The Jolley brothers switched to a lullaby and swayed from side to side in a Kumbaya moment. I’ll admit it was a clever rouse but the Vulgarians were having none of it.
“Vampires! Vampires!” The mob stomped their feet and repeated their chant.
Since Bram wasn’t up for lying and I had no problem bending the truth, I scrambled on top of a tombstone and yelled. “There are no vampires here!” Which was pretty much true. Mina was in the wine cellar. And Edward was MIA.
John and Paul appeared and subtly joined the Jolley brothers as they continued to hum at the left flank of Louts finally backing the mob down the hill away from the open graves. The brothers reminded me of demented snake charmers.
The villagers stumbled but managed to tumble out of the graveyard and down to the road.
A tall beefy peasant woman wearing a double garlic necklace and a slipcover dress stomped forward pushing her sweaty face into my personal space. She had a boil on the tip of her nose, a hairy upper lip, and filmy eyes. The aroma of sausage gone bad emanated from her pours.
The hausfrau was just about to wave her vacuum cleaner wand over my skull when she glanced at my pregnant belly. She lowered her weapon and squinted at me as if inspecting my eyes for signs of a vampire. My whites were red but not from sucking blood.
“I promise you there are no vampires in the cemetery. Would I bring my unborn child here if there were?” I held a biscuit behind my back ready to send it slamming into her kisser.
Hausfrau stepped aside appearing confused. I obviously wasn’t the enemy she expected. “I’ll be back!” she growled and lumbered down the incline to reconnoiter with her posse.
Relief washed over me. I had a feeling that no matter how hard the biscuits, the Louts could take them and come back for more.
Hausfrau’s crew folded into a football huddle. I couldn’t accidentally overhear what they were plotting.
I glanced to my left in time to see a team of Louts dribbling Roger like a basketball. Bram was performing a bad imitation of a Harlem Globe Trotter guarding his bouncing brother. Boys will be boys.
“Cut the clowning!” I yelled between their ouches.
Honk! The sound of an old-fashioned bicycle horn grated on my eardrums. Something short and peculiar drove up on a motorized tricycle wearing a bulbous silver Darth Vader helmet. The creature resembled R2D2 on a bike.
Chapter Twenty-One
R2D2 dismounted the tricycle leaving it in gear. The bike lurched sending the sawed-off Sutherland flying to the ground. He scrambled to his feet.
“I am Vlad,” he said extending a bony hand.
I pretended I didn’t see it and re-gripped my candle.
“You sir are a peeping tom,” I said recalling his upside down snooping outside our bedroom window.
The little dude ignored me. “Am I late for the vedding? My Impala ran out of petrol. Not a drop to be found in all of Loutish. Lucy runs on olive oil.” Vlad patted the handlebars of his trike.
He unbuckled his helmet and tucked it under his arm. The ends of his long white hair were held back in a ponytail. The rest of the hair on his noggin was helmet-headed.
“Did you invite this baby stealer to my wedding?” I turned on Squirl.
She crossed her arms and shook her head. “I never met him before. Quick, take out your cross!”
I groped at my cleavage which was actually now a full cleave and found the cross Squirl had given me. I waved it at Vlad sans Impala as he moved closer.
“Out! Shoo! This is a private vedding, I mean wedding,” I said.
“I am a vampire! No one shoos me unless I want to be shooed!” He swirled his polyester cape tangling it in the handlebars of his trike. One angry yank and his cloak came free. He ran his lips back over his gums revealing canine teeth.
Vlad leaned over my candle, narrowing his eyes in a threatening squint. His vampire teeth dripped onto his lips as his entire mouth melted into a red and white swirl of wax teeth and lips.
I rubbed my eyes with the back of my biscuit-holding fist to make sure I was seeing clearly.
“Your lips are melting,” I said.
He mushed his sleeve over his mouth like a kid with a runny nose.
“Are not,” he said.
“Are so,” I said.
He’d be a perfect toady for Croc.
Squirl tugged on my sleeve. Kit stepped between me and the half-a-Sutherland.
