The Last of the Red-Hot Vampires (2 page)

I sat up a little straighter on the bed. There's nothing I loved like an intellectual challenge. “Well now, that's an interesting thought. But it's hardly fair for you to throw something like that at me without allowing the inverse.”

“Inverse?” She frowned for a moment. “What do you mean?”

“You can't take me to a haunted house, and when I point out that the plumbing is archaic and responsible for making the suggested poltergeist knockings, refuse to allow that as a valid explanation. You have to be open to rational deductions as to the source of your
mystical events
.”

She bristled slightly. “I am the most open person I know!”

“Yes, you are; too open. You're much more willing to believe in something paranormal than normal.”

“Oh,” she said, glaring at me. “That's it! Put your money where your mouth is!”

“A bet, you mean? I'm perfectly willing, not that I have much money, but what I have I will happily use to back myself.”

She got to her feet. I stood up in front of her.

“Then we're agreed. We will have a bet as to who can prove”—I raised my eyebrows—“or disprove a paranormal being or event.” She thought for a moment. “Beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

“Beyond reasonable doubt,” I agreed, and we shook hands. “You know, I'm skeptical even without a bet.”

“Yes, I know you're perfectly happy trying to rain on my mystical parade. But this adds just a smidgen of spice to it, don't you think? A little friendly competition?”

“Mmhmm. How much is the bet for?”

“Oh, we're not betting for money,” she said, waving away such a mundane thought. “This is our honor we're betting, here. Honor, and the right to say ‘I told you so' to the other person.”

I laughed at that. “Sounds good to me. For every haunted house we visit, for every psychic you take me to see, for every crackpot who claims he has crop circles, I'll show you the truth behind the paranormal facade.”

Her smile lit up her eyes as she opened the door to the tiny hallway. “We can start this afternoon. This area is a hotbed of paranormal activity, but most well known is the faery ring just outside of town. Get your faery-hunting clothes on, Portia. The game is afoot!”

“Na then, t'get ta the faery circle, gwain ye doon the road past Arvright's farm—ye know where that be, then?”

By focusing very, very hard, I managed to pick out words in the sentence that I understood. “Yes.”

“Aye. Gwain ye doon the hill past Arvright's, then when ye see the sheep, ye turn north.” The old man pointed to the south.

“Is that north?” Sarah asked in an undertone, looking doubtfully in the direction the man pointed.

“Shh. I'm having enough trouble trying to get through his West Country accent.” I turned a cheerful smile on the man. “So, I turn left at the sheep?”

“Aye, 'tis what I am sayin'. Na then, once ye've skurved past they sheep, ye'll come to a zat combe.”

“Zat combe?” Sarah's face was fierce with concentration. “I'm not sure I…a
zat
combe?”

I wrote down the old man's directions, praying we wouldn't end up wandering into someone's yard.

“Aye, 'tis right zat. Full o' varments.”

Sarah looked at me. I shrugged and said to the man, “Lots of them, eh?”

Behind my back, Sarah pinched my arm.

“Chikky, too. They needs a good thraipin', but none here'll be doin' it.”

“Thraipin',” Sarah said, nodding just as if she understood.

“Well, thraipin' chikky varments is an acquired skill, I've always found,” I said, continuing to take notes that made no sense. “So we go through the zat combe with the varments? Then…?”

“Ye be up nap o' thikky hill.”

“Ah.”

Sarah leaned close. “I recognized a word in that sentence. I think I'm getting the hang of this language. It's good to know that all those years of watching BBC America are paying off.”

“And that's where the faery circle is?” I asked the man, trying not to giggle. “Up nap o' thikky hill?”

“Aye.” The old man narrowed his eyes and spat neatly to the side. Sarah looked appalled. “Dawn't ye go kickin' up t'pellum on thikky hill.”

“We wouldn't dream of it,” I promised solemnly.

“Ye maids be master Fanty Sheeny t'gwain ye ta the faery circle. 'Tis naught good ye find up nap o' thikky hill.”

“Well, now, that's just lost me,” Sarah said helplessly, turning to me for translation.

I winked at the old man. “Really? Bad, is it?”

“Aye. 'Tis evil.” He winked back at me, and spat again.

“That's a common fallacy, you know,” I said, tucking away the notebook. Beside me, Sarah groaned. “Although faery rings have been considered places of enchantment for many centuries, they aren't really made by faeries. They are the result of a fungal growth pattern. Mushrooms, you know?”

The man blinked at me. Sarah tugged on my shirt and tried to pull me to the car she'd rented for the duration of our trip.

“I know this area is rich in folklore, and faery rings certainly have their share of believers, but I'm afraid the truth is much more mundane. It turns out that there are three distinct types of rings, and that the effects on the grass depend on the type of fungus growing there, although not all rings are visible…”

“Ignore her, she's a heathen,” Sarah said, yanking me toward the car. “Thank you for your help! Have a good day!”

