The Falstaff Vampire Files

by Lynne Murray

  “I can do that much, and cook rice as well.”

  “That sounds good. After tonight you can add onion soup to your repertoire.”

  “Okay.”

  It was soothing to chop onions. The window over the sink and counter in the small kitchen looked out over the garden to Vi’s house, but I kept my eyes studiously on my chopping block. The window had been stuck open about two inches for as long as I could remember. Vi had installed a set of wrought iron security bars outside it, so having it slightly open had never worried me till now.

  The rain had loosened the duct tape around the opening, and I could hear the faint bumping noises and see the occasional flicker of red eyes around the window where the tape gapped.

  Human beings can get used to an amazing amount of weirdness. As I chopped onions I reflected that I had adjusted to the idea that homicidal monsters tapped at the window sill less than three feet away. I didn’t feel secure, but it seemed that as long as I kept my eyes away from the window and didn’t invite them in, I would be safe.

  Mina was poking around in the kitchen and found the little pottery garlic keeper. “Could we use some garlic too?”

  “Why not? It’s supposed to keep vampires away. We should probably be wearing necklaces of this stuff.”

  “Here, I’ll chop the garlic.” Mina picked up a knife and began to peel cloves of garlic. She sat at the table with her back to the window.

  I had chopped one onion and it had made me cry, so I was just about to wash my hands before picking up the next when a strange sound made me look up. I peeled the duct-taped edge of the curtain away and cautiously peeked. One of the red-eyed creatures zoomed backward away from the window, long, thin hands covering its eyes, mouth open in a soundless scream.

  I felt as much as heard a small explosion nearby and stared, transfixed, as the creature seemed to claw open a hole in the air, leap in and vanish from view. My attention went back to the onions when my eyes started to water.

  Eyes. Onions.

  “Kristin, what are you doing!” Mina had turned to see me looking up at the sound. “Don’t look out there!”

  I turned back to her, letting the curtain fall shut. “You know why onions make you cry?”

  “The fumes?”

  “Right. The gas that’s released when you peel and slice the onion mixes with some enzymes and rises up to mix with the water in your eyes and form sulfuric acid.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. That’s why peeling onions under water protects your eyes. Let’s try an experiment. Can you bring that fan over here?” I pointed to the small fan on the counter for the very occasional hot days—and to dissipate smoke if I burned something while cooking. Mina brought it over. I raised the curtain a few cautious inches. A thin gray hand instantly moved over the screen and a red-eyed face gazed in, questing for an opening to drain our lives. Shivering at the thing’s proximity without even window glass between us, I plugged the fan in and lifted the cutting board so the fan blew across the onions out into the garden.

  The creature bobbing around the window frame backed away, clutching its eyes and then rubbing long thin hands over its face. Screaming soundlessly, it rocketed upward. The sky ripped open and it vanished.

  Mina moved up to stand beside me. “Wow!”

  “Let me get my food processor.” We started dumping chopped onions into it. I let her finish. “Now I’m going to get my spray bottle.”

  “Yeah!” Mina processed onions and drained the juice into a measuring cup while I emptied the water out of the plastic bottle I used as a plant mister. A few minutes and some tears later, we had enough onion juice to fill the sprayer. Then we headed for the front door.

  My heart beat wildly as I stepped outside the door. Mina half cringed behind me as we ventured forward. Three of the Others drifted closer, their red eyes curious—their shark-like mouths half open. My hands trembled. I aimed a wide spray toward their faces, looking between them rather than at them.

  I felt a jolt when the onion mist connected with the creatures.

  All three clutched their eyes and writhed in what looked like agony as they shot high into the air. A muted crash rumbled and the ground shook as a pinkish rift opened up over Vi’s backyard. They rushed up into it, crowding each other as they went.

  A ripple of hesitation ran through the swarm outside the cottage. As we advanced down the path, more creatures swarmed over to meet us and writhed away in agony when I squirted at them, sailing up into the opening above.

  Mina came out of the cottage behind me, the paring knife still in her hand. “Let me do some!”

  “Aim for the eyes, but be careful not to look into them.”

  I handed her the mister, and she sprayed at the faces of every creature within reach. Her face tense. With the plastic sprayer in one hand and the paring knife in the other, she looked ready to stab them if they didn’t retreat. The stream of creatures away from Vi’s house accelerated.

  “It’s almost as if they’re suddenly afraid of us.” Mina’s face was swollen with tears from the onion fumes, but triumphant.

  I half expected the creatures to come crashing back down, but their numbers were dwindling. Mina squirted till she had her fill of it and handed the bottle to me. I kept squirting, and the stampede into the pinkish cloud continued until a thunderclap marked its closing.

  At last we stood on the edge of Vi’s garden, and not one of the Others was in sight.

  Mina came to stand beside me. “Could this be a weapon?”

  “I don’t know, but I think it’s a start.” I shook the bottle. “I’ve still got a little juice left.”

  A tapping sound in the quiet garden made me jump. I looked up and saw Vi standing in the window—back from the hunt rather quickly, it seemed. Her glowing eyes staring where the Others had gone. She looked down at me and raised her hand in a thumbs up gesture. I started toward the door, but she held a palm out to stop me.

