Blood of the Witch Read online

  Alston’s eyes filled with tears. Blood had run down his fangs and onto his shirt front. “I’m … I’m sorry!” he said hoarsely. Sliding out from beneath Luke, he jumped to his feet and ran for the door.

  “Dad!” Resus shouted again as Alston dashed out of the room, his foot catching the block of concrete holding the door open. The older vampire was quickly lost from view as the metal door slammed shut. Resus didn’t move.

  “Are you OK?” asked Cleo.

  Resus nodded. “At least we know what was bothering the rats now.”

  “Ra roar,” growled Luke, his head still that of a werewolf.

  Resus turned to face him. “What?”

  “Roar rad rut ra roar,” Luke snarled.

  “I can’t understand you.”

  “Roar rad rut ra roar!” repeated Luke.

  Resus shook his head. “You sound like a cartoon dog.”

  Luke sighed and held up a hand, extending all five fingers.

  “Charades!” said Cleo. “Luke’s going to mime what he means!”

  “This has got to be a nightmare,” Resus moaned. “I’ll wake up in a minute.”

  “OK, second word!” beamed Cleo as Luke folded over three of his fingers. They watched as Luke trotted around the room, flapping his arms out behind him.

  “Er … Something that flies?” guessed Cleo. “A bird? A bat!”

  “A total mentalist if you ask me,” mumbled Resus.

  Luke pointed to Resus with one hand and mimed long teeth with the fingers of his other.

  “Fangs!” squealed Cleo with delight. “Vampire? Resus!” She followed Luke’s silent instructions. “No, not Resus … Bigger. Resus’s dad!”

  Luke nodded furiously and held up the pinkie of his right hand.

  “Fifth word,” said Cleo, adding “door!” as Luke acted out opening a door and stepping through. “Right, third word! Sounds like foot. Er … Put? Mutt? Gut?” Luke closed his imaginary door again and again. “But? Cut?”

  “It’s shut!” roared Resus in frustration. “Shut! The sentence is: ‘Your dad shut the door’.” His eyes widened. “My dad shut the door?” He dashed across the room and pulled on the handle. The door was locked tight. “We’re trapped.”

  “Trapped?” said Cleo. “How?”

  “The latch must have dropped down on the other side,” said Resus. “This is ridiculous! My dad needs help and we’re stuck in here!” A crack echoed around the room and Luke buried his head in his hands, wincing as it began to shrink back from its werewolf form.

  “We all need to get out, Resus,” said Cleo calmly. “Luke’s got to find the next relic to take his parents home.”

  “Oh, and while we’re off on another adventure for wolf-boy, my dad’s lying injured somewhere?” snapped Resus. “You saw the blood on his shirt!”

  Luke glared at Resus as the thick fur disappeared back into his skin. “I don’t need your help to find the next relic,” he retorted. “I’ll do it on my own.”

  “You couldn’t find your way around Everwell’s without me!” shouted Resus, kicking at the metal door.

  “Of course! No one can do anything in Scream Street without permission from the all-powerful vampires!” yelled Luke.

  Resus spun to face him. “You take that back. I’m warning you!”

  Luke pretended to shake with fear. “Ooh, I’ve upset the scary vampire! Watch out, Cleo, he might throw his false teeth at you!”

  Cleo leapt in between the boys. “Will you two stop it?” she demanded. “Everyone’s just a little wound up! We’ll help your dad and find the next relic once we’ve worked out how to get out of here.”

  Luke and Resus glared at each other. A small squeak made them jump as a rat’s nose appeared briefly through a hole at the bottom of the door. It sniffed at the air before quickly disappearing again.

  Cleo crouched down to the tiny hole. “Look!” she said.

  “My foot must have gone through the bottom of the door when I kicked it,” said Resus. He produced a crowbar from inside his cloak and used it to break a piece of brittle metal away from the hole. “If the door has rusted enough, we might be able to break our way through …”

  Resus scratched at the hole with the crowbar but could only widen it by a few centimetres. “We’ll need more than just this to get through.”

  “We could tear parts off this machine,” suggested Luke.

  Resus handed the crowbar to Cleo and wedged the torch in the handle of the door. “Keep working on that,” he said.

