Mina had red drips from the corners of her cupid-bow mouth. She barely paused as she continued to advance on Bram. She grabbed him around the waist. It looked to be an attack.
My slow learner of a lover flew at the doll-girl again, evidently not recalling vampires possess supernatural strength.
The little vampire flicked him like a flea. Roger shot passed me, his brown wingtips barely missing my head. Kit caught him like a softball sailing over second base and dropped him to the floor.
Tears soaked the question marks in Bram’s eyes.
Mina held the priest and tipped her head like a little girl dancing with her daddy. “Bram! I missed you soooooo much!”
I couldn’t decipher his expression as it morphed into a kaleidoscope of emotions. He took a step back causing the vampire to release her hold and plop on her butt. She giggled and rolled to her side struggling to right herself. Each time she tried to prop her head on her elbow she missed, and clunked on the ground bursting into contagious laughter.
I caught the sniggers and Kit followed.
Giggle-pooper Roger was behind me. He whispered in my ear, “What the fu… udge?”
Bram took Mina’s hands as she stood. “I remember you,” he said.
She wobbled despite his grip. “Yesh…shs me, Mina.” She giggled and tumbled over again.
“Is she drunk?” Kit asked.
“No drunk. Just drank.” She shot him a sweet red smile and leaned forward falling against Bram.
Renfield wiggled his way between us and ran to her side. She leaned against him accepting his help but arguing. “My Brammy is here. I must hug him.” She glommed on Father Bram.
“Miss Mina was … is … a gypsy vampire,” Renfield said in a soft voice. “She has been weaned from blood to wine. At times she cannot hold her grapes but the effects soon pass.”
Clasping Bram, Mina turned and smiled at the little old man. “Every vampire should have a Renfield. Oy vey, the hangovers before he taught me the cure.”
She gazed up at Bram, love in her dark eyes. “Do you remember me? I was your nanny.”
I watched as recognition lit Bram’s face. “My Mina!”
He held her head to his cassock. I imagined his priestly self-control was being sorely tested as the little vampire pressed her face against his privates and sobbed with joy.
“You saved me from the Lugosi Comet,” he said. “I remember the story if not the exact rescue.”
“You were too young to remember. I carried you into the wine cellar just as the comet passed over.”
Renfield shook his head. “Mina did not make it in time. She threw you to me as I stood in the cellar door, but she sadly fell under the Comet’s dribble.”
The wizened old man looked at her with all the pride of a father. “She has not aged a day since that awful time when she became an undead being. And she has not tasted blood. She only sips the monks’ wine.”
A Tell-Tale Heart thrummed, echoing off the dense stonewalls. It belonged to Roger. He stepped forward and spoke in halting words, “Was the baby in a stroller?”
Hope mixed with fear for Roger. How many babies could have been out and about during the passing of the Lugosi Comet?
I suddenly knew why Bram looked familiar. He was a Jolley by birth.
With a nod of her head, Mina confirmed the wish that hung suspended on hope and prayers.
“My brother!” Roger said reaching for the priest.
Mina turned, facing Roger and protecting Bram with her back. “He’s mine. I saved him and raised him from a baby. I hid him from the monks for six years. I fed him leftovers from their cupboard and never once took his blood, but I could have.”
“I thought the monks knew about you.” I said. I was looking for holes in her story.
“Only Renfield knew at first. He helped us hide for a long time.”
“I was the caretaker of the monastery,” Renfield said. “Only I knew of the tunnels between the abbey and the village and the junction at the Van Helsing. That was how I kept them both at play during the early days. Hide and seek.”
“Hide and seek can get tiresome after a few years, even with the many tunnels under Loutish,” Mina said. “Bram was six when he grew bored with hiding in passageways and making pictures with glued noodles and corks. He wanted to run outside in the grass.”
“I remember,” he said seeming surprised at the memory.
Mina hugged him. “It was a pretty autumn evening. I’d forgotten about the clocks being set back. The monks should have been in the church for prayers, but they were in the graveyard. They discovered us playing tag.”
“Why didn’t your parents find him?” I asked Roger.
