My question drew blank looks.
I didn’t like that he continued to lurk unaccounted for. No real reason to be suspicious, and yet the hairs on my arms were prickling. “Where are John and Paul? Haven’t seen them in awhile.”
“I sent them to return the Book of Names to the church,” Bram said.
“Let’s check on the monks to be sure they’re still corked,” I said
Not that I was an expert on bottled monks, but I’d had my share of accidental champagne cork popage and the results were never pretty.
If the monks vamped and left their kegs at the wrong time, they might wander into a nest of armed Louts and heads would roll.
So far no communication from the Vatican Vampire Investigators. They could be days away. It was clear vampire wrangling took a certain amount of planning. I was a panster and out of my league.
With a collective nod our team of vampire wranglers wobbled to their feet. Mina floated to the floor and stood next to Bram. She slipped her hand through his arm and snuggled against his elbow.
“What time is the ceremony?” Bram asked.
Roger gave me a questioning look.
“Cripes!” I hadn’t thought about it. “How long will it take you to get ready?” I asked Kit.
My bridal preparations would take ten minutes. I was a quick dresser and now with limited toiletries this was a dip and slip. Kit was the resident diva and as maid-of-honor and best man he would take a long time.
“Give me a head start. I can be pure perfection in an hour. Well, not pure. By the way, we still need to pick wildflowers for your headpiece and your bouquet,” Kit said.
“Not from the graveyard, okay?” That would be kind of creepy.
“There’s a small field of flowers on the east side of the church. I can’t pick the blossoms in the sunshine, but I can make a really pretty bouquet for you if you bring me the flowers,” Mina said.
I smiled. “Thank you.” She was trying hard to please me. I needed to turn on my nice valve. Where the hell heck was that thing? “Let’s get to the wine cellar.”
Roger nodded. “To the corked clergy we go!”
Mina stood on tiptoes and kissed Bram’s cheek. He kissed her back. He blushed when he caught our questioning glances. What was a priest doing canoodling with a vampire? If I were a religious person, the kissing thing would have bothered me but I was open-minded, although the idea of kissing a priest was kind of cross-cultural.
The Bram-Mina relationship appeared to be stepping up to the next level. Would one of them be compelled to convert? I shook off the idea of a vampire in the Vatican, although it might make for a best seller.
Sunlight illuminated our trek through the hall to the wine cellar entrance. Roger pulled the door open with a creak that would have awakened a fourth dynasty mummy. We poked our way down the dark cellar stairs, each holding a lighted candle. A cobweb floated across my face. I snorted and it went up my nostrils. Ick!
Sure would have been nice if the monks had believed in small luxuries like electricity.
A sudden heavy thump sent me stumbling as we entered the main wine room. Roger blocked my fall. I hoped it was just a fat rat. Rodents I could deal with.
The thump repeated. I clutched Roger’s hand as we stepped next to the line of barrels.
A second series of knocks echoed from the far end of casks. It sounded like SOS. Two rats sending messages in Morse Code?
We circled the nearest banging barrel behaving like kids in a house of horrors.
Roger gripped a wine bottle by the neck as a weapon.
Bram clutched a crucifix in his mouth as he pried off the lid of the barrel.
Mina, Squirl, and I held our half-melted candles at the ready, useless as weapons unless whoever was in the haunted barrel had a fear of hot wax.
The lid popped off the first barrel and rolled like a manhole cover coming to rest topside up. The wine cask shivered, convulsed, and gave birth to a gasping monk.
“What the hell-heck?” I said stepping back to avoid the stink of pickled parson and sour wine.
Our brave team of vampire hunters looked like a herd of deer in candlelight.
Roger stepped between me and a rising monk. The friar braced his hands on the barrel rim in a feeble effort to climb out. His eyes conveyed his terror at waking in a cabernet coffin.
“A miracle?” I looked at Bram.
He shook his head numbly. I’ll bet they didn’t have a course on this at the Vatican Vampire Academy.
Mina leaned over and sniffed the cask. “The monk-wine is supposed to have miraculous powers. It weaned me from craving blood. Maybe it brought the good brothers back to life?”
More barrels shimmied; two teetered to the floor and rolled toward us. The middle barrel began tapping out Jingle Bells.
We were in the midst of the Beer Barrel Polka version of the Night of the Living Dead and it was barely lunchtime. I handed my candle to Squirl and enlisted Mina in righting one of the fallen casks. We popped the lid and out came a yellow, smelly, staked monk. I stepped back, worried about infection. There was no way could I explain this hoedown to my obstetrician.
