The Twilight Circus (27 page)

Nat counted five …
no … eight … ten
Wolven, but there were too many vampires to count; they seemed hopelessly outnumbered. But the Wolven were equipped with teeth, claws, and incredible strength. The vampires were strong, but the white wolf creatures had an advantage over them: The bloodsuckers had to get up close and really personal to use their teeth.

“We need to get the kids and leave,” said Fish, interrupting his thoughts, “and we can't stay up here. We're too exposed.”

Nat agreed reluctantly. He thought about blasting Woody again, but he worried he might knock him off his guard. He hadn't seen his friend in the midst of the
fighting, but just the knowledge he was nearby was comfort enough. He glanced at the sky in hope.
How long before dawn
?

The Carver boy was gone
!

The vampire queen surveyed the room. It was empty except for the rope she herself had bound him with. For the first time since the rats had reanimated her with their blood, she was frightened. Her fears were confirmed when she reached the cellars. The cocoons lay in tatters—
the children had gone, too
.

She stared at the empty cocoons. If the hive lost the battle, the Wolven would come for her. She needed to find Nat Carver quickly. The others could rot in hell, but Carver was her insurance.
He could not leave the chateau
!

“You put them
where
?” asked Nat incredulously.

“In the mausoleum,” said Fish. “I used the Egyptian key to lock 'em in.”

“If they didn't need therapy before, they will now,” said Nat, shaking his head.

“It's safer than anywhere else,” said Fish defensively. “The comtesse sleeps in the chateau, and the other coffins were full.”

“We'd better—” Nat stopped abruptly. “Can you hear that?”

Fish could hear nothing apart from the howling wind, and shook her head.

Nat concentrated. The voice in his head was familiar, but very faint. And it kept phasing out like a bad radio signal…. Then …

Cominwhereareyaaaaaaa??
??

It was Woody!

Meetyaattheblackbridgecominnow!!!
! Nat blasted back, and hoped he had done it hard enough. His head aching with the effort, he grabbed Fish's hand and ran.

“
C'mon
,” he shouted. “We'll meet him at the black bridge.”

Their relief at hearing from Woody was cut short by another noise.

THWACK THWACK THWACK
. Nat's reaction was instant. Pulling Fish with him, he shot under the cover of the archway between the chateau and the lower gardens.
Flattening themselves to the wall, they prayed they hadn't been seen by the circling vampires.

“The vampire queen must know I've escaped,” panted Nat. “She wouldn't spare any of them from the fighting unless she'd found out.”

Counting the seconds, Nat risked sliding out from under the thin arch. “They've gone,” he said, his face white in the darkness. “C'mon!”

Still dragging Fish by the hand, he belted across the black bridge, trying not to look at the drop on either side. As they ran they instinctively ducked their heads, keeping themselves as low and small as possible. Reaching the enormous door of the mausoleum, Fish fumbled in her pocket for the Egyptian key. There was a truly horrible moment when her frozen fingers dropped it in the snow. Falling to her knees, she scrabbled about for it while Nat scanned the black sky, expecting to see red eyes and black wings and hear the
THWACK THWACK
of wings.

“
Got it
!” shouted Fish triumphantly, holding the key out to Nat.

But Nat wasn't listening. He was just standing there, grinning like an idiot. For galloping over the black bridge,
tongue lolling, eyes glowing like headlights, came a large, white wolf creature. It was Woody.

Saffi Besson had been busy. She had surprised herself over the last dreadful weeks in the company of the vampire, and knew that whatever happened—whether they managed to get out of here alive or not—it wasn't because she hadn't tried to save herself. Now she was in charge of these shocked and freezing kids. Her mum always said that God helps those who help themselves. Well, she didn't know about that, but she—or God—had found some paraffin lamps and matches and, with the help of a couple of the bigger kids, she had smashed up a couple of coffin lids to get a fire going. And when she heard the key turn in the lock, she was ready. Brandishing a flaming piece of wood, she waited, wild-eyed and grim.