Bram and I looked to my poor fiancé, who was reeling, his eyes dewy. What must it be like to find the answer to your lifelong quest in a Vulgarian wine cellar?
Roger cleared his throat. “They gave up the search after five years. My father tried many times to breach the monastery walls, both by petitioning the Vatican and using mercenaries. We could never get the monks to communicate. My dad died of a broken heart.”
Roger studied Bram’s face, his own brilliant mind now shrapneled. “We had to assume the gypsies had taken him far away.”
I turned on Mina. “Why didn’t you try to find his parents once the comet was gone?”
She put her hands on her hips and flipped her bob at me. “I was a vampire! If I came forward they would have garlicked and beheaded me. Renfield was my only friend and my protector.”
Mina reached up and wrapped her velvet-sleeved arm around Bram’s waist. “When the monks first found us, I told them he was my brother. Renfield helped me convince them. The monks sheltered us and schooled Bram. When they forced him to go to Rome to be educated as a priest I thought I would never see him again.”
“It was safer for him in the Vatican,” Renfield said. The village has always harbored suspicions of the monks. It is only a matter of time before they torch the abbey and slaughter the friars.”
“Brother,” Roger said his eyes teary pinwheels.
Bram stepped back, struggling to process the full meaning of the word.
Roger’s life had been a quest for his baby brother, so Bram was always on Roger’s radar. He knew he had a brother.
Bram understood that he was an orphan raised by the Church. The existence of a brother clearly shocked him. The Jolleys had been raised in different worlds but despite all that had happened and all they didn’t know, they’d found each other.
The brothers embraced squashing the little vampire between them.
I leaned against a cask feeling weak at the knees.
Kit tugged at my elbow. “I don’t believe that vampire kept to her diet. Squirl said someone is drinking the blood of the elderly Louts. At least once a month they lose a senior citizen to empty blood vessels.”
Confrontation was my middle name. I stepped into the center of the circle. “I have it on good authority that someone is snacking on the old folks in the village.” I looked pointedly at Mina.
“Hiccup! Not me. I’m strictly a wine drinker. It’s good for your heart.”
She swung from Bram’s leg twisting like a pole dancer, her pale little hands in stark contrast to the priest’s black trouser legs.
“So if you’re a vegan vampire, are you the only bloodsucker in town?”
“I am the only vampire in Loutish!” she said. The force of her words spinning her around his leg. She hiccupped on her return swing.
“If Mina is the only bloodsucker, then who is Vlad the baby stealer?”
Chapter Fifteen
“Vlad?” Mina stuck her head from between the Jolley brother’s legs. “Never heard of him.”
“He steals babies. Does that sound familiar?” I said.
“Only gypsies and vampires steal babies,” she snuggled back in the nest of legs.
That was reassuring—Mina being both a gypsy and a vampire.
Bram seemed to find the investigator-priest in hi
mself. “Why did you stake the bodies?” his voice was soft but authoritative.
“If the Louts thought they were staked they might not garlic and behead the bodies,” Mina said. “We hoped someone would come from Rome to investigate before the villagers pulled the plugs. And it was you!” She hugged Bram and shoved Roger away.
“Who actually did the staking?” I asked.
“Me! I’m small but strong.” She flexed her bicep and giggled.
Bram stared at her while Roger stared at Bram. A stare-off ensued.
I figured this was a good time to ask a favor and break the surreal stupor surrounding the moment. “Father Bram, would you perform our marriage? An end and a beginning.”
Roger reached out and took my hand, then Bram’s. “It would be a perfect closure, brother.”
Bram cracked a smile and a lovely smile it was. I instinctively returned his grin. My almost brother-in-law flashed a frown when he spotted the gap in my front teeth.
I popped my hand over my mouth. “A slight accident,” I said from behind my palm.
Bram took my hand from my face. “I would be honored to bless your union. But first let us make arrangements to protect the monks’ bodies. They must be hidden until the Vatican Vampire Investigators arrive.”
Roger hugged his brother again. The Jolley boys performed a weepy guy-back pat hug.
