“Very well,” Wester said gruffly. “Wait here while I go find one.”
Larten’s mouth fell open and he gawped at the stern-faced Wester. Then he saw his friend’s upper lip twitch and he punched him hard and cursed.
“You thought I was serious!” Wester hooted.
“Shut up,” Larten growled.
“Are you always this easy to fool?”
“If you keep it up, I’ll go find a stake of my own,” Larten warned him.
Wester chuckled again, then sighed. “Will you leave the Cirque Du Freak now?”
“I suppose,” Larten murmured. “I love the circus life, but I want to be a vampire more than anything. I can’t say why. I just do.”
“I think that I want it too,” Wester said softly, stunning his friend.
Larten frowned. “You can’t mean that. You didn’t even know about vampires until I told you.”
“You didn’t know about them either before you met Seba,” Wester countered.
“But our life is hard… there’s so much to learn… you have no idea what you’d be letting yourself in for.”
“Nor did you when you became Seba’s assistant,” Wester said. “I’ll serve an apprenticeship like you. If I don’t like it, I’ll leave and maybe come back here. But I know, the same way you knew that night in the crypt. I can’t explain it. I just know it’s the path for me. I think you do too. I think that’s why you brought me here when you could have simply left me at Strasling’s. It’s maybe why you helped me in the first place.”
Larten stared at Wester, troubled. Wester had as much right as he did to choose, but Larten felt protective of his orphaned friend. While he relished the challenges of the vampire life, he wouldn’t wish the hardships on most folk.
Wester saw the indecision in Larten’s eyes. It annoyed him – what gave Larten the right to choose for him? – but he hid his irritation and said, “I think this is fate. Would you deny me my destiny?”
Larten chewed his lower lip and shook his head. “It’s not my decision to make. The choice is Seba’s. But I will ask him, and put in a good word for you, if that’s what you truly want.”
It was, and later that night, after Seba had said his farewells to Mr Tall, Larten put Wester’s proposal to him. The vampire studied Wester as Larten argued his case. The boy’s eyes were steady and so were his hands. He had a calm, serious air that Seba liked. He saw potential in the boy. But he could see a problem too.
“There is one thing I demand of my assistants,” Seba said. “Truth. Hold my gaze and tell me honestly — do you want to become a vampire so that you can track down and gain revenge on the vampaneze who killed your family?”
“That’s part of it,” Wester replied quietly. “I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t. But it’s not the whole reason. I want to be part of a community again. Part of a family. I could make a life for myself here at the Cirque Du Freak, but it doesn’t feel right. When Larten was telling me of your people, your ways, how you embrace the night and honour it… My soul stirred.”
“That is a poetic way of putting it,” Seba smiled. “He has a fairer tongue than you, Master Crepsley.” His smile faded and he refocused on Wester. “What if I told you to put all thoughts of revenge aside, if I said you could never seek vengeance, even if you ran into Murlough by accident one night?”
“I couldn’t agree to such terms,” Wester said. “He butchered my entire family. I can never forgive or forget that. I will seek revenge, either as a vampire or a human.”
Seba approved of the boy’s honesty. Wester had been open with him, and his thirst for revenge was justifiable. Even a General, bound by tighter rules than most of the clan, had the right to kill a vampaneze who had slaughtered members of his human family.
“I have to test your blood,” Seba said. “If it is pure, I will accept you.”
Wester sat calmly as Seba cut his arm and sucked blood from the wound. Both youths watched silently as the vampire swirled it around his mouth. When he pulled a face and spat out the blood, Larten’s heart sank. Wester’s eagerness to become a vampire had taken him aback, but as he’d thought about it more, he’d warmed to the idea. Now it looked as if his master was going to reject Wester, and that hurt Larten more than he’d imagined it could.
Seba glowered at Wester for several long, threatening seconds…
…then winked. “Your blood is fine,” he said. “In fact it is purer than Larten’s or mine. I accept you without hesitation. You are my assistant now. Pack anything you wish to bring with you from this life. We leave in five minutes.”
Wester and Larten shared a beaming glance. As they hurried off to fetch their belongings, Larten found himself thinking of Wester as he had once thought of a boy called Vur Horston — not just as a friend, but a brother.
PART THREE
“How many losses must I endure?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Larten sat in the Hall of Khledon Lurt, sipping from a mug of ale, studying the red drapes hanging from the walls and ceiling, the statue of Khledon Lurt at the centre of the room, and of course the vampires. He had been here almost a week, but still felt out of place among the hardened creatures of the night. This was his first time at Council and it was hard to shake the feeling that he didn’t belong.
He put his mug down and rubbed the scars on his fingertips, remembering the night when Seba drove his nails into the soft flesh. Larten had welcomed the pain because it meant he was leaving behind the human world, taking a step into the night from which there could be no return. He was proud of his ten scars, still shiny after all this time, but they didn’t mean much here. There was a lot more to becoming a vampire of good standing than being able to show that you had been blooded, and Larten was afraid he might not have what it required.
He was nearly thirty, so as a human he would have been in his prime. If he had battled his way up in the world of man, respect and security would probably have been his by now.
But he had been blooded as a half-vampire when he was eighteen, and as a full-vampire five years ago, so he looked like someone in his late teens. And all of his travel and experience paled into insignificance when compared with the adventures of vampires who had circled the globe countless times. Among these centuries-old beings, he felt like a child.
“There you are,” Wester said, flopping down beside him and half draining a mug of ale. “Charna’s guts! I needed that.” The ancient curse sounded amusing coming from Wester, but Larten hid his smile, not wanting to hurt his friend’s feelings.
“This place is amazing,” Wester beamed. “So many tunnels and Halls. Have you been to the Hall of Perta Vin-Grahl yet? No, wait, never mind.” He sniffed the air. “I can tell that you haven’t.”
“By implying that I stink, I assume you mean that the Hall of Perta Vin-Grahl is a bathing room,” Larten said drily.
“Of a kind,” Wester chuckled. “Make sure you bring heavy clothes to wrap up in once you’re done. They don’t believe in pampering themselves here with towels or robes.”
Wester drank more of his ale and looked around the cave, eyes sparkling. Wester and Larten had been blooded at the same time, but Wester hadn’t become a full-vampire until two years ago. Larten had always been a faster learner, a few steps ahead at every stage of their training, but in spite of that Wester had adapted more swiftly to the world of Vampire Mountain. He had been mixing freely with other vampires since he arrived, learning about their history, exploring the maze within the mountain, making himself at home.
Larten