Bloody Horowitz (16 page)

One way or another, I had to be sure.

Patrick was working late that night and we didn't eat until half past eight. When I came up to the living room, there was no sign of Adrien. Nathalie was in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on a coq au vin. And Vladimir was sitting in an armchair with some sort of leatherbound book balanced on his lap. I've already mentioned that one feature of the living room was a spiral staircase. It stood to one side and twisted up to a gallery with bookshelves behind. Patrick had a desk up here and the gallery stretched the whole length of the room. It couldn't have been better. Making sure that nobody had seen me, I climbed quietly up and, keeping well back, continued along until I found myself directly above the reading man. The shampoo bottle was in my pocket.

Here, at last, was the final test. A tiny drop of holy water would mean nothing to an ordinary man. But to a vampire it would be like being stung by acid. It would burn his flesh—I'd seen it often enough in films. Being careful not to fumble, I took out the bottle and poured as little as I could into the cap. Then I reached out over the balcony. Vladimir Duclarc was directly below me. I turned my hand.

No more than two or three drops fell down, but they hit him directly on the head. And that was when I knew, without any doubt at all, that I was right. Vladimir screamed and leapt out of his chair. The book tumbled to the floor. As Nathalie rushed across from the kitchen, he stood there, one hand pressed against his face. It was as if he was being burned alive. I couldn't believe that a minuscule amount of water could have had such an effect. But of course, this wasn't ordinary water. This wasn't an ordinary man.

Vladimir looked up angrily. I threw myself back, pressing my shoulders against the bookshelves. He couldn't see me. He couldn't possibly have guessed I was there. Nathalie was next to him, dabbing at his skin with a tea towel. She was muttering to him—but even if she had been speaking in English I wouldn't have understood what she said. I stayed where I was, the bottle still in my hand. Eventually the two of them left the room, heading out into the garden, and I more or less tumbled back down the stairs. By way of an experiment, I dripped some of the holy water into my own hand. I felt nothing. It had no effect on me. But I wasn't a vampire. Not yet. Nor did I have any intention of becoming one.

I didn't go back to my room right then, although, as it turned out, everything would have been different if I had. I was feeling hot. The night was utterly still and seemed to be weighing down on me. I went out into the garden to get some air.

And that was when I heard them. Vladimir and Nathalie were kneeling close to the pool. He was splashing his face with non-sacred water. Neither of them heard me as I crept out behind them. But I heard them. And this time I understood at least part of what they said.

“Jack . . .” They were talking about me. “
Hier soir . . .”
Something about the night before. “
Le sang . . .”
That was definitely a word I knew. Vladimir had mentioned blood.

They talked for a couple of minutes. It was infuriating that I could only hear a few words of what they said and could only understand about half of that. But then came a sentence that rushed out of the darkness as if projected onto a screen.

And that I did understand: “He must be killed.”

Vladimir Duclarc spoke again.

“Ce soir.”
“Tonight.”

What a fool I had been! I had managed to prove beyond any doubt that Vladimir Duclarc was indeed a vampire, but in doing so I had exposed myself and left myself a prisoner in the house at the very worst time, after sunset, with at least six hours of darkness ahead. As I stood there, it seemed to me that the heat of the night had been drained away, replaced by an Arctic chill. I was on my own with them. There was no way out. And by the morning I would be dead—or worse. Suppose they turned me into one of them? What would it be like to live for a thousand years, condemned to hide in the shadows, feasting on the blood of other human beings?

Why had my parents sent me here? What did my French exams matter anyway? How had I let this happen to me?

There was a storm that night, one of those fat, heavy, spectacular storms that you only get in tropical climates when the heat of the summer becomes too much to bear. There was no wind but the thunder was deafening, the lightning so fierce that it seemed to rip the whole world in two. The rain held off for as long as it could. Then it all came down at once, smashing into the house and turning the dry earth into livid, splattering mud. The wolves were howling too—at least, I thought I heard them. But it was the thunder that I remember most, great fists of it, slamming into the side of the house as if it wanted to smash down the walls.

I was awake. Even without the storm I wouldn't have slept a wink. I watched the shadows leaping across the room, the intense white light blasting against the brickwork, lingering for a few seconds and then disappearing as fast as it had come. Where were Adrien and the others? I had no idea. Crouching, miserable, on the bed, still fully dressed, I cursed my own stupidity. I should have left when I had the chance. There was nothing natural about this weather. Vladimir Duclarc had somehow summoned it up.

He must be killed. Tonight. Before he can tell anyone what he knows. We will make him one of us and he will serve us forever. Suddenly afraid, I reached out and turned on the lights. Nothing happened. The power supply had been cut. Of course. That would have been simple to arrange.

The door crashed open.

And there he was, on the other side. Vladimir Duclarc. He was wearing his black jacket. His long hair streamed behind him. His face, caught in another burst of lightning, had no color at all, a snapshot from a cemetery. His eyes blazed. His mouth was open, his teeth glistening white. I knew he had come for me. I had been expecting it. But this time I was ready for him.

“Go back to hell!” I screamed.

I had the shampoo bottle and I hurled the contents directly into his face, then followed it, hurling myself onto him. There was only one way to get rid of a vampire. I had known what I had to do and, horrible though it was to contemplate, I had prepared myself.

The wooden stake had come from the garden. I had found it in a flower bed and had sharpened it with a knife stolen from the dinner table. With all my strength, I rammed it into Vladimir Duclarc's chest, slanting down toward his heart. Another bolt of thunder struck at that precise moment. Vladimir screamed but I heard nothing. The sound was drowned out by the elements. I pulled the stake out and struck a second time. I felt the point tear through his soft flesh. Blood, warm and black, spurted out, splashing into my face. I felt nauseous. But I had to be sure. One last time I ripped it out and then stabbed down again. This time I found his heart. I saw the light go out in his eyes. Blood, pints of it, gushed out of his mouth. He fell to his knees and I stood over him, knowing that in seconds he would crumble into ash.

