They hurried into the Bat Cave while Bruno and his cronies laughed behind them.
Bursting through the doors, they nearly trampled Fang Foot, the wheelchair-bound curmudgeon of the Council.
“Bah!” Fang Foot croaked, and shook a foot at them. Fang Foot was not truly crippled. His feet were too large for his body. So large that he could not walk on them.
“We’re terribly sorry,” Lola said. “Can you help us find Gaul?”
“Find him yourself!”
Franz leaned in close to Fang Foot’s face. “Why did the Council move the vote up? We weren’t supposed to vote for another three winters. You lied to us.”
Franz let out a gasp as Fang Foot’s clawed, hairy toes crushed his windpipe.
Fang Foot curled his big foot inward, drawing Franz close. Choking and immobilized, Franz was helpless as Fang Foot’s curdled, rotten breath washed over him.
Fang Foot whispered, “Look around, boy. Don’t you see we’re out of time? You put your heart in the right place, but today will be the last day of our lives if we don’t act now. Wait until the meeting. You’ll hear everything I just heard.”
Fang Foot released Franz and glided away in his wheelchair. Franz rubbed his sore throat.
“What did he say?” Lola asked.
“Let’s sit down.”
“Shouldn’t we find Gaul? Are you okay?”
It hurt to breathe, never mind speak.
They sat down in two velvet thrones near the front of the room as vampires filed into the dome, filling the empty thrones with cold bodies. Their worried whispers flit through the Bat Cave like the dismembered ghost of a snow turtle.
There was a girl who was always on fire. Nobody put a curse on her or anything. She was just born that way.
The elder gods called her Burn Girl.
Burn Girl spent her days walking around under the sea because the cold water soothed the burning. The cold water made the fire feel like an itchy wool sweater. Burn Girl liked itchy wool sweaters, but she had never owned one because there was not very much wool under the sea.
Now Burn Girl walked to her favorite diner. Burn Girl’s favorite diner was a lonely diner. The diner was open twenty-four hours. This was one reason she liked it. She also liked it because unlike most lonely diners, this lonely diner was never empty. At least one elder god or shambling thing could always be found there, drinking coffee or eating pancakes or reading the newspaper.
Nobody talked to Burn Girl on her long walks across the bottom of the sea, but in the lonely diner she never failed to meet someone who was open to a little friendly conversation.
Burn Girl sat next to an old fat squid in a green and yellow spandex costume. She noticed the untouched hamburger in front of him. The hamburger looked as if it had sat there for a while. A war hammer lay on the linoleum floor beneath the stool creaking under the squid’s weight.
“You dropped your hammer,” Burn Girl said.
She bent over and picked it up. The lightness of the hammer surprised her. She realized the hammer was made of foam.
She placed the hammer beside the hamburger in front of the squid.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“I am Cthulhu,” said the squid.
“I’ve heard of you. My name is Burn Girl.”
“What did you hear about me?”
“I heard bad things happen when you’re around, that everything turns to chaos.”
“I am glad they have not forgotten.” He picked up the hamburger in a tentacled hand and shoved the whole burger into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully before spitting it out. He sifted through the mush and plucked out two pickles.
“I hate pickles,” he said.
“Dude, your family is fucked up.”
Isaac shut the door behind him and tossed a duffel bag on the floor. Cyrus sat on the edge of his coffin, strumming an unplugged warlock guitar.
He set the guitar inside the coffin and approached the duffel bag. He touched the bag, then looked up at Isaac. “Is the door locked?”
Isaac reached behind him and locked the door. “I don’t think anyone’s gonna notice us. Your mom is fucking hysterical down there.”
“My sister just called and wanted to talk to her, but fuck that. I’m not going down there and dealing with that shit.”
“At least you can do anything you want.”
Cyrus would have preferred having normal parents than living in a house with no rules or guidance, although he’d never admit this to his friends.
“They’re so fucked,” he said. “They belong in a mental asylum. So is everything in here?”
