Read Online Birth of a Killer by Darren Shan - Free Book Online

factory. This is how the foreman marked me.”
    Paris studied the boy some more as he chewed. “It’s been a while since you took an assistant,” he said to Seba.
    “It is a complicated process these nights,” Sebascowled. “I preferred it when you could snatch a baby from its cradle and no one cared. Now the Princes complain when we do that. They urge us to only take those who will not be missed by humans, and gods help you if you blood the wretch before he comes of age.”
    “Times are changing,” Paris noted. “For the better, I feel. It’s good that people worry more about their young, that we cannot pick as freely as we once did.”
    “Perhaps,” Seba said grudgingly. “But such cautious maneuverings are not for me. I have trained and blooded several fine vampires over the centuries. In terms of bolstering our ranks, I have done more than my fair share for the clan.”
    Paris waved a hand at Larten. “Yet here you are with another apprentice.”
    Seba smiled. “Master Crepsley was an unusual case. When you find a boy eating cobwebs in a crypt in the middle of the night… well, such a lad has already driven a wedge between himself and the human world. If I had not claimed him for the clan, some other vampire surely would have.”
    “It sounds like an interesting tale,” Paris murmured. “I will ask you to tell it to me one night, Larten. In return I’ll tell you a few of mine if you’re interested.”
    Seba laughed. “The lad does not know much about you, Paris, but in years to come, when he realizes what a treasure trove of stories you are, he will remind you of that promise. You may live to regret it.”
    “Nonsense,” Paris sniffed. “I never tire of discussing my great exploits.”
    Talk moved on, and Larten was again forgotten. He had enjoyed being part of their conversation, even for a brief while, and looked forward to the time when he was considered worthy of full inclusion in talks between vampires as old and wise as these two.
    Paris started to tell Seba of his recent adventures in a jungle. He seemed to have traveled to every country Larten had heard of, and many more besides. Larten was fascinated, but he excused himself and went in search of food to serve to the vampires later in the night. His duties had to come first.
    Larten often hunted by himself. He hadn’t in the first few years, but Seba had trained him well, and now he was left to his own devices most nights. While he enjoyed hunting with Seba, he preferred the solitude of the solo chase. He’d never feared the dark as a child but had been wary of it. Now he’d grown to love it. Humans retired when the sun went down, leaving the world in the control of the creatures of the night.
    Larten wandered freely, relishing the heady smells, the sounds of small animals rustling in the bushes, the cries of owls and bats. While his senses were nowhere near as sharp as Seba’s, he had learned to see, hear, and smell more than most humans ever did. He was aware of a different world unraveling around him, nature rolling its dice as it did every night, animals fighting, birthing, feeding, dying. There were a dozen dramas unfolding everywhere at once, in the bushes, in the trees, beneath the soil. Larten could only follow a few of them—he saw an owl swoop on two mating mice and carry them away, and watched a fox drink by a stream, studying the water as if admiring its reflection. But the snatches he caught put a smile on his face like no human tale of ghosts and gods ever had.
    On a rough road he kept to the shadows as a caravan of people passed, no more than three or four feet away from where he stood. It pleased him that he could follow their progress without their knowing he was there. He could have boarded the caravan and stocked up on fruit, meat, and wine if he’d wished. But although he and his master sometimes stole when needs dictated, vampires were not natural thieves. They would rather hunt.
    Returning to the forest, he