The heavy door crashed open, the kids by the fire cowering in fright, covering their eyes. Saffi, her breath held, her feet planted firmly so she could get a good swing at whoever it was, almost fainted in relief.
It was the girl, Alex Fish
!

But there was someone with her—a boy—a boy whom
Saffi had no difficulty in recognizing.
It was the boy from the lake
! The boy she had prayed would get help.
He was smiling at her
. But … this had to be a dream, for behind him there was—and Saffi took a few steps back—
behind him there was a great big white wolf
!

“It's OK,” said Fish hastily as she saw Saffi raise the piece of burning wood. “He's harmless.”

Then the boy with the dark blue eyes smiled. “Ready to get out of here?”

Saffi nodded, her eyes filling with grateful tears.

Gathering up the children, Nat opened the door of the mausoleum for the last time. The moon had come out from the snow-laden sky, showing the black bridge and the white ice in perfect monochrome.
And there were vampires roosted silently on the parapets
.

The vampire queen grinned obscenely as she stood in front of them.

“Caught like rats in a trap,” she cackled. “And now I have a pet Wolven, too. How convenient.”

It didn't take Nat and Fish long to realize they were outnumbered. Woody's lip was drawn into a deadly snarl that showed all his teeth. He looked terrifying.

“Down, boy.” The vampire queen smirked, flanked by her deadly assistants, their red eyes glowing malevolently with thirst. “Master Carver, you'll have to control your beast; he's frightening the children!”

But Woody knew something else, and he hoped Nat was sharing his thoughts.
The clan had been victorious. They had all but demolished the hive and they were coming
. Coming for the last of the hive and their evil queen.

“
AAAAAAAAAHWOOOOOOOOOOO RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHH
!”

The howling cut through the tension like a knife. Fish noticed the expression on the face of the vampire queen with satisfaction. She looked petrified.
Well, it serves her
right
, thought Fish.
A good general never leaves the battle without making sure they're winning
.

In the moonlight came Woody's clan, so glaringly white it almost hurt Fish's eyes to look at them. In one minute flat, the queen had gone from triumph to dismay. Fish watched as the last of the vampire hive swooped to meet the approaching Wolven.

Woody galloped toward them, snarling and growling. Nat watched in horror as a red-eyed bloodsucker landed on Woody's back. In a trice, Woody had rolled over and grabbed the surprised vamp by the throat. Black blood splattered Woody and onto the ice. The Wolven were tireless. As the remaining vampires tried to flee, the clan leaped high into the air, bringing them down effortlessly and finishing them off, the snow melting with their stinking gore.

The queen stood alone. Smiling at them, she backed away, her wings quivering as she tried to unfold them.

“Get her!” screamed Fish. “She's trying to morph!”

The queen laughed, a harsh, grating sound, and leaped up onto the top of the bridge, preparing to morph into her wings. Just as her feet left the ground, a white blur
shot past Nat and Fish and rocketed high into the air, just managing to lock onto her horrid long toes with its teeth.

“
AAAAAIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
!” A ghastly shriek came from the maw of the vampire's mouth as both vampire and Woody plummeted from the top of the parapet down onto the ice-covered lake.

“Get the children inside!” yelled Nat to Fish. “They're going to freeze out here!”

Fish hesitated; she wanted to follow the Wolven, not babysit. But common sense told her she had no choice. Reluctantly she agreed, and she and Saffi took the children back inside the mausoleum, out of the freezing wind.

Nat raced over to the edge of the bridge and looked down. All he could see was a black hole in the ice where Woody had taken down the vampire queen and crashed through. There was no sign of either.

He watched, his heart in his mouth, as the remaining eleven Wolven raced down the rocky path to the lake below. Remembering Mac's words, he hoped they were true:
I can even drown
. If Woody had survived the fall and was strong enough to keep the vampire under the water
long enough to drown her, the reign of terror would be finished—at least for now.

As dawn came, there was no word from the lake. Nat slumped as his energy left him. The kids were safe at least; if only Woody …

He felt a movement behind him and turned around. A large, russet-colored wolf stood in the first light of the sun as it rose in the misty east.

