Darren Shan

The Saga of Larten Crepsley 1-4


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      THE SAGA OF LARTEN CREPSLEY

      DARREN SHAN

      THE COMPLETE COLLECTION

      Birth of a Killer

      Ocean of Blood

      Palace of the Damned

      and

      Brothers to the Death

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       Copyright

      HarperCollins Children's Books A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith London, W6 8JB

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      Birth of a Killer: Text copyright © Darren Shan, 2010 Ocean of Blood: Text copyright © Darren Shan, 2011 Palace of the Damned: Text copyright © Darren Shan, 2011 Brothers to the Death: Text copyright © Darren Shan, 2012 Cover illustrations © David Wyatt Cover images © Shutterstock.com

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Darren Shan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      Source ISBNs: 9780007435470, 9780007441570, 9780007455423, 9780007478385

      Ebook edition © December 2014 ISBN: 9780008126018

      Version: 2014-12-09

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

      Birth of a Killer

      Ocean of Blood

      Palace of the Damned

      Brothers to the Death

       Back ads

       About the Publisher

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      For:

       Pearse and Conall — children of the night!

      OBEs (Order of the Bloody Entrails) to:

       Rachel Clements — one year down, only a couple of hundred to go!!

      Isobel Abulhoul and all of the Shantastic gang

       in Dubai

      Editorial Mentor:

       Nick “the blood ninja” Lake

      General Masterminds:

       Christopher Little and his Princely clan

      Contents

      PART ONE

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      PART TWO

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      PART THREE

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Chapter Eighteen

      PART FOUR

      Chapter Nineteen

      Chapter Twenty

      Chapter Twenty-One

      Chapter Twenty-Two

      Chapter Twenty-Three

      Chapter Twenty-Four

      PART ONE

      “Are cobwebs a treat where you come from?”

      CHAPTER ONE

      When Larten Crepsley awoke and yawned one grey Tuesday morning, he had no idea that by midday he would have become a killer.

      He lay on his bed of sacks packed with straw, staring at specks of dust drifting through the air. The house where he lived was cramped and dark, and the room where he slept never caught the sun except at dawn. He often woke a few minutes earlier than necessary, before his mother roared for the family to get up. It was his only quiet time of the day, his one chance to lie back idly and grin lazily at the world.

      There were six children in the room, five of them snoring and shifting in their sleep. Larten came from a crop of eight, but two had died young and his eldest sister left a year ago to marry. Although she was only fourteen, Larten suspected their parents were glad to be rid of her — she had never been an especially hard worker and brought home little money.

      “Up!” Larten’s mother roared from the room next to theirs, and pounded the thin wall a couple of times.

      The children groaned and crawled out of bed. They bumped into one another as they tried to find their way to the bedpan, the older siblings cuffing their younger brothers and sisters. Larten lay where he was, smiling smugly. He had already done his business while everyone else was asleep.

      Vur Horston shared the room with the five Crepsley children. Vur was a cousin of theirs. His parents had died when he was three years old, his father in an accident at work, his mother of some disease. Larten’s mother had been keeping a close watch on the sickly widow and moved in quickly to take the baby. An extra pair of hands was always useful. The boy would be a burden for a few years, but children that age didn’t eat much, and assuming Vur survived, he could be put to work young and earn his