The Twilight Circus (18 page)

“
Check
,” yelled the Twilighters.

The morning had been spent planning and organizing their defense. Wood was gathered around the trailers and cabins and stacked into neat bonfires. The generator was
set up and the electric fences unrolled. Water from the nearby church was blessed hurriedly by a very scared, very fat little priest and dragged into camp in a tank by the Russian horses. Evan and John Carver were in charge of the stake-sharpening outfit, while Jude ran an onion-chopping production line. Nat's olfactory glands went into overdrive. His enhanced senses couldn't cope with the smell of the onions; the fumes clung to his clothes and invaded his nostrils. He had to resort to tying a scarf around his nose and mouth, much to the amusement of his mum, who luckily thought he was just trying to get out of chopping the onions. It was at times like this that Nat felt he was being deceitful by not sharing his secret with his mum and dad. He wondered how long it would be before they really noticed he wasn't quite the boy they thought he was.

Fish directed all activities with aplomb, much to Crescent's disgust and annoyance. To anyone who would listen, she'd been voicing her opinion about Fish's certain inability to conduct a successful campaign against vampires as she was, after all, a mere human.

Unfortunately, Fish herself had heard.

“Well, you know, Crescent,” she said in a syrupy, condescending voice, “you can always take over if you think you're qualified, but I think you'd better leave this to NightShift, sweetheart. Vampires are slightly harder to kill than ickle furry guinea pigs and meerkats.”

A few Twilighters stifled giggles while Crescent flushed, her eyes flashing. She flounced off in a huff, and for once Nat felt a bit sorry for her. It looked like Crescent had met her match in Alex Fish.

“Who died and made
her
queen?” he heard her mutter to Otis, who wisely kept his mouth shut.

Later, Crescent loped sulkily between the rows of caravans, listening to the sounds of activity as the rest of the Twilighters worked in teams to prepare their attack. Not only had John Carver given her a final, final warning after nearly scaring the horseshoes off poor Rudi
(Nat hadn't even fallen off!)
, Alex Fish had shown her up in front of everyone,
and
Crescent had glimpsed Nat Carver's expression of sympathy.
Well
, she thought to herself, kicking up the snow in temper,
he can stick his stupid pity, thanks very much
.

Her mood was dark. Her stomach churned and her werewolf senses were reeling. Her head ached and, worst of all … she felt like hurting someone. Hurting and
biting… ripping …
She shook her head, making it ache more, but at least the murderous thoughts receded into the dark part of her werewolf brain.
The part you trained yourself to hide if you were a lycan
.

Something gripped her brain like a vise. Crescent fell to her knees in the snow from the sheer force of it. There was something stuck half in, half out of the snow in front of her, something pushing its way out, like a hand scrabbling from a grave.
The snow globe
! Seeing it again made her feel weird—sort of thrilled, but at the same time ashamed and guilty and frightened. The snow globe had made her forget the things it had told her to do, but she knew they were BAD and if she did them she would be CURSED. She had made herself put the globe back on the table and leave the
Silver Lady
. But she
had
done something bad—not a really big thing—but she could remember how wonderful it felt when she had made Nat Carver's horse bolt, how
good
it had felt to see the look of terror on his face!

Still kneeling in the snow, Crescent looked around
furtively. Although her senses were screaming at her, warning her off, she wanted it. She wanted to pick it up and shake it again, watch the snow swirl around. And then … she wanted to see the eye again, although it both revolted and frightened her. She wanted to feel its power and strength creep inside her. It called to her silently, insistently,
cajolingly
. She made her fingers pick it up—part of her still wanted nothing to do with it—and she held it, causing the snow to fly around the scene inside: a tiny family of reindeer and fir trees. As the confetti snow cleared beneath the plastic shell of the globe, the eye of Lucas Scale opened again.

“
Nat Carver has set everyone against you
,” wheedled a syrupy voice in her brain. “
John Carver hates you for what you did to those animals; he wants you gone. Everyone hates you, Crescent, and you smell
very
bad: That's why you had to keep away from the horses
.”

