“How can you even think about such things?” I hissed angrily. “Shancus is dead! Don’t you care?”
She slapped my face. I blinked, stunned. “You’re not a child, Darren, so don’t act like one,” she said coldly. “Of course I care. But we can’t bring him back, and we’ll achieve nothing by standing around, moping. We need to act. Only in swift revenge can we maybe find a small sliver of comfort.”
She was right. Self-pity was a waste. Revenge was essential. As hard as it was, I dug myself out of my misery and set about sending Shancus’s body home. Harkat didn’t want to leave with Evra and Debbie. He wanted to stay and chase Steve with us. But somebody had to help carry Shancus. He accepted his task reluctantly, but made me promise we wouldn’t face Steve without him. “I’ve come too far with you to … miss out now. I want to be there when you … cut the demon down.”
Debbie threw her arms around me before leaving. “How could he do it?” she cried. “Even a monster couldn’t … wouldn’t…”
“Steve’s more than a monster,” I replied numbly. I wanted to return her embrace, but my arms wouldn’t work. Alice pried her away from me. She gave Debbie a handkerchief and whispered something to her. Debbie sniffed miserably, nodded, gave Alice a hug, then went to stand beside Evra.
I wanted to talk with Evra before he left, but I could think of nothing to say. If he’d confronted me, maybe I’d have responded, but he had eyes only for his lifeless son. Dead people often look like they’re sleeping. Shancus didn’t. He’d been a vibrant, buzzing, active child. All that vitality was lost now. Nobody could have looked upon him and thought he was anything but dead.
I remained standing until Evra, Debbie and Harkat had departed, Harkat carrying Shancus’s body tenderly in his thick, grey arms. Then I slid to the floor and sat there for ages, staring around in a daze, thinking about the past and my first visit here, using the theatre and my memories as a barrier between me and my grief.
Eventually Vancha and Alice approached. I don’t know how long the pair had been talking together, but when they came to stand before me they’d wiped their faces clean of tears and looked ready for business.
“Will I talk to the boy or do you want to?” Vancha asked gruffly.
“I don’t care,” I sighed. Then, glancing at Darius, who still stood alone with Evanna in the vastness of the auditorium, I said, “I’ll do it.”
“Darius,” Alice called. His head rose immediately. “Come here.”
Darius went straight to the plank, climbed up and walked across. He had an excellent sense of balance. I found myself thinking that was probably a by-product of his vampaneze blood — Steve had pumped some of his own blood into his son, turning him into a half-vampaneze. Thinking that, I began to hate the boy again. My fingers twitched in anticipation of grabbing him by the throat and…
But then I recalled his face when he’d learnt he was my nephew – shock, terror, confusion, pain, remorse – and my hatred for the boy died away.
Darius walked directly up to us. If he was afraid – and he must have been – he masked it bravely. Stopping, he stared at Vancha, then at Alice, finally at me. Now that I studied him closely, I saw a certain family resemblance. Thinking about that, I frowned.
“You’re not the boy I saw before,” I said. Darius looked at me uncertainly. “I went to my old home when we first came to town,” I explained. “I watched from behind the fence. I saw Annie. She was bringing in laundry. Then you arrived and came out to help her. Except it wasn’t you. It was a chubby boy with fair hair.”
“Oggy Bas,” Darius said after a second’s thought. “My friend. I remember that day. He came home with me. I sent him out to help Mum while I was taking my shoes off. Oggy always does what I tell him.” Then, licking his lips nervously, he looked around at all of us again and said, “I didn’t know.” It wasn’t an apology, just a statement of fact. “Dad told me vampires were evil. He said you were the worst of the lot. Darren the cruel, Darren the mad, Darren the baby-killer.’ But he never mentioned your surname.”
Evanna had crossed the plank after Darius and was circling us, studying us as if we were chess pieces. I ignored her — there’d be time for the witch later.
“What did Steve tell you about the vampaneze?” I asked Darius.
“That they wanted to stop vampires killing humans. They broke away from the clan several hundred years ago and had battled to stop the slaughter of humans ever since. They drank only small amounts of blood when they fed, just enough to survive.”
“You believed him?” Vancha snorted.
“He was my dad,” Darius answered. “He was always kind to me. I never saw him like I saw him tonight. I’d no reason to doubt him.”
“But you doubt him now,” Alice noted wryly.
“Yes. He’s evil.” As soon as he said it, Darius burst into tears, his brave front collapsing. It can’t have been easy for a child to admit his father was evil. Even in the midst of my grief and fury, I felt pity for the boy.
“What about Annie?” I asked when Darius had recovered enough to speak again. “Did Steve feed her the same sort of lies?”
“She doesn’t know,” Darius said. “They haven’t spoken since before I was born. I never told her I was meeting him.”
I breathed a small sigh of relief. I’d had a sudden, terrifying flash of Annie as Steve’s consort, having grown up as bitter and twisted as him. It was good to know she wasn’t part of this dark insanity.
“Do you want to tell him the truth about vampires and vampaneze, or will I?” Vancha asked.
“First things first,” Alice interrupted. “Does he know where his father is?”
“No,” Darius said sadly. “I always met him here. This is where he was based. If he has another hideout, I don’t know about it.”
“Damn!” Alice snarled.
“No ideas at all?” I asked. Darius thought for a moment, then shook his head. I glanced at Vancha. “Will you set him straight?”
“Sure.” Vancha quickly filled Darius in on the truth. He told him that the vampaneze were the ones who killed when they drank, though he was careful to describe their ways in detail — they kept part of a person’s spirit alive within themselves when they drained a human dry, so they didn’t look upon it as murder. They were noble. They never lied. They weren’t deliberately evil.
“Then your father came along,” Vancha said, and explained about the Lord of the Vampaneze, the War of the Scars, Mr Tiny’s prediction and our part in it.
“I don’t understand,” Darius said at the end, forehead creased. “If the vampaneze don’t lie, how come Dad lied all the time? And he taught me how to use an arrow-gun, but you said they can’t use such weapons.”
“They’re not supposed to,” Vancha said. “I haven’t seen or heard of any others breaking those rules. But their Lord’s above such laws. They worship him so much – or fear what will happen if they disobey him – that they don’t care what he does, as long as he leads them to victory over the vampires.”
Darius thought about that in silence for a long time. He was only ten years old, but he had the expression and manner of someone much older.
“I wouldn’t have helped if I’d known,” he said in the end. “I grew up thinking vampires were evil, like in the movies. When Dad came to me a few years ago and said he was on a mission to stop them, I thought it was a great adventure. I thought he was a hero. I was proud to be his son. I’d have done anything for him. I did…”
He looked like he was about to cry again. But