The Lake of Souls. Darren Shan

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      CHAPTER ONE

      Six months earlier.

      THE WALK up the tunnels, coming off the back of our battle with the vampaneze, was slow and exhausting. We left Mr Crepsley’s charred bones in the pit where he’d fallen. I’d meant to bury him, but I hadn’t the heart for it. Steve’s revelation – that he was the Lord of the Vampaneze – had floored me, and now nothing seemed to matter. My closest friend had been killed. My world had been torn asunder. I didn’t care whether I lived or died.

      Harkat and Debbie walked beside me, Vancha and Alice Burgess slightly in front. Debbie used to be my girlfriend, but now she was a grown woman, whereas I was stuck in the body of a teenager — the curse of being a half-vampire who only aged one year for every five that passed. Alice was a police chief inspector. Vancha had kidnapped her when we’d been surrounded by police. She and Debbie had taken part in the fight with the vampaneze. They’d both fought well. A shame it had been for nothing.

      We’d told Alice and Debbie all about the War of the Scars. Vampires exist, but not the murderous monsters of myth. We don’t kill when we feed. But other night creatures do — the vampaneze. They broke away from the vampires six hundred years ago. They always drain their victims dry. Their skin has turned purple over the centuries, and their eyes and fingernails are red.

      For a long time there’d been peace between the two clans. That ended when the Lord of the Vampaneze emerged. This vampaneze leader was destined to lead them into war against the vampires and destroy us. But if we found and killed him before he became a full-vampaneze, the war would go our way instead.

      Only three vampires could hunt for the Vampaneze Lord (according to a powerful meddler called Desmond Tiny, who could see into the future). Two were Vampire Princes, Vancha March and me. The other had been Mr Crepsley, the vampire who’d blooded me and been like a father to me. He’d faced the person we thought was the Vampaneze Lord earlier that night and killed him. But then Steve sent Mr Crepsley tumbling to his death in a pit of flame-tipped stakes — shortly before he let me know that the person Mr Crepsley killed was an impostor, and that Steve himself was the Vampaneze Lord.

      It didn’t seem possible that Mr Crepsley was dead. I kept expecting a tap on my shoulder, and the tall orange-haired vampire to be standing behind me when I turned, grinning wickedly, his long facial scar glinting as he held up a torch, asking where we thought we were going without him. But the tap never came. It couldn’t. Mr Crepsley was dead. He’d never come back.

      Part of me wanted to go mad with rage, seize a sword and storm off after Steve. I wanted to track him down and drive a stake through his rotten excuse for a heart. But Mr Crepsley had warned me not to devote myself to revenge. He said it would warp and destroy me if I gave in to it. I knew in my soul that there was unfinished business between Steve and me, that our paths would cross again. But for the time being I pushed him from my thoughts and mourned for Mr Crepsley.

      Except I couldn’t really mourn. Tears wouldn’t come. As much as I wanted to howl and sob with grief, my eyes remained dry and steely. Inside, I was a broken, weeping wreck, but on the outside I was cold, calm and collected, as though I hadn’t been affected by the vampire’s death.

      Ahead, Vancha and Alice came to a halt. The Prince looked back, his wide eyes red from crying. He looked pitiful in his animal skins, with his filthy bare feet and wild hair, like an overgrown, lost child. “We’re almost at the surface,” he croaked. “It’s still day. Will we wait here for dark? If we’re spotted…”

      “Don’t care,” I mumbled.

      “I don’t want to stay here,” Debbie sobbed. “These tunnels are cruel.”

      “And I have to inform my people that I’m alive,” Alice said, then frowned and picked dried blood flecks from her pale white hair. “Though I don’t know how I’m going to explain it to them!”

      “Tell the truth,” Vancha grunted.

      The Chief Inspector grimaced. “Hardly! I’ll have to think up some–” She stopped. A figure had appeared out of the darkness ahead of us, blocking the path.

      Cursing, Vancha ripped loose a shuriken – throwing stars he kept strapped in belts around his chest – and prepared to launch it.

      “Peate, Vancha,” the stranger said, raising a hand. “I am here to help, not harm.”

      Vancha lowered his shuriken and muttered in disbelief, “Evanna?”

      The woman ahead of us clicked her fingers and a torch flared into life overhead, revealing the ugly witch we’d travelled with earlier in the year, while we were searching for the Lord of the Vampaneze. She hadn’t changed. Short thick muscles, long untidy hair, pointed ears, a tiny nose, one brown eye and one green (the colours kept shifting from left to right), hairy body, long sharp nails and yellow ropes tied tight around her body instead of clothes.

      “What are you doing … here?” Harkat asked, his large green eyes filled with suspicion — Evanna was a neutral in the War of the Scars, but could help or hinder those on either side, depending on her mood.

      “I came to bid Larten’s spirit farewell,” the witch said. She was smiling.

      “You don’t look too cut up about it,” I remarked without emotion.

      She shrugged. “I foresaw his death many decades ago. I did my crying for him then.”

      “You knew he’d die?” Vancha growled.

      “I wasn’t certain, but I guessed he would perish,” she said.

      “Then you could have stopped it!”

      “No,” Evanna said. “Those with the ability to sense the currents of the future are forbidden to interfere. To save Larten, I’d have had to abandon the rules I live by, and if that happened, all chaos would break loose.”

      The witch stretched out a hand, and even though she was many metres away from Vancha, her fingers cupped his chin tenderly. “I was fond of Larten,” she said softly. “I hoped I was wrong. But I couldn’t take it upon myself to spare him. His fate wasn’t mine to decide.”

      “Then whose was it?” Vancha snapped.

      “His own,” Evanna replied steadily. “He chose to hunt for the Lord of the Vampaneze, to enter the tunnels, to fight on the platform. He could have walked away from his responsibilities — but he chose not to.”

      Vancha glared at the witch a moment longer, then lowered his gaze. I saw fresh tears splash in the dust at his feet. “My apologies, Lady,” he muttered. “I don’t blame you. I’m just so fired up with hatred…”

      “I know,” the witch said, then studied the rest of us. “You must come with me. I have things to tell you, and I’d rather talk on the outside — the air here is rank with treachery and death. Will you spare me a few hours of your time?” She glanced at Alice Burgess. “I promise I won’t keep you long.”

      Alice sniffed. “I guess a few hours can’t make much of a difference.”

      Evanna looked at Harkat, Debbie, Vancha and me. We shared a glance, then nodded and followed the witch up the last stretch of the tunnels, leaving the darkness and the dead behind.

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