Roger, Kit, Bram, and Mina uncorked the friars helping them wiggle out of their casks. I stood back to avoid the alcohol fumes.
Holy Acai juice! The cellar spun, a kaleidoscope of gray and purple drilling me into the floor. This was one hell-heck of a hallucination. I teetered. The next thing I remembered I was peeling my face off the floor.
Squirl sat next to me, patting my hand. This special brew from lord knows what kind of grapes possessed some scary powers. I squinted, counting thirty-nine barrels without monks on the floor.
The monks exchanged startled looks as if awakening from a communal nightmare. Not one of them uttered so much as a groan.
Father Bram stood at the center dishing out a group blessing over the bruise-colored flock as they linked arms forming a chain of monks.
The sound of marching feet and angry voices cut through the surreal aura of the moment. The basement walls began to vibrate and the ceiling dropped clods of dirt on my head. Rabble yelling filtered into the cellar. I tiptoed to the battered door and peeked into the graveyard.
An army of villagers looking like a German flash-mob in lederhosen, peasant blouses, and garlic necklaces marched into the cemetery. It was clear by their weapons they had come to behead the monks.
Chapter Twenty
Mina wrapped herself around Bram’s leg like a humping puppy. Roger and Squirl sandwiched me between them to protect my belly. Roger leaned back and planted a kiss on my cheek. “I got this,” he said. That was what I was afraid of.
Bram pried Mina away and handed her to me. “Watch her. I’ll try to reason with them.”
“Hey, Bram!” I called. “In situations like this it’s okay to fib.”
An ironic tweaked his lips and he stepped out the exterior cellar door into the cemetery.
Mina jumped up and down like a kindergartener busting to go potty. “Bram, be careful! They’re armed!” She clenched her fists to her mouth as tears dribbled down her pale face.
I peered out the door. The villagers were carrying lighted torches although it was still morning. The men toted shotguns and shovels; the women were waving brooms and vacuum cleaner pipes. Every Lout wore a garlic lei. No wonder there was a shortage of bulbs.
Behind the first flank of villagers, younger men marched twirling axes like the Freddy Krueger marching band. The beheaders!
I stepped back from the door ready to beg my love to stay indoors today, but I knew even as I thought the thought, that a guy has to do what a guy has to do.
“I’m with you, brother,” Roger said scooting out the door two steps behind Bram.
I wasn’t about to stay put. It was High Noon in Loutish, Vulgaria and I was ready to stand by my man.
“Squirl! Where are your biscuits?”
She frowned. “Upstairs…why?”
“Mina, you stay hidden and comfort the de-ba
rrelling monks. Whatever you do don’t let the Louts see you. You stand out like a magnolia in a forest. Squirl come with me!”
The little innkeeper darted after me as I ran up the stairs and into the bedroom wing of the monastery. The biscuits were in her room.
“Kit, front and center!” I yelled as we ran down the corridor to the guest room.
He wobbled into the hall carrying a mascara brush, wearing the blue maid-of-honor dress and matching pumps. He dabbed lethal-looking three-inch eyelashes with a brush, his blue eye shadow matched the tone of his dress, and his lipstick was a muted shade of coral. He’d yet to don his Carol Channing hair. He wore one of those under-wig stretchy net skullcaps.
“The villagers are here to behead the monks!” I said, the words spilling out of my mouth in a flood.
His eyes rattled right then left. “But the monks are hidden.”
“Not anymore!”
I grabbed the biscuit bag from Squirl and shared a load between the three of us, dodging Kit’s completely valid argument that I had no business going to battle in my condition.
Squirl scowled when she realized her biscuits were about to be used as weapons. I stuck my tongue through the space in my teeth to remind her how powerful her baked goods were. “Think of them as your contribution to saving the planet. Non-nuclear weapons.”
The three of us carried lighted candles in one hand and biscuit-bombs in the other.
I wished John and Paul were with us. How long does it take to return one book even if you walk slowly and pump out a few prayers along the way?
Kit stumbled on the stairs, his satin pumps unsteady on his size thirteen gunboats, his bridesmaid dress snagging on the rough stone walls. He’d had better days.
We descended into the courtyard and through to the cemetery in the nick of time. Bram had run out of psalms and blessings and was humming Amazing Grace. He dangled a rosary from his hands while Roger stood between him and the angry villagers.
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 li
ke 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. But 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.
Vulgarian Vamp (A Wendy Darlin Comedy Mystery Book 5) Page 10