  “Come on, Kristin, we’re going to need more onions. We don’t know when they’ll be back.”

  “We also don’t know if the onions will keep working.

  “Yeah.”

  “I wonder.” I went over to the window. It was open just a crack, and I looked up at Vi standing there. She didn’t move, but she watched me with the same wide-eyed caution that her cats did. “I’m going to squirt some of this under the sill,” I told her, not sure whether she could hear me or not. “If you touch it, will it repel you, the way it repels—uh, them?”

  She didn’t answer, but watched me squirt some onion juice into the crack at the bottom of the window. It was too high for me to see whether it dripped in, but she looked down and touched it with a fingertip. She shut her eyes and winced, breathing in with some pain. Then she opened her eyes and nodded.

  “Can I come in?”

  She must have heard me, because she shook her head and pointed to the window. Effortlessly, she raised the sill up another two inches and slipped her hands out, palms down. She nodded. I sprayed her hands all over with onion juice, there was just a little left. Her hands trembled, but she turned the palms up and nodded, and I sprayed her palms.

  Vi pulled her hands back inside and slowly raised them to her face. She rubbed the onion juice all over, as if she were rinsing her face in water. Then she made another oddly animal gesture, put her hands over her nose and mouth, and inhaled deeply. She began to cough, a deep, echoing sound like crashing footfalls in a huge empty room. She turned away from the window, waved me away and crouched down, still coughing. I waited several seconds after the coughing subsided. Finally her wan face appeared above the window sill.

  “Later,” she said. “Rest now.” I couldn’t tell if her pallor looked a little less gray and her eyes less red, but it seemed so.

  “Wait, wait, Vi. Get your plant mister from inside. I’ll give you the last of it, and I want to try one more thing.”

  “I want to try garlic juice,” I told Mina while Vi went to get the plant mister and opened the
window enough to hand it through to me. I poured the rest of the onion juice into it. “You may want to use that on anything that comes indoors,” I told her.

  “You knew they were inside.”

  “I saw them. But not when Morford and Quiller were in there.”

  “I hid them.”

  “You can do that?”

  Vi just looked at me. Mina came back with a quarter cup of garlic she had pressed earlier. I dumped it into Vi’s hand, which she stuck through the window. She rubbed it all over her face and arms and licked the last of it off her hands. It seemed to hurt her to do that, but she let out a quick puff of breath.

  “Better. Feel better.”

  “We’ll get more onions, and more garlic too.”

  “We could go to the grocery store,” Mina said.

  “I don’t like to leave her.” I said.

  “I’m scared to go alone, but maybe we could ask Bram.” She had a faint teasing note in her voice. “I’ll bet he’d do it for you.”

  “You’re right.” I ignored the teasing. “He’ll want to know about what we just did, and maybe he can bring us some more squirt bottles, too.”

  Chapter 69

  Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes

  August 28th continued

  I just had time to finish the onion soup when Bram arrived with three ten-pound sacks of onions, a huge bag of raw garlic, a Late Bake loaf of sourdough bread, salad ingredients in a bag, and some ice cream. He also carried a plastic contraption that looked like a bright yellow-and-purple rifle.

  “What is that?”

  “Water cannon. It’s amazing what the concierge of a hotel can come up with on short notice at nine p.m.”

  Mina and I laughed. “Did he give you a strange look?” I asked.

  Bram shook his head. “He was unflappable. I did ask if it was the weirdest request he’d gotten at night on short notice, and he said he wasn’t at liberty to divulge guests’ business, but this wasn’t even close.”

  “Might as well bring it into the kitchen. We’ll fill it up with onion juice if they show up again. For the moment we actually cleared the space of the things you can’t see with just a mister full of onion juice.”

  “Good. Let’s eat.”

  I heated up the soup while Bram and Mina brought dishes, salad and bread and set placemats on my office desk like a table. The tiny table in the kitchenette was too small for three. Eating dinner with Bram and Mina banked up the fires of humanity enough to push aside thoughts of the marauding creatures and whether they might return.

  When we were all sated and the few dishes washed, Mina stretched and yawned. “It’s after 11:00 and I have to work tomorrow. Can I sleep in your office on your couch? You guys can go talk in the bedroom if you want. It won’t keep me awake. I feel safe with you here.”

  Bram looked at me, and I smiled, “Come on, I’ll give you the tour. First we have to check on the reluctant guests.” Leading the way back to the bathroom, I opened the closet door to give him a peek at the feral furry princesses. The sight of us brought forth a guttural growl from the mother cat.

  “Okay, okay, enough!” Bram laughed. “The women around here are something fierce.” He put his arms around me and pressed me up against the sink. “Fortunately, strong and fierce is just fine with me.”

  He leaned down to kiss me and I ran my hands down his back and just inside his belt. We kissed more deeply, pressing up against the sink.

  “Listen,” I said when we came up for air.

  “What.” His voice was husky.

  “They’re not growling any more. I think they’re purring. The feral girls approve.”

  “Well, they’re not getting any.”

