Chapters 12--Epilogue

Chapter 12: Got Wood?

“Are you sure this is the place?” Steve asked Tarin. “I mean, I’ve seen worse neighborhoods, but only because I’m an occultist.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Tarin said, stopping in front of a large red door. “The real estate is cheap and Buck cares nothing for appearances.” She knocked.
“Have you met this man in person at least?” Steve said, doubtfully. “Because if this was a cunning vampire ploy, I would be very, very, not surprised.”
“Well, I haven’t met him, as such, but I saw an ad in the paper. ‘Buck Steelham, Carpenter, Custom Woodwork and Finishing.”
“Where did you find this paper? In your local erotic supply store? Because it sounds to me like---”
The door was then opened by a short, burly man with an open mouth and a squint.
“Um,” Tarin said, “Mr. Steelham?”
The man narrowed his eyes further, which Steve hadn’t thought possible, and said “Bssbussy.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Boss’s busy. Workin. No extra work see.”
“Ah, well, could you tell him Tarin the Righteous is here?”
“Ah said, ‘Sssbussy.’”
Tarin and Steve exchanged a glance. There was clearly no getting around the man, who looked like he was nine months pregnant with a small barn, and was clearly stupid enough to sleep with a small barn to begin with. They heard a voice from within.
“Hamburt? Who’re ya talking too?”
“Speople.”
“Damnit—hang on whoever y’all are,” the voice called, and suddenly a tall, muscular man with sandy hair and (inevitably) a flannel shirt appeared. “Hamburt, just you go sweep the wood shavins for me, then have your lunch.”
He turned to Tarin and Steve and looked at the appraisingly. “He’s a good boy, bit slow. My brother, you see. What can I do for you?”
Tarin proferred her hand. “I’m sorry to trouble you, Mr. Steelham. I’m Tarin the Righteous, and this my friend Fr. Stephen. We’re trying to prevent an uprising in the world of the undead and I thought maybe you could help us.”
His handshake was firm, yet surprisingly gentle.
“Undead, is it? Huh. And I thought my days in that line of work were over,” he sighed in world-weary manner. “Come on in then. We’ll see what we can do.”


“Voluptua? Are you home?” Katie knocked on the door nervously. She was getting more an more unsettled by the whole state of affairs, and Voluptua quite scarred her. She couldn’t find Roquefort or Lucretius anywhere but had gotten directions from Withers to Voluptua’s townhouse. No one was answering. Everyone seemed to have forgotten her.
She decided to go see what Lucretius was up to. Vampires, she thought, might be a little too much for a beginner.


Steve, Tarin and Buck were drinking black coffee and sitting around a beautiful wooden table that Buck had made with his own hands. . It was a good table. It was a table on which you could eat dinner with your family, a table on which you could set a foamy mug of beer while you stopped drinking to teach your son how to play catch so he wouldn’t become gay. It was a table that would vote for John McCain, if tables could vote, which they couldn’t, probably because they tended to be rather brown in color. A damn fine table.
They were having a fine time, too: Steve found that while he and Buck may not have had everything in common, he at least hadn’t been alive for a thousand years and didn’t try to kill him.
“And I held her in my arms then, but I knew it was too late. There weren’t a drop of blood left in her. I won’t say I wept, but--” Buck took a swill of his coffee—“God, there are time when I wish I could. I had to give up chasin them bloodsuckers after that. Not if they were hurtin the people I love.”
“God, I know what you mean,” Tarin said, “I lost a good dachshund that way.”
“Celibacy is the answer,” added Steve.
“Too red-blooded,” said Buck said, setting his mug down. “But back to this stake. I’d know if I had it, right?”
“Well gosh, I don’t know,” Tarin said. “Steve, did the prophets say anything about that?”
Steve shrugged.
Tarin narrowed her eyes. “Fr. Stephen! Are you keeping something from us? From the mission? From OUR QUEST?”
“Honesty,” said Buck, “is the best policy.”
“Alright, alright, they said that it would make itself apparent when the moment was right. Are you happy?”
“I just don’t see why you’d hold that back from us,” said Buck.
“It just seemed a little over the top,” Steve groused.
At that moment the sound of irritated, condescending voices floated through the sawdust-scented air. Steve looked out the window: sure enough, the sun had gone down.
“What is that ghastly smell, Voluptua?”
“I imagine it’s the scent of people who work for a living. Just keep walking.”
“I don’t understand why you two know so much about this and I don’t. Highly suspect, I say. Moreover, I believe you two are plotting to prevent me from attaining the stake, because I know the way you think, and it’s very selfish.”
“Oh, are you still talking?”
“You’re a bitch and no one loves you. Also—oooh, is that man pregnant with a small barn?”
Voluptua, Lucretius and Roquefort stepped into the workroom and surveyed it in the manner one might examine a backed up toilet. Buck stood up.
“Now I don’t want trouble from you lot. I know what you are, and who you are and what you’re after, and why you are and when you are. And I think it’d be best if y’all just left,” he said.
Roquefort parried this thrust of diplomacy with an impatient kick at stack of boards. “Wrongo! We’re here to kill you.”
“I was afraid of that,” said Tarin, also standing. “If we’re going to finally throw this down, you should know that I take no prisoners, and Lucretius, you’ll understand if I don’t spare your life.”
“Fickle! Women are fickle. Fickle as a pickle,” grumbled Lucretius, who did not look particularly alarmed.
“Well, you’ve certainly aged, Buck,” said Voluptua. “I wonder if it’s done anything to improve your flavor.”
“You look as pretty as a peony, just like always. A lecherous, malicious, soulless and depraved peony,” said Buck, glaring at her.
“I say, you know what would just be hilarious?” said Lucretius, to the room at large, “If one time we run into a man and it turns out Voluptua hasn’t slept with him at some point! Oh me and my funny ideas.”
“Look, just give us the wretched stake, you flannel-encrusted yokel, and we’ll save you from Voluptua’s evil clutches,” said Roquefort.
“No, let’s kill him anyway. I want to,” said Voluptua.
“Oh ho! A little unfinished business, hmmm? Baring a grudge, are we? Things maybe didn’t turn out the way you’d intended for once, eh?” said Lucretius, in a voice radiant with hope and schadenfreude.
“I’m getting bored. Are we vampires, or the parent-teacher-association welcoming committee for returning students who have had familial troubles? Just kill the man, Voluptua,” said Roquefort, kicking again at the pile of boards.
A sudden intense quiet descended over the room like rohypnol clouding the mind of a fifteen year old.
“What? Why are you all quiet? Do I have the blood of a raven-haired virgin in my teeth?” Roquefort stared, peeved, at the assembled company. Then he followed their gaze and looked down at the pile of planks he had been kicking.
There, in a beam of moonlight, on the floor, was a long, thick, oaken stake, covered in strange markings and looking remarkably pointy.
“Oh,” said Roquefort.
Several things happened very fast. Roquefort, Tarin and Lucretius all dived for the Wooden Stake of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Sometimes Y, followed by Stephen and Buck, who felt obligated to assist Tarin in a two-against-one fight. Stephen couldn’t exactly figure out what was going on in the scuffle, but before he had even gotten out his holy water pistol Lucretius had sprinted out of the door, closely followed by Tarin, and Buck had been thrown out the window by Voluptua, closely followed by Voluptua. Roquefort then kicked him in the stomach, possibly to look like he was doing something.
“Damnit,” growled Stephen, sitting up. “I don’t have the bloody stake. Was that necessary?”
Roquefort was peering out the window. “No, no trace of them. I wonder what she’s going to do with him? Inventive woman, Voluptua, you have to give her that.”
Stephen aimed his holy water pistol at Roquefort. “If you try to kick me again, I will squirt you with holy water.”
Roquefort turned. “Oh I don’t want to kill you. D’you know, I’ve gotten quite used to having you about? Anyway, wouldn’t do much good, you haven’t got the stake.”
“What’s going to happen with that? Aren’t you worried, what with it’s being the one thing that can permanently kill you, and all?” Stephen stood up warily.
Roquefort sat at the table and lit a cigarette from a pack of Marb Reds which were lying there. “Scenic little shit heap, isn’t it? Anyway, it could go one of two ways: Tarin gets the stake from Lucretius, finds her super lover of her life person, and kills me, or Lucretius keeps the stake, unites his powers with Tarin’s, and becomes ruler of the undead.”
“Is that a bad thing for you?” Stephen said, sitting at the table.
“Hummmm,” said Roquefort. “I haven’t exactly thought about that. I’ve been running around on this quest, trying to prevent both Tarin and Lucretius from getting the stake, sleeping with various beautiful women, getting us out of the messes that Lucretius gets us in, trying to oppress and destroy the working man, but do you know what? I’ve never really stopped to think, what DO I want? What does Roquefort want?”
“What do you want, then?” Stephen asked, cautiously.
“I don’t know! It’s all so confusing! God, what a tangled web we weave!”
“Quite.”
“Oh! I’ve just thought of something!”
“That you want?”
“No! Tarin needs Buck to kill me! He’s her lover who owns the stake! Hahaha! Voluptua’s probably ripped him to shreds by now. How roaringly convenient!”
Steve sighed. “I liked Buck. He was slightly less insane than anyone else I know. He probably doesn’t deserve whatever it is Voluptua’s done to him.”
“Well, he shouldn’t have been in his workshop when she came to kill him, now should he?” said Roquefort. “Maybe that’s something I want. To sort of stay out of harms way and watch this great soap opera we call life.”
“It gets lonely, just watching,” Stephen pointed out.
“No it doesn’t. We’ve been doing it for centuries.”
“Who’s we? You and Voluptua?”
“No! Lucy of course. The times we had---”
Roquefort stopped as if he’d just thought of something.
“Roquefort,” said Stephen, “am I correct in assuming that you have decided that you do not want Tarin and Lucretius to get married and rule the undead world and that you mostly hate Tarin because your best friend is obsessed with her?”
“Yes! Yes I have!” Roquefort leapt up. “I’m invigorated with vigor! We have to stop Voluptua from killing Buck! Tarin must marry him, not Lucretius!”
“But won’t that make it easier for Tarin to kill you, should she get her hands on the stake?” Stephen said.
“It’s a risk that must taken! Time is of the essence! To Voluptua’s den of iniquity! We shall charge forward like knights rescuing a beautiful damsel, except that she’s evil, and we’re actually rescuing somebody from her instead! Huzzah!”
Stephen paused for a moment. He realized that he and Roquefort, against all odds, had ended up on the same side. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go fight the forces of darkness.”

