“Non! NON! M’sieur, have you not understood anything I have said? We are savage creatures. Too fierce for the daylight. We cannot become, this, this – what do you say, blood farmers? By my honor. By my panache! I cannot give up the thrill of the hunt.”
Edwin rubbed his eyes and summoned his last reserves of patience. “Your problems and the problems of your kind are all self-created.”
“You would ask the lion to lay down with the lamb? It is not the way of things. I thought you were supposed to be an intelligent man. I see you do not understand the first thing about vampires.”
Edwin sighed. “I see that I have overestimated your capacity for logic.”
“Au contraire. You have underestimated my most important capacity. You call yourself an Evil Efficiency Consultant, but you understand Evil not at all. Only academically. You see, I am a vampire of the oldest line. The treachery of centuries runs through my veins. Yes, we will take your idea. We will use your idea, but still we will hunt. We will make them fear us again. So what if they have cameras? We will kill more and more, and swell our numbers. As payment for your services, I give you not Life Eternal but only Death!” DeChevue hissed and raised his arms dramatically.
“Ah, your inevitable betrayal...” Edwin said. “If only I had been able see it coming.”
“Of course you did not,” DeChevue countered, missing the irony completely. He flipped his hair from his face dramatically and said, “You were too blinded by the prospect of Life Eternal.”
“Life Interminable,” Edwin’s mind corrected once again. He really did need to get control of his thoughts. No good could come of having them run wild like that.
“For you, Windsor, in all your arrogance, the only reward is that to which all flesh is heir: Death. DEATH! DEAAAAATH!” Laughing maniacally, DeChevue was so consumed by blood lust that he didn’t notice that Edwin’s expression had not changed. Of course, Edwin could have been paralyzed with fear. But usually, when a person is terrified, paralyzed in terror, or otherwise, his face constricts into some kind of rictus. Edwin was not only immobile but serene.
DeChevue advanced upon Edwin with hands contorted into claws of unreasonably melodramatic fury.
“MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!” DeChevue laughed wildly as his teeth snapped into place in preparation to rip out Edwin’s throat.
“STOP!” cried Madeleine as she threw herself into DeChevue’s murderous path.
The pale man’s laughter died in his throat. “What do you think you are doing? How dare you! I am your maker and have been your master these many years.”
“C’est terminé,” Madeleine cried, blocking DeChevue’s advance.
This is unexpected, Edwin thought.
“You cannot harm him,” Madeleine cried, spreading out her arms to protect Edwin. “I love him, even though he does not love me back.”
“But come now,” DeChevue said, twisting his anger into a false smile. “He is... is... like a housefly. Living so little and so poorly. How could you?”
“A moment with him,” she said, her eyes full with tears of love (and, it is painful to report faithfully, blood), “is far better than an eternity with you.”
“But, but, you can’t be serious,” DeChevue said, making the fatal error of trying to reason with a woman in love.
She nodded. Slowly at first, and then faster. Her nod was an affirmation of all life, of all things transitory. Somehow, such things were made more important by the fact they were so fleeting. And she knew, for the first time, that something in her shadowy world was real because it entailed a sacrifice.
DeChevue sighed in a way that only a Frenchman dealing with love can. “If this is the way you truly feel...”
“It is. Oh, Monsieur, it IS!”
The vampire nodded acceptingly. Then he backhanded Madeleine across the room and into the rounded side of the chamber. His path to Edwin was now clear. Yet Edwin did not flee. He just sat there, looking at DeChevue with mild contempt. How smart could he really be? DeChevue wondered. How could he not run when certain death was upon him? Was there no life in him? Who was the bloodless one here, after all?
DeChevue lunged, teeth first, at Edwin’s neck. He expected hysterical shrieking. He expected the tearing of warm flesh and the spurting of blood down his throat, which would fill him with power and life once again. So when he wound up with a mouthful of upholstery, he was surprised, to say the least.
Madeleine had dragged herself to a sitting position. She too was shocked to see her master and maker, the most powerful vampire she had ever known, with his face buried in an overstuffed leather chair and his torso sticking through a remarkably high-quality hologram of Edwin Windsor.
