Disclaimer: See chapter 1
Vancha, Harkat and I agreed that it would be best if we kept Vancha's scheme between us. We agreed that it would cause unnecessary tension to what had already become a tense situation. I secretly wondered if Arra was still convinced that her inner sense that Frank and Bear should travel with us was correct, or if she now thought it had been a mistake. Her mood had become increasingly more on-edge, and part of me wondered if it had a lot to do with a desire to hide that she might have been mistaken. I very gently tried to breech the subject with Mr. Crepsley while she and Vancha were out feeding, but he shot it down, excusing it all away as stress, and, possibly, a side effect of the pregnancy.
"Vampiress or not," he'd said quietly, in an effort to not wake Frank or Bear, "I would imagine that hormones will take their toll on her as they do any female."
"Gods help us," Harkat had grumbled, and I snorted as he ducked out of the way of Mr. Crepsley's shove.
It seemed that there was an unspoken understanding that we let the humans in on as little of our mission as possible. We'd told them nothing that could lead to them finding out about the Cirque du Freak, vampires, or the baby. There was no need for them to know - with any luck, we'd part ways in a couple weeks and never face each other again. At least, I hoped we'd never face Frank again. Bear, I was starting to think, we would all miss.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
"Put the fire out, and let's get some rest," Arra said, calling the end of our dinnertime. "It's going to be sundown again before you know it."
"Goddamn sundown," Frank spat. "I'd like to see the sun rise every once in a while, you know."
"Sorry, didn't catch that," Arra said. "But you're sitting closest to the bucket of water. Fire. Out. Now."
Frank spitefully dumped the metal bucket - something we'd picked up the night before at a junkyard we'd passed through - over the flames, dousing them and letting off the sizzling and crackling like a roar of thunder. Once he'd emptied it of water, he chucked the bucket across the hillside cave we'd found and venomously eyed Milo the mouse, who, very near to Frank's foot, was nibbling on a berry Bear had found him.
We'd been traveling with Frank and Bear for a week now. Frank had been on three successful solo missions, with no one tailing him, and had come back very sober every time. I didn't think it would last much longer. Personally, I almost hoped he would start drinking again. It seemed sobriety was wreaking havoc on him. Every night he became more and more sullen, and at times downright vile. He'd lost all of the annoying traits he'd possessed when intoxicated and was now just a negative entity. He barked replies when spoken to and insulted anyone who attempted to confront him. After realizing that none of us were particularly phased by his irritability, he'd begun taking his anger out on Bear (usually through the form of Milo), something that we weren't standing for - especially Arra.
"Leave him," she snapped, catching a glimpse of the look in Frank's eye. "The mouse won't touch you if you don't touch it."
"I told you," Bear piped in, "He's nice, and he's soft. Softer than a puppy, or a kitty, or a fishy."
"Fish aren't soft," Frank muttered, laying down on his back. "They're wet an' slimy."
"Nuh-uh," Bear insisted, crawling over to my bag, where we were now keeping his brand new Incredibles pajamas, and pulling them out. "Fishies are soft. Bunnies are soft too. So are monkeys." He pulled his shirt over his head and quickly replaced it with his red, 'i' emblazoned shirt. Mr. Crepsley automatically reached out to help him - Bear always had trouble getting his arms through the sleeves.
Once Bear had finished putting his pajamas on, with a certain amount of assistance from me and Mr. Crepsley, and once he was content with his argument that fishies, bunnies, monkeys, giraffes, and elephants were soft (but not as soft as Milo), he tucked his little mouse safely into the handbag Harkat had found and given him as a mouse-house. He then borrowed one of Mr. Crepsley's red capes, covered himself up, and fell almost immediately asleep.
Soon after, Frank too had begun snoring, and it was only the hunters left awake. Usually we aimed for a few human-free minutes every day, to talk about things we couldn't say in front of Frank, or to drink some blood. The two of them seemed to be sound sleepers - we had yet to wake them, even when speaking at a normal volume.
"Did you see the size of the puddles we passes on the way here?" Arra began.
"By puddles, do you mean the small lakes I kept knocking Frank into?" Vancha asked dryly.
Arra made a face, though a smile threatened to appear behind it. "Yes," she sighed. "Those. They're because of all the melted snow and rain we've been getting. The rest of the way to Bear's mother's city is through low-lying lands; we're likely to encounter floods if we continue along in the direction I'd planned to travel. Ordinarily, that wouldn't be a problem, but with those two," she jerked her thumb at the sleeping forms of Bear and Frank, "I think we'll have to take a detour."
"What kind of a detour?" I asked.
"Not a long one," she explained. "It wouldn't add more than a week on to the trip time, and we'll end up walking through fewer swampy areas."
"You know this alternate route?" Vancha asked, and she nodded. "And there's no chance of..." he cleared his throat implicatively, "other interferences that prolong our time with the humans?"
Arra stared at him for a second. "What are you trying to say?" she asked sharply. "I didn't know it was going to be so wet and difficult to travel through here. If I had, I would have sent us the other way to begin with."
"Wasn't implying anything," Vancha grumbled, though his tone said otherwise. "But we've just doubled the remaining time we'll be spending with them."
Harkat and I exchanged worried glances. Arra and Vancha hadn't been speaking much lately, and Mr. Crepsley, Harkat, and I had not been encouraging it. Neither Vancha nor Arra was willing to admit that their opinion on Frank and Bear joining us might have been wrong, and neither was even-keeled enough to calmly discuss it. I thought they were both making far too much of it all; it seemed the majority of the tension on our party had stemmed from them, and I didn't see any need for it. The decision of traveling with Bear and Frank had never seemed like much of a big deal to me.
