Darren Shan - Lord Of The Shadows

The building was old and had once been used as a church by a shady preacher. He'd created a couple of secret rooms, almost impossible to find. They were stuffy and uncomfortable, but safe. I'd stayed in one of them three times already, to avoid the police searches which had been in full flow since the massacre at the football stadium.

"Any word from Vancha?" I asked, sitting up and pushing the bed covers back.

"Not yet," Alice said.

As the other surviving hunter, Vancha March was the only person apart from me who could freely kill Steve. Debbie and Alice didn't have a direct line to the Prince, but they'd equipped a number of the younger, more forward-thinking Generals with mobile phones. One would get word to Vancha about the situation here eventually. I just prayed it wouldn't be too late.

Recruiting an army had proved a lot harder than it sounded. No vampire knew for sure how the vampaneze had put the vampets together, but we could imagine their recruiting strategy find weak-willed, wicked people, then bribe them with promises of power. "Join us and we'll teach you how to fight and kill. We'll blood you when the time is right and make you stronger than any human. As one of us, you'll live for centuries. Anything you wish for can be yours."

Debbie and Alice faced a much harder task. They needed good people who were willing to fight on the side of right, who recognized the threat the vampets and their masters posed, who wished to avert the prospect of living in a world where a band of killers dominated the night. Crooked, grasping, evil-hearted people were easy to find. Honest, concerned, self-sacrificing people were harder to come by.

They found a few, among police and soldiers Alice had lots of contacts from her time on the force but nowhere near enough to counter the threat of the vampets. For half a year they made little or no progress.

They were beginning to think it was a waste of time. Then Debbie saw the way forward.

The vampaneze were on the increase. As well as recruiting the vampets, they were blooding more vampaneze assistants than normal, driving up their numbers in a bid to win the War of the Scars by means of force. Since they were more active than usual, they needed to drink more blood, to keep up their energy levels. And when vampaneze drank blood, they killed.

So where were all the bodies?

Vampaneze had survived for six hundred years by feeding cautiously, never killing too many people in any one area, carefully hiding the bodies of their victims. There weren't many of them never more than three hundred before the War of the Scars and they were spread across the world. It was relatively easy to keep their presence a secret from humanity.

But now they were on the increase, feeding in groups, killing hundreds of humans every month. There was no way such a drain on humanity could have passed unnoticed by the general public unless those they fed from weren't officially part of that public.

Tramps. Dossers. Hobos. Vagrants. Mankind had dozens of names for homeless people, those without careers, houses, families or security. Many names but not a lot of interest. Homeless people were a nuisance, a problem, an eyesore. Whether "ordinary" people felt pity or disgust for them, whether they handed over change when they saw someone begging or walked straight by, one thing united most humans they knew homeless people existed, but very few took any real notice of them. Who in any town or city could say how many homeless people were living on the streets? Who'd knowif those numbers started to drop? Who'd care?

The answer almost nobody. Except the homeless people themselves.They'd know something was wrong. The homeless would listen, pitch in and fight. If not for the vampires, then for themselves they were victims of the War of the Scars, and stood to lose big time if the vampaneze were triumphant.

So Debbie, Alice and their small band of Generals took their recruiting speeches to the corners of the world most humans know nothing about. They went out on the streets, into homeless shelters and mission churches, down alleys lined with rough beds made of cardboard boxes and wads of newspapers. They moved freely among the people of this subworld, facing suspicion and danger, spreading their message, in search of allies.

And they found them. There was a grapevine among the homeless, similar to that of the vampire clan. Though most lacked phones, they kept in touch with one another. It was amazing how fast a rumour could travel, and wherever Alice and Debbie went, they found people who'd heard about the murders and knew they were under attack, even though they had no idea who their attackers were.

Debbie and Alice told the street people about the vampaneze. They encountered scepticism to begin with, but the vampires with them backed them up, demonstrating their powers. In a couple of cities they helped the street folk track down vampaneze and kill them. Word spread rapidly, and over the last several months thousands of street people across the world had pledged themselves to the vampire cause. Most hadn't been trained yet. For now they were serving as eyes and ears, watching for vampaneze, passing on word of their movements.

They'd also chosen a name vampirites.

Harkat helped me out of bed and I hobbled from my room, down the corridor and stairs to the ground floor, where the hidden rooms were located. Alice came with us, to ensure all was in order. We passed Declan along the way. He was on the phone to another nearby vampirite stronghold, warning them of the police search.

The Generals with Debbie and Alice left them eventually, to resume the fight against the vampaneze all hands were needed in the War of the Scars. A couple kept in touch, meeting up with them every month or two, monitoring their progress. But most of the time the ladies of the shadows as the vampirites referred to them travelled alone, choosing places where the vampaneze were active, recruiting fervently.

They'd come to my home town a fortnight ago. There'd been many reports of vampaneze here, and a band of vampirites had already formed to combat them. Debbie and Alice came to raise morale, and also to spread awareness among the street folk. That task accomplished, they'd planned to move on soon. Then I'd turned up, beaten and bleeding, and their plans changed.

I rubbed my right shoulder as I shuffled to the secret room. Alice had removed the arrowhead and stitched me up. The wound had healed cleanly, but it still stung like crazy, and I was a long way off full recovery.

Alice and Harkat moved the furniture which helped mask the entrance to the hidden room at the rear of the house. Then Alice pressed a secret panel and a section of wall slid back to reveal a cramped cell. There was a very dim light set in one of the walls.

"They searched the house thoroughly last time," Alice reminded me, checking that the jug beside the mattress on the floor was filled with water. "You could be in for another long stay."

"I'll be fine," I said, lying down.

"Hold on!" I heard Debbie shout, as Alice was about to close the section of wall on me. She came hurrying to the entrance, carrying a small bag. "I've been waiting until you were strong enough to give this to you. It will help pass the time."

"What is it?" I asked, taking the bag.

"You'll see," Debbie replied, blowing me a kiss and stepping back as the cell was closed off. I waited a minute for my eyes to adjust to the dim light, then reached inside the bag and pulled out several notepads bound together by an elastic band. I broke into a smile my diary! I'd forgotten it entirely. Now that I cast my thoughts back, I recalled handing the notepads to Alice before leaving with Harkat two years earlier.

I slipped the elastic band off the pads, thumbed through the copy on top, then paused, upended the diary, and went back eighteen years to before I sneaked out to the Cirque Du Freak and met Mr Crepsley. Within minutes I was adrift in the past, and the hours flew by as I focused on my scrawled writing, aware of nothing else.