  Luke walked around to the far side of the machine and found a loose strip of metal on the front of a control panel. Sliding his fingers underneath, he began to prise it away from its housing.

  “I’ve got something,” he said. “How about you?”

  Resus didn’t reply.

  Luke sighed. “Look, I’m sorry for what I said about vampires,” he began. But Resus appeared to have forgotten their argument.

  “This is the blood filter!”

  “The what?” said Luke.

  “The machine I was telling you about last night,” answered Resus. “It filters blood out of the waste water and pumps it into Scream Street. My dad must have known it was down here and come to try and fix it.”

  “And he didn’t want to bite one of his family so he used the rats to keep him going,” added Cleo. “That’s why he had blood on his shirt!”

  “He’s turned to rats before,” said Resus. “When my mum put him on a diet.”

  “But why did he panic like that when he saw us?” asked Luke.

  Resus shrugged. “He might have thought we were—”

  “Someone’s coming!” hissed Cleo, joining Luke and Resus in the shadows. Resus blew out the torch, plunging the room into darkness.

  The metal latch scraped as it was lifted, and slowly the door opened. Luke’s breath caught in his throat as he saw who was standing there. Illuminated by a gas lamp was the landlord of Scream Street, Sir Otto Sneer.

  Dixon, Sir Otto’s nephew, wedged the concrete block against the door, his greasy ginger hair slapping against his thin cheeks.

  Sir Otto, his face lit eerily by the gas lamp in his hands, blew smoke from his cigar and sniffed the air. “Someone’s been here,” he snarled.

  “I know,” replied Dixon.

  Sir Otto glared at him. “How do you know?”

  Dixon gestured towards the ageing machinery. “Someone had to bring this down here on purpose,” he explained. “You’d never be able to flush something this size down the toilet. Although, I once did a poo so big that it almost didn’t—”

  “You moron!” shouted Sir Otto. “I meant, someone’s been down here recently! It’ll be one of the freaks, trying to restart the blood supply. Disable the machine. The food I jammed into the pipes won’t block them for ever!”

  Dixon stepped up to the machine and opened one of the metal covers. He grasped the edge of a dusty circuit board and began to pull. His fingers slipped in the grime and oil that covered it. “Can’t … quite … get it …” he groaned.

  “Then find me someone who can!” Sir Otto growled. “The sooner I send those vampires insane with bloodlust, the sooner they’ll force the wolfboy to give me the book in return for reconnecting the supply!”

  In the darkness behind the machine, Resus opened his mouth to respond, but Luke held up a hand to silence his friend. They had to stay hidden.

  “Someone else …” mumbled Dixon, closing his eyes. The skin on his face and hands began to ripple, like the surface of a pond in a breeze.

  Luke watched as Sir Otto’s nephew transformed. He’d known that Dixon was a shapeshifter but had never seen the process up close before. It looked effortless. So different from the awkwardness of Luke’s own changes.

  Within seconds, Dixon had become Bella Negative. Luke knew it wasn’t really Resus’s mum, but he had to grip his friend’s arm tightly to prevent an outburst.

  Bella’s black-painted fingernails gripped the circuit board and pulled. The
aged component shifted slightly, but it remained wedged inside the machine.

  “Well, what did you expect?” demanded Sir Otto. “Those sharp-toothed idiots are useless at just about everything!” Luke clamped a hand over Resus’s mouth.

  “Now,” continued the landlord, “change into someone who can actually achieve something!” There was a sound like milk being poured into a glass and Sir Otto found himself faced with an exact replica of himself.

  “How’s this, Uncle?”

  “You’re heading for a night in the dungeon,” the real Sir Otto barked. “Just stop the blood before those stupid vampires figure out what’s going on!”

  Resus battled against Luke’s grip. “That’s all I can take,” the vampire hissed. “I’m going to bite him until my fangs break!”

  “Stop it!” whispered Luke. “We can’t let them know we’re here!”

  But it was too late. As Dixon melted into the shape of a giant Egyptian mummy, Cleo shrieked. “You’re not fit to wear his bandages!”

  “I’m sorry!” panted Cleo as she, Luke and Resus raced back along the sewer tunnel. “I couldn’t help myself!”

