by John Booth
“Lady Ilarna, I’ve been trying to find you.”
Ilarna jumped as if someone had stuck a pin in her bottom. She began to run up the stairs.
“Lady Ilarna, I order you to come back here right now!” Peter shouted at her retreating back. Ilarna stopped. A Castlemaine was obliged to obey the lawful orders of her liege. If she didn’t obey him he could remove her from office. Ilarna turned and walked back down the stairs, her eyes firmly fixed on the stairs.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she awaited further instructions.
“Lady Ilarna, you’ve been avoiding me.” Since this wasn’t a question, Ilarna said nothing. “Why are you avoiding me?” Peter asked, when he realised she had no intention of speaking to him.
Ilarna replied in a whisper. “If I do not please you, would you like me to report to the whipping post, my Lord?” Peter knew Ilarna was bluffing. Before he became Lord Cragus, the castle whipping post was used several times a day. Young Vampires would be whipped for any reason taking a Lord’s fancy. He had stopped all that but if Ilarna was whipped it would all start again. Both of them knew he wasn’t going to have her whipped no matter how much she annoyed him.
“You have shamed me in front of the whole castle, my Lord Cragus,” Ilarna mumbled at the floor.
Peter shouted at her more loudly than he intended. “I’m not the one spreading rumours I asked you to do something perverted.”
Lady Ilarna looked around urgently. She ran to the door and shut it for greater privacy. “Please talk softly, Peter. I didn’t spread those rumours. The slaves did it when they saw me come back alone.”
“I don’t understand Vampires. You’re happy to cut out someone’s eyes and crucify them without a second thought, but fly off with someone and send them back alone and it’s as though you’ve committed a mortal sin. How did I shame you by doing this?”
Ilarna flushed and turned her head away.
“Sending me back alone meant I had refused your advances, my Lord. The slaves assumed that meant you asked me to take part in a human perversion involving the rear passage.”
Peter wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. A species that sucked the very life force from people found the act of anal sex unspeakable. If Ilarna wasn’t taking it so seriously, he would have laughed out loud.
“And yet you’re quite happy to indulge in sex with Grimms and they’re another species, for God’s sake,” Peter said, trying to seek light in the insanity that was Hellogon’s social mores.
“Shhh. We do not talk of such things. It happens, though. You know how much our two species attract each other. You must feel it.” Ilarna leant over towards Peter and whispered in his ear. “They say a male Grimm takes over an hour to spend. There is no danger in such a long flight either, because Grimm flying magic is much more powerful than ours.”
Peter couldn’t resist turning Ilarna’s head and whispering back into her ear “You haven’t tried it yourself, I take it?” Ilarna’s face turned so bright a red Peter feared he might have brought on a heart attack. She shook her head.
“Is there no way I can restore your honour and we can continue as before?” Peter asked. He had to resolve this problem with Ilarna, as he needed his Castlemaine to talk to him, if only to tell him what the other Lords were getting up to.
Ilarna appeared to be in deep thought. After a minute, she looked up at Peter and for the first time looked him straight in the eyes. “I know of one way, my Lord.” She looked away again like a shy schoolgirl.
“Well, out with it woman?” Peter demanded after another thirty seconds of strained silence.
“You could marry me, my Lord,” Ilarna told him.
“My dear Ilarna, I need a solution that lets me retain my testicals and Sal will certainly take them as a prize if even a rumour of that suggestion gets out. As it is, the damned woman is driving me crazy with demands of proof that I haven’t been having it away with you.”
“Excuse me, my Lord?”
Peter decided there were some things best kept secret. “I need you to find a solution to this problem acceptable to you and Sal. If I’m also happy, I will take it a miracle has occurred. I’m ordering you to talk to Sal and find a solution. Is that clear?”
“My Lord, your Warlock consort isn’t speaking to me.”
“Lady Ilarna, I’m trying to save the four species of Hellogon from extinction. The only certain allies I have in this endeavour are you and Sal. I can’t allow this to continue. Sal will have to accept you had the right to try to court me while you’ll have to accept I already have a girlfriend. Find a way to get Sal to talk to you and sort this out before I go insane.”
