Chronicles Vladimir 01 - Eighth Grade Bites Read online

  Killed by a vampire—Vlad was almost sure.

  Late last night, in Tomas’s journal, Vlad had read about Elysia, of tales of camaraderie and celebration, of familial ties, of being bound by blood. Vlad had found himself longing to encounter those of his own kind, to travel to the streets of Elysia—that faraway vampire world, but after a while it seemed more of a fairy tale than anything else.

  Like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, only with fangs.

  But the presence of Mr. Otis had proven quite different from the images Vlad’s imagination had conjured up. He felt terribly threatened by Otis’s presence. And who was that D’Ablo guy? Another vampire? Were vampires all over Bathory now, hunting for Vlad? And hadn’t any of them thought to pick up a phone book? Bathory was populated by fewer than two thousand people, for crying out loud. If Mr. Otis was planning on killing him, why hadn’t he done it last night after dinner? Why the games?

  If Mr. Otis were from Elysia, why had he killed Tomas? Was Vlad’s dad a criminal? And what did that make Vlad? Why was Otis stalking him? He couldn’t have broken the law. He’d never even been to Elysia. Vlad shivered. Maybe he wouldn’t belong there, either. Maybe no matter where he went, he’d be a freak.

  The doorbell rang, shaking Vlad from his daze.

  Vlad pulled open the front door and froze. Mr. Otis tipped his top hat slightly, holding Vlad’s gaze with his serious eyes. “I was disappointed not to find you in class today, Vladimir.” His cheeks looked pale and gaunt, as if he hadn’t eaten in some time.

  Vlad pursed his lips and looked at his feet. He was tempted to slam the door in Mr. Otis’s face and slap the dead bolt until it clicked, but old habits die hard, so instead he stood there and quietly waited for his teacher to finish so he could get on with his life.

  “I have an urgent matter to discuss with you, Vlad. I’m afraid it can’t wait.” Mr. Otis pressed against the door, but Vlad shoved his shoulder against the wood, leaving merely a foot of air between the door and the jamb. His teacher’s face was inches from his own. “Mind if I come in for a snack? I’m sure you have something around the house that will appeal to my particular appetite.”

  Feeling the hairs rise on the back of his neck, Vlad shot his teacher a look fueled by betrayal. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you it’s not nice to threaten your students?”

  “Do you feel threatened by me?” Otis nudged the door forward another inch, as if demonstrating that Vlad’s strength wasn’t an obstacle for him. “That’s not my intent. I just want to get close to you, Vladimir.”

  Vlad relinquished his hold on the door. He was shaking in his shoes, but he couldn’t let Mr. Otis know that. He squeezed his fists tight against his jeans, ready for whatever Otis had in mind.

  The corner of Otis’s mouth rose, and for a second, Vlad could just make out the hint of a fang. “Let me in, Vlad. Don’t make this difficult.”

  “Don’t make what difficult?” The porch boards squeaked as Henry approached, a concerned look on his face.

  Mr. Otis looked back and forth between the boys and then glanced behind him, as if weighing his options. Without a word, he turned and stepped off the porch, pausing momentarily before continuing his exit.

  Vlad breathed a nervous sigh of relief. “Oh, man. I’m screwed, Henry. I’m totally screwed.”

  They went upstairs. Henry told Vlad about school getting cut short because of Mr. Craig’s body being found, and Vlad told Henry all about last night’s dinner. Henry gave him a playful smack on the shoulder. “So you’re saying your teacher sucks.”

  Vlad brushed his bangs out of his eyes and snickered. “That’s what I’ve been saying. I mean, he admitted it, Henry. He all but told me he’s a vampire.”

  Henry led the way down the stairs and out the front door. They both kept their eyes alert for any sign of Mr. Otis. When they reached Henry’s porch, Henry squinted up at the sun. “I wonder how he keeps from frying in the daylight.”

  Vlad shrugged. “Maybe he uses sunblock, too. Or maybe he’s half human like me.”