  Luke scowled at the mummy. “I spent all that time keeping Resus quiet, when I should have had my hand clamped over your mouth!”

  A crash came from behind them and the trio sped up. “That’ll be Dixon breaking the door down,” said Resus. He had slammed it shut behind them, but the act had bought only a few seconds’ head start.

  “After them!” roared Sir Otto, his voice echoing off the stone walls.

  Cleo reached the ladder that led back up to Everwell’s Emporium, but Luke grabbed her arm as she placed a foot on the bottom rung. “No,” he said. “We’ll just let them think we’ve gone back up there.”

  The trio crouched in the darkness further along the tunnel as Dixon, still in the form of the Cleo’s father, dashed into view.

  Cleo jumped to her feet and opened her mouth to call out.

  Resus leapt up and tackled her to the ground, clamping his cape over her mouth. “Will you keep quiet?” he hissed.

  Dixon clambered up the ladder and disappeared as Sir Otto, sweating heavily and out of breath, arrived. The landlord placed the circuit board on the floor and, with a great deal of effort, followed his nephew.

  “Looks like he disabled the machine after all,” said Resus.

  Luke nodded. “He won’t want to take it into the emporium until he knows who’s up there.”

  “What now?” whispered Resus.

  “Stay hidden until Sir Otto’s gone,” said Luke.

  “Mmph fmmph feemfeem mph?” mumbled Cleo.

  “Oops, sorry!” said Resus, climbing off his friend and helping her to sit up.

  “Do you think Eefa will give us away?” asked Cleo.

  Resus shook his head. “She hates Sir Otto as much as the rest of Scream Street does. Eefa won’t tell him anything.”

  The trio remained hidden in the dark as a muffled row erupted in the emporium above them. “Where are they?” roared Sir Otto.

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” shouted Eefa. “No one’s been up or down that ladder in weeks!”

  “Eefa’s covering for us,” whispered Luke. “We’re safe.”

  “The freaks are sticking together,” said Sir Otto. “We’ll never find them now. Get your new toy and we’ll go somewhere where the company is better.”

  “New toy?” asked Dixon. “It’s not my birthday.”

  “You idiot,” bellowed the landlord. “I mean the item we’ve just acquired!”

  The mummified shape of Niles Farr reached down through the hatch as Dixon finally realized that Sir Otto was referring to the blood filter’s circuit board.

  Cleo leapt to her feet. “I’ll feed you to the Sphinx!”

  Resus groaned. “Here we go again …”

  “They’re still down there, Uncle Otto!” Dixon yelled as Luke, Resus and Cleo raced further down the tunnel.

  “I’ll throw you into the Nile!” Cleo screamed over her shoulder.

  “We need to talk about managing your anger!” Resus shouted, as he pulled a jar of tiny glowing insects from his cloak.

  “What are those supposed to be?” scoffed Cleo.

  “Fireflies,” replied Resus. “I left my last torch back behind the blood filter.”

  “We can’t find our way through the sewers with fireflies!”

  “Well, unless you can do any better, they’re all we’ve got,” said Resus.

  The trio suddenly found a metal gate blocking their way. Luke rattled the gate; it barely moved. “We’ve run out of sewer,” he said.

  Sir Otto’s voice echoed along the tunnel. “We can’t be far behind them!”

  “What do we do now?” asked Luke.

  “We fight,” said Resus.

  “Fight?” demanded Cleo. “With what? Your jar of shiny wasps?”

  “We’ve got a werewolf,” said Resus, pointing to Luke in the dim light. “All we have to do is make him angry and there’s no more Dixon!”

  “Er, excuse me …” said Luke.

  “No, Resus!” Cleo yelled. “I can’t watch him tear my dad to pieces!”

  “He’s not your dad!” snapped Resus.

  “Can I just …?”

  “I know that!” came the reply. “But he’ll look like my dad while Luke’s ripping his arms off! How am I supposed to deal with that?”

  “Can I say something?” asked Luke.

  “What?” barked Resus and Cleo together.

  “I’m not ripping anyone’s arms off, if you don’t mind! I’m not some sort of fur-covered weapon to be unleashed whenever we’re in trouble!”

  Footsteps approached. Dixon was almost upon them.

