Bloody Horowitz (15 page)

The room was as modern as the rest of the house, with an abstract painting—splodges of black and red—on one wall opposite the bed. The walls were gray concrete and the floor some sort of Scandinavian wood. Only the bed was antique, a four-poster that looked particularly uncomfortable and out of keeping with everything else. The room had one interesting feature. There was a full-sized mirror on one wall that actually swung open to reveal a walk-in closet behind. This was full of clothes that I assumed must belong to Nathalie and Patrick.

I'd actually been shown the room by Adrien when he had first taken me around the house and I had noticed the mirror as I walked past. Or rather, I'd noticed myself—the fair hair, the freckles and all the rest of it. Well, on the sixth day, just as I was on my way to dinner, I glanced down the corridor and saw Vladimir Duclarc standing next to the bed, fiddling with the cuff of the shirt he was wearing. He didn't notice me, which was just as well, because I stood there, wide-eyed, my whole body frozen as if a thousand volts of electricity had just been jammed through me.

Vladimir Duclarc had no reflection.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that I'd gotten the angles wrong and that I simply couldn't see the reflection from where I was standing. But it wasn't like that. He was right in front of the mirror. Inches away from it. And there was no sign of him in the glass. Just vague shapes. He had no reflection!

And then the worst thing possible happened. I must have moved or made a sound because Vladimir glanced up and saw me staring at him. He was angry. I saw that strange fire in his eyes as his head turned toward me. He knew what I had seen. At once I muttered something that made no sense in French or English and hurried back to my room, closing the door behind me. But it was already too late. Why hadn't I moved away immediately, before he'd spotted me?

I stood there with my heart thumping, every one of my fingers prickling with fear. Perhaps I hadn't worked it out yet. Or perhaps I'd worked it out long before but had been trying to ignore it. All the evidence spread out in front of me, one piece after another. How could I have been so dumb?

Vladimir Duclarc never went out in the light.

He hated garlic.

He came from Eastern Europe.

He had somehow managed to vanish in front of the main gate seconds before I had seen a bat flickering away.

And he had no reflection.

And there was one last thing, one final piece of evidence that somehow entered my thoughts right then. Barely breathing, I went into the bathroom. I'd had a shower earlier that evening and the mirror was still steamed up. Slowly, I extended a finger and wrote a word in capital letters.

DUCLARC.

Then I began crossing out the letters. It wasn't an anagram, but it was close enough. Take out a C and replace it with an A. Then jumble it around and what did you get?

DRACULA.

So here's a question for you. Your starter for ten. Do you believe in vampires? I didn't. Which is to say, I'd read books and I'd seen films and I'd always comforted myself with the thought that they were all made up. But that was then. That was before I found myself hundreds of miles from home in a house full of strangers in the middle of a wood with wolves howling in the night and a man in the next room with no reflection.

Now I remembered that vampires had been around for hundreds of years, that thousands of stories had been written about them. If vampires didn't exist, why had so many writers taken an interest? And there was something else. Dracula, the king of the vampires, had certainly been a real person. We'd once talked about him at school, in history. What was his first name? Oh, God! It was Vlad. Vlad the Impaler, born in Transylvania (Eastern Europe) in the fifteenth century. Historical fact!

Even then, standing on my own, I tried to convince myself that I was wrong. There had to be a simple explanation. Lots of people don't like garlic. It could just be a coincidence that Vladimir's surname was so close to Vlad the Impaler's. I told myself that he didn't even look like a vampire. But then I remembered the long hair, the pale skin, the clothes that were at least fifty years out of date, and I knew it wasn't true. If there had been a magazine devoted to vampires, he would have made the cover.

My first instinct was to run, to get away from the house and somehow find my way to a local police station. But I knew that was crazy. The police would never believe me. They'd think I was a stupid fifteen-year-old English boy and they would drive me straight back to the house, and if there was one sure way for me to end up with my throat torn out and my blood drained, that was it. Could I call my parents? The mobile wouldn't work, but there was still my computer. Yes. That was what I would do. I glanced at my watch. It was five past eight. I was already late for dinner. But the family could wait.

