Nightwing Towers (2 page)

Then he put on a clean pair of jeans and decided to get himself a drink. As he entered the kitchen he heard a scuffling outside the window, followed by footsteps.

Charlie ran out on to the balcony. The small girl he had seen in the shop shot past the door. Then, she stopped and leant over the balcony. An enormous dark bird was hovering in the air a little way off. Suddenly, it made a strange cry and soared upwards. She craned her neck to see where it had gone.

“I bet he’s gone to the top floor,” she said.

Charlie laughed. “It’s only a bird!”

The girl turned on him sharply. “A bird? That was not a bird! Who are you anyway? I saw you earlier with Mrs Parsons!”

“I’m her nephew, Charlie. I live in the country, but I’m visiting for the week.”

The girl stared at him for a moment, then seemed to relax.

“Thank goodness,” she said. “I’m Freya and I live downstairs.”

“What was that then, if it wasn’t a bird?” asked Charlie.

“That was Mr Kube.” She gave him a friendly smile. “And to think I was afraid I might have to battle against the Powers of Darkness all on my own!”

The late afternoon sun threw long shadows into the stairwell of Nightwing Towers. They shimmered like trembling fingers. The building felt as cool as an ancient tomb. Charlie and Freya crouched beneath the stairs on the first floor, staring down at the lift door.

Suddenly, the twang of the lift cable echoed in the shaft.

“This is it, now shush,” said Freya. “The lift’s coming. That will be Mr Kube. He likes to fly up to the top floor, but he sometimes uses the lift to come back down.”

Charlie couldn’t understand what she meant by “fly up”. He held his breath as the lift door opened with a “clunk”.

A man dressed in a long black cloak, wearing dark glasses very like Charlie’s aunt’s, peered round the door. Then he stepped out. He wore a yellow straw boater with a wide black hatband; beneath a white collar was a smart bow-tie.

Charlie watched in wonder. The man’s face was whiter than talcum powder.

Slowly, he made his way towards the entrance. Then he paused, checking that there was nobody about.

Suddenly, he stretched out his arms and flapped his cloak. A puff of smoke came from nowhere. After a few seconds, in his place was a small black animal. It squealed and stretched its wide skeletal wings. As it flew upwards Charlie realized it was a bat. In an instant it had gone.

“That was a man,” gasped Charlie. “And he changed into a bat!”

“Correction,” said Freya seriously, “that was no man, that was a Master Vampire.”

Charlie was almost speechless, but he could not deny his own eyes. Freya went on to explain that Mr Kube had only
moved in a few months ago. She had watched the removals van arrive. There had been no furniture, only a collection of fine mahogany coffins.

For a moment Charlie’s blood turned to iced water. He shook his head.

“No! There’s no such thing as vampires!”

“OK, I’ll give you further proof,” she said. “But then you
must
help me. In a while Mr Kube will have returned to his flat.”

Some time later, Charlie followed Freya through the gap in the boarded-up doors which led to the third floor. Here there was another staircase. The place felt like a huge empty castle. Their footsteps rang out as they slowly climbed the stairs to the top.

“This way,” said Freya when they’d reached the top floor. “Slowly and quietly.” Bats hung from the ceiling like fat umbrellas. She led him out on to the balcony on tiptoe.

Most of the windows and doors were boarded, but there were two that were not.

She peered through the first window and whispered.

“He’s returned.” She beckoned to Charlie. A grubby curtain had been drawn, but there was a gap. The room was empty, dark and silent, but in the centre was
a coffin. A yellow straw hat lay on the chest of a sleeping figure, which rose and fell with each breath.

“Other single people like your aunt lived on the second floor,” Freya whispered, then she moved closer to him. “Then they started to change.”