  “Maybe his soul’s so dark that even the sun won’t touch him.” Henry’s tone was serious, so Vlad didn’t laugh. Instead, he looked quizzically at his friend as he tossed his bag onto the porch. Henry dropped his bag beside Vlad’s. “I mean, what kind of a guy stalks teenagers?”

  “Not teenagers, man. Me. He’s after me.” Vlad shivered at the thought of being Mr. Otis’s next meal. He suddenly understood why Henry had avoided him for several days after he’d drunk Henry’s blood. It made his stomach churn with queasiness. “Hey, Henry?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry about biting you when we were eight.”

  “No problem. Just stay away from the cat or Mom will throw a fit.”

  13

  BOUDD BY BLOOD

  NOTHING COULD CONVINCE AUNT NELLY to let Vlad stay home for the duration of the school year, which just goes to prove that parents and guardians don’t care if they’re sending you to face bloodthirsty monsters, so long as you get a B in English.

  Mr. Otis stood in front of the class. His eyes were still red from the touching ceremony the school had given in the gym in honor of Mr. Craig. He hadn’t uttered a word or offered so much as a glance at Vlad in the weeks since their conversation on Vlad’s porch. When he finally spoke, his voice cracked on the first word. “Thank you all for turning in such wonderful essay papers. I have graded them, and as today is an early-release day in honor of Mr. Craig’s passing, you may pick them up on your way out the door. Have a safe weekend, ladies and gentlemen.”

  Vlad shoved his notebook into his backpack and zipped it closed. On his way past Mr. Otis’s desk, he snatched his paper off the pile and left the classroom, scanning Mr. Otis’s various red scribbles as he walked. He’d gotten an A, which only proved that Vlad was excellent at writing from the point of view of a vampire and horrible at figuring out just how much it would cost to get from New York to Los Angeles if gasoline cost $2.35 a gallon and the car he was driving got twenty-six miles to the gallon.

  Then Vlad glanced at the words scrawled at the bottom of the last page. He gasped. I know your secret, Mr. Otis had written. I know you’re a vampire.

  Vlad almost jumped out of his skin when a hand touched his shoulder. He turned to face Mr. Otis. “I must speak with you in private, Vlad.”

  Vlad did the same thing he’d done in the sixth grade when Nelly asked him who’d broken Mr. Snelgrove’s window. He denied any knowledge pertaining to current events. “Look, if this is about the punctuation test—”

  Mr. Otis held up a hand and hissed, “You know what it’s about. We’re going for a little walk, you and me.”

  “I.”

  Mr. Otis’s stern brow furrowed. “Excuse me?”

  “We’re going for a little walk, you and I.” Vlad glanced at the double doors. They were only ten feet from him. He looked at Mr. Otis and shrugged. “Honestly, you’re supposed to be an English teacher. Besides, I don’t walk with murderers.”

  Vlad bolted for the door and down the stairs. He kept expecting Mr. Otis to follow him, but by the time he reached the hospital, he was sure Otis wasn’t there.

  He caught Nelly at the nurses’ desk and immediately launched into a quietly hysterical explanation of his presence. “Mr. Otis knows I’m a vampire and he’s a vampire too and he killed Mom and Dad, not to mention Mr. Craig, so we have to get out of here! Do you think we could fly somewhere? Maybe the Bahamas? Or Australia? I’m thinking somewhere sunny.”

  Nelly listened intently before picking up her sweater and whispering something to one of the other nurses. She ushered him out the door and took a deep breath before speaking. “Now calm down, Vladimir. You seem awfully upset. Let’s start with Mr. Otis knowing your secret.”

  They walked down the street, toward their house, and Vlad started to explain. He reiterated everything he’d told her the night of the dinner, but this time showed her the note Mr. Otis had scribbled on his essay. When he was finished, Nelly lo
oked more concerned than fearful for their lives. “Where’s Mr. Otis now? I should have a word with him, set him straight. That’s a strange thing to accuse somebody of without any proof, being a vampire. Don’t you think?” She gave him a side-long look, and Vlad shrugged.

  They continued walking toward their house. The silence broke when Nelly said, “We’ll just straighten this out right now, Vlad. No worries.”