After a while, Crescent got to her feet, her face set in an ugly leer. Her body was trying to morph as part of her tried to repel Scale's presence from her body. Her hair stood up on her head and fell in matted clumps around her face. Her hands had changed into twisted paws, her
claws unsheathed. When she opened her eyes, they were
changed
.

The Twilighters were as ready as they would ever be. They were prepared for any eventuality, an aerial attack or ground invasion by their bloodsucking visitors, with three lines of defense facing out in a semicircle around the camp. Nat Carver, who was crouched in position with Woody, felt vulnerable and exposed as they waited for the inevitable attack. Nat had learned to trust his premonitions, and with Woody having the same awful dream, their senses were on Wolven overdrive. In the brief and unsettling silence in the still and frozen night, Nat felt Woody clutch the soft flesh at the top of his arm.

“Ow,” whispered Nat. “Put your claws away!”

Woody was in the middle of a shift. His hands had already morphed and his sharp claws were sticking into Nat's arm.

“Sorry,” Woody growled, and the hairs went up on the back of Nat's neck. No matter how many times his friend shifted, he couldn't help feeling chilled. Woody was always weird when his change was neither here nor there. Half
boy, half Wolven, his amber eyes shone out like beams of light and his voice sounded inhuman and scary. “Listen,” growled Woody.

When the vampires came, they came fast. The
THWACK THWACK
sound of their leathery wings reverberated in the still, frozen night. Nat's keen hearing picked up what Woody had already heard: great wings forcing air away as they flapped nearer and nearer.

“Ready?” whispered Fish.

Nat and Woody both flashed her ghostly grins.

“Can you see anything?”

Nat struggled to answer. His mouth was too dry to talk.

Woody answered for him. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Look.”

Fish peered up to where Woody was staring.

“Oh … oh no,” she breathed.

Fish was used to fighting the unknown. She had been responsible for staking a whole hive of bloodsuckers, hadn't she? But these were different. These would be awake!
How could she ever have thought she would be able to take this on and win
? There were at least fifty of them. Winged horrors with red eyes and black scabrous wings, roosting silently
at the tops of the trees, waiting to attack.

Had the Twilighters done enough to ensure a victory? It was time to find out. She gave the signal.

The team members on lights duty turned the headlights on the trucks and cars to high beam. Woody had fully shifted by now, and he leaped forward in the front line with the werewolves, teeth bared, hackles standing up on his shoulders like a demented porcupine.

The vampires' first mistake was that they approached the camp through the trees, planning to take the Twilighters by surprise. They had no idea, until they tried to climb down through their cover, that Fish had designed a cunning cat's cradle of string throughout the entire network of branches. Maccabee Hammer and his aye-ayes had spent the day up in the treetops, until the semicircle of conifers was crisscrossed with hundreds of yards of hairy green string. And it had worked! Designed to slow their inevitable climb down into camp, the Twilighters had a good idea of what they were up against as the harsh halogen lights from the trucks illuminated the creatures trying to disentangle themselves, and watched in fascinated horror at the struggling vampires, who shrieked abominably
as their wings and feet became caught in the string. They were just as Nat had described them from his premonition, black leathery devils with burning coals as eyes.

The first line of defense waited while the vampires descended. Dark shapes crashed to the floor as the string lost its strength and snapped.

“Prime the hoses!” yelled Fish as the first vampire crashed through. It rose to its feet as if lifted by an invisible force, its black wings morphing back into its body as it stood up and reached out for Nat with a ragged red grin of triumph.

“
Nat
! Look out!”

