Night Runner by Max Turner Read Free Book Online Page B

the light. He would have perished had it not been for a small boy who happened to run past.”
    He paused. We were thinking the same thing, my uncle and I.
    â€œI was bitten by a dog,” I said. It was barely a whisper.
    My uncle shook his head and mouthed a silent “No.”
    â€œPerhaps your memory is faulty. The mind can be like that. Tell me what you remember.”
    I told him. There were eyes in the shadows. I moved closer and the dog crawled out and bit me. It happened so fast . . .
    â€œAnd tell me,” he said, “when you remember this, do you see it as a movie, or do you see it as though it is really happening to you?”
    â€œI don’t understand,” I said.
    â€œHmmm.” He paused to think. “When you look at me now, you are seeing me through your own eyes. You don’t see yourself. You see me, the chair, the desk, the mirror on the door, the wall behind me. When you see the dog in your mind, when it bites you, is it like that, do you see the dog and only the dog? Or is it different? Do you see yourself, as well? As though you are watching yourself in a movie?”
    That was an easy one. “I can see us both. Like a movie. We’re both in the picture and I’m looking from above.”
    My uncle nodded. “That means it isn’t a true memory. Your mind has recreated the scene and you see the recreation. If the memory were real, you would see only the dog, just as you see only me when you look across the room. Of course, it wasn’t a dog, was it. It was the Baron Vrolok. He must have been close to death. Very close. But he drank your blood, and it gave him the strength to survive. To dig deep into the earth and wait for darkness.”
    When he finished saying this, I stared up at him. It was as if I were seeing him clearly for the first time. There was truth in his words. I could see that. And I also saw another truth. One he had implied. I had been bitten by the Baron Vrolok. I had been infected by a vampire.
    And so I was a vampire, too.

Chapter 10
Strange Questions
    M y uncle was right. Some truths could not be ignored. Not when they rolled over you like the dinner trolley.
    I was a vampire. How could I have not known? It was the only thing that made sense. I couldn’t go out in the sun. I needed fresh blood every few months. My body didn’t like food. It made me wonder what Nurse Ophelia had been putting into those brain cocktails. I began to doubt it was strawberry syrup.
    It also made me wonder how much of this she knew. I probably should have asked my uncle about it, but another thought had come to mind—something of much greater concern. After all, this man was a vampire hunter.
    â€œAre you here to kill me?” I asked.
    He smiled. His hard features softened and he looked down at the ground for just an instant. “No,” he said. “I came here for an entirely different reason. I came here to take you away from this place.”
    â€œBut don’t you kill vampires?”
    He shook his head once, slightly, with his lips pressed together. “Not always. In some cases your father and I left vampires alive because they agreed to help us, and because we were convinced they posed no immediate threat to humanity. You must understand, Zachary, vampires aren’t very different from normal people. They have choices to make, just as you will have choices to make. They can choose to be good, or to be something that is less than good. I suppose the hunger for blood makes the choice more difficult for vampires, but it remains a choice.”
    Well, I had no doubt in my mind what I would choose. I would be good. I certainly wasn’t a threat to anybody. I didn’t even believe in mousetraps. But I was thinking that maybe there was another way out of this.
    â€œCan I be cured?” I asked.
    My uncle took a deep breath and put his hands on his knees. Then he pushed himself up and got ready to leave. In a