  Vlad jerked his eyes toward the house. Mr. Otis stood in the front yard, near the porch. Vlad squeezed his aunt’s arm and halted his steps, but Nelly tugged him along, as if his fears were unreasonable. She smiled at Mr. Otis, but Otis didn’t smile back. “Mr. Otis, may we have a word? It seems Vlad is upset by something you wrote on his paper.”

  Mr. Otis had his eyes locked on Vlad. His skin was pale, his jaw set. His eyes had sunk in some, as if he needed either rest or sustenance—or both. He nodded slowly and gestured to the door, as if by retaining his gentlemanly qualities, his crimes would be ignored.

  Vlad pulled away from Nelly, remaining with his feet firmly fixed to the sidewalk.

  Nelly cast him with a sympathetic glance. “Come inside, Vladimir. Let’s all talk this out. You’ll feel better after we do, I promise.”

  Otis stepped closer, but despite his fears, Vlad didn’t back away. “Yes, Vladimir, let’s go inside. We wouldn’t want your secrets becoming public now, would we?”

  Vlad didn’t say a word. In his mind, the image of those words on his paper, the image of Otis’s hat in Mr. Craig’s house, the image of his parents’ bodies reduced to ashes flipped over and over, like a sick Rolodex of morbid thoughts.

  Nelly retreated into the house, probably hoping Vlad would give up and follow. He resisted doing just that until Otis walked inside and closed the door. When Vlad entered, he heard Otis’s voice in the living room. “No more running. No more giving your ward the opportunity to hear me out. You’ll both listen now, and then I can deal with what must be done.”

  Vlad peeked around the corner. Nelly was sitting on the couch and Otis was pacing in front of her. Vlad’s aunt looked spellbound.

  Otis tilted his head toward a chair. “Sit down, Vladimir.”

  Vlad looked over his shoulder at the door and then at the stairs. He could get out, get help, bring the cops back, and explain that Otis was a madman. But Otis would kill Nelly for sure and divulge to the world that Vlad was a vampire. Loathe the idea of listening to the fiend as Vlad did, he knew when he was trapped. He sat in the chair and watched Otis pace silently for several minutes.

  “Where’s the book?” Mr. Otis was looming over him, and though the room was warm, Vlad swore he could see clouds of breath escaping from his teacher’s mouth. Vlad glanced at the leather-bound book, which was lying on the coffee table where he’d left it. Otis followed his gaze and, in a few steps, snapped the book up in his hands. “How much of this have you read?”

  Vlad shook his head, professing ignorance of the book’s contents. “I haven’t read a word. It’s written in some weird language.” He shrugged and offered, “I’m not even sure it is a language.”

  Mr. Otis blinked and then blinked again. He looked at the book in his hands and back at Vlad. Clutching the book to his chest, he resumed his pacing across the room. “Your father never taught you Elysian code? The vampiric language?” he asked.

  Vlad pursed his lips stubbornly. “How did you know my father?”

  Mr. Otis’s booming voice reverberated in the room. “Did he teach you the code?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Vlad looked at Nelly, who shook her head, indicating she was clueless as well. It didn’t surprise him that she was. His dad had been pretty secretive about the vampire world—apparently very secretive. He dropped his eyes to the book in Mr. Otis’s hands.

  Mr. Otis loosened his grip on the book. “So you don’t know.” He lowered his voice so that Vlad had to strain to hear him. “Did Tomas ever speak of Elysia? The vampire world?”

  Vlad shot Mr. Otis a glare, and suddenly a wave of hunger washed over him. He could see himself biting into his teacher’s neck, popping the skin between his teeth like a berry until the juices flowed down his throat and filled his belly. He wanted to taste Mr. Otis’s blood, and he was starting not to care that he’d be injuring another person. He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them again, once more under control. Mr. Otis might be a monster, but Vlad was nothing like him. “Why are you asking me so many questions? I don’t know anything. Just let us go.” He glared again, but Mr. Otis was no longer looking at him.

  Mr. Otis’s eyes were kind of glazed, and he was regarding the space between Vlad’s feet with growing interest. “I can see it in your thoughts, like watching a short film. He told you about Elysia, but as bedtime stories, fairy tales. And he told you so little. He left out most of it, even the name, leaving you with false images embedded in your imagination.”

