Consultation with a Vampire - 01 (11 page)

“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 coast 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.
 

For their able linguistic and editorial assistance, I must thank Deborah Bancroft and Bonnie Trenga.
 

For inspiration I owe a debt to countless other authors and creators, but here are just a few – Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, A.C. Wisebacker, H.L. Mencken, and Stan Lee.

Most of all, for her love, support, patience and honesty, I must thank my wife Kristy. Even though she doesn’t believe me, none of this would be possible without her.
 

If you liked this book, the kindest thing

you can do for the author is to tell a friend,

or even a stranger about it. Why not

write a review on amazon or goodreads?

 
www.patrickemclean.com

The World’s Most Dangerous About the Author Blurb.

You know those “About the Author” blurbs that begin with poignant details from the writer’s childhood? The ones that quickly move through a series of credentials and accomplishments so impressive that they make you feel that if you don’t buy a book, everyone will recognize you for the uncultured Phillistine* that you are? Yeah, this is not that kind of author blurb. This is the other kind.

This is an About the Author blurb that actually tells you about the author. If you stick with this blurb it will tell you that Patrick has been shot, has fallen off a mountain, was once framed for a crime he did not commit — that he has gambled with his rent money and knows how to replace the water pump in a 1966 Chrysler. It will also explain to you that, much like a lost boy raised by wolves, he was brought up by economists and can interpret the strange dances and guttural utterances of their dismal tribe.

 
But most of all this blurb wants you to know that Patrick can write. That he puts words and concepts and characters together in a way that will make your synapses light up like an accident in an unlicensed fireworks factory. Yes, a substance that powerful should be made illegal. But before that happens, you’ve got a chance to go to
www.patrickemclean.com
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If you don’t use this chance, Patrick won’t hold it against you. After all, he’s a nice, easy-going kind of guy. But this Blurb will know. And believe me, this is one “About the Author” blurb you don’t want to cross.

* Editor’s Note: Patrick put an extra l in Phillistine here just to make sure it STAYED down. Don’t let him fool you. He’s also a little dangerous. Especially with a consonant close to hand.
 

© 2012 by Patrick E. McLean

Published by good words (right order)

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