Isaac brushed his choppy aubergine hair out of his face and nodded, “Everything but the dynamite.”
“Shit, I was looking forward to that.” Cyrus unzipped the duffel bag.
Isaac leaned over Cyrus, pointing. “Check out the size of these knives.”
Cyrus carefully removed a towel from the duffel bag. He placed the towel on the floor. Wrapped inside were three knives with blades larger than his forearm. He made an admiring whoa and looked up at Isaac. “Are these machetes, bro?”
Isaac nodded proudly. “Check out what else I got.”
Cyrus fished around in the bag, removing brass knuckles, scalpels, butterfly knives, cans of red and black spray paint, and a six-shooter.
Cyrus admired the haul. “Where’d you find this stuff?”
“You can find anything in Ice Chat’s classifieds. Tons of crazy old vampires sell this shit. They’re so old and crazy, they sell it for like way cheap. Some of them are a bit sketchy but, you know, whatever. The dynamite should’ve been here today. Oh well. With everything we’ve got planned, I don’t even see how there’d be time for it. Besides, I think it’ll be pretty hilarious when I’m gone and then some dynamite arrives in the mail. My parents will probably still be mourning and shit and then some dynamite will show up at their door. Man, I hope they do something drastic, like blow themselves up. I know they’ll be genuinely sad, so I wouldn’t put it past them. What about you? Will your parents be sad?”
“I hope Cthulhu destroys the planet but doesn’t kill my parents. I hope he saves them in a jar and makes them miserable forever.” Cyrus picked up the six-shooter. He held it awkwardly and at a distance, obviously afraid of the gun. He had a very serious expression on his face. “Is this loaded?”
“Three bullets. One for each of us. Better make it count. When’s Kayla supposed to get here?”
“She called not that long ago and said she had to pick up her sister from succubus practice, then she’s swinging by the costume shop for the rest of our supplies. Said she’d come straight here after the costume shop.”
“Kayla always has to pick up her sister from succubus practice.”
“She won’t have to anymore.”
There was a lot of shouting downstairs and they glanced nervously at the door.
“Let’s put this shit away,” Isaac said.
Cyrus nodded.
They returned the weapons to the duffel bag.
“This is it,” Isaac said, zipping the duffel bag.
“Think we can pull it off?”
“Kayla said we can do anything as long as we listen to her. She hasn’t been wrong yet. I’ve got faith in her. She knows what she’s doing.”
“None of us has gone this far before.”
“But we’ve been building up to it. We’re ready to summon Cthulhu. Tonight is our night. We’re the lucky ones who get to destroy the world.”
Cyrus returned to the edge of his coffin. He picked up his guitar and noodled apathetically. Until recently, he’d thought he was on the level with Kayla and Isaac. He, not them, had been the one to suggest messing around with the Necronomicon (well, the available version of it) in the first place. That was less than two months ago. Kayla asserted command when she talked them into summoning a ghoul to rob a blood blank for them. After the blood bank heist, Cyrus took a back seat in the group. Kayla’s desire for power and con
trol was one of the first things that attracted him to her. Now, he couldn’t stand her, but he felt too afraid to leave. By the time she laid out the plans that asked for his life, she held Cyrus on a one inch leash. He worried what she might do if he failed to comply with her latest plan. He was totally into summoning Cthulhu, but he worried that maybe they were taking things too far. Even if they failed to wake Cthulhu from his eternal dreams, they were all going to die tonight.
Suicide pacts were a bitch. Cyrus wished he could back out. At this point, they would kill him anyway. Perhaps he wouldn’t mind so much if he didn’t have to be the sacrificial lamb. Kayla argued that of course he would be the one to die first because he was her true love. He wondered about that, though. She had been way more attentive to Isaac of late.
The doorbell screamed downstairs.
“Think that’s Kayla?” Isaac asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Go check.”