“Just give me a minute. I’m working with a third-grader here,” I said.
Squirl bent in for a closer examination. “I do know this Vlad dude.”
“You should. You told me he steals babies!”
Squirl chittered her teeth. “That was gossip. Now that I see him close he’s no vampire. He’s a mattress salesman. He peddled beds to Jonathan Harker at the Van Helsing.”
“I am not a peddler!” The little dude snapped. “I am the foremost Oyster Pedic dealer in East Vulgaria.” He sounded vaguely like George Hamilton in Love at First Bite.
“How’s that working out for you?” I asked.
“It is very challenging selling mattresses to people who are born to sleep on hay.”
“Why the vampire routine?”
He avoided my probing stare.
“Tell me or I’ll turn you over to that crowd.”
He glanced down the hill at the mumbling mass, and shrugged in resignation.
“I desire to own Carfax Abbey.” He waved his arms toward the walls of the monastery. “If the village believes it harbors vampires it will lose its occupational license.”
Maybe my brain wasn’t on Vulgarian time but I wasn’t getting it.
“And… if it can’t operate as an abbey?”
Vlad shrugged as if I were stating the obvious. “Then the Vatican might be willing to cut me a deal on the land and buildings in trade for a lifetime supply of Sleep Mumble mattresses, personally delivered to Rome.”
This was a head-scratcher.
“Why does a mattress salesman who looks like a vampire need a monastery?” I sounded like something out of Monty Python. Why do witches burn? Because they are made of wood. And if a witch weighs the same as a duck, she’s made of wood.
I shook my head to rid it of the Python.
“Have you heard of Stephen King?” Vlad asked.
Kit rolled his eyes.
Squirl climbed on a tombstone and hugged her knees.
“I’ll bite,” I said meaning I’d listen to his riddle.
Mina appeared from her hiding place in the trees, and taking my words literally she dove at Vlad’s neck. “Me too!” she said baring her fangs.
“Stop that! If the Louts see you biting necks I won’t be able to protect you. And dim your glow for goodness sakes. You look like you belong on top of a Christmas tree.”
Hummingbird-like she flew backwards, her tiny feet dancing on the air. “I’m glowing because I’m in love!”
“You can’t be in love with Bram, he’s a priest. He’ll get fired and lose his pension.”
Vlad appeared mesmerized by Mina’s air ballet. “What kind of jetpack are you using?” he asked.
Mina stopped in mid-flight and zipped nose-to-nose with me ignoring Vlad. “I can so be in love with a priest. Didn’t you see the Thornbirds? Bram and I are going to be married and live happily ever after. So there!” She brushed a strand of raven hair from her eyes as she lowered her feet to the floor.
“Have you talked about marriage with Father Bram?”
“Not yet, but we’re having the talk today.” She put her hands on her hips in a saucy pose and elevated so we were the same height, again.
It was obvious Mina didn’t know the Vatican Vampire Investigators were on their way and once this battle was over Father Bram might not be singing out of the same hymnal.
I imagined Mina chasing through the air after the Vaticopter as it carried her lover back to Rome. Poor little vamp. We can’t choose whom we fall in love with and often our passion makes no sense. She used to be his nanny. B
ut that was then and now he’s a hunky priest.
Speaking of love, my Roger and his brother were still playing with the Louts. I’d best go put an end to this nice-off since Bram seemed reluctant to resort to knocking out their lights. I guess only nuns attend the fisticuffs classes given in the seminary.
Mina suddenly appeared to remember Vlad. She shot at him with her fangs exposed. Not a very girly look.
Vlad swung at her slapping me instead with the swirl of his cheap cape. The price tag poked me in my left eye. That hurt.
Mina dropped from her hover position and plopped on the ground baring her fangs and hissing. She crouched, ready to leap at Vlad.
I yanked the Draculated idiot back before they came to blows. “Back off. I know karate and three other Japanese words. What was that about Stephen King?”
The vampire mattress salesman pulled himself to his full inadequate height and spoke in a stage whisper, “Do you know how much money he makes?”