Peter lifted Ilarna’s chin with his hand until she was forced to look in his eyes. “You’re my friend, Ilarna, and you’ve been a good friend so far. Please make the effort for me.”
Ilarna pulled away from Peter but continued to look at him. “I will do what I can, my lord.” She curtseyed to him, and hurried away up the stairs without a backward glance.
Peter opened the door and walked straight into one of the slaves. It was a man called Jenkins. Jenkins acted as the classic English butler when caught by a Warlock. This attracted the attention of the last Lord Cragus who bought him at a slave auction for a large price. Jenkins had been in Castle Cragus for over ten years. Apparently, they had been very happy years.
“Beg pardon for the interruption, Lord Cragus,” Jenkins said, as he stepped back. “Soluman, is waiting to speak to you in the usual room. He seems to be a little more excited than usual, if I may say so, sir.”
“You may say so whenever you wish, Jenkins. Thanks for the information. I shall join him shortly.” Peter always responded formally to Jenkins. It amused both of them and, in Peter’s view, a slave needed whatever fun he could get.
Solly paced the floor with wings spread out when Peter entered the room.
“You’ve taken your own sweet time.”
“I am Lord Cragus, you know. I have duties, Solly. You should try learning to dance some time.”
“All Grimms dance. I’ll be doing it at the Vampire Ball, never fear. And we Grimms dance in the air as well, which is more than Vampires do.”
“I regret I lack your natural talent, Solly.” It had been Sal’s turn earlier that day to stand on Peter’s toes repeatedly. He would be lucky if he could hobble at the ball the way things were going.
“Han No has agreed to your terms. Call off your dogs and he will meet you in his stronghold in Cathan.”
“And where, exactly, is Cathan?”
“It is in the equivalent of China on Hellogon.”
Peter’s face fell. “I’m sorry, Solly. I’ll not meet him there. It’s hardly neutral ground. Tell him I want to meet in my mother’s flat. He owns that too, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Will you call off your human dogs?”
Peter sensed Han No must have threatened Solly’s gargoyle collection for the Grimm to be so upset. He put a hand on Solly’s shoulder. Han No and Peter were playing for very high stakes and it was likely there would be casualties. He hoped it wouldn’t be the Grimm females who had spent so much of their existence as statues.
“I will not call them off until after the meeting, and that must wait until after the Ball, I’m afraid.” Peter felt his friend’s muscles tense.
“Peter, please…”
“We’ll meet with Han No the day after the ball. At two in the afternoon, Earth time. He can bring a single bodyguard and I’ll bring Sal. You’ll stay in your shop throughout the meeting. I’m sorry, Solly, but those are my terms and Han No will have to live with them.”
Chapter Twenty Eight
Vampire Ball
Lady Geldar looked Peter over critically. He felt like a clown in his ballroom finery. “Well, Lord Cragus, you are as ready as you’re ever going to be. You should make a start for the Banqueting Hall soon. Most of the guests will already be in the hall and while you are required to be fashionably late, you shouldn�
�t be the last to arrive.” Lady Geldar flicked a bit of lint off the top of Peter’s cloak with a talon.
“I’m just waiting for Sal to get here.”
They stood in the meeting room, which was only a stone’s throw from the Banqueting Hall. Peter felt foolish in his official regalia. His trousers were black silk and hugged so tightly around the crotch that Peter felt they might as well not be there. They certainly showed off his bulges.
His shirt was dark purple and had two sets of ruffles running down it. His jacket was made of silk lined with a thicker stiffer material and had large shoulder pads. It was black and adorned with a large gold medal held in place by coloured ribbons. Peter had no idea what the medal was for. Perhaps an earlier Lord Cragus won a village gardening competition. It was as likely as anything else.
What made the clothes feel particularly absurd was the long sword strapped to his waist, held by the most decorated and gilded belt Peter could imagine. The sword’s scabbard had silver chasing on a black ground with perhaps a thousand small diamonds to add a little sparkle.
