"Those clothes will not do," he said, referring to my bright pirate costume, which still fit me after all the years of wear and tear. "Where we are going, you would stand out like a peacock. Here," he threw a bundle at me. I unrolled it to reveal a light gray sweatshirt and pants, plus a woolly hat.

"How long have you been preparing for this?" I asked.

"Some time now," he admitted, pulling on clothes with the same color as mine, in place of his usual red outfit.

"Couldn't you have told me about it earlier?"

"I could have," he replied in that infuriating way of his.

I slipped into my new clothes, then looked for socks and shoes. Mr. Crepsley shook his head when he saw me searching. "No footwear," he said. "We go barefoot."

"Over snow and ice?" I yelped.

"Vampires have harder feet than humans," he said. "You will barely feel the cold, especially when we are walking."

"What about stones and thorns?" I grumbled.

"They will toughen your soles up even more." He grinned, then took off his slippers. "It is the same for all vampires. The way to Vampire Mountain is not just a journey — it is a test. Boots, jackets, ropes: Such items are not permitted."

"Sounds crazy to me." I sighed, but took the rope, spare clothes, and boots out of my bag. When we were ready, Mr. Crepsley asked where Madam Octa was. "You're not bringing her, are you?" I grumbled — I knew who'd have to look after her if she came, and it wouldn't be Mr. Crepsley!

"There is someone I wish to show her to," he said.

"Someone who eats spiders, I hope," I said, but grabbed her from behind his coffin, where I kept her between shows. She shuffled around while I lifted the cage and placed it in my bag, but settled down once she found herself in the dark again.

Then it was time to go. I had said good-bye to Evra earlier — he was taking part in that night's show and had to prepare — and Mr. Crepsley had said good-bye to Mr. Tall. Nobody else would miss us.

"Ready?" Mr. Crepsley asked.

"Ready," I sighed.

Leaving the safety of the van, we cleared the camp, let the two silent Little People fall into place behind us, and set off on what would prove to be a wild, danger-filled adventure into lands cold and foreign and steeped in blood.

CHAPTER THREE

I WOKE UP A LITTLE before nightfall, stretched the stiffness out of my bones — what I would have given for a bed or hammock! — then left the inside of the cave to study the barren land we were journeying through. I didn't get much of a chance to study the countryside while we traveled at night. It was only during quiet moments like these that I could stop and take everything in.

We hadn't hit the snowlands yet, but already we had left most of civilization behind. Humans were few and far between out here where the ground was rocky and forbidding. Even animals were scarce, but some were strong enough to survive — mostly deer, wolves, and bears.

We'd been traveling for weeks, maybe a month — I lost track of time after the first couple of nights.

Whenever I asked Mr. Crepsley how many miles were left, he'd smile and say, "We are some way off yet."

My feet got cut up badly when we reached the hard ground. Mr. Crepsley applied the sap of herbal plants that he found along the way on my soles and carried me for a couple of nights while my skin grew back (I healed quicker than a human would). I'd been okay since then.

I said one night that it was too bad that the Little People were with us, or he could have carried me on his back and flitted. (Vampires can run at an extra-fast speed, a magic kind of running, where they slip through space like eels through a net. They call it "flitting.") He said our slow pace had nothing to do with the Little People. "Flitting is not permitted on the way to Vampire Mountain," he explained. "The journey is a way of weeding out the weak from the strong. Vampires are ruthless in certain aspects. We do not believe in supporting those who are incapable of supporting themselves."

"That's not very nice," I observed. "What about somebody who's old or injured?"

Mr. Crepsley shrugged. "Either they do not attempt the journey, or they die trying."

"That's stupid," I said. "If I could flit, I would. No one would know."

The vampire sighed. "You still do not understand our ways," he said. "There is no nobility in pulling the wool over the eyes of one's comrades. We are proud beings, Darren, who live by exacting codes. From our point of view it is better to lose one's life than lose one's pride."

Mr. Crepsley spoke a lot about pride and nobility and being true to oneself. Vampires were a stern lot, he said, who lived as close to nature as they could. Their lives were rarely easy, and that was the way they liked it — "Life is a challenge," he once told me, "and only those who rise to the challenge truly know what it means to live."

I got used to the Little People, who trailed along behind us at night, silent, aloof, precise. They hunted for their own food during the day, while we slept. By the time we woke up, they'd eaten and grabbed a few hours' sleep and were ready to go. Their pace never changed. They marched behind us like robots, a few feet in the rear. I thought the one with the limp might struggle, but he hadn't yet shown any signs that he was feeling any strain.

Mr. Crepsley and me fed mostly on deer. Their blood was hot, salty, and good. We had bottles of human blood to keep us going — vampires need regular doses of human blood to keep healthy, and although they prefer to drink directly from the vein, they can bottle blood and store it — but we drank from them sparingly, saving them in case of an emergency.

Mr. Crepsley wouldn't let me light a fire in the open — it might attract attention — but it was allowed in way stations. Way stations were caves or underground caverns where bottles of human blood and coffins were stored. They were resting places, where vampires could hole up for a day or two. There weren't many of them — it took about a week to make it from one to the next — and some of them had been taken over or destroyed by animals since Mr. Crepsley had last been here.

"How come they allow way stations but no shoes or ropes?" I asked one day as we warmed our feet by a fire and dove into roast venison (we ate it raw most of the time).

"The way stations were introduced after our war with the vampaneze seven hundred years ago," he said. "We lost many of our clan in the fight with the vampaneze, and humans killed even more of us. Our numbers were dangerously low. The way stations were set up to make it easier to get to Vampire Mountain. Some vampires object to them and never use them, but most accept them."

"How many vampires are there?" I asked.

"Between two and three thousand," he answered. "Maybe a few hundred more or less."

I whistled. "That's a lot!"

"Three thousand is nothing," he said. "Think about the billions of humans."

"It's more than I expected," I said.

"Once, we numbered more than a hundred thousand," Mr. Crepsley said. "And this was long ago, when that was a huge amount."

"What happened to them?" I asked.

"They were killed." He sighed. "Humans with stakes; disease; fights — vampires love to fight. In the centuries before the vampaneze broke away and provided us with a real foe, we fought amongst ourselves, many dying in duels. We came close to extinction, but kept our heads above water, just about."

"How many Vampire Generals are there?" I asked curiously.

"Between three and four hundred."

"And vampaneze?"

"Maybe two hundred and fifty, or three hundred — I cannot say for sure."

As I was remembering this old conversation, Mr. Crepsley came out from the cave behind me and watched the sun sinking. It looked the same color as his cropped orange hair. The vampire was in great form — the nights were getting longer the closer to Vampire Mountain we got, so he could move around more than usual.