Consultation with a Vampire - 01 (3 page)

When the call was concluded, Agnes said, “I will not, I will not, allow you to go gallivanting off into the darkest night for some midnight rendezvous with disturbed individuals who believe themselves to be vampires. And I especially will not allow it with
French
vampires.”

“But what about Topper?”

"The Half-Hostage? Let him rot, I say. Good riddance to the small nuisance."

"Hmmm," Edwin said.

"You do not agree?"

"No, no," Edwin said. "It's not that. I was just wondering how long they could manage to hold on to him."

"We are discussing Topper, are we not? That vile little creature, lawyer, scurrying piece of vermin extraordinaire? You believe he can put up some kind of credible resistance?”

"There is a saying common among the Japanese: ‘Even an inchworm has half an inch of spirit.’ And while it would not surprise me if I found that Topper had been banned from that nation of polite, restrained people."

"Well, they are decent people; of course they would," Agnes muttered.

"But if Topper were an inchworm..."

"He certainly is a pest of some stripe.”

“He would find some way to have an entire foot of spirit, not merely half an inch."
 

In spite of herself, she had to agree. It was grudging admiration, but admiration all the same.
 

After Topper hung up the phone, he looked at the fat, shaven-headed man who had brought him into the room to make the call and said, “Y’know, you are ugly. Some people say that kind of thing as a joke, but you? Sunshine, you are sloppy-bucket-of-ragged-assholes ugly. I mean, you –”

The man’s expression did not change as he walked across the room and matter of factly clubbed Topper across the side of his head with one of his fleshy arms. “Quiet” was all he said.

“Owwwwwww! You prick; that was my ear!” Topper shrieked.
 

The second blow knocked Topper from the chair. The fleshy man stepped on the middle of Topper’s stomach, slid a fabric bag over his head, and pulled the drawstring tight. Predictably, Topper reached towards the bag. When he did, the big man bound the small lawyer’s hands together with a zip-tie. It was all very efficient and matter of fact, as if the large man had done it a thousand times before — which, of course, he had.
 

As the fleshy man watched Topper struggle to catch his breath, he said, “You no talk now.”
 

Topper struggled to his knees, turned to where he thought his captor was, and said, “You hit like a girl.”
 

The big man grunted. It might have been a laugh. He picked Topper up with one hand; carried him to a small, windowless room; and threw him in.
 

As Topper landed, he smacked his head on a cold tile floor. A river of obscenity poured from his mouth. This stream of invective was so vile, so powerful, that it is a wonder it didn’t light the bag on fire.
 

The fleshy man shut the door and locked it. He didn’t pay attention to the little man’s shrieked curses. He knew that a day or so without water would shut him up. But the big man had underestimated Topper.
 

Most people who’ve been kidnapped, blindfolded, zip-tied, and thrown in a cold, dark room would give up hope. But not Topper. You see, he didn’t really have much hope to begin with. For his whole life, he had been made fun of and beaten on because he was different.
 

It wasn’t just his size. If you’re small and cute, everybody loves you. But Topper was small and smart. Worst than that, he was born to make an argument. So, argue he did. He’d fought his way through every major obstacle in his life, regardless of whether or not that was the best strategy. So, his current situation wasn’t a problem. It was an inconvenience.
 

He worked on the plastic of the zip-ties. Back and forth, little by little, wiggle by wiggle. Even when the edges of the cheap plastic cut into his wrists and drew blood, he kept on.
 

Another person might have worried that he was being watched. But Topper didn’t care. If they were watching, that was their problem. He’d masturbate just to make them uncomfortable. And if they weren’t watching, that was their problem too. Because he wasn’t going to stay put. In fact, Topper was so pissed, it was
all
their problem.
 

Eventually, Topper stood up, lifted his hands above his head, and slammed his wrists into his stomach. The zip-tie flew from his wrists, making a snapping sound. He clawed the fabric bag away from his head and looked around the room. It was pitch black so, for Topper, his visual situation hadn’t changed much.
 

“This is just great,” he said, not despondent, but just pissed off. Just getting warmed up. He patiently felt his way around the floor. Well, patiently for Topper, which means he crawled until he smacked his head into something. A moment’s inspection revealed the obstacle to be drywall.