Except that he didn't.

He was dead. That much was certain. I was drenched in his blood. There was blood all over the walls and floor. Then the lights blazed on. The return of the electricity was so sudden and the lights so bright that I was startled. I looked around. Patrick and Nathalie Duclarc were standing in the corridor. Both of them were wearing dressing gowns. Patrick was staring at me, his face filled with horror. Then his wife began to scream.

There is not much more to tell.

It seems that I was wrong about Vladimir Duclarc. He wasn't a vampire after all.

First of all, he came from Slovakia, which is nowhere near Transylvania. He had a little house in a place called Kežmarok where he worked as an antiques dealer, specializing in traditional Slovakian clothes, which he himself liked to wear.

What else can I tell you about him? Well, he didn't like garlic, but you already knew that. But it also turned out that he suffered from a condition called photophobia, which meant that he was extremely sensitive to light. He couldn't go out in the day without giving himself severe headaches and permanently damaging his eyes. Not surprisingly, perhaps, he felt very embarrassed about his condition and the family preferred not to mention it, although, of course, all in all it would have been better if they had.

Apparently he had come to my room that night because he was worried about me. According to Patrick Duclarc, the entire family had been a little concerned about my behavior in the last few days. And they had thought I might be scared, on my own, in such a spectacular storm. Patrick and Nathalie had come downstairs a few seconds after Vladimir had opened the door. Both of them had witnessed the attack. Nathalie was now in bed, sedated. It was Patrick who had called the police.

After I had murdered Monsieur Duclarc, I was driven down to the police station at Nice, but I wasn't interviewed until the next day, when my parents arrived. Both of them looked completely shocked. They were accompanied by someone from the British embassy, a man called Mr. Asquith. They hadn't let me get changed yet. Apparently they still needed to take forensic evidence and I suppose I must have looked quite a sight, covered from head to toe in blood.

I told them about the way Vladimir had vanished over the wall and I also described what I had seen in the mirror. My parents didn't say very much to me. Mum cried a lot and Dad just kept on staring at me and shaking his head. Anyway, Mr. Asquith went away for a few hours and when he came back to me, he explained that there was actually a small door in the wall—I'd never noticed it—and that far from turning himself into a bat, Vladimir Duclarc had simply let himself out that way.

As for the mirror, that was the stupidest thing of all. I've already told you that it was on a door leading into a walk-in closet. Well, what I hadn't realized was that door was covered in some sort of two-way glass. When the light was turned off inside the closet, the glass became a mirror. But when it was turned on, you could see right through it. When I'd seen Duclarc standing in front of the door on that sixth day, just before dinner, the light had been turned on. It was as simple as that. He had no reflection—and if I'd stood next to him, I wouldn't have had one either.

By now, I was feeling pretty sick, as I'm sure you can imagine. But there was still my last piece of evidence.

“What about the holy water?” I exclaimed. It was a relief to be able to express myself in English. “I dropped a tiny bit of it onto Mr. Duclarc and it burned him!”

But it seemed that the man from the embassy already had an answer to that.

“The water you dropped went straight into Monsieur Duclarc's eye,” he explained. “And it was in a shampoo bottle. It had mixed with the shampoo that was still inside. Monsieur Duclarc had sensitive eyes anyway . . . as a result of his medical condition. No wonder he cried out in pain. The shampoo stung him quite badly.”

“But I heard them talking about me!” I protested. “He said quite clearly that he was going to kill me.”

It took a little longer to work that out, but in the end we discovered that I was wrong about that too. Vladimir had been talking about me. He had been offering to give me a lesson in French and that was what I had heard. The French for “lesson” is
leçon
and not
le sang,
which sounds almost the same but means “blood.” As for the rest of it, I had misheard that too. He had been complimenting me on my grasp of the language, and he hadn't said:

Which means “He must be killed.”

But
“Il doit être doué.”

Which means “He must be intelligent.”

It was all a terrible misunderstanding.

I had to stay with the French police for a whole week, but in the end I was allowed to return to England. But not home. My dad explained to me that, after what had happened, I wouldn't be able to come home for some time. Instead, I was sent to a sort of hospital called Fairfields. Actually, I might as well be honest. The sign outside read East Suffolk Maximum Security Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

And that's where I'm writing this. I'm hoping they won't keep me here much longer, although it has already been one year. Mind you, my therapists tell me that I'm doing very well, and although they still give me lots of drugs, overall they're very pleased with my progress.

I also, incidentally, took my SATs while I was here. And I'm delighted to tell you that my visit to Nice must have helped. Because, despite the rather unfortunate things that happened during my stay, I got a 760 in French, so perhaps my father was right and the exchange was worthwhile after all.

It was without doubt the most shocking thing she had ever heard.

“I'm sorry, Jenny, I really am.” Her father was looking terrible. There were red rings around his eyes and he hadn't shaved. With his bald head, his round chin and his slightly protruding cheeks, he reminded her of one of those stocking stuffers she had once been given, the one where you use a magnet to drag iron filings onto a cartoon face. “You know things have been getting more and more difficult recently. This credit crunch. The business . . . all the problems we've been having.”

“Your dad's done everything he could,” her mother interjected. She had been crying. There was a tissue clamped in her right hand. Tears had turned it into a soggy mess.

“We've come to the end of the line,” her father went on. “The banks won't cut me any more slack and, in a word, we're bankrupt. The house is going to have to go. And the car. I'm afraid the dog's going to have to be put down. And we can't keep you either. You're going to have to be sold.”