  “Then I’m out of ideas,” Resus sighed. “It’s not as if an escape route is going to appear out of thin air.”

  As Luke opened his mouth to reply, a handful of bricks crumbled from the sewer wall, revealing a green, cracked face behind them. “Little dudes!” the zombie beamed. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for a way out, Doug,” said Resus. “Can you help us?”

  “No problemo, tiny vampire!” grinned Doug, climbing out of the hole. He turned and called back into the tunnel from which he had appeared. “Turf! Back up, dude. We got us some new passengers on the party train!”

  Within seconds Luke, Resus and Cleo were crawling through the tunnel of earth behind a larger zombie, Turf. The monster paused every few seconds to giggle at something the trio could neither see nor hear.

  “Don’t worry about Turf, little dudes,” said Doug as he collapsed the tunnel behind them. “It’s this rich soil — it goes straight to his head!”

  “Where exactly does this tunnel lead?” asked Resus.

  In the soft glow provided by the fireflies, Doug grinned, revealing rotten teeth that crawled with maggots and lice. “The party train goes wherever there’s good times to be had, my man!”

  “Then I think we should head for my house,” said Luke. “We’ll see if Mr Skipstone knows how to restore the blood supply for your dad.”

  “Thanks,” said Resus, smiling gratefully. “Thirteen Scream Street, Doug.”

  “Thirteen it is!” grinned the zombie. “Turf, hang a left at the next set of tree roots.”

  Turf, however, was no longer paying attention, preferring instead to watch a passing worm with an expression of amazed delight.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have let Turf tunnel today,” said Doug. “He was up all night downing brain smoothies.” The zombie fixed the trio with a steady gaze. “Let this be a lesson to you, little dudes. Friends don’t let friends drink and dig!”

  A zombie’s fist burst through the lawn in the back garden of 13 Scream Street, its yellow, weeping sores glinting in the moonlight. A second fist appeared, pushing soil and grass to one side, widening the hole. A head was forced up into the cool air, flakes of dead skin dropping from it like decomposing dandruff.

  “This is your stop, d
udes,” announced Doug as he clambered to his feet. “Thirteen Scream Street!” The zombie helped Luke, Resus and Cleo out of the hole.

  “Keep an eye open for trouble,” Luke called back to the other two as he disappeared into the house. “I’ll run up and get Mr Skipstone.”

  Resus reached inside his cloak and pulled out an old bottle filled with swirling white liquid. He held it out to their zombie rescuer. “This is to say thanks for helping us.”

  Doug took the bottle and blew the dust from the label. “Spinal fluid!” he beamed. “Dude, how did you know?”

  Resus shrugged, embarrassed. “I got talking to some zombies at my cousin’s wedding, and they swore by the stuff. I thought I’d pick you guys up a bottle.”

  “Turf!” Doug yelled into the tunnel. “Get up here and see this!” The zombie grasped the scabby green arm that extended up from the hole and pulled, tumbling backwards as the limb ripped away at the shoulder.

  “Man!” Doug said, tossing the arm back into the hole. “You are so wasted!”

  As Doug disappeared the way they had come, Luke reappeared at the back door, tucking the silver book into his pocket.

  Cleo was examining her reflection in the glass of the living-room window. “I’m running out of clean bandages,” she moaned, trying to wipe away the worst of the dirt and grass stains. “This will never—”

  She was interrupted by a scream above her. Mr and Mrs Watson stood at their bedroom window.

  “It’s OK!” Luke shouted up. “It’s just me, Resus and Cleo!”

  Mrs Watson shook her head and pointed beyond her son with a trembling hand. Luke spun round and saw that the lawn had turned black. Hundreds of rats were slowly advancing towards them.

  “Where did they come from?” shrieked Cleo.

  “You tell me,” replied Luke. “You were the one watching for trouble.”

  “I-I didn’t see them,” stammered Cleo.

  “Oh, no …” breathed Resus, glancing at the window behind him.

  “That’s not a good ‘Oh, no’, is it,” said Luke, his eyes fixed on the sharp teeth of the rodents at the front of the pack.

  Resus shook his head. “If Cleo didn’t see their reflections in the window, there’s only one explanation …”