Shan, Darren - Cirque Du Freak 11 - Lord of the Shadows

Recruiting an army had proved a lot harder than it sounded. No vampire knew for sure how the vampaneze had put the vampets together, but we could imagine their recruiting strategy — find weak-willed, wicked people, then bribe them with promises of power. "Join us and we'll teach you how to fight and kill. We'll blood you when the time is right and make you stronger than any human. As one of us, you'll live for centuries. Anything you wish for can be yours."

Debbie and Alice faced a much harder task. They needed good people who were willing to fight on the side of right, who recognized the threat the vampets and their masters posed, who wished to avert the prospect of living in a world where a band of killers dominated the night. Crooked, grasping, evil-hearted people were easy to find. Honest, concerned, self-sacrificing people were harder to come by.

They found a few, among police and soldiers — Alice had lots of contacts from her time on the force — but nowhere near enough to counter the threat of the vampets. For half a year they made little or no progress.

They were beginning to think it was a waste of time. Then Debbie saw the way forward.

The vampaneze were on the increase. As well as recruiting the vampets, they were blooding more vampaneze assistants than normal, driving up their numbers in a bid to win the War of the Scars by means of force. Since they were more active than usual, they needed to drink more blood, to keep up their energy levels. And when vampaneze drank blood, they killed.

So where were all the bodies?

Vampaneze had survived for six hundred years by feeding cautiously, never killing too many people in any one area, carefully hiding the bodies of their victims. There weren't many of them — never more than three hundred before the War of the Scars — and they were spread across the world. It was relatively easy to keep their presence a secret from humanity.

But now they were on the increase, feeding in groups, killing hundreds of humans every month. There was no way such a drain on humanity could have passed unnoticed by the general public — unless those they fed from weren't officially part of that public.

Tramps. Dossers. Hobos. Vagrants. Mankind had dozens of names for homeless people, those without careers, houses, families or security. Many names — but not a lot of interest. Homeless people were a nuisance, a problem, an eyesore. Whether "ordinary" people felt pity or disgust for them, whether they handed over change when they saw someone begging or walked straight by, one thing united most humans — they knew homeless people existed, but very few took any real notice of them. Who in any town or city could say how many homeless people were living on the streets? Who'd knowif those numbers started to drop? Who'd care?

The answer — almost nobody. Except the homeless people themselves.They'd know something was wrong. The homeless would listen, pitch in and fight. If not for the vampires, then for themselves — they were victims of the War of the Scars, and stood to lose big time if the vampaneze were triumphant.

So Debbie, Alice and their small band of Generals took their recruiting speeches to the corners of the world most humans know nothing about. They went out on the streets, into homeless shelters and mission churches, down alleys lined with rough beds made of cardboard boxes and wads of newspapers. They moved freely among the people of this subworld, facing suspicion and danger, spreading their message, in search of allies.

And they found them. There was a grapevine among the homeless, similar to that of the vampire clan. Though most lacked phones, they kept in touch with one another. It was amazing how fast a rumour could travel, and wherever Alice and Debbie went, they found people who'd heard about the murders and knew they were under attack, even though they had no idea who their attackers were.

Debbie and Alice told the street people about the vampaneze. They encountered scepticism to begin with, but the vampires with them backed them up, demonstrating their powers. In a couple of cities they helped the street folk track down vampaneze and kill them. Word spread rapidly, and over the last several months thousands of street people across the world had pledged themselves to the vampire cause. Most hadn't been trained yet. For now they were serving as eyes and ears, watching for vampaneze, passing on word of their movements.

They'd also chosen a name —vampirites .

Harkat helped me out of bed and I hobbled from my room, down the corridor and stairs to the ground floor, where the hidden rooms were located. Alice came with us, to ensure all was in order. We passed Declan along the way. He was on the phone to another nearby vampirite stronghold, warning them of the police search.