Thief of Always by Clive Barker Page B

hot, the blood's tasty." He was doing a little dance as he spoke, stamping his feet to the rhythm of his chant. "Don't waste the taste! Go eat the meat!"
          And still Wendell whined, all snot and tears. "You don't want me. Find Harvey! Find Harvey!"
          And the more he sobbed, the more Jive's chant made sense to Harvey. Who was this ridiculous boy Wendell anyway? He was too eager to serve Harvey up as dinner to be called a friend. He was just a tasty morsel. Any vampire worth his wings would chew off his head as soon as look at him. And yet...
          "What are you waiting for?" Jive wanted to know. "We've gone to all this trouble to make a monster of you-"
          "Yes, but it's a game," Harvey said.
          "A game?" said Jive. "No, no, boy. It's more than that. It's an education."
          Harvey didn't know what he meant by this, and he wasn't altogether certain he wanted to know.
          "If you don't pounce soon," Jive hissed, "you're going to lose him."
          It was true. Wendell's tears were clearing, and he was staring at his attacker with a puzzled look.
          "Are you...going to let me...go?" he murmured.
          Harvey felt Jive's hand on his back.
          "Do it!" Jive said.
          Harvey looked at Wendell's tear-stained face and trembling hands. If the situation had been reversed, he thought to himself, would I have been much braver? The answer, he knew, was no.
          "It's now or never," said Jive.
          "Then it's never," Harvey said. "Never!"
          The word came out as a guttural roar, and Wendell fled before it, yelling at the top of his voice. Harvey didn't give chase.
          "You disappoint me, boy," Jive said. "I thought you had the killer instinct."
          "Well, I don't," said Harvey, a little ashamed of himself. He felt like a coward, even though he knew he'd done the right thing.
          "That was a waste of magic," said another voice, and Marr appeared from out of the bushes, her arms filled with enormous fungi.
          "Where'd you find those?" Jive said.
          "Usual place," Marr replied. She gave Harvey a contemptuous look. "I suppose you want your old body back," she said.
          "Yes, please."
          "We should leave him like this," said Jive. "He'd get around to sucking blood sooner or later."
          "Nah," said Marr. "There's only so much magic to go around, you know that. Why waste it on a miserable little punk like this?"
          She waved her hand casually in Harvey's direction, and he felt the power that had filled his limbs and transformed his face drain out of him. It was a relief, of course, to feel the magic unmade, but a little part of him mourned the loss. In a matter of moments he was once again an earthbound boy, wingless and weak.
          With the spell removed, Marr turned her back on him and waddled off into the darkness. Jive, however, lingered long enough to have one last dig at Harvey.
          "You missed your chance there, kiddo," he said. "You could have been one of the greats."
          "It was a trick, that's all," Harvey said, concealing the strange unhappiness he felt. "A Halloween trick. It meant nothing."
          "There are those who'd disagree," Jive said darkly. "Those who'd say that all the great powers in the world are bloodsuckers and soul-stealers at heart. And we must serve them. All of us. Serve them to our dying day"
          He stared hard at Harvey all the way through this peculiar little speech, and then, with a nimble step, retreated into the shadows and was gone.
          Harvey found Wendell in the kitchen, a hot dog in one hand and a cookie in the other, telling Mrs. Griffin about what he'd seen. He dropped his food when Harvey came in, and yelped with relief: "You're alive! You're alive!"
          "Of course I'm alive," said Harvey. "Why shouldn't I be?"
          "There was something out there. A terrible