Blood Moon Read Online Free Page A

and began to draw.
    Someone knocked on the door. For a moment I thought it might be the Wombat, hoping for carrots and companionship. (I was never quite sure how lonely—if at all—my Animal neighbour was.) But he’d been busy with a project of his own, enlarging the hole behind the hut that was his home, and wombat-like, he had room for only one idea at a time. Besides, although I had been trying to teach him the art of knocking, he was more likely just to push his way in.
    I went to answer it. It was Theo.
    ‘Good evening.’ He stood there uncertainly. ‘I apologise for disturbing you. There’s a call for you. Elaine is busy. Martha’s gone into labour and…’
    ‘Please don’t apologise. I’m the one who should say sorry for disturbing you with my calls. They promised to have the manual Terminal ready for me three weeks ago. You wouldn’t think it would be so difficult, would you?’
    I was gabbling. I wondered if Theo and I would ever recover the ease with which we used to talk before the incident last year. I used to enjoy talking with Theo. ‘I’ll just get my jacket.’
    ‘I brought a dikdik in case you thought it too late to walk.’
    Or in case I didn’t want an evening walk with a vampire, I thought. ‘No, Theo,’ I said gently. ‘I’d love a walk. I’ve been cooped up here all day.’
    It was hard to read the expression on his face. How could I, I thought. What had I ever experienced of the small, private hells Theo endured? But I thought he looked relieved.
    ‘I’ll send it back on automatic then,’ he said.
    It was a quiet walk. The dead grass crackled faintly under our feet, and there was the occasional deeper crack of bark. Faintly in the distance I could hear the dikdik puttering back to the farm on the lowest speed, the occasional murmur of a cow, the shriek of a possum whose territory had been disturbed, the far off gong of a powerful owl. Listing all these sounds makes it sound rowdier than any City enclave, but maybe non-human noises are different. They only seemed to emphasise the quiet.
    ‘Fruit bat,’ said Theo suddenly.
    For a moment I thought it was a reference to vampire bats.
    ‘That shriek,’ said Theo.
    ‘I thought it was a possum?’
    I could just see his head shake in the darkness. ‘Fruit bat. They’ll be after the late apples. Not much blossom about in the bush in weather like this. I must remember to put the orchard ultrasound onto pulse before I go to bed.’
    ‘Theo…?’
    ‘Yes?’
    I stopped. I wanted to ask, ‘Has Elaine forgiven you yet? Does she still order the blood you need, hidden in the ‘topia’s medical supplies? Can she bear to touch you yet or is she, like me, still seeing the red blood on the girl’s white skin? Not a nice girl, but who could wish a death like that on anyone? I wanted to ask, ‘How can you be Theo, the kind philosopher I thought I knew, and still be capable of killing?’
    ‘Oh, nothing,’ I said.
    I had forgotten to ask who the call was from. Perhaps I had just assumed it was Neil with fresh news from his conference, or Michael, not believing that this new Danielle might refuse to do his bidding.
    It was neither.
    The screen in Theo’s office was still on. Evidently whoever had called preferred to hold on for the forty minutes or so it had taken Theo to fetch me, rather than have me call them back. Which meant that either they were very patient or I didn’t have their comsig.
    Theo’s footsteps faded along the corridor as I stared at the screen. It showed a white painted wall, with a coloured drawing pinned to one side. Whoever had called had apparently grown tired of waiting.
    I stared at the drawing. It was roughly done. More a scrawl than a sketch—green-topped trees with straight brown trunks and a blue smudge of sky, and an animalwhich might have been a horse or a dog or a deformed bandicoot…
    ‘Is anyone there?’ It seemed silly speaking to an empty screen, but someone could be within