The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,66
Echo’s standards, that he had plenty of time to dodge the animal’s gnashing teeth and soar up into the night sky. Unfortunately for the dog, its momentum was such that it couldn’t stop when it sighted a wall straight ahead. It went crashing into the brickwork like a bag of bones and knocked itself out.
Echo was ecstatic. He had put one dog to flight and panicked a whole pack of vicious tykes, genuine killers! This was the stuff of which a Crat’s dreams were made. Transforming him into a Leathermouse had been a splendid idea on Ghoolion’s part. Leathermice had a whale of a time and the night was still young.
He resisted the urge to go on buzzing the dogs. It was tempting, but his spell as a vampire wouldn’t last for ever and he didn’t want to waste it on a few stupid mongrels. He turned down Hospital Lane, a street near his former home. Alluring smells were issuing from the hospital windows, some of which were open - smells of disinfectant and ether, pus and iodine. As a Crat he had always found them unpleasant. To a Leathermouse, on the other hand, they smelt divine because they pointed the way to defenceless patients lying in their beds asleep or unconscious, anaesthetised or half dead. There was also the scent of blood. Vast quantities of it adhered to everything - to surgeons’ scalpels, nurses’ aprons and patients’ bedding. There were also buckets and tubs of it in the operating theatres, whose walls were spattered with the stuff. The hospital was the finest place in Malaisea apart from the Leathermousoleum. It contained everything a Leathermouse’s heart could desire.
But Echo flew on. First he had to reconnoitre the town. Little by little, his high-frequency squeaks brought the whole of Malaisea into view below him, a ghostly blue panorama. The town looked as if it were built of frosted glass lit from within. Echo glided along the luminous streets, nimbly avoiding taut washing lines and perceiving all the smells that emanated from the buildings in an entirely new way. For a Leathermouse’s sense of smell differed from a Crat’s. Echo caught the scent of bread being baked by the bakery’s night shift, the aroma of the cough-syrup factory, the odour of hops from the beerhouses, but none of these meant anything to a vampire’s nose. Of far more interest were the smells given off by the living, breathing, sweating creatures that resided in those buildings. Issuing from chimneys and open windows, they rose into the night air and combined to form an aroma that encased the town like a bell jar. To a Leathermouse, flying around inside this invisible pall of appetising smells was second only to the actual drinking of blood.
It was time to make up his mind. He had to select his victim for the night, pick out a scent and follow it to its source.
Below him lay the residential district where the pharmacists lived. He uttered a few little squeaks and it lit up to reveal a row of neat suburban villas looking like toys made of frosted glass. He stopped flapping his wings and glided down towards a nice big house. Unfortunately, there were some people chatting on the terrace - they were far too wide awake. He flew on. The next house was dark and silent, but all the windows were shut. A piano was tinkling in the one after that. No, its occupants hadn’t gone to bed yet.
At last, in a large, secluded garden, he came to a house with several open windows. No voices, not a sound, but a sudden whiff of something that prompted him to circle the property several times. Yes, there was someone alive inside, freshly bathed and faintly fragrant. He could smell lavender-scented soap with a discreet admixture of human sweat. A little girl having a nightmare?
Echo flew in a wide arc, plucking up his courage, then glided straight back towards the upstairs window from which the scent was coming. The curtains were billowing out like long, ghostly arms intent on enveloping him in their folds. What was it that Leathermouse had said about curtains before diving down on the town?
No matter, he was heading straight for the window at full speed. With wings folded and body vertical, Echo shot through the narrow gap between the strips of material and landed as safely on the windowsill as if he’d done it innumerable times before. Unable to resist a thrill of pride