Edwin looked down at the vampire that protruded through his virtual torso and said, “For all your arrogance, it comes down to a simple failure to evolve.”
“I do not understand,” Madeleine said.
“Is it magic?” DeChevue asked, standing up and clawing upholstery out of his fangs.
“Any technology, sufficiently advanced, will appear to be magic. You have simply been outstripped by evolution.”
“I will find you, Windsor. I will kill you.”
“Consider the problem from a resource perspective. Human beings are adapted to a variety of foodstuffs and environments.”
“But we rule the night,” DeChevue said.
“Perhaps before the advent of flashlights and night vision, but I am afraid that you are simply obsolete.”
“Obsolete! We are eternal,” Madeleine protested.
“Let us put that to the test,” Edwin said. Then he disappeared.
DeChevue screamed at the ceiling, “WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINDSOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!” It was very dramatic, but as the ceiling was an inanimate object, it was not impressed or scared.
For a moment, DeChevue didn’t know what to do. He looked at Madeleine. She looked back.
“What now?” she asked.
“Eh,” he said with a shrug. “Now we go kill him.” But before they could take as much as a step towards the door, there was a loud boom.
During construction, Edwin had seen fit to include a number of explosive charges along the roof of the extruded polymer bubble. Unlike a self-destruct mechanism, these charges were not directed downward. It is unreasonably difficult to compress a sphere with explosives, as anyone who has designed a detonator for an atomic bomb will tell you. Instead, these charges were directed upward. And when they were detonated, they hurled several tons of earth (and at least one ton of unsightly fountain/reflecting pool/koi pond) into the sky.
The top half of the sphere in which DeChevue and Madeleine were trapped now protruded from the center of a large crater. They were horrified to see a clear night above them and hints of dawn in the visible in the east.
With superhuman strength, DeChevue clawed at the door to the lobby. But it didn’t budge. He kicked it and only succeeded in knocking himself backwards. Then, he got a running start and charged it with his shoulder. He was stopped dead and was treated to a crunch that was the sound a shoulder made when a little too much superhuman strength was focused into it.
Exhausted, panting, and in pain, he threw himself down on the sofa. Madeleine asked, “Is there nothing we can do?” The only answer she got was more panting. She sat herself on the back of the couch and ran her fingers through DeChevue’s long hair in an attempt to comfort him. After the moaning and the cursing subsided, she said, “Well, at least we will get to see the sunrise.”
“Oh, shut up,” DeChevue said.
From the great height of his office, Edwin looked down upon the crater that had replaced the uninspired reflecting pool. In the background, the technician was disassembling the holographic conference equipment. Topper waddled over and surveyed the damage. “Remind me never to back you into a corner,” Topper said.
“Is that the kind of thing you are likely to forget?” Edwin asked.
“No. I mean, NO. Geeze, I’m your buddy, your pal, your friend—even more i
mportant than that, I’m your lawyer. It’s a sacred trust, and you can always count on me.”
Edwin looked down at his small friend. “Topper, would you care to join me for a drink?”
“A drink? I mean you, and the drinking and the— Jesus, the sun isn’t even up yet. What is it, quarter after six?”
“If you don’t feel it appropriate.”
“Feel it appropriate? Are you kidding? I’m the guy with his picture on the bottle of Rise and Shine, the Breakfast Bourbon™. I am literally the Bruce Jenner of early-morning drinking.”
“I thought I might have a glass of champagne to celebrate.”
“To celebrate what? Not getting fanged to death?” Topper asked, truly confused.
“You really have missed most of this, haven’t you? No matter. Let us go outside and watch the sunrise.”
Edwin approached the edge of the crater with a bottle of 1928 Krug and three champagne glasses. “The custom is to open this with a cavalry saber.”
“I am so proud of you,” Topper said with tears in his eyes. “Busting up perfectly good bottles and solving problems with explosions. Pretty soon, you are going to be having fun like a normal person.”
