Darren Shan - The Vampire's Assistant

"I can cook stew. Mr. Crepsley taught me."

"Have you ever cooked for thirty or forty humans?"

"No."

"Too bad. Maybe you'll learn." He flipped through another couple of pages. "Can you sew?"

"No."

"Have you washed clothes before?"

"By hand?"

"Yes."

"No."

"Hmmm." He flipped some more, then snapped the book shut. "Okay," he said, "until we find a more permanent position for you, stick with Evra and help him with his chores. Does that sound fair?"

"I'd like that," I said.

"You don't mind, Evra?" he asked the snake-boy.

"Not at all," Evra replied.

"Very well. It's settled. Evra will be in charge of you until further notice. Do what he says. When your colleague-in-blood arises," — he meant Mr. Crepsley — "you're free to spend the night with him if he so desires. We'll see how you do, then make a decision on how best to utilize your talents."

"Thank you," I said.

"My pleasure," he replied.

I expected him to suddenly vanish then, but instead he turned and walked away slowly, whistling, enjoying the sunshine.

"Well, Darren," Evra said, sticking a scaly arm around my shoulders, "looks like you and I are partners now. How do you feel about that?"

"I feel good… partner."

"Cool!" He slapped my shoulder and gulped down the last of his sausage. "Then let's get going."

"What do we do first?" I asked.

"What we'll be doing first every morning," Evra said. "Milking the poison from the fangs of my snake."

"Oh," I said. "Is it dangerous?"

"Only if she bites before we finish," Evra said, then laughed at my expression and pushed me ahead of him to the tent.

Evra did the milking himself — to my great relief — then we brought the snake outside and laid her on the grass. We grabbed buckets of water and scrubbed her down with really soft sponges.

After that, we had to feed the wolf-man. His cage was near the back of the campsite. He roared when he saw us coming. He looked as angry and dangerous as he had that night I went to see the Cirque with Steve. He shook the bars and lunged at us if we got too close — which we didn't!

"Why is he so vicious?" I asked, tossing him a large chunk of raw meat, which he grabbed in midair and bit into.

"Because he's a real wolf-man," Evra said. "He's not just somebody very hairy. He's half human, half wolf."

"Isn't it cruel to keep him chained up?" I asked, throwing him another slice of meat.

"If we didn't, he'd run free and kill people. The mix of human and wolf blood has driven him mad. He wouldn't just kill when he was hungry; if he was free, he'd murder all the time."

"Isn't there a cure?" I asked, feeling sorry for him.

"There isn't a cure because it isn't a disease," Evra explained. "This isn't something he caught, it's how he was born. This is what he is."

"How did it happen?" I asked.

Evra looked at me seriously. "Do you really want to know?"

I stared at the hairy monster in the cage, ripping up the meat as if it were cotton candy, then gulped and said, "No, I suppose I don't."

We did a bunch of jobs after that. We peeled potatoes for the night's dinner, helped repair a tire on one of the cars, spent an hour painting the roof of a van, and walked a dog. Evra said most days were like this, just wandering through the camp, seeing what needed doing, helping out here and there.

In the evening we took a garbage bag full of cans and broken pieces of glass to the tent of Rhamus Twobellies, a huge man who could eat anything. I wanted to stay and watch him eat, but Evra hurried me out. Rhamus didn't like people watching him eat when he wasn't performing.

We had a lot of time to ourselves, and during our quieter moments we told each other about our lives — where we'd come from and how we'd grown up.

Evra had been born to ordinary parents. They were horrified when they saw him. They abandoned him at an orphanage, where he stayed until an evil circus owner bought him at the age of four.

"Those were bad days," he said quietly. "He used to beat me and treat me like a real snake. He kept me locked up in a glass case and let people pay to look at me and laugh."

He was with the circus for seven long, miserable years, touring small towns, being made to feel ugly and freakish and useless.

Finally, Mr. Tall came to the rescue.

"He showed up one night," Evra said. "He appeared suddenly out of the darkness and stood by my cage for a long time, watching me. He didn't say a word. Neither did I.

"The circus owner came. He didn't know who Mr. Tall was, but thought he might be a rich man, interested in buying me. He gave him his price and stood back, waiting for an answer.

"Mr. Tall didn't say anything for a few minutes. Then his left hand grabbed the circus owner by the neck. He squeezed once and that was the end of him. He fell to the floor, dead. Mr. Tall opened the door to my cage and said, 'Let's go, Evra. I think Mr. Tali's able to read minds, which is how he knew my name."

Evra was quiet after that. He had a faraway look in his eyes.

"Do you want to see something amazing?" he finally said, snapping out of his thoughtful mood.

"Sure," I said.

He turned to face me, then stuck out his tongue and pushed it up over his lip and right up his nose !

"Ewww! Gross!" I yelled delightedly.

He pulled the tongue back and grinned. "I've got the longest tongue in the world," he said. "If my nose were big enough, I could poke my tongue all the way to the top, down my throat, and back out my mouth again."

"You couldn't!" I laughed.

"Probably not." He giggled. "But it's still pretty impressive." He stuck his tongue out again and this time licked around his nostrils, one after the other. It was revolting but hilarious.

"That's the most disgusting thing I've ever seen." I laughed.

"I bet you wish you could do it," Evra said.

"I wouldn't, even if I could," I lied. "Don't you get snot all over your tongue?"

"I don't have any snot," Evra said.

"What? No snot?"

"It's true," he said. "My nose is different from yours. There's no snot or dirt or hairs. My nostrils are the cleanest part of my whole body."

"What does it taste like?" I asked.

"Lick my snake's belly and you'll find out," he replied. "It's the same taste as that."

I laughed and said I wasn't that interested!

Later, when Mr. Crepsley asked me what I'd done all day, I told him: "I made a friend."

We'd been with the cirque two days and nights. I spent my days helping Evra and my nights with Mr. Crepsley, learning about vampires. I was going to bed earlier than I had been, though I rarely hit the sack before one or two in the morning.

Evra and I were tight friends. He was older than me, but he was shy — probably because of his abusive childhood — so we made a good team.

As the third day rolled by, I was gazing around the small groups of vans and cars and tents, feeling like I'd been part of the scene for years.

I was starting to suffer from the effects of going for too long without drinking human blood. I wasn't as strong as I had been, and couldn't move as quickly as I could before. My eyesight had dulled, and so had my hearing and sense of smell. I was a lot stronger and quicker than I'd been as a human, but I could feel my powers slipping a little more every day.

I didn't care. I'd rather lose some strength than drink from a human.

I was relaxing with Evra on the edge of the campsite that afternoon when we spotted a figure in the bushes.

"Who's that?" I asked.

"A kid from a nearby village," Evra said. "I've seen him hanging around before."

I watched the boy in the bushes. He was trying hard not to be seen, but to someone with my powers — fading though they were — he was as obvious as an elephant. I was curious to know what he was doing, so I turned to Evra and said, "Let's have fun."