The Vampire Club (16 page)

“
No. I mean, are there any vampire graves in Australia?”

“
Two.”

“
So, according to the VVV, how many vampires are known to exist?” the professor asked, true researcher that he was.

“
Twenty-three.”

I processed that new bit of information into the vast mental vampire file. How many must have been completely obliterated over the years, the wonderful, noble species that could have taught us so much about the workings of the natural world? Not to mention the supernatural world?

I tried to picture our drowsy vampire below, and inspiration struck. “Basements are usually below the first floor, right?”

Maybe they thought it was a trick question or something, but it took the professor and Dial a moment to finally answer: “Right.”

“
Now let’s see, we probably aren’t too far from the basement entrance—am I right Dial?”

“
Down the hall and to the left.”

“
So, in all probability, we’re standing over the basement now?”

“
Or damned close to it,” said Dial. “It probably runs all over.”

“
What are you proposing?” the professor wanted to know, his head no doubt blurring with possibilities that didn’t add up.

“
The same way we always get to vampires,” I said. “Dig.”

“
Sounds like a prison story,” mused the professor.

Thinking of the encaged vampire, I said, “Prison indeed. Only, instead of getting out, we’re getting
in
.”

Chapter Thirty-five

“
How old’s the house?” I asked.

“
Built in 1730, or so I was told in my debriefing,” Dial said.

“
Colonial period, obviously,” said the professor, as if everybody should be an expert in American architecture when most of us just wanted a house.

“
Did they have concrete then?” I asked innocently enough.

“
I don’t know. Professor?”

“
It’s long been around in some form or another, usually made from clay or limestone or other minerals. Are you suggesting that there might be concrete under the floorboards and it might stop our rather crude—but creative—plan of boring through the floor and into the cellar?”

“
More or less.”

Dial reached down, shoved his fingers between two floorboards and parted them like a frat boy planting a wedgie, and with a groan and pop of wood, he pulled free a plank.

We all gathered around the rectangular hole and peered into it. A dull, bluish flicker of light shone up at our peering faces. I couldn’t tell exactly where the glow was coming from, and said as much to the duo.

“
Me, either,” said Dial.

“
The important thing,” said the professor, in lecture mode, “is that we have found an alternate route into the Vampire Laumer’s tomb.”

And, to me, that was about as important as things got in my life.

“
I would offer to help with those floorboards,” I said, “and to be perfectly honest with you—”

Dial, not even taking his eyes off me, reached down and pulled out three more six-inch floorboards. The man was not man but a man-god. I was more relieved than ever that he wasn’t a rival for Janice’s hand and other organs.

“
That’s fine with me,” said Dial. “Then you can be the first down.”

“
How far down do you think it is?” I asked.

The suggestion then proffered by Dial was not for the faint of heart, but it had a “teen” in it.

“
I’ll go,” I said. “And if I plummet to my death, Professor L, I want you to tell my mother I really do love—naw, forget I mentioned it. Tell her ‘Anita Blake rocks.’ Anyway, here goes.”

I dropped to my belly, then bounced back up. I looked into Dial’s dangerous eyes. “You did say me, right?”

“
Right.”

“
That’s what I thought.”

I dropped down to my belly again and whispered a silent prayer.

“
You say something?” asked the professor.

“
Just my prayers.”

“
Is there a vampire god?” asked Dial.

“
Waiting.” And with that pleasant thought, I dropped over the edge.

Chapter Thirty-six

Hanging by my fingertips, I reached down with my toes as far as they could go but met only empty air.

And then somebody was prying my fingers free. I looked up, shocked.

“
Sorry, Andy,” the professor was saying, “but we’ve got to get this show on the road, and we can’t have you hanging around.”

And as I fell into space, one thought ran through my mind: with friends like
theeeeeeeeez
—

And then I landed. What exactly on, I couldn’t say. Especially with the air knocked out of me.

“
You okay down there?” It was the professor asking, the good-for-nothing, low-down....

“
I’m fine, you old fart.”

“
Pardon me?”

“
I’m fine, you’re all heart.”

Then the professor said to Dial, “I timed his fall, and it took him approximately one point three seconds to land, and that’s roughly twenty-four feet.”

A second point three later somebody was standing next to me. Out of nowhere. Just standing there.

Before I could scream from shock, a hand snaked out and hushed me. “I’ve been trained to land silently at fifty feet without a parachute.”

And, of course, that was Dial speaking.

I nodded, heart still hammering from its near failure. When I regained what little composure I owned, I looked up and saw the professor teetering at the edge of the hole.

“
C’mon professor, I’ll catch you.”

No, that wasn’t me talking.

However, the professor was distinctly talking to himself, and I could barely make out: “Oh my, Oh, Oh, Oh my. This is not good.” And then he tipped into the hole....

But did not fall. Instead he dangled freely in the air as if suspended by a meathook.

“
They got him,” hissed Dial.

And he was right. It had been a hand that snaked out and now held him suspended over the hole. A moment later, the professor disappeared and Grandmaster’s head was in his place, and what was amazing was they both filled the same amount of space in the hole. I put two and two together and figured the professor had been caught and that we were no doubt close to it also.