Edwin ignored this and popped the cork with his hands. He held the bottle out over the edge of the crater so that champagne would not splatter on his shoes. Golden liquid pooled on one side of the bubble and soaked into the earth. Edwin could see DeChevue and Madeleine looking up at him from inside the bubble. “It’s the ’28,” Edwin shouted down. “Said to be the finest vintage ever produced.”
“Please, please!” DeChevue shouted. The carbon-fiber shell dampened his shout to barely more than a whisper.
“There’s nothing I can do,” Edwin said as he filled a glass. “You were simply born at the wrong time too enjoy this champagne.”
DeChevue got down on his knees and held up his hands imploringly.
“Monsieur,” Edwin said, “please preserve your dignity.” He handed a full glass to Topper and poured another.
“Edwin, I am surprised at you!” Agnes said, joining them at the edge of the pit. A scarf was tied around her head, and she was wrapped tightly in a coat to protect against the early spring chill. “I am shocked that you are wasting a ’28 Krug on this uncouth savage. This Philistine would be content drinking rubbing alcohol!”
“Only after 5 pm,” Topper fired back.
“Ah, Agnes. You got my message. I hope you haven’t compromised your principles too much by joining us,” Edwin said as he handed her a glass.
“I am simply here for this sweet ambrosia,” she said, hoisting the glass. “What you do with your pets is no concern of mine. Now, gentleman — and Topper — to what do we toast?”
Edwin held the glass of golden liquid high in the air and let it catch the first rays of the sunrise. It glowed with the promise of new worlds of possibility. “To profit,” he said.
“Yeah,” Topper said. “Gobs of cash!”
“Progress,” Agnes whispered as everyone lowered their glasses and drank.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Topper said. “Whattya mean profit? Sure, we’re burning vampires, and that’s a great thing, but where’s the profit in this job?”
“Soon enough,” Edwin said. “You’ll see soon enough. Not only profit but revenge.”
“Revenge? That doesn’t sound like you, E.”
“Oh, the revenge is for you, not for me. I don’t believe in it.”
As Agnes sipped her champagne, she looked down upon DeChevue and Madeleine as one might consider bugs under glass. By now, they had scuttled into the remaining sliver of darkness. Cries for mercy floated upward. Agnes arched an eyebrow and said, “It is curious, isn’t it? A man lives for hundreds of years, and the best consort he can find, the woman who is more dazzling and captivating to him than any other, is a teenage girl.”
“Well, she is pretty hot,” Topper said.
“Posh,” Agnes said in a way that made the word sound like an unimaginably vile curse. “Perhaps for a night, or a few weeks, but for years? For centuries?”
“Yeah, I guess you are right,” Topper said. “I get sick of some girls after 20 minutes, but still, she...”
“Oh, Good Lord! You are NOT still holding a torch for this woman!” Agnes said. But when she saw the look on his face, she softened a bit and added, “Topper, you must believe me that never in a thousand years of sunlight did I think that these words would pass my lips, but you - even you - are simply too good for the likes of her.”
Madeleine cried up to Agnes, “Please! Please you are a fellow woman. Have mercy.”
“Well, well! One moment it is ‘prey’ this and ‘food’ that, and now we’re all sisters standing together! I think not.” Agnes leaned carefully over the edge so she could have a better view of the remaining sliver of darkness in which they were hiding. “NO!” she shouted. “AND I WILL TELL YOU WHY. YOU WERE MEAN TO MY LITTLE,” and here she paused and looked at Topper. After a moment, she coughed awkwardly and said, “MY LITTLE FRIEND. LET THIS BE A LESSON TO YOU.”
Topper said, with some melancholy, “It’s a lesson that’s gonna kill her.”
“All the better,” Agnes said. “A lesson she will not forget. You may be an uncouth little savage, but you are our uncouth little savage.”
A low whuffing noise came from the bubble below. The shadow had finally run out for the trapped vampires, and one of them was on fire. They clawed at each other in a flaming mass.
“Just like animals,” Edwin said.
