If my life was a fairy tale and I was writing a book about it, Iâd start with, âOnce upon a time there were two boys called Darren and Steveâ¦â But my lifeâs a horror story, so if I were to write about it, Iâd have to begin with something like this instead:
Evil has a name â Steve Leopard.
He was born Steve Leonard, but to his friends (yes â he had friends once!) he was always Steve Leopard. He was never happy at home, didnât have a dad, didnât like his mum. He dreamt of power and glory. He yearned for strength and respect, and time in which to enjoy it. He wanted to be a vampire.
His chance came when he spotted a creature of the night, Larten Crepsley, performing in the wondrous magical show, the Cirque Du Freak. He asked Mr Crepsley to blood him. The vampire refused â he said Steve had bad blood. Steve hated him for that and vowed to track him down and kill him when he grew up.
Some years later, as Steve was preparing for his life as a vampire hunter, he learnt about the purple-skinned, red-eyed vampaneze. In legends, vampires are wicked killers who suck humans dry. Thatâs hysterical rubbish â they only take small amounts of blood when they feed, causing no harm. But the vampaneze are different. They broke away from the vampire clan six hundred years ago. They live by laws of their own. They believe itâs shameful to drink from a human without killing. They always murder when they feed. Steveâs sort of people!
Steve went in search of the vampaneze, certain theyâd accept him. He probably thought they were as twisted as he was. But he got it wrong. Although the vampaneze were killers, they werenât inherently evil. They didnât torture humans and they tried not to interfere with vampires. They went about their business quietly and calmly, keeping a lower-than-low profile.
I donât know this for sure, but Iâm guessing the vampaneze rejected Steve, just like Mr Crepsley did. The vampaneze live by even stricter, more traditional rules than vampires. I canât see them accepting a human into their ranks if they knew he was going to turn out bad.
But Steve found a way in, thanks to that eternal agent of chaos â Desmond Tiny. Most just call him Mr Tiny, but if you shorten his first name and put it with his surname, you get Mr Destiny. Heâs the most powerful person in the world, immortal as far as anyone knows, a meddler of the highest order. He gave the vampaneze a present many centuries earlier, a coffin which filled with fire whenever a person lay within it, burning them to ash within seconds. But he said that one night someone would lie in the coffin and emerge unharmed. That person would be the Lord of the Vampaneze and had to be obeyed by every member of the clan. If they accepted this Lord, theyâd gain more power than theyâd ever imagined. Otherwise theyâd be destroyed.
The promise of such power proved too much for Steve to ignore. He decided to take the test. He probably figured he had nothing to lose. He entered the coffin, the flames engulfed him, and a minute later he stepped out unburnt. Suddenly, everything changed. He had an army of vampaneze at his command, willing to give their lives for him and do anything he asked. He no longer had to settle for killing Mr Crepsley â he could wipe out the entire vampire clan!
But Mr Tiny didnât want the vampaneze to crush the vampires too easily. He thrives on suffering and conflict. A quick, assured victory wouldnât provide him with enough entertainment. So he gave the vampires a get-out clause. Three of them had the ability to kill the Vampaneze Lord before he came fully into his powers. Theyâd have four chances. If they were successful and killed him, the vampires would win the War of the Scars (thatâs what the battle between the vampires and vampaneze was known as). If they failed, two would die during the hunt, while the third would survive to witness the downfall of the clan.