Things didn’t look good, especially not with Grandmaster’s distorted, ugly face peering at me.

Even the probable proximity of my first vampire wasn’t enough to make me happy.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Grandmaster waved an angry fist. “Now, we’ll give you one cha—”

“
Hold on a second,” Dial shouted up at him.

“
Hold on?” Raul turned sharply to one of his lurking associates, and as Dial pulled me in close, I heard Raul say, “Can you believe that traitor bastard told me to hold on?”

But now Dial was speaking into my ear: “We won’t give him a chance to blackmail us, so come on.”

Dial simply moved in a direction at random, I assumed, and I could only follow.

Grandmaster shouted. “If you don’t leave now, we’ll—”

“
Cover your ears, Andy! Don’t listen to the threat, if we don’t hear it, they can’t carry it out.”

I covered my ears, but still heard Grandmaster shouting in spurts above us. Dial and I began babbling. “La da da da dee, we can’t hear you, la la la da da deeeeee!”

And together, da deeing the tune to
Gilligan’s Island
, we drowned Grandmaster’s screams. Now, if Grandmaster played fair, the old man should have a chance. It wasn’t much, but it was the best we could do.

“
Don’t jump,” Dial warned Grandmaster. “I’ve booby trapped the landing site with the Ankle Breakers of Death.”

My index finger was looped in the back loop of Dial’s jeans, for I did not desire getting lost in so much blackness. And then I distinctly made out a blue light up ahead, and soon this light rested on walls that surrounded, and I realized we’d been following a hall of sorts.

Light good. Dark bad.

My primal needs were being satisfied, and at this moment that was all I could ask for.

But then my heart stopped when something crunched under my feet. I looked down and could have sworn the floor was moving. And then something began its way up my jeans. Insects. Everywhere.

At any rate, I quickly unzipped my seven-or-eight-sizes-too-big military pantaloons and pulled out the frisky little devil. It was long, had many legs, and was hairy, and I left it behind where I found it, or it found me.

Still crunching, still following Dial, we came upon a door. Why there was a blue light hanging in front of the door, I never did learn. At any rate, it helped me spot a five-legged beast on my chest, which I hefted off with both hands.

With a swift kick and a piercing “
He he aack
!” the door was firewood. We and the insects poured out into a cavernous room.

And in the center, raised on a platform, under another blue light—this one dangling from the ceiling like a stage spotlight—was a decrepit, dusty wooden coffin.

I started shaking. “Hold me, Dial. I think I’m in love.”

Chapter Thirty-eight

I realized my first encounter with a vampire would likely be brief, more like a handshake than a cup of coffee. A first date with the dead.

“
How much time do you think we have?” I asked.

Dial looked down a dark corridor which I assumed led to the entrance into this cellar. “Five minutes. This cellar’s pretty deep, and there’s a long flight of stairs to get down, not to mention the length of this hall.”

“
Let’s,” I said quietly taking a step into the corridor, “go to work then, eh?”

The room was as big as a basketball court, the dark walls in the surroundings made it look even bigger. I heard a distant muffle of sound, and if it were possible, my heart would have hammered even harder.

“
They’re coming down the stairs.”

I practically floated across the room, and with a gasp I stood next to the closed coffin. “No.”

“
I assume,” said Dial, “you’re going to revive the vampire with the stuff in that satchel of yours.”

“
Your assumption’s right. Now help me with this lid.”

All my years of research.

All my days of devotion.

All my whispered prayers were finally being answered.

The coffin was of a dark wood and the dust made it slippery. It was plain, no sacred sarcophagus by any means. I gripped the edges at one end, and with Dial at the other, slowly eased the lid off.

Did I deep down, I mean really deep down, ever doubt the existence of vampires? I mean, wasn’t there an inkling of reservation? Though I’d fully submitted to their wonder, to the rest of the world they were fantasy objects, the stuff of legend, myth, and movies.

Until now.

As the lid slid off the coffin, I dare say an unusual form of panic rose in me. The panic of doubt.

And it scared the caca out of me. So much that I closed my eyes to delay the moment of truth.

But then I could stand it no longer.

Shaking as if from the cold, I gazed down into the waxen, undead face of the vampire named Laumer.

And the panic left forever.

Chapter Thirty-nine

Fingers trembling, I reached out and touched his white cheek. The skin was cold and gelid and as creepy as I’d always imagined.

“
You’re real,” I whispered.

“
Hurry, Andy, they’re coming!” Dial shouted, breaking me out of my bliss. “You can kiss and make up later.”

“
Help me with his clothes.”

“
His clothes? No time for a quickie, you pervert.”

“
Do you know where he was shot?”

“
No idea. I’m still new here, remember? I don’t even want to look at it.”

I ripped open the vampire’s high-collared shirt, which was bunched around his throat with a cravat, and ripped it open. The task was easy, since the cotton was rotted through and through. More pale skin was revealed, slightly blue in the light.

There, in his right side, was a hole. The skin around the two-inch hole was sucked into the wound. It looked very clean and smooth, as if it had grown there like a knothole in a tree.

I opened my satchel and pulled out a flashlight and long, sturdy tweezers. “Hold the light and follow me,” I told Dial.

He moved to the vampire’s side. “I don’t want to touch it.