Chapter 13: Back to the Multiverse

Voluptua had not, of course, ripped Buck to shreds. She had whisked him away to her pleasure dungeon, although more because that was her general base of operations than because she wanted to use it for its intended purpose.
“Sit down, sit down,” she waved a hand at Buck. “I’m going to keep you here a moment while I sort something out.
“Um, are you intending on strapping me down? These chairs are covered in restraints.”
“Do I intend to strap you down, Buck. Do I intend to,” Voluptua corrected, glaring into the distance. “And no, sit wherever, or stand, I don’t care.”
Buck settled into the least problematic of the chairs available. He had a fairly good idea how this scenario was going to turn out. “So, Miss V. Seems you have me at your mercy yet again.”
“If by ‘yet again,’ you mean, ‘as usual,’ then yes, yes I do,” Voluptua said, leafing through a book that she had left on a tray of whips. “Well now, according to this, tonight is the night. The stars are aligned.”
“Oh, I think we both knew that,” Buck said, wishing she’d fastened the straps after all. It added to the atmosphere.
“And yet—sexual union is not apparently necessary,” Voluptua muttered.
“Um. It, err, isn’t? What union?” Buck asked, then added, “And if you think I’d lay down with a creature like you, you’d be mistaken. This time.”
“Shut up Buck,” said Voluptua, briskly, “Now listen. There’s a stake, right, which you apparently have, or had, until Lucretius got his hands on it. Heh. Yet the stake is no good on its own; the stake-wielder, heh, must be balanced by a counterpart in order to effectively dominate the black underbelly of creation. Do you follow?”
“Yes,” said Buck, who was in fact starting to suspect this evening was not going to go the way he had thought it would.
“And... there is something else which seems to have fallen into place… but my, how heavy-handed. Traditional I suppose. Well, Roquefort too has his uses. Thoughtful of him in his bullheaded way to help us with that one.”
“...Excellent?” Buck said.
“Now,” said Voluptua, “how shall I make sure you do not assist Tarin in her quest to claim to control of the stake?”
“Um,” Buck said, “was that rhetorical? Also, aren’t you worried about Lucretius?”
“I would be if he were competent, or if Tarin was seriously about to consider some sort of union… you are the hitch in my plan.”
“You have a plan?”
“I always have a plan,” Voluptua said. “I carry plans like other women carry tampons.”
“Eww,” Buck said. “Look. Why don’t you just strap me to this chair, for old times’ sake, and we engage in some creepy metaphorical sex, and then while you go off and be dastardly, Tarin comes to rescue me. That seems like something which would happen.”
“Those days are over, my good man,” Voluptua said, “Anyhow. You go rescue Tarin.”
“Does, uh, she need rescuing? Maybe we should rescue Lucretius? Make it a fair game, you know, sportsmanship?”
“You’ll be rescuing her from me, you idiot,” Voluptua said, “At which point—no, I’ve done this before. I’m not telling you.”
“Awwww.”
“Now run along and rescue her! Or don’t. I could use an early night.”
“Voluptua,” said Buck, “I think we both know that was a lie.”
“I know,” said Voluptua, “I was being sporting.”

Buck ran along the rain-drenched streets, to Tarin, where his heart lay. He had deduced that Voluptua was up to something. His first clue had been her refusal to tie him up. Buck knew women. That was a bad sign. And then there had been the “I’m not telling you.” If Buck knew anything about the undead, it was that when they told you they weren’t telling you something, they meant it, except when sometimes they didn’t.
At any rate, even if he wasn’t going to play into her hands, he felt he ought to be around when whatever she was up to went down. In case someone needed a good calm voice of reason, or a solid, well-deserved punch.
And yet—some piece of the puzzle was rubbing him the wrong way, like how he would feel if a queer person accidentally touched him. He was pretty confident that Tarin would wrest the stake from Lucretius, but was Voluptua not worried about Roquefort? Or the priest? Or him, for that matter? It would have been better manners, Buck reflected, if she had at least acted a little intimidated by him.
He stopped for a moment, troubled somewhat by the problem that he had no idea where Tarin was. It was time to rely on his innate street smarts. Tarin would be following Lucretius. But where would Lucretius go? What did demons do once they got hold of a stake? Where did they go? He looked up to the pitch black sky.
“If there is an Almightly,” he murmured to himself, “it would probably be in a lot of people’s best interests if He helped me out right about now.”
The night was quiet and foreboding. Buck scanned the street dejectedly. No one else was out and about. No one else was worried about the Wooden Stake of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Sometimes Y. Only a solitary frog hopped along through a puddle in the gutter.
“I didn’t think you got frogs out here,” muttered Buck, scratching his lightly stubbled (yet still well-groomed) chin. He paused. “IHOP!”

“IHOP!” Roquefort told Stephen. “The one downtown is open all night! Lucretius loves that place! Also, it’s a portal to the Netherworld!”
“Why would an IHOP be—you know what? Never mind. I don’t care. Let’s just get a cab,” Stephen said.
“Why get a cab—when you can turn into a bat!” Roquefort said triumphantly.
“Roquefort, I can’t turn into a bat. Also, your clothes would fall off and then what would you do when you got there?”
“Ha, what wouldn’t I do? Get it?” Roquefort was back in the best of spirits. “Anyway, in the time it took me to make that rather witty joke (I think you’ll agree it was witty), I have decided on a different course of action. Give me your hand. And don’t look at me like that. I haven’t got a promise ring, if that’s what you’re after. Now now, you know you’ll like it.”
“Roquefort,” said Stephen, “does it ever even begin to enter your head that sometimes people aren’t trying to sleep with you?”
“Oh I don’t get much sleep!” Roquefort said. “Raarw, demon lover! It’s my new catchphrase!”
And with that, he grabbed Stephen’s hand and lifted them both into the night sky.

