Brothers to the Death (The Saga of Larten Crepsley) by Darren Shan Page B

forever. If he’s alive, he’ll come back to take another stab at you, like he did with Tanish Eul. That’s when you should hunt for him, not now.”
    Larten knew that Arra was right, but he found it difficult to abandon his quest. He feared what Randel Chayne might do if he returned and struck when Larten was unprepared—he might target Arra, Wester, Gavner, or Seba. The General didn’t want to lose another loved one to the murderous vampaneze.
    But he also wanted to carry on because he wasn’t sure what he would do if he stopped. Larten had found meaning in the search. He had never felt as focused as he did now. He had come to a simple, defining point of his life—he existed to find and kill Randel Chayne. He liked having no gray areas to worry about. If he gave up, he feared a return to the times when he’d thought that his life lacked direction.
    Larten fought another two vampaneze, one of whom knew Randel Chayne but hadn’t seen him inover a dozen years. The one who had known Randel was a hard, experienced warrior and treated Larten to his toughest test so far. He wounded the vampire seriously and almost opened Larten’s stomach with a swipe of his nails. Larten triumphed, but only barely, and Arra needed to stitch him together afterwards—their spit wasn’t strong enough to close all of his wounds.
    Larten spent more than a month recovering before he took to the road again. When he did, he headed for Berlin. According to Holly-Jane Galinec, that had been one of Randel’s favorite cities. Larten hadn’t wished to travel there while the Nazis were in control, as he didn’t want to fall into their hands. But the tide of the war had turned. It was nearing its end and the Germans had been pressed back. They were only weeks away from ultimate defeat, maybe less, and Larten felt that now was as good a time as any to zone in on Berlin.
    He wouldn’t admit it, even to himself, but part of his reason for going there now—as opposed to waiting a few months, until it was completely safe—was that he wanted to be present when the Nazis fell. He had no plans to gloat, but he would be grimly satisfied when he saw them surrender. They had put thisworld through hell and he was delighted that they’d failed.
    The vampires made good time, skirting the areas where fighting still raged, and arrived in Berlin on a dark, cloudy night. The city had changed drastically since Larten had last visited. It was a pale ghost of its former self, shredded by bombs and bullets. Wandering the pockmarked, dusty, bloodstained streets, Larten found it hard to believe that the city could ever recover from a leveling this severe. But he knew how resourceful humans were, how swiftly they bounced back from disaster and tragedy. He was sure this would be a thriving metropolis again within ten or twenty years.
    In 1945 Berlin was a city of vicious dangers, but Larten and Arra walked the streets without fear, at home among the shadows, silent as they listened to the cries, screams, and gunfire that saturated the night. It was as if the great old city was dying, leaking corpses and rubble instead of blood.
    Larten expected to see Desmond Tiny. He had been sighted a few times during the war, always where the fighting was thickest, cheerfully plodding through fields of blood and guts. But if he was present now, Larten saw no sign of the eternal meddler.
    The General had decided to seek shelter—day wascoming—when Arra touched his arm. “Look,” she said, pointing at a group of people crossing a mound of bricks and timber in the distance.
    Larten studied the people but couldn’t see how they were different from the many other refugees he had spotted over the course of the night.
    “The one carrying the woman and child,” Arra prodded him.
    Larten squinted but couldn’t get a fix on their faces. “My eyes are not as good as yours,” he said. “Who is it?”
    “You’ll find out soon,” Arra smirked, and smugly set off ahead of him. She