Pure Dead Wicked by Debi Gliori Read Free Book Online

already I’m bored, he thought. Bored, bored, bored. At least at home I could go and raid the fridge, but I’m not allowed to do that here.
    In front of him, a dialogue box informed him that he was now connected to the Net. The cursor blinked on and off, politely waiting for Titus to enter an address. Without hesitation, he typed:
    www.diy-clones.com
    pressed ENTER , and then sat back again to wait for the interminable time it usually took to gain access to the Web site.
    The previous summer, Titus had accidentally stumbled on this address when he mis-keyed in the name of his favorite ice cream manufacturers. He’d been starving after dinner, and after a fruitless trawl of the freezers for ice cream, he had decided to see if he could set up a direct supply of Dairy Cones to StregaSchloss. Diy-clones had been the result of his hasty typing, and after he’d spent five gripping minutes exploring the many attractions of that fascinating Web site, Titus had completely forgotten how hungry he was. Now, six months later, in an upstairs bedroom of the Auchenlochtermuchty Arms, he was inching closer to making a major scientific breakthrough. The screen on his laptop glowed deep red as the Web site came online. Titus logged in his password, bypassed screenfuls of introductory stuff, scrolled rapidly through pages of mathematical calculations, and arrived at what he was looking for. There. It all seemed simple enough. All he needed was:
    fresh blood
some growth medium
an incubator
and an infrared facility.
    Checking a side panel on his laptop, he found that he had at least one of the requirements at hand. His computer had the ability to communicate data by means of an infrared transmitter located next to the modem input. But as to where he was going to find the rest of his list . . . Titus sighed. Fresh blood was going to be a bit tricky, not to mention totally gruesome. He could just about manage to acquire some of his own—if he shut his eyes and stabbed himself with a badge pin, he was sure he could squeeze out enough blood for his needs before he fainted.
    Pandora’s blood was another matter entirely. Titus eyed his sister speculatively, wondering how to go about this without simultaneously causing her too much pain and alerting her to what he was doing. For the time being, he was reluctant to let Pandora in on his master plan for creating two clones, one of himself and the other of her, mainly because if he shared the secret with her, he would also have to inform her that he needed her blood. It was unlikely that she would see the scientific necessity for this. However, he mused, Pandora would be the first to agree that creating clones for the purpose of doing homework (Pandora-type clones) and tidying the bedroom (Titus-type clones) was a stroke of utter genius. Staring through Pandora as his thoughts turned this way and that, he realized that she had turned the television off and was gazing at him in alarm.
    â€œTitus . . . ?” She shivered. “What
is
it? You’re looking at me very strangely . . . almost as if you’ve turned into a—a
zombie
or something.”
    Titus snapped out of his reverie and grinned wolfishly at her. “Not a zombie, sister
dear
. A vampire, actually. . . .”
    He’d worked out how to do it, he realized. In fact, Pandora had worked it out for him. Fresh blood was going to be easy. Now he could turn his attention to the two remaining items on his list.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” said Pandora, peering over his shoulder before he had time to log off from the incriminating Web site. “Is that
another
game?
Diy-clones
? Don’t you just hate it when people spell things wrong on purpose? Die doesn’t have a ‘y’ in it.”
    â€œUm, yes,” Titus mumbled, barely listening as he frantically tried to leave the Web site without Pandora catching a glimpse of anything that might alter her assumption that he was playing yet