Night Runner (19 page)

The buck ran deeper into the woods. I followed. I'd never run in the forest at night. I wasn't sure I could manage it. My arm was better, fortunately. I hadn't really been paying attention to it, so I guess it had sort of fixed itself. That was a bonus. But the ground wasn't even. It kept throwing off my stride. There were roots and rocks lying all over the place just waiting to trip me up. To avoid these I tried bounding from one open patch to another. It seemed to be working, until I hit a clump of moss. It swallowed my foot and I nearly pitched head over heels. There was a lesson in that. Avoid the moss. I learned to spot it quickly.

Fortunately, I could see well. And my eyes could focus in a snap. I had to trust them. Look down when I needed to, but keep mapping out the best way ahead.

Rocks and roots. I'd been jumping over them. Time to fix that. It was slowing me down. I started using them as launch pads so I could cover greater distances between strides. I took powerful steps. Long and fast and smooth. I would have made Mr. Entwistle proud. It was awesome. I was where I belonged. In the dark. In the wild. And my powers of survival were being tested.

I pushed the buck over trails that wound through the forest. It was faster than I was. Over a few hundred feet it wasn't a close race, but it couldn't keep the same pace after a few miles. Gradually it slowed down. Then it stumbled.

My body went a bit haywire. It started in my mouth. I felt a sharp pain in my upper gums. Something moved against my front teeth. The taste of blood, my blood, was in my mouth. The same thing had happened during my first disastrous meal back in Charlie's shed, so when I ran my tongue over the area, I knew exactly what I'd find—two long, sharp teeth that seconds before had been the short version you would see in a normal person's mouth. These were my canines, the vampire's teeth, the ones we use for feeding. They had descended. And with them came a feeling that I could only think of as
the killing urge
. My father had mentioned it in his entry about the werewolf. It was a lust for blood so strong that once it took hold, there was no turning back.

My eyes locked on the buck's neck. An instant later, it was dying with my fangs in its throat.

I have heard people say that the best part of the hunt is not the kill but the thrill of the chase. Well, I'd bet my last pair of running shoes that none of them ever killed anything larger than a housefly. Sure, the chase was fun, exercise and all that, good for the heart. But the meal at the end was tops. It frightened me, actually, how intense it felt to surrender to that killing urge and feed.

As the warm blood coursed down my throat, it was as if my senses were waking up. Everything was magnified. Nothing moved around me that I didn't see in the clearest detail. Bats, moths, rustling pine needles. And I heard every sound. The buck's failing heart. My own heart pounding in my chest. Heavy breathing. The drone of mosquito wings. I could pinpoint every one of them. And the smells. Evergreen boughs. Musk. Fur. Damp leaves and old needles. The soil. I could even smell the lichen and the granite rock around us.

The sense of being watched was very strong—as if all the creatures around me in the forest were aware of what I had done and were afraid.

I fed like a predator. And I had no remorse. None.

I look back at this moment with a mixture of sadness and something else. Understanding, maybe. Or acceptance. I'm a vampire. Sometimes I wish I could live on tofu and alfalfa sprouts, but I can't. And I understand that I'm not consistent. I don't always act the same way. I'm a nice guy as often as I can be. As my Uncle Maximilian said, I have a choice. And I choose to be good. Until I get hungry. Then I'm something that is less than good. Then I'm a killer.

C
harlie came to get me just after sunset the next night. “You sleep all right?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I stretched and blinked my eyes. It felt good to tense every muscle.

Charlie tossed a dark bundle into the shed. It landed on the sleeping bag I was using.

“What's this?” I asked.

“Your scrubs.”

“They're soaked.”

“Yeah. You can thank me later. I had to clean them in the sink. You must have run about fifty miles in those things before you got here. The smell was killing all the birds.”

“What's wrong with these?” I said, pulling at the collar of my shirt.

“You wore them to the bonfire last night. You want to spend the rest of your life stinking like a chimney?”

“Do you have something else I could wear?”

Charlie shook his head. “Do you want to wear a bedsheet? My clothes would never fit you.”

“Then whose clothes am I wearing?”

“Those are Dan's. I scoffed them the night you got here. He was at Canada's Wonderland, remember? Well, he's in his room right now, so there's no way I'm going to be able to borrow any more. You want me to tell him an escaped lunatic is living in our shed and needs another set of duds?”

I stood and unrolled the shirt and pants from the ward. Charlie had obviously tried to wring them out because there were crease lines all over them.

“I can't wear these!”

“You can if you
believe
you can.”

 

 

The boat ride was freezing. I endured it thinking about how nice the bonfire was going to be. I was disappointed when we arrived at the girls' cottage and Charlie announced to everyone that we were going sailing instead.

“I left a window in the Yacht Club unlocked so I could sneak in,” he said, climbing out onto the dock. “I'll open up the doors and we can rig up a boat.”

“I don't think that's such a great idea,” said Suki. “If someone saw us, we could lose our jobs.”

“Well, you don't have to come,” said Charlie. “I just thought it would be cool to take Zack out for a sail. He's never been.”

Unless he was planning to light some part of the boat on fire, I didn't have any great interest in sailing, especially if it was going to involve wind.

“We should just go tomorrow afternoon,” said Luna. She was
watching me shivering in the boat. “You look a little cold for sailing. Don't you have anything warmer to wear?”

I shook my head.

“Come on,” Charlie said to me. “Live a little. What's the worst thing that can happen?”

