But she remembered the look of horror on the mayor’s face and, later, the blank engrossed expression when he was trying to throttle the Count with his chain of office. The vampire had killed him with a blow that had almost broken him in half.
She fingered the wounds on her neck. She was pretty certain vampires didn’t miss, but Vlad must have done, because she dearly wasn’t a vampire. She didn’t even like the idea of rare steak. She’d tried to see if she could fly, when she thought people weren’t looking, but she was as attractive to gravity as ever. The blood-sucking . . . no, never that, even if it was the ultimate diet programme, but she’d have liked the flying.
It’s changed you, said Perdita.
‘How?’
‘Sorry, miss?’
You’re sharper . . . edgier . . . nastier.
‘Maybe it’s about time I was, then.’
‘Sorry, miss?’
‘Oh, nothing. Do you have a spare sickle?’
The vampires travelled fast but erratically, appearing not so much to fly as to be promising entries in the world long-jump championships.
‘We’ll burn that ungrateful place to the ground,’ moaned the Countess, landing heavily.
‘Afterwards we’ll burn that place to the ground,’ said Lacrimosa. ‘This is what kindness leads to, Father. I do hope you’re paying attention.’
‘After you paid for that bell tower, too,’ said the Countess.
The Count rubbed his throat, where the links of the gold chain still showed as a red weal. He wouldn’t have believed that a human could be so strong.
‘Yes, that might be a good course of action,’ he said. ‘We would have to make sure the news got around, of course.’
‘You think this news won’t get around?’ said Lacrimosa, landing beside him.
‘It will be dawn soon, Lacci,’ said the Count, with heavy patience. ‘Because of my training, you will regard it as rather a nuisance, not a reason to crumble into a little pile of dust. Reflect on this.’
‘That Weatherwax woman did this, didn’t she?’ said Lacrimosa, ignoring this call to count her blessings. ‘She put her self somewhere and she’s attacking us. She can’t be in the baby. I suppose she wasn’t in your fat girl, Vlad? Plenty of room in there. Are you listening, brother?’
‘What?’ said Vlad distantly as they turned a corner in the road and saw the castle ahead of them.
‘I saw you give in and bite her. So romantic. They still dragged her off, though. They’ll have to use quite a long stake to hit any useful organ.’
‘She’d have put her self somewhere close,’ said the Count. ‘It stands to reason. It must’ve been someone in the hall . . .’
‘One of the other witches, surely,’ said the Countess.
‘I wonder. . .’
‘That stupid priest,’ said Lacrimosa.
‘That would probably appeal to her,’ said the Count. ‘But I suspect not.’
‘Not . . . Igor?’ said his daughter.
‘I wouldn’t give that a moment’s thought,’ said the Count.
‘I still think it was Fat Agnes.’
‘She wasn’t that fat,’ said Vlad sulkily.
‘You’d have got tired of her in the end and we’d have ended up with her always getting in the way, just like the others,’ said Lacrimosa. ‘Traditionally a keepsake is meant to be a lock of their hair, not their entire skull-‘
‘She’s different.’
‘Just because you can’t read her mind? How interesting would that be?’
‘At least I did bite someone,’ said Vlad. ‘What was wrong with you?’
‘Yes, you were acting very strangely, Lacci,’ said the Count, as they reached the drawbridge.
‘If she was hiding in me I’d know!’ snarled Lacrimosa.
‘I wonder if you would,’ said the Count. ‘She just has to find a weak spot. . .
‘She’s just a witch, Father. Honestly, we’re acting as though she’s got some sort of terrible power-‘
‘Perhaps it was Vlad’s Agnes after all,’ said the Count. He gave his son a slightly longer stare than was strictly necessary.
‘We’re nearly at the castle,’ said the Countess, trying to rally them. ‘We’ll all feel better for an early day.’
‘Our best coffins got taken to Lancre,’ said Lacrimosa sullenly. ‘Someone was so sure of themselves.’
‘Don’t you adopt that tone with me, young woman!’ said the Count.
‘I’m two hundred years old,’ said Lacrimosa. ‘Pardon me, but I think I can choose any tone I like.’
‘That’s no way to speak to your father!’
‘Really, Mother, you might at least act as if you had two brain cells of your own!’
