I knocked the ball from left to right a few times, making sure I hadn’t forgotten how to control it, then looked up and focused on the goal.
There were seven players between me and the goalkeeper. None of them rushed to tackle me. I guess they felt there was no need, being five goals up.
I set off. A big kid – the other team’s captain – tried blocking me, but I slipped around him easily. I was past another two before they could react, then dribbled round a fourth. The fifth player slid in with his stick at knee level, but I jumped over him with ease, dummied the sixth and shot before the seventh and final defender could get in the way.
Even though I hit the ball quite softly, it went much harder than the goalie was expecting and flew into the top right-hand corner of the goal. It bounced off the wall and I caught it in the air.
I turned, smiling, and looked back at my team-mates. They were still in their own half, staring at me in shock. I carried the ball back to the halfway line and set it down without saying a word. Then I turned to Michael and said, “Seven-three.”
He blinked slowly, then smiled. “Oh yes!” he chortled softly, then winked at his team-mates. “I think we’re going to enjoy this!”
I had a great time for a while, controlling the course of play, rushing back to defend, picking players out with pin-point passes. I scored a couple of goals and set up four more. We were leading nine-seven, and coasting. The other team hated it, and had made us give them two of our best players, but it made no difference. I could have given them everybody except our goalkeeper and still knocked the stuffing out of them.
Then things got nasty. The captain of the other team – Danny – had been trying to foul me for ages, but I was too quick for him and danced around his raised stick and stuck-out legs. But then he began to punch my ribs and stand on my toes and slam his elbows into my arms. None of it hurt me, but it annoyed me. I hate sore losers.
The crunch came when Danny pinched me in a very painful place! Even vampires have their limits. I gave a roar and crouched down, wincing from the pain.
Danny laughed and sped away with the ball.
I rose after a few seconds, mad as hell. Danny was halfway down the pitch. I set off after him. I brushed the players between us aside – it didn’t matter if they were on his team or mine – then slid in behind him and swiped at his legs with my stick. It would have been a dangerous tackle if it had come from a human. Coming from a half-vampire …
There was a sharp snapping sound. Danny screamed and went down. Play stopped immediately. Everybody in the quad knew the difference between a yell of pain and a scream of real agony.
I got to my feet, already sorry for what I’d done, wishing I could take it back. I looked at my stick, hoping to find it broken in two, hoping that had been what made the snapping noise. But it wasn’t.
I’d broken both of Danny’s shin-bones.
His lower legs were bent awkwardly and the skin around the shins was torn. I could see the white of bone in amongst the red.
Michael bent to examine Danny’s legs. When he rose, there was a horrified look in his eyes.
“You’ve cracked his legs wide open!” he gasped.
“I didn’t mean to,” I cried. “He squeezed my …” I pointed to the spot beneath my waist.
“You broke his legs!” Michael shouted, then backed away from me. Those around him backed away as well.
They were afraid of me.
Sighing, I dropped my stick and left, knowing I’d make matters worse if I stayed and waited for grown-ups to arrive. None of the boys tried to stop me. They were too scared. They were terrified of me … Darren Shan … a monster.
CHAPTER SIX
IT WAS dark when I got back. Mr Crepsley was up. I told him we should skip town straight away, but didn’t tell him why. He took one look at my face, nodded and started gathering our belongings.
We said little that night. I was thinking how rotten it was to be a half-vampire. Mr Crepsley sensed there was something wrong with me, but didn’t bother me with questions. It wasn’t the first time I’d been sulky. He was getting used to my mood-swings.
We found an abandoned church to sleep in. Mr Crepsley lay out on a long pew, while I made a bed for myself on a pile of moss and weeds on the floor.
I woke early and spent the day exploring the church and the small cemetery outside. The headstones were old and many were cracked or covered with weeds. I spent several hours cleaning a patch of them, pulling weeds away and washing the stones with water I fetched from a nearby stream. It kept my mind off the hockey game.
A family of rabbits lived in a nearby burrow. As the day went by, they crept closer, to see what I was up to. They were curious little fellows, especially the young ones. At one point, I pretended to be asleep and a couple edged closer and closer, until they were only half a metre away.
When they were as close as they were likely to get, I leapt up and shouted “Boo!” and they went running away like wildfire. One fell head over heels and rolled away down the mouth of its burrow.
That cheered me up greatly.
I found a shop in the afternoon and bought some meat and veg. I set a fire when I returned to the church, then fetched the pots and pans bag from beneath Mr Crepsley’s pew. I searched among the contents until I found what I was looking for. It was a small tin-shaped pot. I carefully laid it upside-down on the floor, then pressed the metal bulge on the top.
The tin mushroomed out in size, as folded-in panels opened up. Within five seconds it had become a full-sized pot, which I filled with water and stuck on the fire.
All the pots and pans in the bag were like this. Mr Crepsley got them from a woman called Evanna, long ago. They weighed the same as ordinary cookware, but because they could fold up small, they were easier to carry around.
I made a stew, as Mr Crepsley had taught me. He believed everybody should know how to cook.
I took leftover bits of the carrots and cabbage outside and dropped them by the rabbit burrow.
Mr Crepsley was surprised to find dinner – well, it was breakfast from his point of view – waiting for him when he awoke. He sniffed the fumes from the bubbling pot and licked his lips.
“I could get used to this,” he smiled, then yawned, stretched and ran a hand through the short crop of orange hair on his head. Then he scratched the long scar running down the left side of his face. It was a familiar routine of his.
I’d often wanted to ask how he got his scar, but I never had. One night, when I was feeling brave, I would.
There were no tables, so we ate off our laps. I got two of the folded-up plates out of the bag, popped them open and fetched the knives and forks. I served up the food and we tucked in.
Towards the end, Mr Crepsley wiped around his mouth with a silk napkin and coughed awkwardly.
“It is very nice,” he complimented me.
“Thank you,” I replied.
“I … um … that is …” He sighed. “I never was very good at being subtle,” he said, “so I will come right out and say it: what went wrong yesterday? Why were you so upset?”
I stared at my almost empty plate, not sure if I wanted to answer or not. Then, all of a sudden, I blurted out the whole story. I hardly took a breath between the start and finish.
Mr Crepsley listened carefully. When I was done, he thought