Now I was truly confused. Was this troll thinking of flipping an ancient monastery with shitty plumbing and selling it to Stephen King?
He raised his hands, palms forward. “Wait! Wait! Wait! A great idea hit me!”
“Left a bruise, I hope.”
“The monastery will make a perfect retreat for writers. If I can buy low enough and get King to endorse it as a haven for horror I’ll make a killing!”
I’d met blithering idiots before but never one riding a tricycle and wearing a Darth Vader helmet. I’d just spent my last ounce of patience on this noodle.
“I’m calling the mob. Oh mob!” I said in a semi-yodel waving at the cluster of Louts.
Vlad fixed his eyes on Mina as she air-danced. “You can’t fool me. She is a vampire!” He swooshed his cape, plopped his helmet on his head and remounted his trike. “Stay here. I’ll be right back with my Kodak!” He was gone in a poof of olive oil exhaust.
Squirl perched on a stump chewing a twig.
Kit sat on a tombstone shaking his wigless head and adjusting his skirt. “Not going according to plan, is it? We could be at Joe’s sipping Bloody Mary’s.”
I waved off his rhetorical snipe. I would be drinking Virgin Mary’s.
“Mina, now look what you’ve done,” I said. “Vlad’s going to out you. Probably sell your picture to the National Enquirer, because inquiring minds want to know about vampires and aliens.”
She began to weep like a little girl.
I felt like a verbal Buffy killing vamps with my words.
“Or-e-o! Whoa! Or-e-o! Whoa!”
Was that the flying monkeys from Oz? I swiveled my head jamming my neck in a hot painful crack. The monks were out of the barrels, and on the march. They were headed our way.
In a solemn procession, hoods down and hands over their staked chests, they lumbered closer. Aside from smelling like a bunch of winos, they didn’t look too bad. That monk wine contained some powerful mojo.
We might just get away with convincing the villagers that the monks weren’t dead. Maybe we could buy some time before the Vatican SWAT team arrived.
I was feeling a bit confuzzled. The monks were dead. Or were they? Either way, who was the boss of them?
Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty, I counted the clergy as they shambled passed the tombstones toward the Jolley brothers and the villagers. Forty hoods were all present and accounted for, proof positive they weren’t exactly dead just operating on alternative fuel.
Gack! Forty!
One cleric made no effort to hide the stiffie he carried under his cassock as he lumbered passed Squirl. It was Edward! That sucker!
Whatever the little innkeeper had, the vampire-monk was hooked on it.
Mina flitted to the ground and stood next to me.
“Get out of here!” I whisper-yelled at her. “I thought I told you to hide.”
With her pale complexion and Angelina lips, there was no disguising what she was. The Louts would tear her apart and stuff her with garlic.
On one hand I could understand her glee. The woman had spent the last three decades keeping house for a bunch of silent, celibate men … like being married for thirty years, only forty times worse. On the other hand she needed to lay low until this battle for blood was over.
The monks continued their zombie shuffle down the hill toward Roger, Bram, the postulants, and the villagers. They were too intent, too focused. They’d never pull it off.
The Louts hefted their weapons and assumed battle positions. Obviously they’d rehearsed this final conflagration. The beheaders moved to the front line, their axes held high.
I had to clue the guys about Edward before he started neck nibbling and confirmed the villagers’ fears.
“Edward!” I yell-whispered, dashing after the procession, my feet slipping on the rocky ground.
The monk with the stiffie turned with a leer. “How did you know it was me?”
“Your cologne,” I said. I wouldn’t give Edward the satisfaction of noticing it. This dude could spend a century in a religious enclave and never clean up his act.
The villagers’ voices rose in anger. Bram needed a diversion to end this standoff. The arrival of the monks brought things to a head and heads were about to roll.
I jumped to the center of the confab clapping my hands and jabbering at the top of my voice, “We would like to invite the entire village of Loutish to our wedding later today. Fun. Dancing. Cotton Candy!”
Roger looked at me like I’d lost my last marbles.
The villagers mumbled, smiles breaking out on their faces.