The old man waved a gnarled hand, spat again, and hobbled past us toward the pub.

“You are so incorrigible! Honestly, spouting off all that stuff about fungus to that very colorful old man.”

I got into the car, taking a moment to readjust myself to the English-style cars. “Hey, you started this bet, not me. I'm just doing my part to win serious ‘I told you so' rights. Ready?”

“Just a sec…oh, whew. Thought I'd forgotten this.” Sarah folded a wad of photocopied pages and stuck them in her coat pocket. “I can't wait to see what effect these spells have on the faery ring!”

“I am obliged by reason to point out that some weird quasi-Latin words found in a Victorian book on magic are not very likely to have any result other than making your friend and companion don a long-suffering look of martyrdom.”

Sarah lifted her chin and looked placidly out the window as we crept through town. “You can scoff all you want—these spells were written by a very famous medieval mage, and passed down through one family over the centuries. The book I found it in was very rare: only fifty copies printed, and most of them destroyed. And I have it on the best authority that the spells are authentic, so I have every confidence that you'll be eating that long-suffering martyred look before the sun sets.”

“Uh-huh.”

By dint of Sarah consulting the hiking map she'd picked up in London, we tooled along the lazy river that wound around the town, headed over the stone bridge, and turned the car in the direction of farmland and the famed Harpford Woods.

“Left side,” Sarah pointed out as I strayed to the right.

“Yup, yup, got it. Just a momentary aberration. Let's see…down past the big farm, then take the road south to a bunch of trees. Beware of the varments. What do you think a zat combe is?”

“I have no idea, but it sounds fabulously English. Here, do you think?”

We pulled off the road and got out of the car to eye the field stretched out before us. It was the perfect day for a walk in the country, what with pale blue, sunny skies, the bright green of the newly dressed trees, hundreds of daisies scattered across the field bobbing their heads in the breeze, birds chattering like crazy as they swooped and swirled around overhead, no doubt busily gathering nesting materials. Even the sheep that dotted the hillsides were picturesque and charming…at least when viewed from the distance.

We gave them a wide berth as we followed what the hiking map showed as a right-of-way through a huge open pasture and up a hill to where a sparse crowning of trees waved gently in the June breeze.

“This is so awesome. It's absolutely idyllic! And the emanations—my god, they're everywhere. We have to be close, Portia,” Sarah said emphatically, looking around us with happiness. “I feel a very strong sense of place here.”

“Yeah, me, too,” I answered, stopping by a fallen tree to scrape sheep poop off my shoe.

“I knew you'd feel it, too. I can't wait to try the mage's spells—they simply can't fail. Interesting arrangement of the trees, don't you think? They appear to make a circle around something. Shall we investigate?”

“Lead on, MacDuff.” I followed obediently as Sarah, glowing with excitement, broached a sparse ring of trees. In the center, a space of about eighteen feet was open to the sky, covered in lush, emerald grass.

“There it is!” Sarah grabbed my arm and pointed. Her voice dropped to an awe-filled whisper. “The famed West County faery ring! It's perfect! Just what I imagined it would be! It's like a holy place, don't you think?”

I left her hugging herself with delight, marching over to squat next to the bare earth that marked the boundaries of the faery ring. The ring was about four feet wide, a perfect circle of bare earth surrounded by lush grass growing on the inside and outside of it. There was nothing to indicate the cause, no mushrooms visible, but I knew they weren't always seen. I touched the sun-warmed dirt, and mused, “I wonder if there's a lab around here where I could send a soil sample so we can find out just which fungus caused this ring?”

“Infidel,” she said without heat, slapping her coat pockets, pulling out the spell pages, and turning around in the way women who have forgotten their purses have. “Do you have the camera?”

I cocked an eyebrow at her. “You took it away from me at Denhelm, if you recall.”

“Oh, that's right—you insisted on taking pictures of the farmer's son rather than the bog man mummy. I must have left the camera in my bag.”

“You have to admit, the son was much better looking than that moth-eaten old bog man.”

She straightened up to her full five-foot nothing. “That bog mummy is said to have been used in a druid sacrifice, and thus could well contain the spirit…oh, never mind. I can see by the mulish expression on your face that you are closing yourself up to any and all things unexplainable. Let me have the car keys so I can run back to town and get the camera.”

“I'll do it—”

A little sparkle lit her eyes. “No, you stay and meditate in the faery ring. Maybe if you open yourself up to the magic contained within, you'll see how blind you've been all these years. Here, you can read the spells over while I'm gone, but don't try them out until I get back. I want to see everything the ring has to offer!”

