The Mark of the Moderately Vicious Vampire by Charles L. Grant

Author:Charles L. Grant [Grant, Charles L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: humor, science fiction
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2017-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

V

Interlude With Count And Minions

1

The ancient stone mansion that had no name had a pretty big dining hall, two fairly large parlors, and a kitchen immense enough to house the Roman Army in the glory days of the year II. There were also rumored to be fourteen bedrooms, several bathrooms, a basement that had tunnels leading to other tunnels that led to the basement, and an attic of such proportions as to make the rest of the house look fairly large. The turrets on the four comers were in a class by themselves, but expected to graduate any day now.

But it was in the library that Count Lamar de la von Zaguar chose to gather his forces for their final meeting. It was an unsurprisingly large room with a walk-in fireplace, several pieces of still serviceable furniture, built-in bookshelves now standing empty, a long Lepeche-polished refectory table at which, in former times, many people sat playing a complex game of cards long since forgotten, and high arched windows covered now with thick, dark velvet drapes.

And here, as in the rest of the mansion, all the mirrors had been taken down and shattered, the pieces scattered off the cliff.

The Count stood at the head of the table, his hands clenched in tight bloodless fists.

“You will be quiet and listen!” he hissed angrily. And immediately shut up because trying to hiss menacingly lately meant that he also spit and sprayed through the gap left by his collision with both beach boulder and chapel steeple. It was not the image he required or desired for his conquest, and the dentist had told him it would be weeks before the cap would be ready.

He passed a weary hand over his face.

Eight centuries, give or take a turbulent decade, had not given him so much trouble in establishing a beachhead of heinous rampage as had this miserable bunch of fishermen and merchants. In Maine, of all places.

But in a rare moment of self-admitted honesty, he realized that he welcomed it, too; that he welcomed the challenge. Eight centuries also tended to get rather boring when the people you attempted to suborn were so bloody predictable.

“Are you all right?” Belinda Durando asked solicitously.

He nodded.

“Got another contract,” offered Jared Graverly proudly, dropping the papers onto the table and beaming. “They insisted on keeping the pink light, though.”

He nodded.

Dwight swallowed quickly when he realized he was expected to say something as well. “The food’s pretty good.”

The Count nodded.

In a shadowy corner of the room, three young women in expensive filmy white nightgowns much too thin for the weather giggled and hissed and generally carried on in a grotesquely coquettish fashion until he glared at them to be silent. They glared back. He smiled at their spunk. He liked living dead with spunk; they kept him on his toes.

Now if only he had someone of a more mature nature to share his destiny with him, a companion, a helpmeet; someone who could love him for what he was inside,

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