“Lucretius,” Tarin said, warily, “you efficiency thus far is actually starting worry me.”
“As well it should, my luscious avenger!” Lucretius said. He turned to Katie. “I hope the ropes aren’t too tight, dear. You understand this is how such things usually work.”
“Not at all!” Katie effused. “Honestly, I really never thought this would happen to me, but gosh, destiny is destiny, isn’t it!?”
“See? Even my virginal sacrifice is being helpful. Now if I could but persuade you to take my hand in unholy union…”
Tarin sighed and looked around the deserted IHOP. The staff, completely unsurprised to learn that their establishment was a portal to the netherworld, had most obligingly cleared out, and Katie, completely unsurprised to learn that she had become enmeshed in an ancient prophesy had most obligingly allowed herself to be tied to a table.
“Are you going to wait until it is exactly midnight?” Katie said hopefully. “Also, I hope you don’t mind my asking, but how much blood do you need?”
“Oh I’m actually waiting until our mutual friend here agrees to be my accursed bride for an eternity of blissful damnation. Can’t open a portal to the netherworld without a counterpart. Otherwise things just get ungodly out-of-whack.”
“So not too much blood?” Katie asked.
“Dash it all woman, how should I know?” Lucretius snapped. “I suppose we’ll just let you keep bleeding until the thing opens.”
“Um,” said Katie.
Lucretius brandished the stake in manner that could only be described as suggestive. “Now, Miss Tarin, are you going to tell me that an eternity of everything your heart and mind and body could desire isn’t a little tempting?”
Tarin sighed. “Lucretius, you would never give me what I truly desire.”
“What? What?” Lucretius looked hugely affronted. “I do beg to differ. If this is the work of that damned Voluptua, so help me--Why, give me but a mere five minutes--”
“I’ve got five minutes,” said Katie, helpfully.
“No,” Tarin said, ignoring the virginal sacrifice, “What I truly desire is the death of my sworn enemy, Roquefort. Only then can I stop roaming the night. Only then can I find peace. Then my quest will be at an end.”
“Oh,” said Lucretius, looking a little put-off.
“Lucretius,” Tarin said, “this is how it has to be. This is according to the prophecy. How many times has Roquefort insulted your intelligence, or taken credit for your brilliant ideas?”
“Many,” sniffed Lucretius.
“How many times has he accepted your help, only to leave you to chase some woman? Or Voluptua?”
“Especially Voluptua! I hate her!” snarled Lucretius.
“Hey! Voluptua and I are BFFs,” said Katie, from somewhere in the depths of denial.
“How many times has he eaten my mother?” continued Tarin.
“Constant—oh, well, once, I suppose, but that’d do it,” mused Lucretius.
“It’s all so clear!” Tarin said. “The prophecy is more accurate than I thought. I will avenge my mother and complete my task as a vampire slayer by killing Roquefort. And through unholy union with you, I will balance you evil, not to say disorganized tendencies and be a force of moderation in the black world of the undead. I do hope Fr. Stephen and Buck aren’t offended in any way.”
“Oh, I’d just file them under ‘don’t care,’ if I was you,” Lucretius said. “Still. Your logic is good…”
“My logic is brill—mphhh!” Tarin was cut off abruptly by a tight, cold hand around her neck.
“Did you really think I was going to let this happen?” Voluptua asked, frostily.
“Voluptua!” hissed Lucretius. “God how I hate you!”
“No sentiment was ever more mutual,” Voluptua responded. “Now untie that girl.”
“See? See? BFFs!”
“Voluptua, what you fail to realize is that this is an impasse,” Lucretius said. “You have my partner in fiendishness, but I have the Wooden Stake of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Sometimes Y.”
“Unhand her I say!” yelled Buck, bursting onto the scene like breath of mountain freshness.
“Or what?” Voluptua asked mildly. “Anyway, do you really want Lucretius to go through with this?”
“Well—” Buck paused. “Voluptua, this isn’t very sporting.”
“I have an ingenious solution!” said Lucretius. “A duel! A duel, I say! You and me Buck, a duel for Tarin’s hand and the Wooden Stake!”
“Since you already have the stake and since that bloodsucking hussy has Tarin, I can’t see my way clear to how that would benefit you.” Buck said, overcome with a pang of honesty.
“Yes, but Voluptua likes a bargain,” Lucretius said. “Can the three of us, you, me, and Tarin, agree to give her some kind of diplomatic immunity, no matter who wins this scuffle? And I don’t say this lightly. She is easily my least favorite creature under the sun.”
“Mmmph!” agreed Tarin.
“Seems a fair bet, actually,” said Buck. “I’ll agree. I’m a man of my word. If Voluptua wants to trust you to yours, that’s her business.”
“Oh, I trust Lucretius not to mess around with prophecies. I agree. Tarin, blink twice if you too agree. There now; that’s settled.”
“I agree!” Katie added.
“What sort of duel shall this be?” Lucretius mused.

Chapter 14: Strange Bedfellows

“What sort of duel are they planning?” whispered Roquefort to Fr. Stephen, from where they were squinting into the IHOP.
“I don’t think they’ve decided yet.” Stephen peered in through the window. “I also have no idea who has the upper hand in this situation. Do you think Lucretius has some ingenious plan? Or is he just making things up as he goes along.”
“Ah, well, I’ve always been more of the brains of the outfit,” Roquefort said. “Let me think. Our objectives are the same, yes? Stop Tarin’s vicious and uncalled for plan to kill me, to say nothing of wresting the stake from Lucretius, wipe Tarin and Buck from the face of the earth, then follow it all off with good round of shagging. Not with you. With Voluptua. But you can watch.”
“Roquefort, convenient as this alliance is, I fear we may have different objectives, in the final reckoning. If we can agree on a way to stop Lucretius, then I’m not averse to preventing Tarin from killing you, but I’m going to have remain opposed to your unrestrained carnage,” Stephen said. “Also, I don’t want to watch. Anything.”
“Why are you so damn short-sighted? Think, man, think! Tarin causes nothing but trouble and must be destroyed.” Roquefort rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Look here. I promise not to do anything to Buck or that girl. You let me kill Tarin. We call it good. Eh?”
“No, not good,” Stephens aid, but an idea was creeping into his mind. “Don’t you think, though, it would be a good idea if Buck won the duel?”
“Errr, in that it would prevent Lucretius from allowing Tarin to kill me, yes. In that it would allow Tarin to kill me, no.”
“If we help Buck win, Lucretius will be free from Tarin’s clutches, and he may be amenable to some sort of compromise,” Stephen pointed out. “Have you got a better idea?”
“Well, no, no I haven’t. But I don’t see how we can help Buck win some kind of duel.”
“Stephen frowned thoughtfully. “I suppose that depends on how they are dueling.”

