Darren Shan - Blood Beast

“It’s true,” I cry. “ I should be dead now, not the Spleens. It should be…” I stop, frowning. “But why did I come here? Why pick on them and Bill-E?”

“You didn’t like them,” Juni reminds me.

“But I didn’t hate them. And Bill-E’s my best friend. Why…?”

“Does it matter?” she interrupts sharply. “You were jealous of Billy, or you wanted to kill his grandparents, or the beast just came to somewhere it knew, to a familiar place it stole from your memories. It could have been your home, school, another friend’s house. It happened to be here. What of it? Just be glad you regained consciousness before… before…” She can’t continue.

I pat Juni’s head as she cries. The tears have dried in my own eyes. I’m staring at the dead bodies again, but calmly, detached, knowing what must be done.

“Phone Dervish,” I tell Juni. “Give him our position. Ask him to bring the Lambs. I won’t fight. They can have me. I’ll surrender.”

“No!” Juni gasps. “They’ll kill you.”

“They’ll exterminate me,” I correct her. “And that’s what I need. This can’t go on. I was wrong to run. I…” A thought. “Dervish doesn’t know you helped me, does he?”

She shakes her head. “I told him you broke out, that I tried to stop you but couldn’t. He took off with the Lambs to track you down. I stayed behind, then sneaked out once they’d gone. He doesn’t know anything.”

“Good. Forget about ringing him. I’ll do it. Go home and clean yourself up. Say nothing about this to him. You don’t have to be involved.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Yes I do. This has gone far enough. Too far. I killed tonight. Whether it was me or the beast doesn’t matter. We both know that, if I carry on, I’ll kill again. That can’t happen. I won’t allow it.

So go. Thanks for everything, but I’m past helping.” I reach for my phone and start tapping in numbers.

Juni gently takes the phone from me. “Come away with me,” she whispers. “We’ll go where nobody can find us, where you can’t hurt anybody.”

“What are you talking about?” I frown, trying to get the phone back.

“We’ll run,” she hisses, holding the phone out of reach. She’s stopped crying. Sounds more like her old self. I can imagine her brain whirring behind her eyes. “Head for somewhere secluded and remote. When the next full moon comes, we’ll go up a mountain or into a cave. I’ll tie you up and sedate you with magic and drugs to make sure you can’t kill anyone. I’ll only set you free when the moon has passed. We’ll stay in that place and carve out new lives for ourselves. Keep the world safe from you… from the beast.”

“You’re fantasising,” I sigh. “It wouldn’t work. You saw what I did to the cage. I’d escape and kill again.”

“No,” she insists. “I can control you. I’m sure I can.”

“And if I change forever the next time?” I ask. “If the beast takes over?”

“Then I’ll do what the Lambs tried to do tonight,” she vows. Takes my hands and squeezes. “Don’t doubt my conviction. If I have to kill you, I will, regardless of how much that would hurt me. But I don’t want to harm you if I don’t have to. I still believe you can be saved. The werewolf should have taken you over tonight, but it didn’t. You fought it and won. You can win again, I’m sure you can. If I’m wrong… if you lose…” Her jaw goes firm. “So be it. But we have to try. Life’s too precious to throw away needlessly.”

“I don’t know.” I look at the bodies again, at Bill-E. “The risks…”

“There’ll be none,” she promises, standing and pulling me up. “We’ll leave immediately and find a place where you can’t hurt anyone.”

I hesitate, torn between knowing the right thing to do and wanting to live.

“If not for yourself,” Juni says softly, “do it for me. I love you, Grubbs. Please. Stay alive. For me.”

I don’t know what to say. I want to go with her. But the beast… the magic… the murders. I open my mouth, meaning to ask for the phone again, making up my mind to act bravely, selflessly, for the welfare of those I care about.

But what comes out is a weak, “OK. But you have to promise to keep me away from people. And, if necessary, you’ll stop me the next time, any way you can.”

Juni crosses her heart and smiles. “I promise.” She goes to the back door and opens it, then pushes me ahead of her, out into the night. I stumble through the doorway meekly, silently cursing myself for my cowardice, head low, crying again. Once I’m out, Juni quietly closes the door on the bloodshed and carnage, leaving Bill-E sleeping, to awaken later in the morning to horror and chaos.

Juni finds a car parked close by. She mutters a quick spell and the doors open. Another spell and the engine fires. She smiles at me through the window and nods for me to get in.

Sitting numbly beside her as she drives. Thinking about the last twelve hours. Studying the blood caked to my hands. Wondering if Bill-E saw me kill his grandparents, if he recognised me behind the mask of the beast. If not, will Dervish tell him? Will he hate me or understand? I think hate. If I was in his shoes, I’d despise the monster who let this happen. No excuses. No forgiving.

Running away is wrong. I’ve killed Bill-E’s grandparents, let Juni wreck her relationship with Dervish, and now… what? Drive off into the sunrise, find a sweet little cottage where we can settle down and live happily ever after? Play a warped mother and son game? Let Juni tie me up like a rabid animal every time the moon grows round? Madness. I should call an end to it now, make Juni stop, hand myself over to Dervish, accept what I have coming.

But instead I sit quietly, staring at the blood or out the window. I try to tell myself I’m doing it because of Juni, that I don’t want to hurt her. But that’s a lie. I’m running because I’m terrified of being killed. I don’t want to let myself be executed. Even though I know, for the safety of everyone I love, that I should.

The car comes to a stop. Juni leans back and sighs, massaging her temples, eyes closed. I look around. We’re in a car park. Hundreds of cars. A roaring overhead. My gaze lifts and I see a plane come in to land. It clicks—we’re at an airport.

“Juni?” I ask quietly.

“Yes,” she says, not opening her eyes.

“What are we doing here?”

“We have to get out. They’d find us if we stayed. We need to go somewhere they can’t track us. Fly far, far away. It might take three or four flights before we’re really safe.”

“But I don’t have a passport. Luggage. Clothes. Money.”

Juni lowers her hands, opens her eyes and smiles twistedly. “You want to go back to pack a suitcase?”

“Of course not. But how…?”

She rubs her fingers together. “Magic.”

Inside the airport. Nobody pays us any attention, even though we’re bruised and cut all over, covered in blood. A masking spell. Not that difficult to perform. Even Bill-E’s able to cast a lesser masking spell. One of the first tricks any wannabe mage learns.

Juni sends me to the bathroom to get cleaned up. Says she’ll meet me by the main departures board in fifteen minutes. Tells me to be careful, not to talk to anyone.

Staring at my reflection in the mirror, eyes dark and ravaged. The hopeless expression of the lost, the damned. Dervish has often said I’m a natural survivor, able to wriggle out of any sticky situation. But sometimes it’s not worth wriggling free. What’s the point of being alive if you have to live with memories and guilt as crushing as this?

I run hot water and splash it over my face, washing away the worst of the blood. The sink’s soon a streaky, pinkish mess. I squirt liquid soap into my hands, clean around the sink, then set to work on myself, scrubbing my hair, taking off my jumper and T-shirt, throwing them into a bin, washing my upper body and arms. I should get rid of my trousers too but I don’t like the idea of wandering around in just my boxers. Crazy, considering all that’s happened, but some habits are hard to break.