heavily to the floor as Mr. Crepsley sailed by. As the vampire rolled to his feet and spun to strike a second blow, the man who had grabbed me roared, "Stop, Larten! It's me - Gavner!"
Mr. Crepsley paused and I scrambled to me feet, coughing from the fright, but no longer afraid. Turning, I saw a burly man with a scarred, patchy face and dark rims around both his eyes. He was dressed in clothes like ours, with a hat pulled down over his ears. I recognized him immediately - Gavner Purl, a Vampire General. I had met him years ago, right before my run-in with Murlough.
"You bloody fool, Gavner!" Mr. Crepsley shouted. "I would have killed you if I had connected! Why did you sneak up on us?"
"I wanted to surprise you," Gavner said. "I've been following you most of the night, and this seemed like the perfect time to close in. I didn't expect to almost lose my head in the process," he grumbled.
"You should have been paying more attention to your surroundings and less to Darren and me," Mr. Crepsley said, pointing toward the bloodstained wall and floor.
"By the blood of the vampaneze!" Gavner hissed.
"Actually, it is the blood of a vampire," Mr. Crepsley corrected him dryly.
"Any idea whose?" Gavner asked, hurrying over to test the blood.
"None," Mr. Crepsley said.
Gavner prowled around the inside of the cave, studying the blood and broken coffin, searching for more clues. Finding none, he returned to where we were standing and scratched his chin thoughtfully. "He was probably attacked by a wild animal," he mused aloud. "A bear - maybe more than one - caught him during the day, while he was sleeping."
"I am not so sure of that," Mr. Crepsley disagreed. "A bear would have caused great damage to the cave and its contents, but only the coffins have been disturbed."
Gavner ran his eyes over the cave again, noting the tidy state of the rest of it, and nodded. "What do you think happened?" he asked.
"A fight," Mr. Crepsley suggested. "Between two vampires, or between the dead vampire and somebody else."
"Who'd be out here in the middle of nowhere?" I asked.
Mr. Crepsley and Gavner exchanged a troubled look. "Vampire hunters, perhaps," Gavner muttered.
My breath caught in my throat - I'd gotten so used to the vampire way of life, I had pretty much forgotten that there were people in the world who thought we were monsters and made it their business to hunt us down and kill us.
"Or maybe humans who chanced upon him by accident and panicked," Mr. Crepsley said. "It has been a long time since vampire hunters aggressively trailed us. This may have been a case of mere misfortune."
"Either way," Gavner said, "let's not hang around and wait for it to happen again. I was looking forward to resting, but now I think it's best we don't cage ourselves in."
"Agreed," Mr. Crepsley replied, and after one last sweep of the cave, we retreated, our senses alert to even the slightest hint of an attack.
We made our base for the night in the middle of a ring of thick trees, and lit a rare fire - all of us felt chilled to the bone after our experience in the cave. While we were discussing the dead vampire and whether we should search the surrounding area for his body, the Little People returned, carrying a young deer they'd captured. They stared suspiciously at Gavner, who stared just as suspiciously back.
"What are they doing with you?" he hissed.
"Mr. Tiny insisted I bring them," Mr. Crepsley said, then raised a quieting hand as Gavner swiveled to ask more questions. "Later," he promised. "Let us eat first and dwell upon the death of our comrade."
The trees sheltered us from the rising sun, so we sat up long after dawn, discussing the dead vampire. Since there wasn't anything we could do about him - the vampires decided against a search, on the grounds that it would slow us down - talk soon turned to other matters. Gavner asked about the Little People again, and Mr. Crepsley told him how Mr. Tiny had appeared and sent them with us. Then he asked Gavner why he'd been trailing us.
"I knew you'd be presenting Darren to the Princes," Gavner said, "so I located your mental pattern and traced you through it." (Vampires are able to bond mentally with each other.) "I had to cut up from a hundred miles south, but I hate traveling alone - it's boring having no one to chat with."
As we talked, I noticed a couple of toes were missing from Gavner's left foot and asked about them. "Frostbite," he answered cheerfully, wriggling the three remaining toes. "I broke my leg coming here a couple of Councils back. Had to crawl for five nights to reach a way station. It was only by the luck of the vampires that I didn't lose more than a few toes."
The vampires talked a lot about the past, old friends and previous Councils. I thought they'd mention Murlough - Gavner had alerted Mr. Crepsley to the insane vampaneze's whereabouts - but they didn't, not even in passing.
"How have you been?" Gavner asked me.
"Fine," I said.
"Life with this sour buzzard hasn't got you down?"
"I've coped so far." I smiled.
"Any intentions of topping up?" he asked.
"Excuse me?"
He raised his fingers so I could see the ten scars on the tips, the usual sign of a vampire. "Do you plan to become a full vampire?"
"No," I said quickly, then looked sideways at Mr. Crepsley. "I don't have any such plans, do I?" I asked suspiciously.
"No." Mr. Crepsley smiled. "Not until you have come of human age. If we made a full vampire of you now, it would be sixty or seventy years before you were fully grown."
"I bet it's horrible aging so slowly when you're a kid," Gavner noted.
"It is," I sighed.
"Things will improve with time," Mr. Crepsley said.
"Sure," I said sarcastically, "when I'm all grown up - thirty years from now!" I got up and shook my head, disgusted. I got down a lot when I thought about the decades I'd have to spend on the road to maturity.
"Where are you going?" Mr. Crepsley asked as I headed toward the trees.
"To the stream," I said, "to fill our canteens."
"Maybe one of us should go with you," Gavner said.
"Darren is not a child," Mr. Crepsley answered before I could. "He will be fine."
I hid a grin - I liked the rare occasions when the vampire gave me a compliment - and continued down to the stream. The chilly water was fast-flowing and gurgled loudly as I filled the canteens, splashing around the rims and my fingers. If I had been human I might have gotten frostbite, but vampires are a lot sturdier.
As I was corking the second canteen, a little cloud of steamy breath drifted across from the other side of the stream. I glanced up, surprised that a wild animal had ventured this close, and found myself staring into the flaming eyes of a fierce, hungry-looking, sharp-fanged wolf.