Cyrus sighed and set his guitar against his coffin. He got up and unlocked the door, shutting it behind him as he stepped out of his room. He walked down the hall and stopped at the railing at the end. He stared down into the main entryway. It was empty.
The doorbell rang again. His mom was screaming in the kitchen. His little brother and sister were crying somewhere else downstairs. “It’s open,” he shouted, even though he did not know for sure whether the front door was unlocked. He descended the stairs and opened the front door, expecting to greet Kayla. She never entered a home without being welcomed in. Like a true vampire, she claimed.
It wasn’t Kayla. It was Fang Foot’s wife. The gold digger with hot fangs. Sarah.
She smiled like she was just so goddamn happy to see him. “Hi Cyrus,” she said. “How are you?”
“My mom’s in the kitchen.”
“Thanks,” Sarah said, a puzzled expression on her face. She was waiting for Cyrus to move aside so she could enter the house.
Cyrus realized that he had totally spaced out, fixated on Sarah’s fangs. He lowered his head, embarrassed, and ran upstairs.
“Life is horseshit,” he said as he reentered his room.
Isaac was lying in the coffin.
Bathory’s Blood on Ice spun on the record player Cyrus had received from his older sister, Lola, for his most recent birthday.
“No Kayla?” Isaac asked.
“Just the babysitter.”
“Oh.”
Cyrus climbed into the coffin. He was lying next to Isaac. Their fingers touched.
Silence settled between them as they both realized this was the last time they would ever hang out, listen to music, and get into the sort of trouble only great friends knew how to dig up together.
A few minutes later, Kayla called Isaac via Ice Chatter and said to meet her outside.
As they left the room, Cyrus had to force himself not to cry or get sentimental. This was the last time he would see his record collection, his movies, his books, and most importantly, his guitar.
“You were getting pretty good,” Isaac said, gesturing toward the guitar. “We could have started a band.”
Cyrus left the Bathory record spinning.
As they drove away from his house, he felt relieved that he was sitting in the back seat of Kayla’s car. Out of direct vision of his friends, he stared out the window and hid his face, tears welling in his eyes.
“Where’s the Necronomicon?” Isaac asked.
“In the back with the costumes. You got the weapons?”
Isaac bobbed his head up and down. “I can’t fucking wait. I’m so pumped.”
“Cthulhu rises,” Kayla said. She took one hand off the steering wheel and laid it in Isaac’s lap. “Tonight, baby, Cthulhu rises.”
Isaac and Kayla leaned in over the middle console and kissed. Pulling away, they chanted together: “That is not dead which can eternal lie, and in strange aeons even death may die.”
After the curious burning girl left the diner, Cthulhu rang the bell on the counter.
The waitress came out from the kitchen, eating a tuna melt. “You need another blood beer?” she asked between bites.
“There were pickles on my burger,” Cthulhu said.
“Pickles come on all hamburgers,” the waitress said, her mouth full of cheese and tuna.
“I asked for no pickles.”
“The chef takes pride in his pickles. He doesn’t take no for an answer.”
“Perhaps I could teach him a lesson about the meaning of no.” Cthulhu slammed a tentacled hand against the counter on the word ‘no’ for added effect.
The waitress set down her tuna melt. She looked nervous. “We don’t want any trouble here. The burger’s on the house. You want another beer? Drinks are on me tonight.”
“Do you like calamari?”
“What?” the waitress asked, her brow furrowing.
“Answer the question.”
She shook her head, her eyes darkening with worry.
“No, I never really cared for it,” she said.
“I take great pride in my calamari. I insist that you try it.”
Cthulhu whipped a tentacle across the counter. The waitress reached behind her and grabbed hold of something. She stabbed at Cthulhu, but the object in her hand was a tuna melt, not a knife.
Cthulhu forced a tentacle into her mouth, down her throat.
“I’ll ask once more,” he said. “Do you enjoy calamari?”
The waitress gurgled. She would choke to death in another minute.