Then there was a cloak modelled on a Batman movie. It billowed around him as if it possessed a life of its own. All in all, in his current clothes, he felt like a prat.
Lady Geldar’s outfit was much more modest. She had replaced her leather trousers with a short black pleated skirt over black knickers. The skirt was so short that Peter couldn’t help but notice her underwear. She wore a plain silver band around her head that gave her look regal look. That is, if a bow-legged, bald, snake skinned gargoyle with fangs could ever achieve such a state.
“Just one more thing before we go,” Lady Geldar remarked as she straightened out the ruffles on Peter’s shirt. “It is possible that after the toasts and before the pledges of allegiances, you will be challenged.”
Peter flinched. Was he going to have to fight someone in these idiotic clothes? “What do you mean, challenged?”
“It is the right of anyone who feels he has been wronged by the Lord Cragus to seek redress at the ball,” Lady Geldar explained. “Only those with sufficient grounds can make the challenge, but your Warlock consort might be considered a sufficient reason to some. We have been fighting the Warlocks for hundreds of years. Everybody at the ball has lost members of their family to the Warlocks.”
“How do I deal with a challenge, should it happen?” Peter asked as a sinking feeling moved down into the pit of his stomach. He felt it was a silly question given the Vampires tendency to kill and ask questions later.
Peter was distracted for a moment by his reflection in a full length mirror. At least Vampires can be seen in mirrors, Peter thought. He had to shave this morning for the first time in a week and doing it without being able to see could have been fatal given he was using a cut-throat razor.
“You kill the challenger, my Lord,” Lady Geldar’s manner suggested he had just asked the stupidest question she had ever heard.
“Can’t I just let him go with a good telling off?”
“Your only other choice is to admit your crime and throw yourself on the mercy of the one challenging you,” Lady Geldar smiled. “It is committing suicide by proxy. I believe a Lord Cragus did it once, a long time ago.”
Their conversation was interrupted by a knock, followed by Mary poking her head around the door and looking in as if a poisonous snake might be lurking somewhere.
“If it pleases the Lord Cragus and Lady Geldar, Saloni Dark asks permission to enter.”
“Stop being silly Mary, let Sal in,” Peter commanded.
Mary opened the door and held it open. “The Warlock Saloni Dark.” she stated proudly
Sal walked into the room and Peter’s mouth fell open. He hadn’t been allowed to see the clothes Mary and Sal were working on.
Starting from the bottom up, Sal’s legs to just below the knee were coated in black calf’s skin high-heeled patent leather boots. The boots looked as though they might have been sprayed on. Above the boots, Sal wore the sheerest black silk tights. The leather skirt Sal wore didn’t go down far enough, though it hung right on the edge, revealing hugging black silk knickers
Sal’s skirt was a work of art. As Sal twirled to give Peter a better look, he saw the thin supple leather had been shaped to her buttocks like black paint. The skirt was held in place by a two inch wide silver chain link belt. The belt drooped low at the front as if to draw the eye towards the place where her legs met.
Above the skirt she wore a purple blouse, the same colour as his shirt, though it had no ruffles on it. Its sleeves dropped down to her wrists and its V-necked front was cut down almost to her navel. How her breasts stayed in place was beyond Peter. He expected them to fall out of her blouse when she moved. They must be glued in place, he thought in awe.
Sal also wore a simple diamond necklace that dropped to her cleavage. Like Lady Geldar, she wore a band of silver around her head, though in her case it served to hold her hair in place. Bright green emeralds sparkled in their silver filigree mounts matching her green eyes. Her eyes were shrouded in a painted black webbed mask, matching her tights in pattern and giving her a mysterious sultry look.
“Put your eyes back in their sockets before they fall out,” Sal said amiably. “And you had better adjust your tackle. We can’t have your willy arriving in the ballroom a few seconds before the rest of you.”
“You look gorgeous,” Peter stammered as he thrust his hands into his silk trousers and tried to adjust himself, completely forgetting about Lady Geldar’s presence in the room.
“Ahem, I shall precede you,” Lady Geldar said primly. “Men have one track minds.”