“Good idea,” Squirl said tapping my arm. “They don’t get out much. Keep their minds off the monks and that Mina. She is a vampire, isn’t she?”
“I thought I told you to hide,” I said. “Edward’s in that pack of hoods.”
She covered her neck with her hands, but couldn’t hide the look in her eyes. The little innkeeper was hot to trot even if it meant relocating to the dark side.
Roger stood next to me and spoke through clenched jaws. “What the heck are you doing?”
“Ixnay on the Edward-ay.” I nodded my head toward the monk with the protuberance.
“I’ll grab him,” Roger whispered.
“Careful where you grab him!”
Roger inched toward Edward, facing the villagers but peering back over his shoulder as he retreated from the mob. He snatched at the vampire monk. The instant his fingers touched the monk, the vamp morphed into a pretty impressive wolf. The lupine hunk howled once, then trotted into the forest blending with the darkness without so much as a goodbye. Rude.
“We’ll be back with Mayor Cushion for the wedding,” the fat lady sang. “I’ll bring a noodle casserole. Nice to see you boys!” She waved at the monks who maintained their glazed expression.
The hausfrau slid down the embankment adjusting her billowing frock. Her instructions to her minions carried over the shuffle-stomp of the gang. “We’ll bring them their pot luck, casseroles and Cushion. It is time to do away with this cult and burn the abbey to the ground.”
She waved her vacuum cleaner baton in the air and disappeared round the bend in the road. The mob lumbered after her, the ground vibrating under their heavy gait. I wondered if Loutish was built on a honeycomb of tunnels, which would account for the mini-earthquakes.
I waved and called in a singsong voice, “Bring your favorite dishes! Toodles!”
A sound closely resembling the Green Mamba Jet Car rumbled over the hill. I’d seen the jet-powered hotrod once on the Discovery Channel. It’s not a sound easily forgotten. The spot where I stood crumbled under my ballet flats. Loutish must be built on shifting sand.
I was surprised when I turned to see a mini-tank with a gun turret slit for a window and metal-plated sides. It wasn’t the Mamba. It was the size of a small Hummer and twice as iron encrusted. It cruised to a halt between Roger, Bram and myself.
I peeked in the slit window. It was dark inside but I connected with watery red eyes staring back
at me.
It was Renfield.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Renfield said something, but I couldn’t hear him over the rumble of the tank.
I put my hand to my ear as a sign I had no idea what he was saying.
He motioned to the back of the tank.
With a clang that echoed off the trees, the rear door dropped open and a step unfolded in three flip-flops.
Renfield signaled the monks.
“It looks like he’s attempting to spirit them away before the Louts return,” I said.
“Let Renfield take them to safety until we figure out what to do with them,” Roger said.
Bram followed Roger to the head of the monk line. The Jolley brothers extended helping hands to the fried friars as they wobbled over the uneven terrain and into the armored vehicle.
I had to temporarily suspend my gross-out as I watched Roger touch the mildewed puce and purple sleeves. The friars’ robes tangled and they tripped over each other like a multi-pack of clowns.
John and Paul stood to the side not helping but not hindering. In the shadowy half-light I thought I saw blood on their collars. Before I could look closer, a rumpus occurred that drew my attention.
A flutter of cassocks, a few flipped monks, and an umph and Edward broke from the pack of monks in a glitter of diamond-like dew. He flew at Squirl who stood inches from me.
The dude would make a great MLS listing agent. He would not take no for an answer.
I stepped in front of the flying monk and delivered a Kill Bill kick to my estimated location of his problem.
He keeled over for a second and popped back up. I guess all parts of a vampire are subject to temporary stunning and quick recovery. He was like a twenty-year old stud at a keg party.
“You guys pin that horny toad down and keep him under control.” I glared at Edward.
“I’ll run Squirl into the church for safe keeping. Vampires won’t dare cross that threshold. I’ll meet you at the pavilion for the ceremony. Remember, we can’t see each other before the wedding so stay out of the guestroom so I can get dressed.”
Claws of Doom Page 30