“There’s got to be some way we can duel,” Lucretius mused. “Are you sure you don’t play chess?”
“Too damn elitist,” said Buck. “And I thought most demons played the fiddle. As part of the job description.”
“That’s Satan you’re thinking of. Not much room for promotion in the realm of eternal fire, I’m afraid. How are you with riddles?”
Buck narrowed his eyes. “Oh, I’m okay with riddles, I just don’t trust that you’d think of a fair riddle. It’d be something like, ‘What has four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening?’ and then the answer would be ‘frankencreature whose legs I had been breaking off and reattaching.’”
“Oh you are good,” said Lucretius, impressed.
“Voluptua could ask one,” said Buck. “Then we could race.”
“On absolutely no account will she be in any way involved in this competition!” snapped Lucretius. “I’d sooner answer a riddle from that meddling priest!”
“I accept your offer,” said Fr. Stephen, marching into the IHOP in a moment of brilliant timing. “I’ve thought of one already.”
“Is it something you have to know Latin to answer?” said Buck suspiciously.
“No,” said Fr. Stephen, “in fact, I think I can say that how long or short a time you’ve been alive, or what languages you’ve studied have nothing to do with the answer.”
“I was being facetious,” said Lucretius. “The priest is obviously biased in Buck’s favor. I refuse.”
“You’re probably right,” said Voluptua, “Buck would know pretty much anything the priest could come up with. We’ll find someone who would allow you a sporting chance of victory.”
“Allow me? Allow me?” Lucretius said. “I don’t know what I was worried about. I’ve got centuries on Buck. Ask anything, priest.”
Fr. Stephen shot Voluptua a suspicious look, but she seemed impassively bitchy as ever.
“Alright, here goes, but if you think the question is unfair, you have to tell me before the other person thinks of an answer,” said Stephen. “Who was the 1960 NASCAR Cup Series champion?”
“Oh! I know this one,” Buck muttered. “I watched it with my dad—”
“Rex White,” Lucretius said. “Victory is mine!”
“How could you possibly know who won a NASCAR Cup Series?” asked Stephen.
“Oh it’s played on a constant loop in Hell,” Lucretius said. “Anyhow, fair’s fair, piss off Buck.”
“Well, that isn’t what I intended on happening,” Buck said, “but fair’s fair. I’m a man of my word. And I do appreciate your trying to help me out, Father.”
“Yeah, nice try,” Lucretius sneered. “Come on, Tarin. Let’s fulfill some destiny!”
“No!” Buck said. “The prophecy can’t be fulfilled without you, Tarin! Without you, that stake is useless.”
“Wrongo,” said Lucretius. “Without her, I would just unleash chaos. The purpose of the counterpart is to balance the power of the stake-bearer. I’d prefer to be in control, but I’d settle for being king of a whirlwind. Demons are good at chaos.”
“I hate to say this,” Tarin said, “but it seems that this is the prophecy. I’d be morally remiss not to attempt to impose some restraint on Lucretius, and besides, I’ve wandered this world so long, searching for a man who was my equal. They get boring so soon! But most importantly, I will finally, finally, finally be able to kill Roquefort.”
“Of course you will, my eternal darling!” Lucretius said. “Now, Katie, if you’d be so good as to hold still, we’ll just open that portal right on up and get down to business.”
“Errr,” said Katie, “eeek? Voluptua?”
“Sorry dear,” said Voluptua, “I’ve got myself all sorted out.”
“Oh don’t worry, I’ll start with a just a small incision,” said Lucretius.
Under the neon hum of the IHOP’s lights, Lucretius took the Wooden Stake of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia and Sometimes Y, and made a quick scratch on Katie’s arm. Stephen, Buck, Volutpua stared as a single drop of blood trickled down the Stake’s shaft. And then, in the middle of cheap linoleum floor, a crack started to open.
“Um,” said Buck.
A hot, crimson light shone out of the widening chasm and the lights in the IHOP seemed suddenly dim. The windows and doors look farther away, and Stephen couldn’t help but notice that Lucretius and Voluptua looked a lot scarier in the new, bloody light.
“What is that smell?” asked Buck. “That doesn’t smell like fire or brimstone.”
“Those are the moist and steaming boysenberries of the multiverse,” said Stephen grimly. “Nothing good is about to happen.”
“Roquefort is going to come and rescue us,” said Katie, who was in excellent spirits again now that she hadn’t been bled to death.
“Well that would certainly make a bad day worse,” Voluptua muttered.
The chasm stretched between Lucretius and Tarin, bathing them in the unholy light of universal conquest. Lucretius stretched his hand across the divide. “Take my hand,” he said, “and we’ll make it, I swear.”
“Sorry guys,” Tarin said, “but it must be done.” She stretched out her hand.
“Stop! I’ve come to save you!” Roquefort yelled, busting through the doors like a breath of crypty freshness.
“Oh God,” said Stephen.
“Out of idle curiosity, Roquefort, old thing,” Voluptua asked, “who are you saving?”
“Does that matter woman? Does that matter now of all times? Lucretius! Throw the stake into the fire—oh. I see you’ve stolen my snack and used her as a way to open the portal to the netherworlds, after all that talk about being morally upright. Rich, I call that! Rich!”
“Oh, I suppose you don’t see the difference between a light scratch for a higher good and a self-indulgent much. I don’t know why I thought you would,” Lucretius sniffed haughtily.
“And I don’t know why I thought you would be able to see that using a person as a means, rather than an end in and of themselves, must either be acceptable or universally unacceptable! I at least am consistent and open in my wrong-doing,” Roquefort returned, hotly.
“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few!” Lucretius snarled. “Anyway, your selfishness and condescension are over, now Roquefort. I’m sorry it had to be this way, but I know you’d have done the same. Come, on Tarin!”
“Oh I don’t blame you,” Roquefort said, philosophically, “I really would have done the same thing; you’re quite right. It will be some small satisfaction to know that our last argument ended with you using Mr. Spock as a counterthrust to Emmanuel Kant.”
“Yes, well—what? Spock? What are you talking about?” Lucretius stared at Roquefort in irritation. “You idiot. You really think that thought was first posited by Mr. Spock?”
“No, no I don’t,” sighed Roquefort. “The thought itself is a rather reductionist expression of utilitarianism, and most people think that John Stuart Mill came up with it. I know he’s your favorite philosopher. But Mr. Spock said it that way first! And I wanted to annoy you one more time, so there!”
“Come on, Lucretius, you’ll have the last laugh once you take my hand give me the power to kill him,” Tarin snapped. “The portal won’t stay open forever!”
“You remembered my favorite philosopher?” quavered Lucretius.
“Oh God,” said Tarin.
“Of course, Lucy, how could I forget? You loved the ones with all the good intentions.”
Lucretius hesitated. “Damn it all, I can’t do this! Sorry, Tarin; I’ve had an attack of Platonism! Roquefort, come and rule the moist and steaming multiverse with me!”
“Lucy,” said Roquefort, “I thought you’d never ask.”
He reached out, took Roquefort’s hand, and the two of them leapt into the fiery chasm.
The floor of the IHOP closed with a bit of a pop.
“What,” said Tarin, “the hell.”
“Do you mean to tell me that two sexually ambiguous nosferatu are now in charge of all the supernatural on this earth?” gasped Buck.
“Technically, yes,” said Voluptua, “but the chances of them getting anything done are… slim.”
“Does anyone want to untie me?” asked Katie.
Buck did the honors.
“What now?” mused Tarin, somewhat deflated. “I haven’t killed Roquefort and he and Lucretius are likely to do God knows what to the universe.”
“Have a little more faith in the checks-and-balances system, my girl,” said Voluptua, yawning a little.
“But the stake is gone! How can I kill Roquefort now? It’s my destiny!”
“There are other hellfiends out there,” Stephen said, consolingly.
“And you’ve still got me,” said Buck. “I’m right here where I always was.”
“Well, yes, I do have you” said Tarin moodily. She felt that this was how it was supposed to end, somehow, but she couldn’t help but feel a little bored by it.
“You don’t sound happy,” Stephen observed.
“I don’t know. I sort of enjoyed having an arch nemesis,” Tarin reflected. “It’s hard to be a vampire slayer without one.”
“I suppose,” Stephen said, “but it’s going to be hard to top Roquefort. He was a good nemesis. Maybe you ought to take it easy for a while.”
“Or train me!” Katie added. “You could train me to be a vampire slayer!”
“Uhhhhh,” said Tarin. “I dunno. I guess I could turn in my chain mail. What do you say, Buck?”
There was a loud silence. Everyone looked around. Buck and Voluptua had disappeared.
“Buck! Voluptua has taken Buck! We have to save him!” yelled Tarin.
“He might have gone consensually,” Stephen suggested.
“Not on your life!” Tarin said. “Katie, you come too. You might learn something.”
“Gosh!” said Katie.
“Gosh,” said Stephen.
“After them!” said Tarin.
“Do you honestly think you can kill Voluptua?” Stephen asked. “I mean, she’s a slippery character. I must also point out that she seems to have had a hand in more than one aspect of this little peccadillo.”
“I don’t know exactly how she could be defeated, I guess,” Tarin said. “Huh. Well, we better go consult the Prophets.”
“Why not?” mused Stephen. “They make as much sense as the rest of you.”
“Hey guys!” Katie gushed. “You know what we form? A triumvirate! An evil-fighting triumvirate!”
“You’re getting the hang of this Katie,” said Tarin, “I can already tell. Now we better be on our way! God only knows what she’s doing to him!”


Epilogue

“Our first move should be to make all crucifixes illegal.”
“Crucifi, surely?”
“No, that’s a verb. I crucify, you crucify, they crucify.”
“Don’t be dim! I meant the plural of crucifixes was crucifi. With an ‘i.’”
“That only works if a word ends in –us. It’s Latin. Believe me, I was alive then.”
“Well so was I!”
“I don’t recall you getting up to much grammar.”
“I don’t recall you getting up much at all. All you did was get fed things by nubile slaves and give people bad ideas.”
“Well you have to give people bad ideas in sentences that they understand! Also, every time I caught up with you, you were messing around with that wretched Greek!”
“Greek is full of interesting ideas. Beautiful language.”
“You know who I’m talking about!”
“I most certainly do not!”
“Ha! Ha! Tenth muse my foot!”
“Oh her! I thought you meant--- well never mind.”
“What? What? What are you not telling me?”
“Nothing. I’m not telling you nothing.”
“So you are telling me something?”
“What?”
“That was a double negative.”
“I don’t think I’m the one focusing on the negative here.”
“I’m through with this argument.”
“Alright. Fine. Me too. You know who we haven’t seen in a while? Voluptua. I thought it would be nice to catch up.”
“No! No! Absolutely not! I despise her! You know I despise her!”
“You always assume I know things about you that I don’t.”
“I can tell when you’re being willfully obtuse!”
“I’d rather be willfully obtuse than just obtuse!”
“Well, you’re both!”
“No one loves you!”
“No one loves you!”
“Fine! One thing I think is clear: fewer churches.”
“Oh, that is a good idea.”
“And garlic.”
“I like garlic.”
“You only eat it to irritate me and we both know it.”
“Everything revolves around you!”
“Well, it rather does now, doesn’t it?”
“You and me both, Roquefort. You and me both.”