I grabbed my laptop and wrenched it open. My hands were trembling so much that I had to jab down three times before I hit the start button. And then the computer seemed to take an hour to boot up. But at last the screen was glowing in front of me. The house had no Wi-Fi, but I'd be able to connect over the telephone line. I'd already done so half a dozen times.

But this time it didn't work.

I double-clicked on the AOL icon and managed to get the home page on the screen. There was nothing wrong with the computer. But every time I tried to dial out, I got a busy signal. I must have tried twenty times before I suddenly heard Nathalie Duclarc's voice, calling me from upstairs.

“Jack. Dinner is ready!”

Once again, I froze. The computer bleeped uselessly in front of me. What was I to do? Join them and try to pretend nothing had happened? Or make a break for it? There was only one answer to that. It was dark. The gate was locked and, unlike Vladimir Duclarc, I couldn't turn myself into a bat and fly over the top. And even if I did manage to get out onto the lane, they'd catch up with me before I reached the main road. Right now it was night. The darkness was my enemy. If I could somehow hold myself together until sunrise, if I could survive, then I could take action. Maybe they'd take me into Nice. I could slip away and check in at the airport before they knew I'd gone. All I had to do was to pretend that nothing had happened. Vladimir Duclarc had seen me outside his room. But despite what I had thought earlier, there was always a chance that he believed his secret was safe. I just had to be very, very careful.

I left the room and climbed up the concrete stairs that led to the main living room, knowing exactly how a condemned man must feel on his way to the scaffold. The entire family was already around the table and nobody seemed to take much notice of me as I sat down. I noticed Vladimir Duclarc was eating more hungrily than usual. Dinner that night was steak. My own meat had already been served. It was sitting in the middle of the plate with blood all around. Patrick said something and passed me the vegetables. I didn't understand his words. In fact, they echoed in my ears. I helped myself to a few pieces of broccoli and some potatoes. I had no idea how I would get through the next hour.

Fortunately, nobody seemed to notice that I was freaking out. Or maybe they were just pretending. Vladimir glanced at me a couple of times but said nothing. Nathalie asked me if I was feeling well and I told her that I might have had too much sun.

“You've hardly eaten anything, Jack,” she said.

“I'm sorry.” I'd barely had two mouthfuls of the steak. “I'm not very hungry.”

“You don't like your meat
sanglant
?”

Sanglant.
The French for “bloody.”

“It's fine . . .”

But it wasn't. I've always liked meat, but right then I could have become a vegetarian in the blink of an eye. When I sliced a piece of the steak off with my knife, I didn't feel hungry. I felt like a surgeon in an operating room.

Patrick poured himself a glass of red wine. As I saw the liquid tumbling out of the bottle, I could only imagine something very similar pouring from my own neck. “You must get an early night, Jack,” he said. “We need to look after you.”

And this is what I was thinking. Were they all vampires or was it just cousin Vladimir? True, they were all very pale. They all had the same uncomfortable eyes. But surely they were normal? After all, Adrien and his parents had come out with me into the sunlight. Perhaps it was like this. Vladimir was the vampire and the rest of them were, as they had told me, distant relatives. They were similar to vampires but they weren't actually vampires themselves. That would make sense. But even if they weren't blood guzzlers, they still knew about their cousin. Their blood relative. They were protecting him. And that made them as bad as him, however you looked at it.

I had to fight my way to the end of the meal. But at last I was able to stand up and go to bed. There was one last thing I had to know.

“Is there a problem with the telephone?” I asked.

Patrick Duclarc glanced sharply in my direction.

“I tried to send an e-mail,” I added. “I just wanted to tell my parents about the market that we visited today. My mother loves markets. It was a great market.” I realized I was babbling and shut my mouth.

“Yes.” Patrick nodded. “The telephone line is broken.”

Nathalie smiled at me but her eyes were cold. “The repairmen will come tomorrow.”