  Otis shook his head, raising his gaze to meet Vlad’s. “The journal.”

  Otis stretched his mouth wide, exposing his fangs and eliciting a gasp from Nelly. “Your father was an outlaw, Vlad. He left Elysia for the love of your mother. Revealing vampiric heritage to humans is forbidden, let alone engaging in a romance with one. Those who do are hunted down, and their lives are taken for their crimes.”

  Though he fought it, a tear dripped from the corner of Vlad’s eye and rolled down his cheek. He didn’t want to cry. Not here in front of his parents’ murderer, not here when he was about to die. He tried to look away from Otis’s fangs, but they gleamed in the soft light, demanding to be seen. Beside him, Nelly was shaking in her seat, muttering things that Vlad couldn’t understand. He met Mr. Otis’s eyes. “So that’s why you killed my parents. But why did you kill Mr. Craig? And why kill us? We haven’t broken any of your laws.”

  Mr. Otis stopped, as if Vlad had kicked him hard in the chest. “Is that what you think? No, Vlad. I could never . . . I wouldn’t kill you. I could never bring myself to harm a family member.” Otis’s fangs shrank slightly. He regarded Vlad with shimmering eyes. “Vladimir, I’m Tomas’s half brother. Your uncle.”

  “What?” Vlad blinked again, trying to make some kind of sense out of the words his teacher had spoken, but he couldn’t. What Mr. Otis had said was crazy.

  Nelly glanced nervously between Vlad and Mr. Otis.

  “My uncle?” Vlad said. “But you killed my parents and Mr. Craig.”

  “I most certainly did not.”

  “Then for glob’s sake, why’d you scare us like that?” said Aunt Nelly. It was something she had always said as long as Vlad had known her: for glob’s sake. Vlad rolled his eyes, then looked to Mr. Otis for his reply.

  Mr. Otis looked at Nelly and then at Vlad, stretching out his palms in front of him as if he were pleading for forgiveness. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intent to frighten you. I needed you to sit and listen. Every time I tried to talk to you, you’d run away. I need you to tell me what you know about Tomas and Mellina, and exactly what happened to both of them.”

  He glanced out the window again and then took a seat on the sofa, his elbows on his knees, his fingers raking back the hair from his face. “I was shocked to hear of their deaths. In fact, after Mr. Craig disappeared, I volunteered to take his teaching spot to find you, Vlad. I thought if I found you, I could find Tomas. I’d never planned to harm you or your parents. I only hoped to protect you from the vengeful justice of Elysia.”

  Tears coated his cheeks, and the sight of them made Vlad feel insignificant and small. The man he’d thought a monster was braver than he was. Brave enough to cry.

  Nelly stood and crossed the room, placing a caring hand on Mr. Otis’s shoulder. “We don’t know what happened. It was an accident, their death. A dark mystery to us all.”

  Vlad swallowed a lump in his throat and pushed the image of his parents to the back of his mind. “Where is Elysia?”

  A sigh escaped Otis. “All around you. Elysia isn’t a place one can visit, Vlad. It’s wha
t we call vampire society. Coexisting with our own world—that is Elysia. The council gathers in Stokerton.” He tapped the book’s cover and handed it back to Vlad. “Everything you need to know is in here. I can teach you the code if you’d like. But later, when things are safer for you.” His eyes shifted to the door, as if something terrible were going to burst through it at any second.

  Vlad gripped the book in both hands. A million questions cluttered his mind. “But your hat . . . and that symbol . . .”

  “I need you to trust me, Vladimir. I loved your father. We were more than brothers, we were best friends. It pained me when he left, when he chose your mother over Elysia, but it was his choice to make and I respected that.”

  He pulled up his sleeve and held his wrist up for them to see. Vlad cringed a bit at the symbol—a guilty cringe, one from a boy who’d actually accused his uncle of being a murderer. When Otis turned his wrist, the symbol glowed slightly, like the glyph he and Henry had discovered in his father’s study, like the one on the book he was holding.