“Shall we follow her?” Sal asked a minute later when Peter finished his adjustments to her satisfaction. Peter took Sal’s arm and the two sauntered down the corridor.
Two slaves stood in gaily-coloured costumes at the hall doors, each holding one of the handles of the great oak doors. As they approached, the slaves opened the doors. Jenkins waited for them, dressed in a ceremonial butler’s uniform. As they entered the hall he indicated they should stop at its threshold.
“Peter Craig, Lord Cragus, Lord of all Vampires and his consort the Warlock Lady Saloni Dark,” Jenkins intoned. The announcement was followed by silence until Lord Baldan began to cheer. The rest of the crowd began clapping and cheering as Peter and Sal walked into the room.
Peter didn’t recognise the place. The tables had vanished along with the tapestries. The tapestries must have subdivided the hall, as it now looked wider. High above them, a balcony ran along two walls, bounded with wrought iron railings too low to prevent someone falling over.
There were hundreds of Vampires in the hall. The room held more than a third of the adults on Hellogon. Peter heard a shuffling noise above him. When he looked up he found the balcony filled with Grimms. At a rough count, they represented an even larger proportion of the Grimms population.
Peter and Sal moved through the crowd to where Lord Baldan and Drogwar waited for them with their wives. Most of the male Vampires dressed in a similar manner to Peter, though Peter suspected he had the most glittery sword and belt in the room. The female Vampires dressed in black wedding dresses. Several of the women wore silk veils, though most held small masks up to disguise their faces.
There were murmurs from the women as Sal walked across the room. From the sounds Peter couldn’t tell whether Sal had introduced a fashion change or was about to get them lynched.
When they reached the two Vampire lords they heard the doors open again and turned around.
“The Lady Ilarna Dran, Castlemaine to the Lord Cragus and Keeper of the Keys!” Jenkins announced more loudly than he introduced Peter and Sal. Peter suspected Jenkins wanted to make sure nobody missed Ilarna’s entrance. She certainly deserved attention as she looked spectacular.
The simplest way to describe Ilarna’s look was that she dressed like a man. Her body shape dispelled this initial male illusion. She wore high-heeled black shoes, but they were shoes like a Cuban da
ncer’s. Ilarna wore loose black trousers of sheerest silk that moulded to outline her legs as she moved. The trousers were tight across her torso, outlining it in intimate detail.
She wore a parody of a man’s jacket over a man’s shirt. Her breasts filled the shirt to bursting with the upper buttons undone down to her cleavage to give them room. From the way they moved as she stepped across the room, it was clear they were otherwise unsupported.
She wore a man’s short-sword, the sword hilt, scabbard and belt glowed white and dazzled the eye against the black of her trousers. Peter suspected next years ball would be full of women wearing costumes he’d pay money to see as they copied Ilarna’s and Sal’s clothes.
The orchestra started up. It took Peter a few seconds to locate them on the balcony above them. The crowd crushed against the wall as the senior lords and ladies lined up for the first dance.
The dances were exclusively of the formal kind common in medieval England. Men and women formed lines facing each other and performed a series of complicated manoeuvres as each man danced with every woman before returning. Peter was required to lead the first dance. Ilarna found a partner and stood half a dozen dancers down from Peter and Sal.
Sal and Peter danced as though they were born to it. Peter’s skills took over as soon as the dance was under way, the music guiding his feet. Sal had practised in secret and was much better than she had let on. They heard the audience’s appreciation as they glided across the dance floor keeping perfect time.
The dance brought Ilarna into Peter’s arms and she gave him a look capable of burning a lesser man to a crisp. Peter saw disdain as they twirled around. It was only as they parted and Ilarna looked into Peter’s eyes from less than a foot away that she gave him a sly wink.
The dance continued while Peter tried to work out what Ilarna was up to. It became clear from whispers following Ilarna across the dance floor that the ladies held her in contempt. Peter hoped Ilarna and Sal would come up with a plan to fix the problem, but if they had spoken to each other since he gave Ilarna her orders, he’d seen no sign of it.