Mina harrumphed, pulling them apart with her little fingers.
I stepped back and took stock of our situation. Thirty-nine or maybe forty dead monks needed concealing. What had I learned about hiding dead bodies in Florida real estate school? No so much. That was a Jersey thing.
Surveying the wine cellar, I caught Kit staring at me. He had such faith in my ability to pull rabbits out of hats. This would be one of my most weird hat tricks.
Where could we duck dead friars until the Vatican cops arrive? We were definitely dealing with thirty-nine bodies. Edward, the fortieth monk, could wait till he came out of hiding.
I sat on a cask being careful not to let it roll. If I were looking for a covey of corpses where’s the last place I would look? The cask rolled out from under my tushie and my legs paddled to keep my balance. That was it!
The wine casks!
All we had to do was empty thirty-nine barrels and insert one monk in each. We would have barrels of monks, something new from Milton Bradley.
My missing tooth ached and I felt as if I gone for a ride in a blender, but I managed to clap my hands and call the group to attention.
Kit lifted me up on a small tasting table so I could see them all in the dim, purplish light.
“Listen up. I have a plan. “Wesss… damn, darn.” I tried again to sound a ‘w’ but it came out a whistle. One tooth can make such a difference. I stuck my tongue where the tooth would be and tried again. “We can hide the monks in empty wine casks in the cellar until the VVI get here. If we work fast we can have them all barreled and corked before morning.”
“Brilliant!” Roger said, glowing with pride. “The alcohol vapors from the wine should slow up the decomposition of the bodies.”
I looked down on the team. The old non-pregnant, bossy Wendy was back under full power. The two shotgun-toting Louts stood at the top of the stairs glaring down at us and scratching their heads.
“Bram, please send those two villagers home for the day. And don’t let them know where we hide the bodies. I don’t trust them.”
The priest saluted me and left the cellar, scooting the Louts before him.
“Kit and Roger, start dumping the wine. Line up the empty casks at that big coal chute thingie.” I pointed in the direction of a stone slide that opened from ground level to where we stood.
“Mina, you are our muscle. As soon as the Louts leave, start pushing those barrels up the incline and into the cemetery. Renfield, help Mina.” The little man rolled his Marty Feldman eyes, or else they were slipping in their sockets.
Kit and Roger began tipping the wine barrels. The wooden casks thunked to the floor spilling their purple juice in a giant splash and then trickled as a slosh of wine remained in each barrel. The floors ran red with cabernet.
A wave of nausea washed over me. The fumes from the wine-spill were overpowering. I worried that Little Roger might be inhaling the alcohol.
“I’m going topside to check on Bram,” I called over the sound of slopping vino.
The graveyard resembled a demented OK Corral. Bram stood in a faceoff with the two Louts.
“We no go!” The taller villager said. Between them they redefined male sweat. Pee-yew!
“Please go!” Bram said, waving a sign of the cross as if to bless them on their way. John and Paul stood at the priest’s sides approximating alabaster bookends.
The Louts fidgeted with their gun butts. “We stay for treasure.”
Bram cut me a glance and shook his head. “There is no treasure here. Whatever gave you that idea? Leave now or I will send for your wives. You may come back tomorrow if you leave now.”
The Louts shuffled off grumbling like two fat trolls.
“That was weird,” Bram said.
“It will be weirder tomorrow when we have to explain the empty graves. They are sure to believe in the walking dead and tear apart the monastery looking for them.”
The first barrels thundered into the cemetery. Mina was half-skipping half-flying as she gave each barrel a kick with her tiny slipper. Zip, a barrel rolled in place and she was gone. Seconds later, she returned with two more casks lining them up like toys. Zip, they rolled in line.
Bram circled the graves blessing each body. Paul the postulant walked behind him and swung a censer, the smoke from the incense symbolizing the prayers of the faithful for the souls of the monks who had once been Bram’s foster fathers. The poor men now slumped in pits with wooden stakes through their hearts were a sad contrast to the dignified lives they had led.