Crescent
! Did that mean the Howlers had tracked them?
But there was something wrong with her
, thought Nat uneasily.
Something wrong with the way she moved
. She looked awkward, almost cringing away before being propelled toward him, her ears tightly pressed to her skull as though she was moving against her will. And there was something else—
her eyes weren't her own
! Crescent's eyes were usually a vivid, orange color, filled with haughty excitement, full of life. The eyes that were narrowed and stared at Nat were a dull, malevolent orange; they were the eyes of a dead creature with no soul.
The eyes of Lucas Scale
!

Crescent's body launched itself clumsily at Nat. Finding himself on the ground, Nat scrabbled away from the
werewolf, desperate to summon up some Wolven strength. He could feel his muscles stretching and pulling under his skin, could feel his strength increasing as the adrenaline made him wolf out like he had in the crypt, hours before.

But hold on—what else was happening?
It wasn't stopping
! Then Nat was aware of falling, his body lengthening out on the cold, cold ground. Something insane was happening.
My hands are changing
! Terrified, Nat saw his hands spread out in front of him. They were morphing into paws, great claws emerging from what were once his ordinary, human hands.
Oh God, what's my mum going to say
? thought Nat irrationally. And then his wolf side took over.

Inside Crescent's body, Scale felt the first frisson of fear.
This was unexpected, to say the least
! He stared at the silver-gray wolf who had until seconds ago been a teenage boy. The wolf who stared back at him, sizing him up, creeping toward him with dripping jaws, much bigger than the she-wolf that Scale now inhabited.

The two locked together in a deadly embrace, neither moving as they both clung on to each other with their
claws, each trying to find purchase with their teeth.

Alex Fish and Saffi Besson stared at each other in dismay. What was going on? Fish had thought the noises were thunder at first, low rumbling sounds that shook the ground. But then, there was no mistaking it.
Growling
. The noise was somehow the worst sound Fish had ever heard. Leaving Saffi with the increasingly confused children, Fish sped back to the bridge to see a large silvery gray wolf grappling with a familiar russet she-wolf.
Crescent! But who was the other one? And what was going on
? thought Fish, confused. Then she saw Nat's ragged clothes in a heap. Her eyes widened in shock.
The beautiful silver-gray animal was Nat
!

As Nat pinned down his enemy and bared his teeth for the final time, Fish ran out from the shadows, yelling his name.

“Nat!
Noooo
! It's
Crescent
!”

Nat came to his senses and stopped.
If he killed this body, he wasn't killing Scale, but Crescent
! Then another thought popped into his head, sent there by Lucas Scale.
Yes, but isn't she your enemy? Isn't she always trying to break your friendship with Woody? Kill her
!

Lucas Scale had lost this battle for now, he knew that. But if he could make the Carver brat finish off the she-wolf, well, that would almost make up for it! He would be an outcast!

Nat hesitated again, thinking about plunging his teeth into Crescent's soft furry neck. It was all Fish needed. She knew that to part two fighting werewolves was madness—she could end up dead herself. But she felt herself grabbing Nat by the scruff of thick fur on his neck, and
puuuuulling
.

Nat fell on top of Fish, almost squishing her. When he had scrambled to his feet, he saw the truth. It was just Crescent, lying in an untidy heap on the ground staring up at him, her eyes filled with molten tears. Of Scale, there was no sign. He had left Crescent's body and disappeared.

Alex Fish watched wide-eyed as the russet wolf shook herself and flexed her lithe body in the snow beneath her. She stared in fascination as Crescent's face and body started to change. Her snout flattened out, her ears shrank, and her body shortened into a human shape again. In seconds
the russet wolf had gone, replaced by a naked girl, her body bruised from her fight with the silver-gray wolf.

The wolf who had once been Nat Carver watched as Fish pulled off her top layer of clothes and offered them to the exhausted girl. Crescent flashed her a grateful smile.

“Thanks,” she said simply. Then Crescent turned to the gray wolf and smiled.