‘It is not your father’s fault that everything’s gone wrong!’
‘It has not all gone wrong, my dear! This is just a temporary setback!’
‘It won’t be when the Escrow meat tell their friends! Come on, Vlad, stop moping and back me up here . . .’
‘If they tell them, what can they do? Oh, there will be a little bit of protesting, but then the survivors will see reason,’ said the Count. ‘In the meantime, we have those witches waiting for us. With the baby.’
‘And we’ve got to be polite to them, I suppose?’
‘Oh, I don’t think we need go that far,’ said the Count. ‘Let them live, perhaps-‘
Something bounced on the bridge beside him. He reached down to pick it up and dropped it with a yelp.
‘But . . . garlic shouldn’t burn . . .’ he began.
‘Thith ith water from the Holy Turtle Pond of Thquintth, ‘ said a voice above them. ‘Blethed by the Bithop himthelf in the Year of the Trout.’ There was a glugging noise and the sound of someone swallowing. ‘That wath a good year for beatitude,’ Igor went on. ‘But you don’t have to take my word for it. Duck, you thuckerth!’
The vampires dived for cover as the bottle, turning over and over, arced down from the battlements.
It shattered on the bridge, and most of the contents hit a vampire, who burst into flame as if hit by burning oil.
‘Now really, Cryptopher, there’s no call for that sort of thing,’ said the Count, as the blazing figure screamed and spun around in a circle. ‘It’s all in your mind, you know. Positive thinking, that’s the ticket-‘
‘He’s turning black,’ said the Countess. ‘Aren’t
you going to do something?’
‘Oh, very well. Vlad, just kick him off the drawbridge, will you?’
The luckless Cryptopher was pushed, squirming, into the chasm.
‘You know, that should not have happened,’ said the Count, looking at his blistered fingers. ‘He obviously was not . . . truly one of us.’ Far below, there was a splash.
The rest of the vampires scrambled for the cover of the gate arch as another bottle exploded near the Count. A drop splashed his leg, and he glanced down at the little wisp of smoke.
‘Some error appears to have crept in,’ he said.
‘I’ve never been one to put myself forward,’ said the Countess, ‘but I strongly suggest you find a new plan, dear. One which works, perhaps?’
‘I have one already formed,’ he said, tapping his knuckles against the huge oak gates. ‘If everyone would perhaps stand aside. . .’
Up on the battlement Igor nudged Nanny Ogg, who lowered a decanter of water from the Holy Fountain of Seven-Handed Sek and followed his pointing thumb.[14]
Clouds were suddenly spiralling, with blue light flashing inside them.
‘There’th going to be a thtorm!’ he said. ‘The top of my head’th tingling! Run!’
They reached the tower just as a single bolt of lightning blew the doors apart and shattered the stones where they had been standing.
‘Well, that was easy,’ said Nanny, lying full length on the floor.
‘They can control the weather,’ said Igor.
‘Blast!’ said Nanny. ‘That’s right. Everyone knows that, who knows anything about vampires.’
‘Thorry. But they won’t be able to try that on the inthide doorth. Come on!’
‘What’s that smell?’ said Nanny, sniffing. ‘Igor, your boots are on fire!’
‘Damn! And thethe feet were nearly new thicth month ago,’ said Igor, as Nanny’s holy water sizzled over the smoking leather. ‘It’th my wire, it pickth up thtray currentth.’
‘What happened, someone was hit by a falling buffalo?’ said Nanny, as they hurried down the stairs.
‘It wath a tree,’ said Igor reproachfully. ‘Mikhail Thwenitth up at the logging camp, the poor man. Practically nothing left, but hith parentth thaid I could have hith feet to remember him by.’
‘That was strangely kind of them.’
‘Well, I gave him a thpare arm after the acthe acthident a few yearth ago and when old Mr Thwenitth’th liver gave out I let him have the one Mr Kochak left to me for giving Mithith Kochak a new eye.’
‘People round here don’t so much die as pass on,’ said Nanny.
‘What goeth around cometh around,’ said Igor.
* * *
‘And your new plan is . . . ?’ said Lacrimosa, stepping across the rubble.
‘We’ll kill everyone. Not an original plan, I admit, but tried and tested,’ said the Count. This met with general approval, but his daughter looked unsatisfied.