A note from our sponsors.

Tarin and Steve already read this. I forgot I'd written it. But here you are, a fun-for-the-whole-family VRN special feature.

The following passages are VRN written in the styles of Stephen King, Anne Rice and Ernest Hemingway. I thought about adding a section in the style of Twilight, but then I realized I might have to read part of a Twilight novel to pull it off.

And don't forget to tell me how you scored on the Cosmo Naughty Vampire Sex Quiz!


----------



1
Steve walked up to the withered door of the house on Pine Street, smoking a Winston and guiding Tarin’s slender, shivering form with a callused hand. The hand was callused because he worked with his hands, but then, everyone did back in his hometown of Braintree. Except the fagboys.
“Steve,” whispered Tarin, looking up at him with large, wet eyes, “it’s going to be okay, right?”
Steve looked down at her with calm, flinty, masculine eyes. The rain had stained her cheeks and coat and Steve felt the weight of responsibility on his broad, working-class shoulders. It was a comfortable weight. He wasn’t afraid of it; it felt right, somehow, that he protect this soft, vulnerable woman. “Yeah. It’ll be alright. You can trust me. I’m working-class.”
Doubt crept into Tarin’s upturned face. “But you speak Latin.”
Steve smiled at her feeble attempts to understand his stoic mind, toughened by hard knocks. But then, everyone was stoic in Braintree. You had to be. “Don’t worry. I learned it in a coal mine.”
Tarin smiled, the smile of a woman who knows she has found a man she can trust. “Okay. I’ll knock then.”
And she knocked the large, pretentious brass knocker on Roquefort’s door.
Steve heard footsteps. His intestines twisted and his spleen moved slightly to the left. He remembered what his father had told him, in the coal mine one day: “Son, there’s only two kinds of people who have brass knockers. Brass women and puffed-up fagboys. You don’t want to be fuckin’ with either.”
The door opened. Steve had been expecting a butler, but instead Roquefort himself answered. Opera music, Verdi, played in the background. Steve remembered something his father had said about opera: “Son, only Italians and fagboys like opera. And you don’t want to be fuckin with either. Except sometimes Italians, the young ones. The women. They’re okay.” He had said this after his wife had been run over by a train. There were some things no man could save a woman from.
“Come in, please. I can’t say I was surprised you two turned up,” Roquefort said. “I’m already entertaining a couple of guests; they’d be happy to see you both.”
Entering the parlour, Steve and Tarin saw Lucretius and Voluptua sipping drinks on effeminate couches.
“Well, well, this is a pleasant surprise!” purred Voluptua. “Weren’t we just discussing these two, Lucy?”
“Indeed we were, my dear,” said Lucretius. Steve knew two things about the assembled company: They were European, and they had all been well-educated. You couldn’t trust people like that. Also, they sucked the blood of the living.
“Fr. Stephen, perhaps you could come this way. I’d like to speak to you alone; that would be more pleasant for everyone,” Roquefort said, smiling in a particularly European way.
Steve felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. His father had warned him about men who used semicolons. You couldn’t trust anybody who used semicolons. They might be interested in other kinds of colons.
“Anything you want to tell me, you can tell me plainly in the open,” Steve said. He strongly suspected that Roquefort wanted to anally rape him. It was a constant threat these days.
“Don’t be a Yankee yobo,” said Roquefort. “I’m not going to rape you, if that’s what your thinking. Come on.”
Tarin tried to assume the burden of third-person omniscient narration, but realized that her personality was tepid and badly portrayed. “Fuck,” she said, sweetly, “Someone forgot to write in a believable personality for me. I guess I’ll just go menstruate somewhere until a man comes and impregnates me.”
Her balls tightened.

2
The architecture of the drawing room was richly furnished in satin and velvet, with silk, pearls, and bunches of grapes scattered around the room, in manner of fin-de-siecle Paris. Tarin knew one thing about the assembled company: They were all European, and they were all well-educated. As such, they were much more attractive, interesting, sexy and dangerous people. Also, they sucked the blood of the living.
Voluptua moved toward Tarin erotically. Her throat was a silken white column and her breasts moved beneath her white silk gown like dolphins beneath a turquoise sea.
“Tarin, put aside your trifling scruples, your scrupling trifles of mortality. Embrace the true pleasure of immortality, the pleasure it takes centuries to learn and moments to communicate,” Voluptua whispered through red, parted, moist lips.
Tarin’s heart leapt to her throat and thoughts about the nature of mortality, feminity, masculinity, pleasure, life, death and the French arose conflictedly in her mind.
Lucretius also moved toward Tarin. His throat was like a column of alabaster in a Grecian temple. “Open yourself to a world of experiential and existential bliss and meaninglessness. Drink of my blood, Tarin, and live forever. I’m making a parallel to Roman Catholicism. A parallel exceeded in its obviousness only by its eroticness.”
“Eroticism?” corrected Tarin.
“Shhh. Don’t speak,” Roquefort murmured and pressed a pearly finger to her lips.
“Wow,” Tarin thought, “mortality, life, pleasure, pseudo-Frenchery are heavy shit, man.”

3

Roquefort in chair across from Stephen. Stephen was also sitting in a chair. They were drinking scotch in glasses and smoking.
“The rain is falling,” said Roquefort.
“Yes,” said Stephen.
They sat in silence a few moments.
“She wants to kill me,” said Roquefort.
“Yes,” said Steve.
“A man should fight death.”
Steve took a mouthful of scotch. It burned. “Sometimes.”
“Yes.”
The rain fell.
Roquefort said, “Love is not protection from death.”
Stephen said, “No.”
“I loved a woman.”
“I loved a woman once, too.”
Roquefort glanced at the candle on his desk. It was shorter than the last time he looked at it. “I thought about destroying myself. But then I realized that life is a better punishment than death.”
Steve nodded. That was hard to argue with.
“I sometimes wish,” he said, “that I could use a semi-colon.”




Cosmo's Naughty Vampire Sex Quiz!!!
How much do you know about naughty vampire sex???

1.) Which of these is not an erogenous zone?
a.) The M-Zone.
b.) The G-Spot.
c.) Dakota Fanning.

2.) When you plan on hooking up with a vampire, what do you wear?
a.) A sexy LBG!
b.) What the hell is an LBG?
c.) It’s a Little Black Dress, you moron.

3.) Uh-oh! There’s garlic all over the food at the restaurant. How do you cope with this date spoiler?
a.) Penis.
b.) Pop a Tic-Tac!
c.) The Penis-Zone.

4.) Penis?
a.) Yes please!
b.) But now there’s garlic all over it.
c.) You find it by inserting your finger and beckoning in a “come here” motion while doing Kegels and looking diagonally to your left and thinking of a beach in the south of Germany. Remember to turn the light on so you don’t get his mouth by accident. Whoops!

5.) Do you let him drink your blood on the first date?
a.) Only if I’m having my period- WINK!!!!!
b.) Wait, southern Germany borders Switzerland and Austria.
c.) helphelphelp I am trappd in trunk car tappng in morse code not sexy vampire creepr mlster send help


Results:

Mostly A’s: Wow, you are a degenerate slut! You probably have the herp. Get tested.

Mostly B’s: You are a savvy vampire sex queen. You can probably find the Penis Zone even with the lights out, and really, that’s all a girl needs.

Mostly’s C’s: What do you do, read maps for fun? You are the girl whom we shunned in high school. Try not to be so lame and consider sucking mad cock like the rest of us.

Thank you for the comments, friendies!

Trevor, inexplicably, does not want to be in the VRN. (He and Shay had a discussion about this, resulting in the conclusion on Shay's part: "Whenever I hear about one of Mary's projects, I just stay the hell away and try not to get involved." They know me too well.)

I could probably work you in, Kristina: in what role to you envision yourself?

New chapters probably up by Monday.