I took the pages she handed me, plopping down to sit with crossed legs in the middle of the circle. “All right, if you're sure you're OK with driving on the wrong side of everything.” I plucked a piece of grass and chewed the end of it as I shucked off my light jacket. “I'll soak up a bit of sun while you're gone.”

“Portia!” Sarah's eyes grew huge. “You can't do that!”

“Do what, sunbathe? I'm not going to take off my clothes, just roll up my sleeves,” I said, suiting action to word.

“You can't eat anything that grows in the faery ring. It's…it's sacrilegious! In fact, I don't think you should be in the ring at all. I'm sure that's going to anger the faeries.”

I rolled my eyes, chewing on the blade of grass. “I'll take my chances against the fungus. Remember to stay on the left.”

She hurried off after delivering herself of a few more dire warnings as to my fate if I continued. I sat enjoying the sun for a few minutes, but that quickly lost its charms. I made a search of the area surrounding the ring, but there was nothing there but trees, grass, daisies and buttercups, and the wind whispering through the leaves.

“Right. A little scientific investigation is in order,” I said aloud to break the silence. I seated myself again in the faery ring, plucking another blade of grass to chew while I consulted the photocopies Sarah had thrust upon me. The text explaining the purpose of the spells was couched in dramatically obscure language, no doubt fooling the more gullible reader into believing its authenticity. “It's going to take a lot more than some lame attempts at mysticism to fool me,” I muttered as I ran my finger down the spells. “
Magicus circulus contra malus, evoco aureolus pulvis, commutatus idem dominatio aqua
…oh, for heaven's sake, how hokey can you get? I bet this isn't even real Latin—”

A glimmer of something caught the corner of my eye. I turned my head to look at it, thinking someone had dropped a penny or bit of glass on the ground that had caught the sunlight, but there was nothing.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, as if something that posed a threat was approaching.

“Honestly, Portia, how pathetic is it that you're letting Sarah's chat about magic get to you?” I rubbed my arms against a sudden prickling of goose bumps, and gave myself a mental lecture about allowing someone's enthusiasm to sway my common sense.

A little flash of light in midair had me whipping around to look at it.

There was nothing.

“Oh, this is ridiculous. I'm spooking myself, and over what? Figments of an overactive imagination…”

Directly in front of me, something twinkled in the air again, just as if tiny motes of metal had reflected the sunlight.

To my astonishment, the twinkling continued, growing thicker until the air around me seemed to collect, flashing like a thousand tiny, nearly imperceptible, lights.

“I'm hallucinating,” I said, closing my eyes. “It's the sun. I'm sun blind, or having heatstroke, or the fungus in the faery ring is a hallucinogenic.”

I opened my eyes, sure I would see only the top of a sunny hill, but instead gawked as the twinkling lights gathered themselves into an opaque form.

“It's got to be the fungus,” I said quickly, getting to my feet and backing up out of the ring. “It's from the peyote family or something—”

As I backed away, I stumbled over a lump in the grass, falling onto my butt. My mind came to an abrupt stop as the form turned into a person. I shook my head, blinking rapidly to clear my vision. “All right. Time to get some medical aid. This silliness has gone on long enough.”

“Oh, there you are!” the hallucination said as it turned to me. “Thank heaven you called me. Quickly, we don't have much time. I must pass on the Gift and be on my way before they find me.”

The hallucination—in the form of a woman, slightly shorter than me, with long black hair and brilliant blue eyes—stood over me with her hands on her hips, an exasperated look on her attractive face. “Merciful sovereign, are you faery struck?”

“Don't be ridiculous,” I answered, my voice coming out as a croak. I cleared my throat. “There are no such things as faeries. Oh, man, what am I doing? I'm talking to a hallucination?”

The woman—I couldn't help but think of her as such when she looked so real—rolled her eyes for a moment, then startled me by grabbing my arm and hefting me to my feet. “Don't tell me they didn't conduct the preliminaries with you? You passed the trials, yes?”

“That must be some serious fungus,” I answered, brushing the bits of grass off my butt as I looked at the faery ring. “I could swear I felt someone touch me.”

“Hello! Can't you hear me? I'm talking here!”

“It's amazing, absolutely amazing. I'm going to have to get a sample for the nearest lab to analyze. This could be dangerous if children came across it—who knows what sort of thing they would hallucinate.” I dug through my pockets, hoping for a plastic bag or something I could use to hold a sample of the earth. Unfortunately, I had nothing on me other than a package of gum. “Damn. I'll just have to wait for Sarah, then pop back to town to get something—”

“Are you deaf?” the woman in front of me shouted, waving her arms in the air. I watched her, amused at the lengths my imagination would go to under the influence of a delusionary drug. She looked quite normal, dressed in a tight pair of green pants and a chunky tan and green sweater. She was frowning, clearly unhappy about something.