Cthulhu let his tentacle constrict around her heart, cutting off the circulation of blood pumping through her body.
“How you feel right now, that is how I feel when I eat pickles,” he said. “Pickles make me mad. Pickles make me sad. Things die when I feel mad or sad.”
He withdrew the tentacle from her esophagus and let her experience a small moment of relief before ripping her head off.
Gaul was one of the last vampires to enter the Bat Cave. Franz waved to him. The soothsayer shuffled up the aisle, walking with a cane he did not truly need, and sat in the throne they’d saved for him.
“Gaul, they want to hold the vote today. We’ve got to stop them,” Franz said.
Gaul shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid we must concede. We’ll give our speeches and make our case as planned, but I’ve spoken with the scientists. The Council is right. The vote must be held now. In fact, it may already be too late.”
“But Gaul, I’m not ready to make a speech. I have nothing prepared.”
“You’ll do fine. Stay calm. Remember the key points. Leave the legwork to me.”
“Stay calm. Remember the key points,” Franz repeated.
“In school, you were elected president of the Young Vampire’s Environmentalist Club on the basis of your campaign speeches alone. You’ll be wonderful,” Lola assured.
“That was six-hundred years ago. I haven’t spoken in front of a crowd since.”
“Listen to Lola,” Gaul said. “Find the calm center within yourself, and if you start to panic, look to us for guidance.”
Franz took a deep breath.
“You’ll be wonderful,” Lola said.
The seven members of the Vampire Council rose to the stage and occupied the six thrones of judgment. There were only six thrones of judgment because Fang Foot did not need a throne; Fang Foot had his wheelchair.
The seven Council members raised their seven wooden stakes in the air, signifying the start of the meeting.
Excepting Fang Foot, the Council members looked identical. They wore curly white wigs, red lipstick, rings of black eye shadow, and pale green face powder. Until Bruno started the muscle craze, the Council members were the sole trendsetters of cool. Most vampires still acted and dressed exactly like the Council, although buff vampires were an increasingly common sight in the village. There were rumors of a floating gym that Bruno had begun to build upon the sea. He intended to call it Muscle Island. He wanted to smother the ocean and split the vampire community in two.
This was all according to rumor, of course.
Fang Foot cleared his throat. “Can the two sides please rise and approach the bench?”
Franz and Lola helped Gaul out of his throne. They marched, one halting step at a time, to the front of the cavernous hall. Franz could feel the disdainful eyes burning into his back. He tried to remember the key points for his speech, but his brain had turned to mush. He trembled as they turned and faced the hateful eyes.
The clan of scientists flew to the front of the room with their blood-fueled jetpacks. The crowd applauded.
Progress was impressive. Progress was fun. Saving the planet was not impressive. Saving the planet was not fun. Franz had known this for a long time. Now was his last chance to prove to the vampires that progress would kill them in the end. He remembered that his purpose for being onstage was to support a cause far greater than himself. This gave him a boost of confidence, until a vampire shouted, “Go home, ice huggers!”
The crowd burst out in laughter.
Fang Foot hammered silence down on the Bat Cave with his evilest gaze. He cleared his throat and began, “We are gathered here today to decide the fate of our community. Whereas a short time ago we sat on the edge of a storm, anticipating the end of a dry spell that plagued us for seven months, we are not celebrating now. We are not celebrating because the storm did not come to fruition. Our scientists are here to tell us what that means. Their report may startle you. You may feel scared, anxious, and uncertain. Give them your fullest attention, because they are also here to tell us what to do. After we hear from the scientists and counterpoints from the environmentalists, we shall vote on how the community is to mobilize in the wake of this dire, yet totally unforeseen, crisis.”
Fang Foot bowed his head and the audience clapped as one of the vampire scientists took to the center of the stage. A second vampire scientist shuffled up beside the first, toting a stack of large graph charts.
The first vampire grabbed the first chart and held it up for the crowd to see.
Cthulhu Comes to the Vampire Kingdom Page 2
