Camdeboo Nights (13 page)

Two showers later, the water having stung his raw skin like acid, he was still convinced he reeked of the interior of the rubbish bin. His sneakers were almost a dead loss. Auntie Miriam who worked in the kitchen took pity on him when she caught him scrubbing them with some green Sunlight soap he’d pilfered from the laundry, and offered to find him a bucket so he could soak them.

“You’re not going to wear those
tekkies
while they’re stinking like that,” she said, her brown face crinkling with concern.

“No, Auntie.”

“It’s those kids again, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Auntie.”

“You should report them.”

“It doesn’t help. I tried that when I first started here and they laid off for a week before bog-washing me. After using the toilet first.”

The woman tutted. Auntie Miriam had a way of making him feel better, no matter what. Her kitchen and the small vegetable and herb garden attached to her domain were the safe places where he could retreat to lick his wounds.

She wouldn’t hear of him eating supper with the other students this evening. Instead, they ate their fish and chips while sitting on the steps, watching the sun bleed red into the horizon, and he listened to Auntie Miriam’s tales of growing up in District Six during the sixties.

Sensibly he kept to his room on Sunday. He had meant to sneak into the common room to watch the films while the others went to church but he’d lost his taste for this. Instead, he tried to read, do homework, but found himself staring at the posters on his wall, instead.

Perhaps he should have gone with Arwen this weekend. In her typical fashion, she had not replied to a single text message he’d sent.

* * * *

Etienne was only too glad when Monday brought the distraction of what he hoped would be a normal school day, even if it promised to be a real scorcher. At the breakfast table, he listened to the chatter, hoping Arwen, Helen and Damon would be there. Of course, they wouldn’t. The Wareings had some sort of special arrangement to bring their daughter through on a Monday morning just before school started, instead of the Sunday afternoon that applied to the rest of the students who went home weekends. By default, that honor now applied to Helen and her brother as well–more reason for some of the others to be jealous.

He didn’t have much chance to speak to Arwen before assembly, gaining only a noncommittal “it was cool” before she clammed up to concentrate on text-messaging someone–illegal during school hours. When Helen slipped into the desk next to him during mathematics, he couldn’t help but smile. She returned his smile, looking happy enough.

“How was the weekend?” Etienne asked.

“Fine. Yours?”

“Crap.”

“Ah, no. What happened?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary.” Etienne spared a dark look for one of his tormentors, who sat with his back turned, yakking with Jean-Pierre.

At that point, before he could say anything further, Mr. Bayly entered and surveyed the class with his gimlet eyes. The buzz of chatter died away fast, as if someone had flipped a switch.

Their teacher paced the width of the class. “I appreciate that you all had fun drinking and fornicating this weekend but you won’t be discussing your conquests in my class. Open your textbooks on page...”

Etienne’s eyes glazed over. Why he had decided to study mathematics all the way to grade twelve was beyond him. He was in no mood for any of this today.

Instead, he tore off a leaf of paper from his examination pad and wrote to Helen.
So, what did you guys do this weekend?

He took care checking that Mr. Bayly’s back was still turned to the class while he scribbled in blue and red on the whiteboard. Even from where Etienne sat, the chemical stench of the markers reached him and he suppressed the urge to sneeze.

Helen gave a sharp intake of breath when Etienne slid the paper over onto her desk. Their fingers met, sending warm shivers up his arm. To have a nice girl like Helen treat him as if he were more than... Well, that was damn exciting.

She bit her lip as if to suppress a slight smile. Etienne made pretense of following the teacher’s lesson, all the while straining to keep from looking to the side at what Helen wrote.

A nudge. Once again their fingers fumbled together and Etienne retrieved the folded paper. He froze when Mr. Bayly swept the room with a glare. Fortunately, the man rarely bothered him.

When he was certain that Mr. Bayly had focused his attention entirely on Jean-Pierre, who positively glowed with pride at having been singled out to blather on about the figures on the board, Etienne unfolded the note, taking care not to make it rustle.

Helen’s script was small, angular and precise, not flying about like his scrawl.

Arwen had some weird-ass idea to go to the cemetery. When we were there, some boy showed up.

Etienne’s heartbeat faltered. What in hell was Arwen thinking? The tone of Helen’s reply seemed unconcerned, however. A boy? He’d never heard Arwen say anything much about the locals’ kids their own age. Pieter and his sisters were all younger than them. Jenny was in grade twelve this year and didn’t talk to the likes of Etienne, or Arwen, for that matter. Some of the others went to a boarding school in Port Elizabeth and only visited home every quarter during vacations. They didn’t talk much to Arwen, either.

Most likely, the boy was a visitor’s son.

OMF! WTF!
He scribbled.
What did U do? The boy, where’s he from? He local?

Helen’s reply came,
Arwen had this idea about some sort of witchcraft thing. Nothing happened. Just felt a bit weird and stupid standing there with all the mumbo-jumbo. The boy says he’s local, from what I’ve managed to find out. He said his name’s Trystan. Kinda cute. I think he’s about our age. Has long hair so I don’t think he goes to school here. Probably home-schooled.

Etienne scribbled back,
So, he just walked up to you? What about the ritual? Arwen was telling me about it. Never heard Arwen mention the boy, tho.
Part of Etienne felt disappointment that Helen was interested in another guy.