"With all due respect, Sire," Mr. Crepsley interrupted, hoping to intervene before things went farther. I saw Vancha roll his eyes. "She could not predict that we would be running into this problem. In the grand scheme of our journey, an extra week is hardly anything to speak of."
"I told you," Vancha grunted, his face in a sneer. "I wasn't implying anything."
"It sure sounded like you were," Arra growled.
"Hold on," Mr. Crepsley told her, putting a hand gently on her arm. "I think..."
She shook him off. "Stay out of this, Larten," she barked, hopping up to her feet. "Vancha's been asking for this for a week. I'm sick of seeing that look on his face."
Vancha too got to his feet, and there was nearly steam coming out of his ears and nose. "What look? The look of knowing that Darren made the wrong decision because of you?" He'd begun raising his voice, but a particularly loud snore form Frank brought the volume down again.
"Look, maybe we should all – " I began, starting to stand and putting my hands up, but Mr. Crepsley cut me off.
"Darren, quiet." He gave me a threatening look and I sunk back to the ground with a fearful grimace at Harkat. Mr. Crepsley rounded on Vancha. "I cannot believe you are trying to peg this whole thing on Arra!"
"I said to stay out of this," Arra snarled. She and Vancha both had the same dark expressions on their faces, and their eyes held a fiery craze I'd never seen blaze so strongly in either of them before.
"I am trying to help you," Mr. Crepsley said quietly, reaching out to put his hands on her shoulders to calm her, but she pushed him away.
"I don't need your help," she half-shouted, and Harkat and I hissed, "Shhh!" as Frank rolled over, grumbling in his sleep.
"Don't try and stand up for her, Larten," Vancha said angrily. "You know we made the wrong decision!"
"There is no basis for calling Darren's decision wrong!" Mr. Crepsley cried, outraged. "Nothing bad has happened since we have been with the humans, and, frankly, the way things have been going, I do not foresee anything bad happening...as a result of them, at any rate." He shot a feverish glare at Arra. "But if you wish for me to 'stay out of it', then so be it. But you are both acting irrationally. I do not know what has come over the pair of you."
"Shut up," Vancha snapped at him. "If you have such a problem with it, then get the hell out. It's what I'm going to do. No reason for me to hang around. The way I see it, we abandon our mission the minute we took them on. Let me know when the lot of you've got your priorities straight and I'll come back."
"If neither of you can pull it together, perhaps I will leave!" Mr. Crepsley barked.
"Yeah, why don't you?" Arra said venomously. "You're good at that."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Mr. Crepsley bellowed. "I thought -"
I'd become so engrossed in the escalating argument in front of me that I'd been completely oblivious to the unnerved Little Person next to me.
"Stop, stop...STOP IT!" Harkat interrupted, his voice louder and more urgent than I had ever heard it, and everyone turned to him. He was on his feet, his mask on the ground behind him, and his hands in the air. "Don't you see...what's happening? It's exactly like...Evanna said. Des Tiny wants us to...argue; he doesn't want...us to stick together and get along. If we...split up because...we're fighting, we will be...easier for him to pick off...one by one." Everyone's mouth clamped shut as we stared at him, his blue-robed body shaking as he glared at us all with his glowing green eyes. "We can't fight," he said softly. "Not now. Not so soon."
The three vampires glared at Harkat for several more long seconds, their breaths coming in heavy, sharp hisses.
Arra was the first to respond. She slumped to the ground, covering her face with her hands. "You're right, Harkat," she said. "Larten, I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me." She reached out and took his hand apologetically, sincere regret in both of their eyes. He gave her a half-smile and clasped his hand around both of hers forgivingly.
"Destiny's what came over you," Vancha sighed, sitting back down himself. "Harkat's right: Evanna said it. He - Destiny - would twist our minds, make us argue. I apologize to you all - I was the one who started this."
We murmured our acceptances of Vancha and Arra's apologies, and Mr. Crepsley gave an apology of his own. We then glanced nervously around as though expecting Mr. Tiny to dive out at us, heart-shaped watch in hand, evilly controlling us like puppets. But no such thing happened. After giving a look at the incredibly still-sleeping Frank and Bear, Harkat asked, "You don't think...that means that he is here, or nearby...do you?"
"I don't think so," Vancha said. "But you never know."
"I don't think he's necessarily controlling our minds," Arra said slowly. "I don't think he's able to do that...if he could, I don't think I'd still be alive. Maybe none of us would. But what Evanna said, what she told us - that can control us; knowing that he wants us divided. We expect it to happen, and so it does."
"It is self-perpetuating," Mr. Crepsley said, and she nodded.
"Exactly."
"But," I said, frowning, "then, we also know it's self-prep...perp...whatever, so can't we stop it? We know that's what he wants, so now we know that we'll have to do everything we can to stop it from happening."
Vancha beamed at me. "Darren Shan," he said. "Vampires in general are known for a dislike of the young, but there is something to be said for one who can think so freely outside the box."
I decided to take that as a compliment and smile
A/N: I'm incredibly proud of my quick update here (even if it's not quite considered quick by the usual standards, it's quick for me, damn it!)! Don't squelch my pride by not reviewing, please! Remember, anyone can review! :D Thanks for reading!