  “Sorry, girls.” I took Bram’s hand and led him to the bedroom. Ariel, Sly and Hamlet were sprawled across the bed, but when they saw us they leaped up and ran to hide.

  “Very sensible of them to get out of the way.” Bram sat on the bed and leaned back against the headboard. I got into the bed beside him and he pulled me close. It felt like coming home.

  “I know you couldn’t see those things around the house, but having them gone feels like a immense burden was lifted.”

  “The way you all were acting gave me a chill. If I hadn’t been through all that with Sir John, I might have wondered if it wasn’t a kind of mass hysteria.”

  “I wish it had been. I’d prefer hallucinations to having those things be real.”

  He stroked my hair.

  I sighed. “I love that you do that. It’s something you can’t really ask for, but it’s so very nice.” We kissed a little more, feeling the luxury of a whole night ahead.

  “Thank you for coming back to help,” I said between kisses.

  “Which time?”

  “Every time.”

  “I wanted to see you, and I wanted to do this. And this. Also this.”

  We went beyond words.

  Afterward, dozing in the quiet of intimacy under the covers, I wondered at how much more profound it was with Bram. For the first time I realized that Hal had been performing, while Bram was exploring. For a moment I thought he was asleep, until he asked, “Do you have any kids?”

  “No. You said you had a son?”

  “I have a son. My wife and I divorced when he was fifteen, and I’ve spent the past ten years getting reacquainted with him.”

  I told him a little about taking care of my husband during his long illness.

  Lying full length touching each other made the questions a kind of continuation of the lovemaking. “Do you regret not having kids?”

  “Some curiosity, but no regret. Do you regret having kids?”

  “Only during the years from 15 to 25.”

  We both laughed. “My clients are like my kids in a way. Of course, they do get better and go out into the world and never call.”

  “And this is different from children—how?”

  “So, are you a grandfather?” It seemed to be the thing to ask.

  “Not yet.”

  With Bram in the bed, I slept peacefully for the first night in a long time. When I awoke, Sly and Ariel were stretched out on either side of us, while Hamlet snored softly draped over most of the loveseat next to the bed.

  Chapter 70

  Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes

  August 29th

  By the time we got out of the bedroom the next morning, Mina had gone off to work. Bram took a cup of coffee and watched in amusement as I walked around feeding cats—outdoor ferals, the three males in the bedroom. The two females in the bathroom stayed pasted up against the back of the closet when I peeked in.

  When Bram and I took a shower, I tried leaving the door open a little so the steam would get out, but the three male cats immediately came in to investigate. More growling and hissing followed, so I got out of the shower, waved a towel to chase the males out of the room, and closed the door again.

  Bram laughed. “Not one of those sensual morning-after shared showers.”

  “More like a turf war in a steam room.”

  “You have very complicated domestic arrangements, Kristin Marlowe.”

  “This is new to me, too.”

  “I know. But you’re resourceful, and sexy, and never boring.”

  “And you are wise and open-minded and very inventive.”

  “You’re not just saying that because I destroyed that tree yesterday.”

  “Not every experiment is going to work, and you did protect us from getting burned with the asbestos vests. The water cannons will be great to put the onion juice in if those things do come back. Though frankly, I’m hoping they never will.”

  “Amen to that.”

  We went out to breakfast. All the tension had drained away, to be replaced with that hollow, hallowed post-great-sex, infinite-possibilities feeling.

  “I think I should stay with you until this is over.”

  “It will be crowded, but until we’re out of the woods, I would feel safer with you here.”

&nbs
p; Bram went to the hotel to get his things.

  While he was gone doing that, I got my first email from a vampire.

  Of course. They could send email all night. This one had been sent around 2:00 a.m.

  To: Kristin Marlow

  From: Dr. Nehemiah Quiller

  Subject: Last night’s rout

  Dear Ms. Marlowe,

  It has come to my attention due to a brief report from Violet Semmelweis that you and your fellow human, Miss Mina, have defeated the entire contingent of forces besieging Violet’s house by employing a spray apparatus filled with onion juice. I need to hear more of this, and request that you present yourself at my laboratory this evening.

  Violet can bring you here. I must test her blood to see what effect the onion treatment you gave her has had. Her faculties are much revived or she would not have contacted me describing your encounter. I have never received an email from her before. Indeed, I was not aware that she had my address, so this shows a considerable improvement in her mental functioning over last night. Meanwhile, I have the honor to remain,

  Your obedient servant,

  Nehemiah Quiller, M.D.

  I had to smile—even in his emails, he was an 1800s kinda guy. But was happy to hear that Vi was turning on her computer to write, even if it was just email. So far as I knew, this was the first she had turned it on since becoming a vampire. I longed to talk to her, but of course she would not arise till dusk.

  Bram came back with a rolling suitcase and duffel bag of clothes. He worked for a little while on a laptop at my kitchen breakfast nook. Then he went out to talk to colleagues to let them know he would be in town again.

  “What are you going to tell Larry?” I asked.

  “As little as possible.”

  It felt odd, but somehow natural, to send Bram off with a kiss. I sat down with my notes. I was missing some of my clients, and concerned about a few of them. I called Larry, who had sent me an email recap of sessions with my clients during the week I took off.