Once there was a line of thirty-nine casks bordering the cemetery, the team of Mina and Renfield began the heavy lifting. Mina brushed John and Paul aside and leaned into the first grave. She grabbed a monk by the hair and lifted him in one swift move. The little vampire said his name as she slipped him into a barrel held by Renfield.
Mina’s personal relationship with each monk was obvious by the tenderness with which she spoke their names as she yanked them by the hair and dropped them in each vat.
John and Paul handed Bram rustic wooden lids for each cask. He slowly banged the tops into place. I kept my distance not knowing what effect the sight of pickled monks would have on Little Roger in utero.
“Hey babes!” Big Roger’s voice had a slight slur.
The world’s greatest archaeologist bumbled into the graveyard, followed by Miami Beach’s stellar drag queen. Roger plotzed into one of the graves and disappeared from view with a yelp.
Kit tittered on his wedges, wavering as he tried to bring his index finger to his lips. “I gosh this one!” He dropped to his knees, leaned over the hole Roger was in, and tumbled in after him. They were both drunk as skunks from the fumes. I’d never seen my fiancé plastered. Cute as he was, he was now loaded with grave germs.
Father Bram VVI joined the little vampire in rolling out the barrels. I’ll not soon forget the bone-jarring thud and thump of pre-pickled clergy bouncing over the rocky road.
Thanks to Mina’s super strength and her chipper attitude, despite the task at hand, thirty-nine monks were barreled and ready to be rolled back toward the monastery before evening. We set a world record for barreling monks.
Kit, Roger, and Renfield stood on the receiving end of the coal chute on the cellar floor as Mina launched each barrel with a swift hit of her tiny foot. She was better than an NFL kicker. We soon had thirty-nine barrels of monks on the floor.
Tension grabbed the back of my neck like a mugger’s fist. I wanted to take part in the monk corking but I had to think of the baby. I leaned down the chute, the heady smell of wine knocking me back as I caught a glimpse of the barrels standing at
attention along the wall and back into the shadows.
The wine-spilling team of Kit and Roger stood in the courtyard, bent over with their hands on their knees. They inhaled in deep, syncopated gasps wheezing like two old geezers. “Feelin’ whoozie…” Roger groaned.
“Lesh go chick… check out the pavilion. The sea air might clear our yeads.” Roger and Kit leaned on each other, staggering drunk from the fumes.
“Don’t go near the edge!” I said. Hoping his ‘yead’ cleared up pronto.
“Course not!” Roger called over his shoulder.
Bram held Mina’s hand and took mine. He shook his head in disbelief. “I have a brother, and he’s a pretty nice guy even when he’s not sober.”
I smiled up at him. “Your brother is a great guy. And thank you for marrying us.”
“Tomorrow will be the happiest day of my life,” he said squeezing my fingers.
“Me too!” the little vampire looked up at him with such adoration. Between my feelings for Roger and the sizzle between Mina and Bram, I believed in love again. My miserable marriage to the Croc purged from my mind … almost.
The pavilion was perched in a clearing fifty feet from the cliff. Wild flowers encircled a stone crescent. There would be just enough room for Roger and me to stand on the semicircular with Bram in between.
The wedding party could stand in the grass. I hoped Kit brought a pair of flats, otherwise, he’d be grousing about his heels being stuck in the mud. I decided to invite Squirl to be another bridesmaid. It would make the little innkeeper happy and cost me nothing.
The splash of the waves on the rocks below was muted by the distance from the cliff to the sea. Holding onto Roger, I peeked over the edge. It was a long, long drop. Chicago was closer. The trees spun in a dizzying swirl. I clutched my guy with clammy hands. I have a thing about heights.
Bram stood next to us, with Mina clinging to his coat. He looked past me and up at the sky. “What was that? It looked like a giant bat.”
I caught a glimpse of the vulture thing struggling over a clump of stunted, broken trees. Whatever it was, it was fighting with the wind. An anguished eiii echoed off the cliff wall, and the creature fell from view, perhaps into the sea.
Vulgarian Vamp (A Wendy Darlin Comedy Mystery Book 5) Page 7