“Really?” Topper asked. “You gotta be shitting me. Drywall? You’re gonna trap a guy with drywall? You’re not gonna trap
this
guy with drywall.” Then he put his fist through the wall. Light streamed through the hole. Topper saw an empty hallway lined with doors. “Better than here,” he said. Then he clawed at the hole until it was big enough for him to squeeze through.
 

Almost as angry as he was the day he was born, he fought his way free through an opening that was just a little too narrow for him. Then he stood up and dusted himself off. “Okay, assholes, now it’s time for some serious mayhem.”

Topper walked down the hallway, opening all the doors as he went. They were all hastily constructed holding cells. But the only people they would hold would have to be pretty damn docile. Not tough-guy survivors like him. Behind the last door on the left, he found another captive.
 

The Good Lord helps those who help themselves, but Topper was feeling more generous than God. He ripped the hood off the captive and was greeted by a pale, squinting, scared face.

“What’s ya name, Sportsfan?” Topper asked.

“What?”

“I said, what’s your name?”

“My name is Sam,” Sam said, very confused.
 

“Okay, Sam. Do you want to die here?”
 

Sam’s eyes focused on a point behind Topper’s head. “But she was so beautiful. Where did she go?” For a moment, Topper felt a pang in his heart. She was beautiful. She was beautiful, peaceful, everything Topper had ever wanted. But then the anger flared up in his heart. He thought of the flabby man who had thrown him on his ear in that crappy cell. He got angry, and the anger washed him clean.
 

“Yeah, she was a real looker. If we see her, we’ll be sure to rape her on the way out. Now, c’mon, we’re going.”

“But Madeleine, she told me to stay.”

“Yeah, yeah, dopey, but we got an appointment, a very important appointment.”

“Okay,” Sam said. Topper understood why they didn’t waste money on bars. What kind of mumbo-jumbo, hocus-pocus bullshit was this? Is this what they tried to work on Sam? Topper wasn’t having any of it. He stayed angry. Because if there was one thing Topper liked more than getting laid, it was getting revenge.

With a massive hard-on for revenge, Topper pushed through the heavy metal door at the end of the hallway. Docile as a lamb, Sam followed behind him.
 

Topper soon reached a wall made of large, gray stone blocks. “Jesus, they upgraded a castle? C’mon, Sam. We’re gonna find a window or some stairs.” As they wandered through the maze of the remolded interior, it became evident that the interior had been redone many times over the years. The crappy, modern, drop-ceiling holding pens surrounded by drywall reminded Topper of office cubes. The older, more substantial plaster and lath walls had wooden doorways and transom windows. The battered wooden floor was sometimes covered with carpet and sometimes bare.
 

Topper wasn’t afraid he would run into the fleshy guy who had thrust a bag over his head. He wasn’t woozy anymore. He had sobered up and was eager to share the pain of his hangover. But the big man was nowhere to be found. No doubt he was off somewhere gorging himself on a six-pound sack of gummy bears.
 

When they found the stairs, Topper figured they were home free. Sam began to whimper, “No, no. They’re down there. Definitely don’t want to go down there.”

“Shh, ya crazy bastard,” Topper whispered. Sam’s eyes rolled around in his head wildly, but he shut up.
 

As they came to the next floor, Topper heard a muffled voice in the distance. He crept along a hallway, coming closer and closer to the speaker. A flickering light streamed out through a half-opened oak-paneled door. When Topper got close enough, he recognized the voice as belonging to that French bastard who had kidnapped him. Vampires. Fucking vampires, Topper thought. His thoughts swerved dangerously close to Madeleine again, and he found himself going loopy and soft in the brain. He needed the anger back.
 

Farther down the hallway was the next flight of stairs. This meant he would have to pass by this doorway to get out. But, really, why go? She had to be around here somewhere, didn’t she? Sam whimpered, and Topper’s anger flashed up again. “Shhhh,” he hissed.
 

Topper peered around the doorway. There sat DeChevue, in a room filled with velvet and candelabras. He was talking on an ornate, old-fashioned telephone. The divan on which he rested himself faced the hallway. If he hadn’t been looking at his manicured nails, he would have been staring straight at Topper.
 