Chapter 11: Balance of Power Politics and the Working Man

Any further involvement on the part of Roquefort or Voluptua was postponed until the next night, since the sun had come up. Lucretius, since evil never sleeps, found himself stuck with job of guarding Fr. Stephen, who did go to sleep. Tarin was stuck in charge of Katie.
“This is a vampire slayer’s lair?” Katie asked, looking around Tarin’s aparetment. “I thought you lived in Gothic mansions. I expected fewer Bon Jovi posters.”
“Vampires live in mansions. And I haven’t slept in two days, so I suggest you find a way to get comfy on my futon, otherwise you’ll pretty bored for the next few hours.”
Tarin, optimistically, had intended to get ready for bed and then go to bed. Katie seemed oblivious to this plan.
“Isn’t Voluptua pretty?” she gushed, watching Tarin brush her teeth. “And don’t you think Roquefort is just sex on toast?”
“Fnnrfl.” Tarin spat out toothpaste. “Remember that bit where I’m a vampire slayer? Does that not indicate to you my general feelings towards the species at large?”
“Well, I suppose, but they seem rather fun. Why don’t we play MASH with them?”
“With Roquefort and Voluptua? What are you talking about? I want to mash them into pieces. It’s my sworn duty to kill Roquefort, that’s what we were consulting the bloody prophets about, so we can see who’s got the Wooden Stake of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. And sometimes Y. That’s why they kidnapped Stephen, because he understands the wretched people, and that’s what they were on their way to do when you summoned Lucretius and got a side of vampire and Catholic.”
“Oh.” Katie seemed a little put out, but she wasn’t to be put off. “Lucretius seemed keen on you.
“That’s another kettle of fish entirely.”

Diplomatic relations between the undead, alive, demonic, and hopeful hangers on broke down temporarily next evening. Fr. Stephen refused to tell Lucretius and Roquefort anything concerning the prophecy. Voluptua demanded to know the prophecy and threatened to kidnap Fr. Stephen from his kidnappers and torture it out of him. Tarin demanded Stephen’s immediate release and threatened to kill Katie, but Roquefort called her bluff and she really hadn’t the heart. Lucretius, with rather more likelihood of following through, threatened to kill Stephen if Tarin didn’t order him to reveal the prophecy and then had an extensive argument with Roquefort. (“Waste of blood!” “But free weapons.”)
It was finally arranged that they would all meet together, Fr. Stephen would reveal the prophecy and that in return Voluptua would not bother him again.
“And we,” Lucretius said magnanimously, “will release you back into your natural habitat. I will stop attempting to kill you for as long as a week in return for your translating services.”
They ended up meeting in Roquefort’s gaudy and velvet draped mansion and sitting around a large mahogany table in dining room with a pleasant skull and roses motif.
“Right ho! Let’s have it then!” said Roquefort, rubbing his hands together. “I propose that after Fr. Whosy tells us what he knows, we all disband and have fair-minded, honest race to find and kill this stake-bearer, except of course if you, Tarin, you can do what you like.”
“Since I can’t find a way to stop you, I agree,” said Tarin. “Stephen?”
“Um,” said Stephen. “He will be gruff, but with a heart of gold.”
“Obviously!” said Lucretius in a stage whisper.
“He will be good with his hands. He will wear flannel shirts or no shirts at all. He will be practical and always come through for you in a pinch. He takes pride in keeping his word. He is nobody’s master but his own. He opens doors for women and likes dogs. He makes his own rules.”
“Oh, he sounds rather attractive,” said Tarin.
“Well, not as attractive as I am,” said Lucretius jealously, “but sounds a decent sort. Shame about having to kill him.”
There was a pause in which everyone else realized that Voluptua and Roquefort were staring at each other with expressions of abject horror.
“Falalalala, lalala fuck,” Roquefort said, not a man to stay coherent under pressure. “By the fresh scent of inappropriately shaped jello, this is worse than I thought.”
“What? Who? Why do you and Voluptua know things I don’t?” Lucretius whined.
“Are you experiencing an attack of conscience? You must admit, he sounds all right,” said Stephen.
“No,” said Voluptua, “what we are dealing with here is the worst sort of opponent. We are going to have to deal with, and possibly be in the same room as, a Gritty Everyman.”
“He probably try to ‘tell it like it is,’ and have a monosyllabic name,” said Roquefort.
“And inspire respect and loyalty in his employees, crew, minions, slaves, what ever he has. They always have fawning hangers on,” snapped Voluptua.
“Oh, you had me worried,” said Lucretius. Lucretius had not been born; he came into being as an evil spirit somewhere around 1 AD and viewed people as either more or less likely to be of use to him. Voluptua and Roquefort, however, worked within human constructs, and as such, cultivated the ability to look down on anyone. They had played pleasant childhood games such as “Throw Rocks at Poor People” and “Terrorize the Peasant” and “Make Jokes in Languages That Inferior Classes Don’t Know, Like Sanskrit.” They enjoyed spending money, lying outrageously and generally reassuring each other that there was nothing gritty or everyman about them.
But Tarin and Fr. Stephen exchanged a knowing look. For they already where to find their specimen, Buck “Testosterone” Steelham.

Chapter 11: Remember What the Dormouse Said

What was going on inside of Voluptua’s sordid mind? Her sexual interlude with Tarin had passed from her mind, as sexual interludes tended to with Voluptua. By the time you figured out why your pants were off, she was on the prowl for her next victim.
But Voluptua, soaking erotically in an erotic bubble bath, was experiencing an unpleasant sensation, which was not something that happened very often and least of all in Voluptua’s specially engineered bathtub.
Volptua spent most of her time avoiding boredom. She had no moral conscience, but more problematic for people around her was that she was very extremely gifted at avoiding consequences. Metaphorically speaking, she had spent centuries firing guns in the air and watching, with interest, as bullets fell on other people. Indeed, sometimes she created diabolically unfortunate situations for the expressed purpose of amusing herself by avoiding the consequences.
But, she reflected, playing idly with a pet water snake, the plot had thickened like a belligerent custard. Setting aside the whole problem of Fr. Freudian Displacement, there were now four people who could affect the future of the undead world of darkness. And between those four, there were a limited number of relationships which would be beneficial to her interests. A union of Tarin and Lucretius would be disastrous. On the other hand, while Tweedledick and Tweedledum (as she thought of Roquefort and Lucretius) kept each other out of trouble with their own incompetence, they left Tarin free to fulfill all manner of prophecies, especially with a priest on her side. And if Tarin killed Roquefort, there would be no one to distract Lucretius from being a massive bother.
The hub, nub and crux of the situation was Tarin. I ought to have killed her instead of having sex with her, Voluptua mused, but she had seemed so delightfully confused and disturbed. At the heart of the matter, Voluptua enjoyed trouble too much to dispatch her enemies when an easy opportunity presented itself. Villains, as James Bond could have told her, tend to have this problem.
It occurred to Voluptua that she had promised to rescue Fr. Stephen. With Tarin. But Tarin had left in a flurry of sexual confusion and unnecessary accusations, culminating with some rather cutting personal remarks about Voluptua’s character and the ludicrous claim that she could rescue Fr. Stephen better without the help of “a malevolent, manipulative sexual predator and slut.”
Voluptua resolved to rescue Fr. Stephen anyway, because if there was a question of his being in any way useful she wanted him where she could see him. He might know more about the Wooden Stake of Etc than he was letting on.
Besides, rescuing someone from the Dynamic Duo was like rescuing candy from a moist, succulent baby.