But, then, it sucked being honest. What girl would find a little person attractive? Another little person, perhaps, but he’d met and disliked two other little people in his life. It was better to dream.

“Etienne Labuschagne! What are you doing?” Mr. Bayly’s voice cut through his reverie.

He jerked upright and slid his notebook over the paper he’d been reading. Mr. Bayly’s gaze flickered at the movement, traveling up to meet Etienne’s eyes.

“What are you doing, Mr. Labuschagne?”

Someone giggled.

“Helen and Etienne are passing love-notes, sir,” came a taunt from behind Etienne. The emphasis was placed on “love,” making it sound like “lurve.”

“No, sir–” Etienne started.

“Give it here.”

“It’s nothing, sir.”

“You can’t lie to me, Etienne. You always go pasty when you lie and you swallow reflexively, like you’ve got a cockroach stuck in your throat. Don’t think that my NLP classes haven’t paid off. Give the note to me.”

A dozen equally implausible solutions occurred to him, but, this wasn’t the first time he’d been caught not paying attention in Mr. Bayly’s class. To feign ignorance of his behavior would be worse than handing over the offending slip of paper.

Helen’s gray eyes were wide, horrified. She shook her head, almost imperceptibly, but he could do nothing to prevent the inevitable.

With trembling fingers, Etienne folded the paper over, slid to his feet and tried to ignore the poorly stifled giggles while he waddled to the teacher’s desk. Mr. Bayly glowered, tapping the whiteboard marker in his palm as if it were a cane.

The man snatched the paper from Etienne, scanned it then spoke. “You and Helen will not only complete exercise twelve point one and two. You’ll do the supplementary exercises up until those points in the test section as well, then hand it in tomorrow with the rest of your homework.”

“Yes, sir,” Etienne muttered through gritted teeth.

If Mr. Bayly had bothered to go back to read through the offending exchange properly–clearly he hadn’t–the consequences would have been far worse for Helen and him. Apart from being the school’s mathematics teacher, Mr. Bayly was also the head of the Student Christian Union.

Chapter 15

An Unholy Alliance

Trystan was polishing
Rose
when he caught a hint of the other vampire. The chap was walking down Nieu Bethesda’s main drag as bold as brass.

The
jagter
, for Trystan had no doubt as to the vampire’s purpose, had succeeded in keeping his presence secret, and had held his Essence close, except for a moment.

It could have been a dog barking or a sudden movement in the shadows. That brief, careless flash was enough to have Trystan padding into the streets, hugging the dark places so he could slip behind the intruder.

The
jagter
was a short man, balding and portly during life–qualities that had not been improved upon once he’d joined the ranks of the undead. Like a moth to a lightbulb, the fellow had been drawn to the cemetery, where flickerings of the Wareing girl’s attempts at magic still eddied, days after the event.

Who wore pince nez glasses nowadays? The intruder’s clothing seemed out of place with the present age. Trystan had no doubt the vamp’s ivory-knobbed cane hid a blade, and the chap wasn’t anyone he recognized. The vampire paused by the gate, pale nostrils flaring as if he would capture an elusive scent.

All the while, Trystan remained close, flexing his fingers while wishing for a weapon other than teeth, and undecided as to whether he should let the guy be or consider a more permanent solution.

The faint electric hum of Essence resonated. It could be so easy to...

The interloper was bound to be missed, though.

But, if allowed to investigate, the
jagter
would also return to his elders, report on the disturbance, and share what he’d found, even if there had been no concrete evidence. He could make recommendations. This hamlet could be placed under surveillance.

Trystan was screwed either way. What would the lesser of the two evils be?

Inspector Poirot–for Trystan couldn’t help but think that the chap resembled the fictional investigator–paused by Helen Martins’s grave and removed a shiny calfskin glove so he could trace the owl-shaped profile. He brought his finger to his nose and sniffed audibly.

“You can come out now,” the vamp said, his voice thin and nasal, with traces of a colonial accent. “I know you’re only ten feet to my left, hiding behind the wall.”

Not to be caught hesitating a second time in a week, Trystan rushed the vampire. His suspicions regarding the sword cane proved correct, when a foot of steel flashed, sliding with a hiss into Trystan’s abdomen. The pain lanced fire through his flesh. He dropped to the ground and feigned serious damage. Then, when the vampire withdrew the weapon for another stab, Trystan twisted up, pushing against the ground hard so he flew into the other vampire.

To give the
jagter
some credit, he’d moved fast in the end, but not fast enough.

The momentum of Trystan’s attack carried both undead several meters before they knocked over a particularly large, angular black granite headstone. The object caught Trystan a glancing blow against his head that had him seeing stars.

Desperation gifted him with the determination to finish his attack. The
jagter
could not have been older than eighty–his flesh was still soft with the last vestiges of his humanity.

He gave a soft groan when Trystan’s teeth found their mark, at the sweet spot just under the chin. The interloper clutched at Trystan’s hair, pulling hard enough to almost remove clumps of it. The flood of Essence caused convulsions in both.

For Trystan, the stolen blood was living fire that gushed down his throat to flood to his extremities.

A momentary stirring in his chest could be ascribed to the sudden flutterings of the ghost of a heartbeat. When the last of the Essence left the now still
jagter
, Trystan fell back, heedless of his vulnerable situation.

A ragged breath imposed itself on his lungs, unused muscles burning. A force coiled and pooled in his belly.