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‘I’m not a knotted nit,’ said Igon sadly.
The servant by now was leaning over the coffin, busily sucking a piece of ice.
‘Valentine’s moving,’ he said, wiping his chin. The Doctor and Igon raced to the coffin. The now near-hysterical Doctor grabbed the lapels of Valentine’s evening dress suit and started to shake him.
‘Wake up, sir. Please wake up, sir,’ the Doctor begged.
Valentine opened his eyes.
‘Hello,’ he said quietly, his head resting in the crook of the Doctor’s arm.
They all looked down at him. He was a most handsome young man, not a bit like a Vampire; more like a normal person.
‘I’m very hungry,’ he said.
‘Me too. Me too.’
Igon received a blow on the head that was so quick he didn’t know whether the Doctor or the servant had done it.
‘I really am hungry.’ Valentine slowly sat up.
The Doctor grabbed Igon by the hair and pulled a few rags from his throat and offered the exposed throat to Valentine, saying, ‘Here, Sir, try this until we can get you something better.’
‘No thank you,’ said Valentine nicely, much to the relief of Igon.
‘I’ll shake Igon for you, Sir. You’re not supposed to take medicine without it being shaken.’
The Doctor shook Igon so vigorously that a cloud of dust came from his old clothes. He once again exposed Igon’s neck towards Valentine.
‘No thank you. I don’t like blood.’
For a few seconds everyone was still.
‘Pardon?’
‘I don’t like blood, so would you mind putting Igon away please.’ Valentine asked. The Doctor dropped Igon hard on the floor.
‘You don’t drink blood?’ he said incredulously.
‘No. To be quite honest with you, it makes me feel a bit queasy.’
‘How long, Sir, may I ask, have you not been drinking blood?’
‘You may not believe this, but all my life. As a matter of fact, I don’t like any of the food we Vampires are supposed to eat or drink. I like chips and I like a small glass of red wine.
For years I’ve been kidding everybody I’ve been drinking blood, but I change it for red wine. Father doesn’t know or Vernon either. I have a feeling that Mother knows, but I’m not positive. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I don’t even know who you are, or worse, if I can trust you. Of course, I know I can trust Igon because I look upon him as a friend.’
The servant and the Doctor looked at Igon who was now smiling gummily at everyone. The Doctor was the first to speak.
‘Of course he’s your friend, sir. He’s our friend too,’ he said, patting Igon on his head. ‘Maybe we should introduce ourselves. I’m Doctor Plump.’
Valentine’s hand came out of the coffin to be shaken by the Doctor. The servant walked slowly over to the coffin and said:
‘My name is Sed.’
‘Is that your first name?’ asked Valentine.
‘No Sir. Sed’s my last name.’
‘Well, tell his Vampship your first name then,’ Doctor Plump snarled.
‘My first name is a traditional Gotcha name, Sir. It’s Ronnoco.’
‘Yes, that’s a traditional Gotcha name all right,’ Igon said, not wanting to be left out of the conversation.
‘So,’ said Valentine. ‘Your name is Ronnoco Sed?’
‘Yes Sir,’ The servant nodded.
‘How long have you been working here, Ronnoco?’
‘I started last week, Sir.’
‘And may I ask what you did before you came here?’
‘I was a troubadour, Sir. I used to sing. I toured our country and sang to the people of the cities and the villages.’
‘And why are you now working here as a servant?’ Valentine inquired nicely.
‘The people of the cities and the villages didn’t want me to sing to them.’
‘Sir, would you mind lying down in your coffin,’ pleaded Dr Plump. ‘After all, I am the doctor and you do have the vile Vampire vapours so you need all the rest you can get.’
‘I’m getting up,’ Valentine told them. ‘I’m getting up if someone will give me a hand.’
‘But you can’t …’ the Doctor spluttered, thinking of leaving the castle in a small bucket.
‘I haven’t got the vapours. The only thing I have at the moment is a chill from staying out late the other night.’
The relief on the Doctor’s face was a sight to behold.
The Doctor helped Valentine down from the coffin to the floor. The four of them quietly left the room, Valentine with the specific intention of telling his mother not to worry. He was feeling better.
CHAPTER 2
King Victor smiles with venomous grace
At Wilf the Werewolf’s hairy face.
In the village of Katchem the clock had just struck midnight, although the hands said the time was a quarter to twelve. The reason was that Victor was sitting on the pointer, his cloak billowing in the wind.
Above the din of the clock and the strong wind, the four people in the tavern heard the howling of a lone wolf; a long, piercing sound that almost stopped the blood flowing through the body. A howl so chilling as to make the serving girl, Areta, drop and break an empty Stein mug she was clearing off a table. Her father, Klaus Grabbo, who owned the tavern, gave her a look of annoyance. She, in return, gave him a quick look of apology.
Then the wolf stopped howling and within seconds the large window next to the door burst open and Victor stood in its frame. A flash of lightning lit up the tavern for a mere second, followed by a deathly silence. Areta and her father, with their two customers, stood like statues.