Voluptua found them outside the Temple of Prophesy (mysterious Grecian temple on a barren moor, always surrounded by thunderstorms and the distant howl of wolves) arguing.
“How did you manage to drag her along?” ranted Lucretius. “Send her back to her parents! She’ll slow us down!”
“Shan’t,” said Roquefort. “You’re not the murderous tyrant of me.”
“Well, a quick bite and then back to her den of cheap body spray and futile dreams. But no more,” snarled Lucretius, rife with homosocial anxiety.
“May I interject that this is highly immoral?” interject Fr. Stephen. “Plow ye not the grassless furrow. Sup not of the young and the breastless. Leviticus, something something,” he added hopefully.
“I’ll plow the furrow of your face!” said Roquefort, and stood back with the air of a man who has really laid down a zinger.
“Roquefort,” said Stephen, “that was not actually a counter-argument.”
“Oh, hark at him! First name basis, eh? Kidnap a man for a day and he’ll think you’re friends for the rest of your life or teach you how of fish,” gabbled Roquefort.
“It was a bit familiar,” agreed Lucretius. “Look, why not--- oh hell, hell hell hell hell hell. I was just wondering how, how possibly, this night could reach below the absolute nadir of crapnitude, but now my eyes have been opened.”
“How are my favorite boys?” said Voluptua, sweetly.
“Voluptua!” said Roquefort, “this is a pleasant surprise.”
“Don’t talk to her,” muttered Lucretius. “It encourages her.”
Voluptua’s chief redeeming features were that she was very good-looking and very interesting to be around. It tended to bring out the worst in people. Lucretius, however, spent quite a lot of time in hell, where there were large numbers of very good-looking and very interesting women, and frankly the novelty had worn off after a few centuries. Really, though, he hated her effect of Roquefort, which was invariably bad. Like most things without a noticeable penis, Volutpua was one of Roquefort’s weaknesses.
At that moment, thunder clapped. Voluptua was about to suggest, by way of a distraction, that they actually enter the Temple of Prophesy, when Tarin the Righteous leaped out of a hedge, gleaming with chain mail and righteousness.
There was a moment of awkward silence in which they all regarded each other with animosity, confusion and sexual desire (the latter emanating mainly from Roquefort) before Tarin broke the silence, by saying, in the voice of one who feels she ought to say it, “Stephen! Thank God you’re all right.”
“I can’t tell you the day I’ve been having,” Stephen said.
“Well, that’s all right, I’ve come to rescue you,” said Voluptua, generously, and was greeted with a chorus of objections.
“Hahahahaha.”
“Wouldn’t go, mate. Out of the frying pan and into the fire of unadulterated liscentiousness.”
“Hahahahaha,” repeated Roquefort, irked that no one appreciated his sarcastic laughter.
“Don’t go with her! I’ve come to rescue you!”
“Hehe. Quite good that, old girl. Rescue. Is that what they’re calling that. Oh deary me. I’m tearing up with mirth,” continued Roquefort, determinedly.
Another malignant silence followed, as everyone was aware that a nasty argument was about to ensue and nobody wanted to start it, be on the same side as Voluptua, be on the opposite side of Voluptua, or catalyze another endless, sexual-tension filled squabble between Roquefort and Lucretius.
A diversion presented itself in the form of a previously unnoticed figure.
“Like, seriously. Are you really a vampire?” Katie gasped, awestricken, staring at Voluptua.
Tarin, Stephen, Lucretius and Roquefort then experienced the rare pleasure of seeing Voluptua disconcerted. Anyone would be put off, confronted by someone who appears to have dressed up as you. Voluptua stared, gobsmacked at what appeared to be a grotesque and rather hopeful parody of herself.
“Yes,” she managed. “I’m Voluptua. Charmed, I’m sure.” She extended a smooth white hand and shook Katie’s bony, silver-ring encrusted one.
“Gosh! I’m Katie. I’ve been trying to get people to call me Jadine, but it doesn’t really stick. How do you get people to call you Voluptua? And how to you get your hair like that? Are you Rocky’s girlfriend? It’s okay if you are, because I really totally feel like we’re going to be Best! Friends! We have sooooooooo much in common.”
“Voluptua… is my name…. Rocky? Girl… friend? Best... friend? Rocky?”
Tarin barely contained a snort of laughter, only because she felt bad for the poor girl. Lucretius, a creature of a nastier persuasion, chortled freely. “Rocky! Oh it’s too good! To think I’ve let him call me Lucy all of these years! Rocky! You were right, old thing, we must keep this one around!”
“Now, now,” said Roquefort nervously. “There’s no need to be assigning hasty titles like ‘girlfriend.’ Plenty helpings of Roquefort to go around.”
Katie was not tuning in to the basic tone of this conversation. “I. Love. Your. Dress. It’s sooo legit! Is it custom made? Do you dance under the moon with your sistern?”
“Sistren,” corrected Fr. Stephen helpfully, “ A cistern is a well.”
“He does this too me, too,” said Roquefort, whose talent for derailing conversations was second to none, “had a whole conversation about dormice and he was claiming I was talking about doormats.”
“You’re thinking of witches,” added Tarin.
Voluptua was recovering. She generally disliked having other women around, unless she was in a certain mood, but the advantages of being trailed by someone who is a much less attractive version of yourself were swiftly presenting themselves. Also, Roquefort seemed fond of her, and she liked a nice bargaining tool.
Roquefort, for his part, was not entirely out of the loop. He could tell from Voluptua’s face that Plans Were Hatching and unless they immediately and intimately involved the lower half of his body he was having none of that. “Lucy,” he hissed, “let’s drag the priest into the temple and get some nice hot prophesies.”
Lucretius, who had been trying to make suggestive eye-contact with Tarin for the past few minutes, and who was having no luck, nodded. They each grabbed one of Fr. Stephen’s arm and bolted for the temple, moving as only a demon and a vampire can. They were aided by a complete lack of resistance on Stephen’s part, since Voluptua’s creepy expression gave him the willies and Katie was the most irritating person he had ever met. Tarin, he felt, could fend for herself.
Voluptua looked after them, lazily. She could catch up in a hurry, if necessary.
“Don’t worry, Stephen,” yelled Tarin, “I’ll come rescue you... again!” She couldn’t feel right about leaving Katie with Voluptua.
Katie was positively glowing. “God, men, eh? Always…” she fumbled, “Always rushing off unexpectedly into Grecian temples, right? No sense of community or fraternity of sisternity.”
“Quite,” said Voluptua, who was always up for a little cheerful misandry, however ill-directed.
“Look here,” said Tarin. “I don’t like you, Voluptua, and you don’t like me, and we had sex, but I really feel we should follow them and find out what they’re up to.”
“Yes, better get those sillies out of trouble, that’s what we always do,” blathered Katie, happily ensconced in an imaginary sisterhood. Then she rethought. “Sex? Oh my God, really? I’ve always been, like totally bi-curious!” She turned her innocent interest to Tarin. “Are you a vampire too? I love your chain mail!”
“I’m a vampire slayer, you idiot,” said Tarin, losing patience. “Tarin the Righteous, descended from a line of vampire hunters sworn to rid the earth of the foul fiends that plague its very soul.”
“Oh,” said Katie, turning to Voluptua, “is she our enemy?”
Voluptua and Tarin exchanged a rare look of camaraderie. “Temple, then?” said Voluptua, bleakly.

The three prophets sat cross-legged in very high thrones. Wafts of smoke drifted up from the incessant fires of burning leaves at their feet.
“Bay leaves! How Delphic!” squealed Katie.
“Katie,” said Tarin, “those are not bay leaves.”
Lucretius and Roquefort were encouraging Stephen.
“Go on, Father Whatnot! Ask them whose got the Wooden Stake of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia and Sometimes Y,” said Roquefort, eagerly.
“And be quick, or else we’ll all be in Estonia pretty shortly,” added Lucretius, who did not share Voluptua’s open mind about recreational drugs.
“I thought demons spoke in all tongues?” asked Fr. Stephen, absently.
“Tongues is not the problem,” said Lucretious. “Bloody annoying is the problem. The tall skinny one on the left speaks only in classic rock lyrics. The one with crazy hair in the middle can only quote Fox network television, and sometimes Comedy Central. And the woman on the end speaks only in the most pretentious literary references possible.”
Fr. Stephen nodded. He knew this. He’d met the prophets before. “Greetings, O Those On High,” he said, amicably. “How have you been?”
“Better to burn out than to fade away.”
“Your music is bad and you should feel bad!”
“And I, I took the one less traveled by.”
Fr. Stphen nodded sagely. “Really? Well, I can imagine. I’ve been rather busy myself. Look, I hope you don’t mind if I ask you a question?”
“Bucket of truth,” conceded the mad-haired individual beneficently.
“What are they saying?” hissed Roquefort.
“They say its nice to see me, they’ve been keeping very busy trying to remember where they put their feet, and of course I can ask a question, but I might not like the answer,” translated Fr. Stephen.
“I knew we were right to kidnap him,” beamed Roquefort.
“One of your better ideas, old fellow,” said Lucretius.
“Guys, you don’t happen to know who’s got the Wooden Stake of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Sometimes Y, do you?”
This provoked consternations, or as much consternation as was possible for people who are on a transcendent plane of reality.
“And the walls came down. All the way to hell,” posited the lanky one.
The woman bristled. “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment! Love is not love that alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. Friends, Romans—”
“Parliament actually has five houses,” interjected the third, tentatively.
“You can’t start a fire,” countered the man on the left. “You can’t start a fire without a spark.”
“Woob woob woob!”
Fr. Stephen sighed. “They don’t know. But then can give us distinguishing characteristics.”
“Well get them,” snapped Lucretius. “God, I can feel my mind dissolving.”
The mad-haired one grudgingly admitted, “Kiss my shiny metal daffodil.”
“Hear it not Heaven, thy misters have done it! Oh, for a voice of thunder,” opined the woman.
“She was a fast machine,” added the man on the left. “She kept her motor clean.”
“Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”
“Godamnit, Any Poehler, no one knew what red wings were until you invented them!”
“Sky rockets in flight. Afternoon delight.”
“Had we but world enough, and time, this coyness, lady, would be no crime.”
“Ah,” said Fr. Stephen. “Well, thank you for your efforts.”
“Let us go then, you and I, while the evening is spread out against the sky, like a patient etherized upon a table.”
“What do they say?” said Roquefort.
“And does it mean anything?” added Lucretius.
“Hmm, it will take some extrapolating, but--- um, does anyone remember where Tarin or Voluptua have gone?”
“Well, buggery, buggery dock,” said Roquefort, “they’ve sippadeared. Disappeared. With my dinner.”
And indeed, the cistern had fled the coop.

