Free Vampire Breath by R. L. Stine

into tight fists.
    “Noooooo! Noooooo! This can’t be happening!” he cried hoarsely.
    Cara and I huddled together as the vampire advanced on us.
    “I don’t want to be here!” he declared. “I must go back. I must find my
fangs! Without my fangs, I will not survive. I will perish!”
    He rose up over us. His eyes burned angrily down at us. His dry lips
quivered. He stretched out his cape as if to trap us inside it.
    “I must go back!” he rasped. “Where is the Vampire Breath ? Where is
the blue bottle?”
    My eyes glanced quickly around the room.
    No sign of it.
    “It didn’t come back with us,” Cara announced.
    The old vampire tossed back his head in another angry wail.
    Then, raising his cape even higher, he swooped down to attack us.
    Cara and I staggered back against the pool table.
    The vampire moved quickly, wrapping his heavy, purple cape around us both.
    We were trapped. Nowhere to move.
    Then, suddenly, the cape slid off. Count Nightwing took a step back. His mouth dropped open in surprise.
    I followed his gaze—and saw Mom and Dad hurrying into the basement. “Mom!”
I cried. “Dad! Look out! He’s a vampire! He’s a real vampire!”

 
 
28
     
     
    Count Nightwing squinted at my parents, his mouth still open in shock. He
locked his stare on my mom. “Cynthia—?” he cried. “Cynthia, what are you doing here?”
    Mom smiled at him. “Daddy, you finally woke up!” she exclaimed.
    “Huh?” Cara and I both gasped in shock.
    Mom rushed forward and threw her arms around the old vampire. She hugged him
for a long time.
    “Daddy, you’ve been napping down here for at least a hundred years,” she
said. “We didn’t know whether to wake you or let you sleep.”
    Dad came rushing over, too, a big smile on his face. He rested a hand on my
shoulder. “Did you meet our son Freddy?” he asked Count Nightwing. “This is
Freddy—your grandson.”
    Grandson?
    Me?
    I’m the vampire’s grandson?
    Count Nightwing stared down at me, shaking his head. I could see that he was
as confused as I was!
    “Cynthia—?” he said to my mom. “Cynthia—my fangs. I’ve lost my fangs.”
    Mom slid her arm around the vampire’s waist. “Daddy, your fangs aren’t lost,”
she told him. “They’re in the glass in the bathroom. Right where you left them.”
    “Here. Over here,” Dad said. He led the way to the little bathroom in the
corner that we never use.
    A few seconds later, Count Nightwing stepped out, adjusting the fangs over
his gums with both of his thumbs. “There. That’s better,” he said. “Now let’s
fly out of here. I’m so thirsty! It’s been a hundred years!”
    Mom and Dad turned to me. “We’ll be home soon,” Dad said. “Make yourself a
sandwich upstairs, okay? Make one for Cara, too.”
    I stared back at him, unable to get over my shock. “But if you and Mom are
vampires, am I a vampire, too?” I asked in a trembling voice.
    “Of course,” Mom replied. “But you’re way too young to get your fangs,
Freddy. You have to wait at least another hundred years!”
    I wanted to ask a million more questions. But the three of them began to flap
their arms. Up and down. In seconds, they changed into bats and flew out the
basement window.
    I stared at the window for a long while, trying to calm down, trying to slow
my racing heart. When I started to feel a little more normal, I turned to Cara.
    “Wow,” she said, shaking her head. “Wow.”
    “I don’t believe it, either,” I replied softly.
    She grinned at me. “I knew you were weird, Freddy. But I didn’t know you were that weird!”
    I wanted to laugh at that. But I was still too shocked to laugh, or cry, or
scream—or do anything!
    I turned away from Cara and counted to twenty, trying to get myself together.
    It isn’t easy to find out that you’re a vampire.
    I really think Mom and Dad could have broken the news to me in a little
better way.
    But I guess they didn’t think it was any big