“No dignity,” Agnes said.
Topper said, “I can’t watch this.”
“Really?” Agnes asked.
“I’m sorry, honey. We coulda been beautiful.” Tears streamed down Topper’s cheeks as he dashed his empty champagne glass against the polymer bubble at the bottom of the pit. He stormed off, ablaze in his own emotions.
After a moment, Agnes said, “It seems that immortality isn’t what it used to be.”
Not taking his eyes off the pit, Edwin said, “Before this, my intuition,” a word he used with some reluctance, “was that vampires were not real. My suspicions have been confirmed.”
“They are certainly real enough to be flammable,” Agnes said. The fire leapt up with higher intensity.
“To surrender to one’s appetites is to lose one’s mind,” Edwin said. “To lose one’s mind is to not be human. Better to live for a moment as a person than an eternity as an animal.”
They stood there and watched the vampires burn to dust. Finally, when a noxious-looking black smoke filled the sphere and no movement could be seen, Agnes said, “I fear that smell will never come out of the upholstery.”
As they walked into Windsor Towers, Agnes asked, “You realize that there are far easier ways to get rid of a reflecting pool, don’t you?”
“Perhaps, but this solution has elegance. Efficiency operating in multiple dimensions.”
“You have grown from an odd boy into a strange man,” Agnes said. But, for the first time in a long time, Edwin did not feel odd at all. The foolish had been dispatched. He had made a profit, and the world had been made more productive in the process.
The next day, a caravan of armored trucks pulled up in front of the stone house on the East River.
Security guards with lockboxes and hand trucks knocked on the front door. The door was answered by a fleshy, shaven-headed man in obvious distress. He looked at the two men in uniform and in a thick Eastern accent said, “Master no here. You can no come in!” Then he moved to close the door. When it was stopped by something that weighed significantly more than a foot, he looked down. Topper smiled up at him as if it were Christmas.
“Hey, Knox Gelatin? Ya remember me?” Topper asked. Then he jammed a stun gun into the caretaker’s balls.
“BZZZAHHAHHAHHAHyuhyuhyuhyuhyuhyuh,” the big man said as he collapsed on the parlor floor.
Topper scratched behind his ear and then looked up and down the street to see if anybody had seen them. The coa
st was clear. “Okay, put a bag over his head, and duct tape his wrists and feet together. We’re paying you bastards good money, so no cutting corners and using zip-ties, you understand.”
The men nodded.
“The rest of youse, take it all the way down, stairwell through the kitchen. You’ll find the cargo buried on the far left of the room.”
Topper stood on the stoop and watched the men go by with heavily laden hand trucks. Armored car after armored car reached its weight limit and then drove off to a depository vault that was guarded by men with guns, thick walls, cameras, alarm systems, and exactly zero fleshy, shaven-headed eunuch-types.
After watching the men load for a while, Topper could take it no longer. He plunged into the house and down into the terrible undercroft. On the other side of the chamber, perhaps 100 yards away, work lights illuminated the team of men as they continued digging up gold bars and loading them into the trucks. Topper drifted towards the dark and velvety part of the room with sadness in his heart.
He stood in front of her coffin, where she had slept for years, perhaps hundreds of years. Topper lit some candles and raised the lid. His nose barely reached the edge of the coffin. He inhaled her smell, and with it, the memories of all the good times they hadn’t had. In a perverse way, this made Topper sadder than if they had had a long, rich time together.
He looked at the coffin for a long time. Finally, he said, “Ah, this is bullshit. You’re just like all the rest. Just another hot broad looking for a man to suck dry.”
That night, Topper made violent, drug-fueled love to a prostitute and screamed, “Tell me I’m tall. Tell me I’m tall!” After they were done, she let herself out, and Topper slept like a baby.
Acknowledgements
In my pursuit of a purer, funnier kind of evil, there are many people who deserve special thanks. First of all, my listeners, readers and fans. Your enthusiastic support has meant more to me than I can say. Your comments and emails are always welcome. In fact, they keep me going.
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