‘Gutt evenink,’ Victor the First said, smiling, showing a fine set of teeth of which two were noticeably longer than the others. ‘I vould like a drink, mine host. A drink out of mine special bottle, ya?’
He crossed to the bar with the movement, ease and grace of mercury on glass. Grabbo picked out a bottle hidden at the back of the bar.
The liquid in the bottle was blood red. With a shaking hand Grabbo poured from the bottle until Victor hissed, ‘Enough’. Then, with a hard look around the room at the other two customers, he raised the glass to his lips with the Vampires’ toast:
A soldier’s in love with his rifle,
A sailor’s in love with his deck,
A Vampire’s in love when he kisses a girl
And leaves two holes in her neck
He swallowed the blood red liquid in one fast gulp. The other two customers kept their eyes averted from Victor, not wanting to antagonise him in any way and not wanting to be noticed by him either. Victor smacked his lips and said:
‘Excellent. Really very gutt. Eighteen years olt, I vould say, ya?’
The landlord picked up the bottle and looked at it before answering. ‘Nineteen,’ he said.
‘Nineteen? Vos she really? I vould haff said eighteen. Maybe, mine bar-keeping frent, you are keeping it too cool. I don’t like it ven it’s too cool. Unterstant, Grabbo? I don’t like it ven it’s too colt, ya?’
‘Yes, Sir.’ Grabbo grovelled. Areta continued to clear the tables although she had done them twice already.
Victor watched her, a smile coming to his lips. ‘You know somethink, Grabbo?’
‘Sir?’
‘You daughter has become very beautiful, ya?’
‘Er … thank you, Sire.’
‘Ya, very beautiful inteed. Giff me a drink off the twenty year olt.’
Grabbo filled the waiting glass from another hidden bottle.
‘Vill you join me, mine frent?’
‘Er no, Your Greatness. Er … I’m off it at the moment. I’m … er … trying to lose weight,’ Grabbo quickly lied, not wanting to offend a customer.
‘I haff the perfect vay off losing veight. Vot you do is simple like your two customers over there.’ Victor looked very hard at the two other customers. ‘You eat nothing but roobs, ant then …’
‘Roobs?’ questioned Grabbo.
‘Yah, roobs.’
‘What are roobs, Sir?’
‘Roobs are a special fruit. They are very rare ant are only to be fount ten feet unterground.’
‘But, how will they help me to lose weight, if I may ask, Sire?’
‘It’s obvious. The exercise vile you are diggink for them. And then, ven you haff fount them you von’t eat them because they have such a horrit taste. That vay you vill lose even more veight, ya?’ Here Victor burst into almost uncontrollable laughter; laughter so chilling that the mirror behind the bar cracked.
Grabbo looked into the mirror. He could see his own reflection and the look of terror on his own pale face. He could also see the entire room. But he could not see Victor who was stood next to him because, being a Vampire, Victor had no reflection.
‘I’m sorry, mine frent,’ Victor said, looking at the cracked mirror and although Grabbo couldn’t see the reflection of Victor, Victor looked towards the mirror and straightened his tie.
A long scratch at the door of the tavern made everyone, including Victor, turn their heads. No one moved. The door slowly creaked open. There stood a smiling werewolf, a man covered in long, shaggy wolfhair looking a bit dishevelled on account of the rather strong wind. He had the werewolf’s almost red, fiery eyes and long, canine teeth. He stood erect in the doorway with the wind blowing his long hair as a woman blows on a fur coat. King Victor looked at him and thought he looked like a rather untidy crow’s nest.
‘Come in, Vilf, ant close the toor,’ Victor said.
Wilf the Werewolf, as he was known, walked into the tavern, shutting the door behind him.
‘Hello Victor,’ he said in a rather sing-song voice. ‘How’s the wife and kids?’ He was pleased to be indoors on such a night as this and he showed it by wagging his tail.
‘They are all very vell, thank you, mine covered-in-hair frent, and it vos very nice of you to ask.’
‘Not at all,’ Wilf smiled. ‘You know me. I’m very fond of your brood. How’s poor Valentine? Is he any better?’
‘Whom tolt you he vos ill?’
‘Dick.’
‘Tick?’
‘Yes, Dick. You remember Dick … Dick the big, daft dwarf,’ he almost barked.
‘Ah yes, Tick. Tick the bick taft twarf. Ya, I remember him. Ya.’
‘He told me Val wasn’t too good,’ Wilf continued. ‘I met him in the forest and we went for a walkies. That’s when he told me.’
‘Vell, Valentine’s a lot better I think. The Doctor’s vith him now. Doctor Plump.’
‘Plump?’ Wilf thought a while. ‘Doctor Plump?’
‘Ya.’
‘Yes, I think I used to go about with his alsatian. I’m not sure.’
‘Very tall.’
‘No. Short, rather fat with a scruffy tail.’