Nat was dimly aware of his mum screaming. He ducked just in time as the vampire shot out an impossibly long, thin arm, and turned to run. But the vampire was too quick. This time it managed to grab him roughly, making Nat lose his balance and fall over. It was strong, stronger than Nat, even with his Wolven blood. It tightened its hold around Nat's neck, and he was dimly aware of a reddish-colored wolf shape moving forward close by.
Crescent! Thank goodness! Why wasn't she helping him? WHAT THE FLIPPIN' HECK WAS SHE WAITING
FOR? A WRITTEN INVITATION
? To Nat's horror, she cringed away from him, her lush red tail tucked firmly between her back legs. Nat couldn't believe it.
Crescent had punked out! She was running away
! And the vampire was inches away from Nat's face, its vicious features frozen in a ferocious snarl. He was helpless.
Why hadn't they turned on the hoses
? If he could only move his arms, he could smack the vampire a good one, but his arms were pinned by his sides. Sensing he didn't have long, he pulled his head back as far as he could from the horrific teeth that were trying to latch on to him, and
SMACK
! He head butted the vampire hard enough for it to loosen its grip. Although the vampire looked like it had a headache, it was still hanging on to Nat, moving in again with its fangs.

Then, there was a sudden jolt, like an electric shock, a muffled BANG—and Nat found himself covered in black, sticky goo. The vampire had disappeared, and Fish, also covered in black gore, pulled Nat from the ground.

“Where'd it go?” cried Nat. “What the —”

Fish grinned, her teeth white against her grubby face.

“Exploded,” she replied, handing Nat a sharp wooden
stake. “Here,” she said. “There's plenty more where this one came from.”

More vampires were breaking through the trees. As they advanced on their prey they quickly smelled out the fruity scent of humans, but there was an underlying odor—a meaty, savage whiff of … werewolves! The vampires were caught on the back foot again, because they hadn't expected any resistance from the humans, let alone werewolves. They hadn't bargained for the Twilighters to be forewarned by Nat's nightmare, much less on being met by this hostile crowd with their stakes and their rather infantile string traps.
And what was this
? Again, something they hadn't bargained for.

“
Sooooooouuup! FIRE
!”

They didn't have a chance to retreat. The vampires in the front row met the full force of the onion soup. Gallons of foul-smelling, flesh-burning gunk shot out of a dozen hoses, making the vampire lieutenants shriek and sizzle as the French onion soup ravaged their vampire skin. Encouraged by their success, Natalie and her team reloaded with more soup and holy water, ready for the next lot. “
FIRE
!” When it hit the vampires full
in the face it hissed horribly, burning off their flesh, and giving them the appearance of melted candles as they writhed on the snowy ground and evaporated. The vampires who escaped this undignified method of vampire-slaying were caught by the three Surrealias as they rose gracefully up into the night sky with a fishing net held in their clawlike hands. Flying high above the camp, they pulled the net taut and dropped it onto the fleeing creatures, for Fish, Evan, and JC to finish off with wooden stakes.

“Is this going to work?” shouted Evan Carver. “I've only ever seen this part in movies!”

“Trust me!” shouted back Fish, “it works. Watch and learn!”

But it was horrible to watch. Alex Fish raised her arm in an arc. She swung it down and staked the nearest vampire trying to bite through the net with razor-sharp incisors. It was as though the stake were a lightning rod. A blue flame sprang out of the vampire's chest, and then it exploded with a muffled
BANG
, covering Fish again with a mixture of vampire innards and French onion soup. After the smoke cleared, all that was left of the deadly beast was an
acrid black stain on the pure white snow. The smell was appalling.

“We need to get them all!” Fish commanded. “Don't let any get away!”

“There's too many!” Nat yelled back.

The scene on the ground was horrific. If Nat had been able to watch instead of fighting for his life, he would have seen Woody and the three Howlers dragging the vampires from the trees, leaping up as they broke through the string and mauling them until Fish could stake them. Her tried-and-tested method of shoving trash bags over their heads proved useful for disorienting the vampires, and staking them wasn't so messy, as most of the gore was contained inside the plastic, but it took too long. The vampires who got the full force of the onion soup were taken out quickly, but staking the others as they landed was a bit hit-or-miss.
There had to be a quicker way
!

NAT! STABLES
!

“Uh … Woody?” Nat caught Woody's message and flung the hose down. “Back in a minute!” he shouted to Scarlet. “Keep it coming!”

He caught a glimpse of white fur as Woody flashed
ahead toward the stables. As he ran, Nat was forming a picture in his mind. Woody was showing him the electric fence and …
Wait a minute, he was showing him Titus the bull
!