This picture was mostly dark varnish. There was a suggestion of a beak on a hunched figure.
Vlad turned away, quickly. ‘We’ve come a long way, of course,’ he said. ‘Evolution, Father says.’
‘They look very . . . powerful,’ said Agnes.
‘Oh, yes. So very powerful, and yet so very, very dumb,’ said Vlad. ‘My father thinks stupidity is somehow built into vampirism, as if the desire for fresh blood is linked to being as thick as a plank: Father is a very unusual vampire. He and Mother raised us . . . differently.’
‘Differently,’ said Agnes.
‘Vampires aren’t very family orientated. Father says that’s natural. Humans are raising their successors, you see, but we live for a very long time so a vampire is raising competitors. There’s not a lot of family feeling, you could say.’
‘Really.’ In the depths of her pocket Agnes’s fingers closed around the bottle of holy water.
‘But Father said self-help was the only way out. Break the cycle of stupidity, he said. Little traces of garlic were put into our food to get us used to it. He tried early exposure to various religious symbols – oh dear, we must have had the oddest nursery wallpaper in the world, never mind the jolly frieze of Gertie the Dancing Garlic – and I have to say that their efficacy isn’t that good in any case. He even made us go out and play during the day. That which does not kill us, he’d say, makes us strong-‘
Agnes’s arm whirled. The holy water spiralled out of the bottle and hit Vlad full in the chest.
He threw his arms wide and screamed as water cascaded down and poured into his shoes.
She’d never expected it to be this easy.
He raised his head and winked at her.
‘Look at this waistcoat! Will you look at this waistcoat? Do you know what water does to silk? You just never get it out! No matter what you do, there’s always a mark.’ He looked at her frozen expression and sighed.
‘I suppose we’d better get some things off our chest, hadn’t we?’ he said. He looked up at the wall and took down a very large and spiky axe. He thrust it at her.
‘Take this and cut my head off, will you?’ he said. ‘Look, I’ll loosen my cravat. Don’t want blood on it, do we? There. See?’
‘Are you trying to tell me that you were brought up with this, too?’ she said hotly. ‘What was it, a little light hatchet practice after breakfast? Cut your head off a little bit every day and the real thing won’t hurt?’
Vlad rolled his eyes. ‘Everyone knows that cutting off a vampire’s head is internationally acceptable,’ he said. ‘I’m sure Nanny Ogg would be swinging right now. Come along, there’s a lot of muscle in those rather thick arms, I’m-‘
She swung.
He reached around from behind her and whisked the axe out of her arms.
‘-sure,’ he finished. ‘We are also very, very fast.’
He tested the blade with his thumb. ‘Blunt, I notice. My dear Miss Nitt, it may just be more trouble than it’s worth to try to get rid of us, do you see? Now, old Magyrato there would not have made the kind of offer we are making to Lancre. Dear me, no. Are we ravaging across the country? No? Forcing our way into bedrooms? Certainly not. What’s a little blood, for the good of the community? Of course Verence will have to be demoted a little but, let’s face it, the man is rather more of a clerk than a king. And . . . our friends may find us grateful. What is the point of resisting?’
‘Are vampires ever grateful?’
‘We can learn.’
‘You’re just saying that in exchange for not actually being evil you’ll simply be bad, is that it?’
‘What we are saying, my dear, is that our time has come,’ said a voice behind them.
They both turned.
The Count had stepped into the gallery. He was wearing a smoking jacket. There was an armed man strolling on either side of him.
‘Oh dear, Vlad . . . Playing with your food? Good evening, Miss Nitt. We appear to have a mob at the gates, Vlad.’
‘Really? That’s exciting. I’ve never seen a real mob.’
‘I wish your first could have been a better one,’ said the Count, and sniffed. ‘There’s no passion in it. Still, it’d be too tiresome to let it go on all through dinner. I shall tell them to go away.’
The doors of the hall swung open without apparent aid.
‘Shall we go and watch?’ said Vlad.
‘Er, I think I’ll go and powder my, I’ll just go and . . . I’ll just be a minute,’ said Agnes, backing away.
She darted down the little corridor that led to the small door, and drew the bolts.