Chapter 10: Occult Play and Light Bondage

Roquefort, Lucretius and Fr. Stephen were happily on their way to see the Three Prophets when the limo started to rattle, hiss and glow.
“I say, making it rather hard to drink, eh?” said Roquefort, who had been feeling bored and was not averse to a diversion.
“Are we going to explode?” said Fr. Stephen, not without a trace of hope.
“No,” said Lucretius, with a look of deepest horror and fear. “Worse than that. We’re being---”
However, there was a sudden flash of light and bang and sense of movement.
Fr. Stephen looked around. He was in a darkened room. He felt for a gun, and stroked it to reassure himself. He was surprised to find that the sound of Lucretius and Roquefort bickering was oddly comforting.
“I strongly suspect this is something to with you, Lucy!”
“Oh, of course you do! First thing you always do, we find ourselves in a Circle of Demonic Summoning and you blame the demon! Racism!”
“A what of Demonic whating? Did my keen little ears hear the word ‘Demonic?’”
“A Circle—you know the word, I can only hope—of—it’s a possessive—Demonic—and I want to reiterate that I did not orchestrate this…”
Stephen tuned them out and peering into the darkness. This did not look like hell, or indeed, anything demonic. If he wasn’t very mistaken he would have said he could see a Blink 182 poster—but that didn’t make sense…
A shrill, female voice. “Sisters, it worked!”
“Do they come in threes, usually, Katie?”
“Well, we are new at this—ahem!”
(“We don’t have time for this!” “You never have time for my problems. Or sympathy.” “Lucy, I was wrong. This is entirely your problem. I really have no reason to be extremely angry—oh, I say, someone is talking to us…”)
Three young female faces, which Stephen would put at roughly fifteen, peered out of the darkness, illuminated by flashlights they held under their chins and a considerable amount of pale makeup and red lipstick. Stephen felt a sudden burst of pessimism. They were wearing black nail polish.
The one in the middle had a nose stud and was clearly in charge. “Are you all incubi?”
“No!” said Stephen and Lucretius in unison.
“Yes!” said Roquefort, predictably.
“Can I just interject, gentlemen,” said Lucretius, “that this is a perfect lesson in negative stereotyping? I am a perfectly respectable, certified demon, trying to make an honest living---”
“Sorry, you can’t expect me to just let that pass,” began Stephen, but Lucretius was enjoying a rare moment of righteous outrage.
“And every four or five years, this happens, a group a prepubescent baggages summon me because of course, ALL demons are incubi, we ALL have the same interests, profiling, I call it, profiling of a most pernicious nature. And by the way, we’re stuck in the Circle of Summoning until they let us go.”
“Well, I am certainly an incubus. Rawwwr, demon lover!” Roquefort said, hungrily. “Just let me out of this little Circley whatnot and I’ll drain you dr—erm, fulfill all of your innermost sexual fantasies.”
“This is what I put up with constantly,” Lucretius muttered to Stephen. “Everywhere we go, its suck this, seduce that, change into a bat that flies up women’s skirts. And who cleans up the mess?”
“You?” said Stephen wearily. He was wondering if divide and conquer might not be the way out of this kidnapping pickle. Lucretius was clearly more reasonable, but Roquefort was probably easier to manipulate. He glanced over at the girls. There would be no help from that quarter. They probably thought being kidnapped by a vampire and a demon was the best thing that could possibly happen to a girl. Roquefort, with admirable shamelessness, was encouraging this impression.
“Well, the problem with being an incubus,” he purred, “is that all sorts of hideously unattractive women summon you. Imagine, ladies what very pleasant surprise the three of you were!”
Stephen noted that the girls were trying, in some respects, to look like Voluptua. They had all died their hair jet black, and were wearing the sort of tight, low dresses that cost about 11.50$. Two of them had obviously stuffed their bras and the one that didn’t need to do so had neglected to wear one at all.
“One grows so world weary… so lonely… searching for a woman who understands the recesses of my troubled, complex heart. And loins,” Roquefort was saying.
“Beezebub’s blood-stained crockpot,” grumbled Lucretius. “We’ll be here for hours. Where’s a priest when you need on?”
Stephen blinked. “I am a priest.”
“What? Why didn’t you say so? You think you know a person.”
“Lucretius,” Fr. Stephen said. “We’ve been fighting each other for years. Because I’m a priest and you’re a demon. You’ve been calling me ‘Father.’ I am wearing a cassock.”
“Well, yes, but you sort of forget the specifics of a mortal enemy, don’t you? I mean, it’s like you have blond hair, but every time I see you, I don’t take especial note of it, because it would be beside the point.”
“The reason that we are mortal enemies is beside the point,” Stephen said flatly, feeling a twinge of sympathy for Roquefort.
Roquefort was picking up steam. “It’s just heart-breaking. You finally meet a woman, three women, who move something in your heart that you thought had died long ago, women who could teach a bad man to love again, and you find yourself stuck within a demonic circle of some sort.” He sighed wistfully. “Oh, if only there was some way to get out… to embrace the fires of love…”
The plump one looked sideways at the central girl. “Urm, should we let him out, Katie?”
There was an awkward silence. “Well, I don’t know. I didn’t think we’d get an actual demon,” Katie said nervously. “What do you think will happen?” She blushed. “I mean, I know what will happen, but there are questions of, you know, how soon, where, with what, all that.”
“Really?” said the plump girl hopefully. “What will happen?”
Roquefort changed paces rapidly. “Romantic kisses. Light petting. Parchesi.”
“Right, this has gone just about as far as it should,” said Stephen. He whipped out his crucifix. “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, this circle is broken!”
“Soothing talks about books,” continued Roquefort. “Hand-holding. Tea and----GAH WHAT ARE YOU DOING HE HAS A CRUCIFIX LUCY!”
“I know,” said Lucretius, in a tone of pride, as if he were responsible for this discovery. “Turns out he’s a priest.”
“And they always carry those things? Bloody dangerous.” Roquefort prodded the circle’s edge with his evening boot. “Oh I say. Seems this thing has broken.”
There was a pause both pregnant and distinctly virginal.
“Um, just remembered an important geometry homework curfew going to the bathroom,” said the third girl, the quietest and apparently the most intelligent, and left.
Julie, the plump one, stood up and folded her arms. “I’m leaving. Don’t try any funny business.”
“He won’t. I’ve got a crucifix,” said Stephen, feeling protective, and, for the first time in several hours, in control.
“Eurggh, Boringus Maximus Alertus,” said Roquefort, stepping toward Katie in what could only be described as a predatory manner.
“No, we’re leaving. And you are too, you bloody encourager of racial profiling,” said Lucretius. “We can go back to the limo through the circle now they’ve let us go.”
“They didn’t,” said Roquefort, “Whatsit here broke it. No way of getting back now. My dear, can I interest you in a moonlight stroll?”
Lucretius grabbed Roquefort’s velvet-clad arm and jerked him backward. “We are on a mission to prevent Tarin the Righteous from overcoming the forces of evil, ie, us, and when I am not in a Circle of Demonic summoning, I can disapparate when I like. Now come on. He’s a vampire, by the way, you silly girl. As in, he vaaants to suck your blooood.”
“Wait!” Katie threw herself on the ground. “Take me with you! Show me the ways of love!”
“You see? She wants to come along. Everyone knows vampires only go where we’re invited, more or less.”
“He’ll show you the ways of a light snack,” said Lucretius. “Now come on, you useless lout!”
Stephen felt a familiar jerk and flash, and, faintly in the distance, Roquefort’s voice saying like, “Interfering, judgmental of lifestyle choices, hungry, bag of hot air demon, back to hell where he belongs, no harm in a light bite…”
Then there was a thud, and they were not back in the limo at all.

Chapter 9: Deleted Lesbian Sex Scene

No seriously, I deleted it. Well maybe. It's still on my computer. But it's available only to members of a secret society.