Heart hammering madly in his chest, Topper slid back into the darkness of the hallway. As he struggled to get ahold of himself, he heard DeChevue say, “No, no, no, Monsieur. Your office will not do at all. No one of my kind would run the risk of being trapped in a large glass box in the sky, waiting for the sun to rise. I am comfortable only in the Earth.”
 

There was a pause, and Topper could imagine Edwin’s tired, reasonable tone as he tried to talk sense to this nut. But dammit, this wasn’t the time to be reasonable. This was the time to show up with the cavalry. With sunlamps and stakes and garlic and flamethrowers.
 

DeChevue continued. “Very well. I shall hold onto the mi-ghey until you have arranged a satisfactory place for us to meet.” Mi-ghey. Midget. Again, that word.
 

Inside Topper, Anger had a quick fight with Fear. At the end, Fear was carried from the ring on a stretcher while Anger danced around the arena singing the long, vowel-laden, adrenaline-fueled song of Victory.
 

Topper crept back down the hallway and tried another door. It opened into a room paneled with white plastic. In the center of the room was a floor drain. But none of that interested Topper. He was fixated on the casement window built into the far wall. “Hot damn, Sam. We’re getting out of here!”
 

“No!” Sam said. “This is the bad room. Bad room.”

“Ya know, pal, you really need to work on that negativity,” Topper said as he walked to the window. He climbed up on the wide sill that was cut into the thick exterior wall of the building. The window opened easily, and Topper saw that he was six stories up. Far below was the river. “Ah shit, Sam. That’s a long way down. Even into a river.”
 

Sam whimpered. Topper shook his head. Sam just wasn’t any fun at all. The way Topper looked at it, just because you were a hostage slated to be an appetizer for a vampire who had purchased Liberace’s entire collection of candelabras didn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy yourself.
 

“What do ya mean you can’t swim, Sam? Ya big baby, the fall is probably what will kill you,” Topper said with a wry smile. He took another look at the drop. Yeah, they were going to have to find another way out.
 

Behind him, Topper heard DeChevue say, “But why do you want to fly, my little bird?” Topper turned and saw that the velvet-robed vampire held Sam in his clutches. Poor Sam’s eyes were wide and crazed. He gave another whimper.
 

“Ah, crap,” Topper said.
 

The vampire’s eyes glittered like daggers. “I have very good hearing, mon petit otage.”

Topper opened his mouth to crack a funny, very acerbic insult. Oh, this insult was going to be the best. It had everything: sodomy, necrophilia, velour, and the true horror of DeChevue’s taste in home furnishings. But, unfortunately for you poor reader, Topper’s devastating and profane conversational riposte was cut short when DeChevue bit into Sam’s neck and ripped his head off.
 

Topper’s was going to begin with ‘y’know’, but when he saw Sam’s blood fountaining off the ceiling,
 
his scream came out, “Y’oooooollly Shit!” Topper’s arms and legs shot out to the stone that surrounded him, and sheer terror pinned him to where he stood. He couldn’t turn away. He couldn’t even close his eyes. Blood was everywhere. While drinking from Sam like a man guzzling from a fire hose, DeChevue no longer seemed meek and silly.
 

When the stuff of Sam’s unhappy life had pumped itself out, DeChevue slung his blood-soaked hair over his head and turned his attention to Topper. He advanced upon Topper, picking at a piece of skin stuck between his teeth. When he spoke, his tones were measured and even, as if nothing had happened. “Now, you will come away from that window and return to your room.”

Something about the vampire’s eyes made Topper feel he was falling into a dark void. His arms and legs loosened their pressure against the wall. Part of him knew that it would be a terribly wrong thing to do, but the rest of him, including parts like feet and legs, moved back towards the room. They seemed bent on obeying the vampire’s will, against every instinct of self-preservation Topper possessed.
 

“Yes, come to me like the good, trained mi-ghey that you are.”

The word “midget” broke the spell. Topper’s anger flared bright and hot again. He stopped moving, and DeChevue knew something was up. The vampire made a desperate grab, but he was one lunge too far away. Topper didn’t think. He just turned and jumped out of the open window.