B. Larson - Creatures

I almost gave up then. I almost opened up the curtains and threw myself on their mercy. I was just a bad kid and I deserved my punishment. But something forced me to hold back. I think it was my thoughts of Beth. I owed it to her to get her out of this.

“Who approaches me so confidently in my own house?” said the stranger. The voice was deep and it resonated through the room. It was accented strangely.

“It is Urdo, milord, Daughter of Seth and Ralen.”

“Ah, granddaughter,” said the voice in a softer tone. “I knew your parents well and I will miss them. The family blood was strong in them.”

“Thank you, Grandfather.”

There was a quiet moment, and I wondered if they were shaking hands or hugging. I realized my eyes were squinched tightly shut. Beth was digging her nails into my palm, which was hot and sweaty because we were holding hands so tightly. We both knew now that Vater was less than ten feet away from us.

“I wish I could say the same for the rest of this sprawling brood. There are far too many half-breeds. The bloodlines have grown faint. Many have been taking mundanes as mates-”

“-but milord-” Urdo protested.

“No,” he stopped her. “No excuses. Perhaps it is all my fault. In any case. I’ve been gone for far too long. There will have to be a purge.”

I heard him force the window open further. I imagined he was scanning the vast frosted roof. “Still,” he said, as he brushed snow about. “Not all of them are weak. Look at this!” he gave a strange laugh.

“Interesting,” said Urdo.

I chewed my lip, not liking the sound of her response. I thought right away that she might have a clue who had done it.

“Imagine, trying to slip away from me in my own house. The cheek of it!”

“I’m sorry, milord.”

“Oh no,” he said, suddenly serious. “No, no. Don’t be sorry, be proud. As the good emperor Fredrick often said: ‘Audacity is the rarest of traits to be found amongst the weak!’ There’s a spark of my spirit here, and it’s good to see.”

“I’m glad you approve.”

“Indeed, perhaps you’ve not failed completely. I’m going to my suite now, I’m weary after my journey. I do trust you’ve kept it in good order in anticipation of my return?”

“Of course,” said Urdo. Her voice was smooth again.

Vater’s footsteps faded away. But Urdo simply stood there. We waited, but she made no move to leave.

“Your hearts are pounding like drums in my ears,” she said finally.

I didn’t know what to do, but I felt my stomach falling away in a deep hole. We’d been discovered. Worse, we were trapped in this alcove with nowhere to run.

There was a pause. I waited for the curtains to be yanked back, but it didn’t happen.

“You’d best be getting back to your rooms now, children,” Urdo said at last. Her bootsteps moved away rhythmically.

Beth and I let out a long sigh of breath like swimmers coming up for air after a long trip to the bottom of a lake. We drew the curtain open, half-expecting to see them standing there, having tricked us somehow, but the passage was empty. We ran all the way back to the attic access and down the ladder to our rooms. We didn’t even bother putting the stairs back up. What was the point?

That night, I laid awake for a long time listening to Chris Anderson’s snoring. I went over everything in my mind. What did it all mean? Things seemed so complicated now. I’d expected an old man’s birthday party, not anything like this.

And what exactly had he meant by a purge?

“I’ve been thinking,” I said in a hushed the voice to Jake the next morning over breakfast. “I’ve been thinking a lot.”

“Uh-oh. You’re going to ruin this lovely breakfast, aren’t you?” said Jake. He said it around the strip of crispy bacon in his mouth. It was a heavy breakfast, and seemed unusual to me since I was used to just getting a bowl of cereal in the morning. We had thick bacon slices and scrambled eggs with lots of cheese baked in. I didn’t really like it that way, but it tasted okay if you put the eggs on drippy buttered toast. My mother would have called this breakfast a “heart-stopper”.

“Do you want me to tell you what I saw up there or not?” I asked him seriously.

Jake looked at me with raised eyebrows. His expression was a mixture of curiosity and resignation. We both knew I was going to tell him anyway.

“I saw Vater, or at least I heard him,” I said.

Jake looked at me and pushed the rest of the bacon into his mouth. He eyed me for a few seconds, probably trying to figure out if I was joking or not. “Okay,” he said finally. “You’ve got me. Spill it all.”

So I did. While we munched on that heavy, heart-stopper breakfast I filled him in on the whole story.

“Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

“You were snoring when I got back. Louder than Chris Anderson, even. Besides, I had to think about what I was going to tell you.”

“A purge?” whispered Jake. “What does that mean? Isn’t that what adults call vomiting sometimes? I don’t like the sound of that.”

I shrugged.

“So, they are going to run us losers out of town, or kill us all and bury us in the woods, eh?” said Jake, chuckling.

I shrugged again.

Jake eyed me. “That’s not what you’re really thinking is it?”

“He wanted just our class to come here, just the youngest newest generation who are going through the change. He wants to see how strong we are.”

“So?” asked Jake. He fished a bagel out of the basket in the center of the table and slathered it with cream cheese. “Maybe he’s a Hussades fan. Maybe he’ll have us all run the course to prove who’s good and give us a medal.”

“Maybe you ought to slow down on the food if we are going to be running for our lives later today.”

He looked at me with a frown, took just one bite of the bagel then stared at it for a moment and put it down on his plate. It was perhaps the first time I’d ever seen food left on his plate.

As we were finishing up, Beth finally showed up and joined us.

“Uh-oh,” said Jake, catching sight of the big frown on her face. “More doom and gloom from your partner in crime here, eh?”

He picked up the bagel on his plate again, and seemed to be thinking about the next bite.

“I’ve been in the library. They’ve got a computer in there hooked to the Internet.”

“What’d you find out?” I asked her.

“It’s not good. Purges are never good things in history. I checked into the web browser history to see what people have been looking up on that machine. I read some disturbing things. Have you guys ever heard of Vlad the Impaler?”

Jake and I both shifted in our seats. Jake put his bagel down again.

“Oh, don’t tell me!” she said, staring.

Jake and I didn’t meet her eyes. “Don’t talk about him with the adults,” I told her.

“He’s like a relative or something, isn’t he?” she hissed. “You have got to be kidding me! I thought you said you were from Switzerland not Transylvania.”

I shushed her with my hand. “Look,” I told her, glancing around nervously. “It’s something we learn about in history class, but are told never to bring it up with others. Keep it down.”

“Oh geez,” she said, putting her face in her hands. “Okay, so at least tell me that Vater isn’t Vlad. I mean, the things I read…”

“No, no,” I said urgently. “Nothing like that. Look, don’t you have some cousins somewhere that you aren’t proud of? Someone in the distant family that is famous, but not in a good way? Someone who went to jail or something?”