‘About time,’ said Nanny, hurrying in. ‘It’s really clammy out here.’
‘They’ve gone to look at the mob. But there’s other vampires here, not just the guards! The rest must’ve come in on the carts! They’re like . . . not quite servants but they take orders.’
‘How many are there?’ said Magrat.
‘I haven’t found out! Vlad is trying to get to know me better!’
‘Good plan,’ said Nanny. ‘See if he talks in his sleep.’
‘Nanny!’
‘Let’s see his lordship in action, shall we?’ said Nanny. ‘We can nip into the old guardroom alongside the door and look through the squint.’
‘I want to get Verence!’ said Magrat.
‘He’s not going anywhere,’ said Nanny, striding into the little room by the door. ‘And I don’t reckon they’re planning to kill him. Anyway, he’s got some protection now.’
‘I think these really are new vampires,’ said Agnes. ‘They really aren’t like the old sort.’
‘Then we face ’em here and now,’ said Nanny. ‘That’s what Esme would do, sure enough.’
‘But are we strong enough?’ said Agnes. Granny wouldn’t have asked, said Perdita.
‘There’s three of us, isn’t there?’ said Nanny. She produced a flask and uncorked it. ‘And a bit of help. Anyone else want some?’
‘That’s brandy, Nanny!’ said Magrat. ‘Do you want to face the vampires drunk?’
‘Sounds a whole lot better than facin’ them sober,’ said Nanny, taking a gulp and shuddering. ‘Only sensible bit of advice Agnes got from Mister Oats, I reckon. Vampire hunters need to be a little bit tipsy, he said. Well, I always listen to good advice. . .’
* * *
Even inside Mightily Oats’s tent the candle streamed in the wind. He sat gingerly on his camp bed, because sudden movements made it fold up with nail-blackening viciousness, and leafed through his notebooks in a state of growing panic.
He hadn’t come here to be a vampire expert. ‘Revenants and Ungodly Creatures’ had been a one-hour lecture from deaf Deacon Thrope every fortnight, for Om’s sake! it hadn’t even counted towards the final examination score! They’d spent twenty times that on Comparative Theology, and right now he wished, he really wished, that they’d found time to tell him, for example, exactly where the heart was and how much force you needed to drive a stake through it.
Ah . . . here they were, a few pages of scribble, saved only because the notes for his essay on Thrum’s Lives of the Prophets were on the other side.
‘. . . The blood is the life . . . vampires are subservient to the one who turned them into a vampire . . . allyl disulphide, active ingredient in garlic . . . porphyria, lack of? Learned reaction? . . . native soil v. important . . . as many as possible will drink of a victim so that he is the slave of all . . . “clustersuck” . . . blood as an unholy sacrament . . . Vampire controls: bats, rats, creatures of the night, weather . . . contrary to legend, most victims merely become passive, NOT vampires . . . intended vampire sufers terrible torments et craving for blood . . . socks . . . Garlic, holy icons . . . sunlight-deadly?. . . kill vampire, release all victims . . . physical strength & . . .’
Why hadn’t anyone told them this was important? He’d covered half the page with a drawing of Deacon Thrope, which was practically a still life.
Oats dropped the book into his pocket and grasped his medallion hopefully. After four years of theological college he wasn’t at all certain of what he believed, and this was partly because the Church had schismed so often that occasionally the entire curriculum would alter in the space of one afternoon. But also-
They had been warned about it. Don’t expect it, they’d said. It doesn’t happen to anyone except the prophets. Om doesn’t work like that. Om works from inside.
-but he’d hoped that, just once, Om would make himself known in some obvious and unequivocal way that couldn’t be mistaken for wind or a guilty conscience. Just once he’d like the clouds to part for the space of ten seconds and a voice to cry out, ‘YES, MIGHTILYPRAISEWORTHY-ARE-YE-WHO-EXALTETH-OM OATS! IT’S ALL COMPLETELY TRUE! INCIDENTALLY, THAT WAS A VERY THOUGHTFUL PAPER YOU WROTE ON THE CRISIS OF RELIGION IN A PLURALISTIC SOCIETY!’