Hunters of the Dusk by Darren Shan Page A

your mentor, I am responsible for informing you. I am sure he would have told me about it, so that I could have sat down with you and explained it, but there was no time — Mr. Tiny arrived and we had to leave the Mountain.”
    “You said Darren would grow during . . . the purge,” Harkat said. “How much?”
    “There is no telling,” Mr. Crepsley said. “Potentially, he could mature to adulthood in the space of a few months — but that is unlikely. He shall age a few years, but probably no more.”
    “You mean I’ll finally hit my teens?” I asked.
    “I would imagine so.”
    I thought about that for a while, then grinned. “Cool!”
    But the purge was far from cool — it was a curse! Shaving off all the hair was bad enough — Mr. Crepsley used a long, sharp blade, which scraped my skin raw — but the changes my body was undergoing were much worse. Bones were lengthening and fusing. My nails and teeth grew — I had to bite my nails and grind my teeth together while I walked at night to keep them in shape — and my feet and hands got longer. Within weeks I was two inches taller, aching all over from growing pains.
    My senses were in confusion. Slight sounds were magnified — the snapping of a twig was like a house collapsing. The dullest of smells set my nose tingling. My sense of taste left me completely. Everything tasted like cardboard. I began to understand what life must be like for Harkat and made a resolution never to tease him about his lack of taste buds again.
    Even dim lights were blinding to my ultra-sensitive eyes. The moon was like a fierce spotlight in the sky, and if I opened my eyes during the day, I might as well have been sticking two hot pins into them — the inside of my head would flare with a metallic pain.
    “Is this what sunlight is like for full-vampires?” I asked Mr. Crepsley one day, as I shivered beneath a thick blanket, eyes shut tight against the painful rays of the sun.
    “Yes,” he said. “That is why we avoid even short periods of exposure to daylight. The pain of sunburn is not especially great — not for the first ten or fifteen minutes — but the glare of the sun is instantly unbearable.”
    I suffered immense headaches during the purge, a result of my out-of-control senses. There were times when I thought my head was going to explode, and I’d weep helplessly from the pain.
    Mr. Crepsley helped me fight the dizzying effects. He bound light strips of cloth across my eyes — I could still see pretty well — and stuffed balls of grass into my ears and up my nostrils. That was uncomfortable, and I felt ridiculous — Harkat’s howls of laughter didn’t help — but the headaches lessened.
    Another side effect was a fierce surge of energy. I felt as if I were operating on batteries. I had to run ahead of Mr. Crepsley and Harkat at night, then double back to meet them, just to tire myself out. I exercised like crazy every time we stopped — push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups — and usually woke long before Mr. Crepsley, unable to sleep more than a couple of hours at a time. I climbed trees and cliffs, and swam across rivers and lakes, all in an effort to use up my unnatural store of energy. I’d have wrestled an elephant if I’d found one!
    Finally, after six weeks, the turmoil ceased. I stopped growing. I didn’t have to shave any more (though the hair on my head remained — I was no longer bald!). I removed the cloth and grass balls, and my taste returned, although patchily to begin with.
    I was about three inches taller than I’d been when the purge hit me, and noticeably broader. The skin on my face had hardened, giving me a slightly older appearance — I looked like a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old now.
    Most importantly — I was still a half-vampire. The purge hadn’t eliminated my human blood cells. The downside was that I’d have to undergo the discomfort of the purge again in the future. On the plus side I could continue to enjoy sunlight for the time