“I can't really swim, Charlie,” I said. “So the worst thing that can happen is that I drown.”

“You can't swim?” said Suki.

“Not really,” I said. I thought of my trip down the Otonabee River with Mr. Entwistle. “My last try didn't go very well.”

“Well, we'll have to fix that.”

“Can we fix it later?” I said. “Unless the water's warmer at this end of the lake.”

So I got my bonfire after all. It wasn't so big that you could see it from outer space, but it did the trick. A few logs were set up as benches near the shore by the dock. They were arranged around a small circle of stones that kept the fire from crawling across to the neighbours' place. While I thawed out and dried my clothes, the others roasted marshmallows and talked sailing.

“You ought to try one,” said Suki, as she plucked a toasted marshmallow from her stick.

“Oh, no thanks,” I said. “I ate yesterday.”

Charlie plunged his marshmallow right into the coals. As soon as it turned into a torch, he blew it out, ate the char, burned the next layer, then started chewing on the sliver of black marshmallow that was left on his stick.

“No, Zack doesn't eat sweets,” he said between mouthfuls. “He likes roasted squirrel.”

I could have killed him.

Suki glared at us. “What did you do with our squirrels?”

“I let them go,” I said. “Honestly. You can come visit them anytime.”

“They're living like rodent kings on our island paradise,” Charlie added.

Suki pointed the sharp end of her stick at him. “You'd better not be lying.”

Charlie grabbed the stick from her and started chasing her around the fire. I noticed he wasn't trying all that hard to catch her. Come to think of it, she wasn't trying all that hard to get away. Then the two of them disappeared around the corner of the cottage. I held my breath and listened. They didn't go very far, but they didn't come back, either.

And that left me alone with Luna.

She looked up from her seat and watched me soak up the heat from the fire.

“Why didn't you come by today?” she asked.

“By the Yacht Club?”

“Yeah.”

I took a deep breath and let it go.

“Am I being too nosey?”

“No,” I said. “I just . . .”
Can't tell you that I'm a vampire.

Luna pushed another marshmallow over the remains of the last one, then hung it over the coals. “Stumped on question one. Wait till I get to the hard stuff.”

“This
is
the hard stuff.”

“Really?” Her eyebrows flashed up for just a second. “Well, this ought to be good. You out robbing banks or something?”

I stood and turned so that my back was to the fire. Luna was watching me. Her eyes sort of moved around my face. They were curious. And bright.

“I'm allergic to the sun,” I said. “I sleep during the day.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“You sleep all day?”

“Yeah.”

“Every day?”

“Yeah.”

“A creature of the night?”

“Pretty much.”

She was looking at me to see if I was telling the truth. I pointed to her marshmallow. The bottom was starting to blister.

“Oh,” she said. “Thanks.” She turned it over and began toasting the other side. “So what do you do for school?”

“Don't go.”

“Get out!”

I shook my head. “Not since Grade Two.”

She pulled her marshmallow stick away from the fire, reached over and offered it to me.

“No thanks.”

She waved it around a few times, like there was no way I could pass up a gooey ball of roasted sugar.

“No, really,” I said, lifting my hand. “I don't want one.”

She gave me a look like I was putting her on. Like living with no sun and no school was easier to believe than not wanting to eat a marshmallow.

“Suit yourself.”

She tested it with her fingers, blew on it a few times, then carefully pulled it off and stuffed it in her mouth.

“So how do you get your vitamin D?” she asked. The marshmallow muffled the sound of her voice.

“Squirrels,” I said.

She put her stick down and stood up so that she was right in front of me. “A wise guy, huh?”

“Not really,” I said. “I haven't been to school since I was seven.”

“I don't believe you,” she said.

I smiled and shrugged. It was the perfect thing for her to say. It meant she thought I was normal.

While I continued to dry, she stepped over the log she'd been sitting on and walked over to the front porch. A towel was hanging over the railing. She pulled it off and slung it over her shoulder.

“I think I'm going to explode,” she said. She was still holding the bag of marshmallows. She tossed them back beside the fire. “You warm enough for a swim?”

The correct answer was no. I was so cold I could have crawled right into the coals and made a nest for myself, but I didn't want to miss a chance to spend more time with her, even if it meant drowning.

“I think so,” I said.

She started walking around to the back of the cottage.

“Isn't the water this way?” I pointed towards the lake.

“I'm just going to see if the others are interested.”

She came back a minute later by herself. I had to put my hand over my mouth to keep my smile from showing. I was so happy I thought my lips were going to crack.

“Do I need a life jacket?” I mumbled.

“You mean you really can't swim?”

“No. I can't.”

I started to walk towards the dock. Luna took hold of my elbow with both hands and steered me over to the shore.

“That part of the lake is better for drowning. This part is better for swimming.”

Beside the dock was a narrow ribbon of sand that stretched along the shore. I pulled off my shirt, kicked off my shoes, rolled up my scrubs and waded into the shallow water. And what a thrill. I've never had a massage, but I imagine that swimming must come very close. I lay in the water looking up at the stars. Luna had one hand under the small of my back and the other between my shoulder blades. I just floated with the water pressing around me on all sides. Then she
showed me how to keep myself from sinking. Sculling, she called it. It sounded like the kind of skill every vampire should have. And all the while we talked. She told me about her school. I talked about the ward. It took a while to convince her that I hadn't been joking earlier. I really couldn't go out in the sun and I'd never been to high school. She seemed to think I was lucky, but I thought she was the lucky one. All of her close friends were people she'd met there.