“You can telephone them then,” Adrien added, although there was no need.

“Right.” I forced a smile. “Good night, then.”

“Good night, Jack.”

They were still watching me as I went back downstairs to my room.

I went to sleep. It took me four hours and by the time I finally closed my eyes, the bed felt like a sack of potatoes that has been left out in the rain, but somehow I managed it. The next thing I knew, incredibly, it was ten o'clock and the sun was streaming in through the window. My clothes were scattered across the floor where I had left them. And there were no punctures in my neck, my wrists or anywhere else.

And here's the funny thing. With the coming of light, I began to doubt myself. My dad always had said that I had an overactive imagination and I really did wonder if I hadn't allowed my thoughts to run away with themselves the night before. The garlic, the hatred of light, the absent reflection, the name . . . it was true that they all pointed to only one conclusion. But vampires didn't really exist. Everyone knew that. What would my parents say if I asked them to take me home because I was scared? My sister, Isabelle, would never let me live it down.

When I went up for breakfast, Nathalie was in the kitchen and she looked utterly normal, pleased to see me.

“Are you feeing better, Jack?” she asked me.

“Yes, thank you.”

“Please. Help yourself!” There were croissants and honey on the table. Coffee and orange juice. I glanced out of the window and saw Adrien, already in the swimming pool. An ordinary family on an ordinary day.

“We thought we would go to Antibes this afternoon,” Nathalie went on. “There is the Château Grimaldi, which may interest you. Also, there is a very beautiful cathedral that we can visit.”

It was almost as if she had said it on purpose, to prove to me that I had imagined everything the night before.

“A cathedral?” I repeated. “Are you coming?”

“But of course. Adrien and I will come with you.”

If she and Adrien were vampires, if they even had a drop of vampire blood in them, they wouldn't possibly be able to enter a holy place like a cathedral. That was when I decided that I wouldn't make a break for it after all. It was also when I made my single worst mistake. I also decided that I would put Vladimir Duclarc to the test. One small experiment and I would know exactly what he was. And if I was proved right, then I would contact my parents and nobody would be able to argue with me.

I spent the morning swimming and sunbathing with Adrien. We played Ping-Pong—there was a table in the garage—and chatted as if nothing had happened. Just after lunch we drove down the coast to Antibes, which was an impressive, densely packed town held back from the water by a huge seawall. The cathedral was a striking, strangely modern-looking building, all orange, white and yellow, next to the chateau that Nathalie had mentioned, but to be honest I don't remember much about it. Because this was where I was going to put my plan into action. And I had to do it without being seen.

Nathalie and Adrien had both entered the cathedral ahead of me—and I'd noticed that neither of them had so much as hesitated. I went in third and as I passed through the main door, my hand slid into my trouser pocket and cradled the empty shampoo bottle that I had stolen from the bathroom and hidden there earlier. I waited while the two of them walked ahead to the altar, which was surrounded by dozens of panels, each one showing a different biblical scene. Nathalie had told me that the altar itself was medieval. But I wasn't interested. I found what I was looking for almost at once. A font, close to the main door. And I was in luck. Just as I had hoped, it held a couple of inches of water.

Holy water. Do you get the idea? It was one thing that I knew a vampire couldn't stand. And there was no need to call my parents. If I was protected with a bottle of holy water, even a bottle that had once contained anti-dandruff shampoo, I would be safe. Making sure that nobody was watching, I managed to half fill it, then put the lid back on and slip it back into my pocket. I was feeling much more comfortable when, ten minutes later, we went back out into the cobbled courtyard and stood in the sun. The night could bring whatever it pleased. This time I was prepared.

In fact, the shadows were already stretching out by the time we got back to the house, and it was only then that I began to have second thoughts. Perhaps I should have legged it for the airport. Right now I could have been in the air, on my way home. But you have to put yourself in my shoes. This was a vampire I was talking about. A vampire in the south of France! If I'd run all the way home to England with an accusation like that and was then proved wrong, my parents would think I was crazy. I'd never live it down.