Dirk stopped at the closed door to his office. Resting on
his crutches, he tilted toward the door to get a listen inside. He pressed his
ear against the lacquered wood slats.
Nothing.
No commotion. No sound of vampire or leprechaun.
Dirk opened the door, and as it swung wide to reveal the room, his chest tightened with anxiety, expecting the worst.
In the middle of his office, between Dirk and his cluttered desk, sat Lugosi the vampire, passed out on a chair, head tilted back and mouth gaping. Seamus was sprawled out prone over Lugosi’s chest, resting his head on the vampire’s shoulder. The two were slathered in a vivid, rainbow colored, semi-congealed crust of vomit. The serpentis dagger lay haphazardly on the floor next to a growing pool of viscous, chunky rainbows.
The assassination attempt had been a failure. Seamus’s attempt had been a failure. Dirk had to fight with his crutches for even the most menial tasks, but with Lugosi passed out, the elf could still finish the job. Dirk hobbled toward the two asleep on the chair. Transferring both crutches to one arm, Dirk carefully leaned down to pick up the dagger. Just as his fingertips touched the gold hilt, the abrupt sound of a metal door clanging open echoed up the stairway.
Eamonn.
Dirk’s heart raced. While he had had enough dexterity to kill the vampire passed out on the chair, he stood no chance against the undead leprechaun who had just awoken downstairs.
Eamonn had appeared in the doorway to Dirk’s office just as Dirk had shut one of the drawers to his desk.
“Somebody’s been drinking,” Eamonn said, seeing Seamus and Lugosi in their somnolent embrace.
“Do you mind cleaning up the mess?” Dirk asked Eamonn.
Eamonn’s red eye gazed into Dirk piercingly, his white eye looked everywhere and nowhere.
“I can’t concentrate with these two in here like this,” Dirk added.
“You. OUT!” Eamonn ordered.
Dirk got up from his desk, mounted his crutches and left the room. Eamonn watched him begin his descent down the stairway to the metal shop in the tower’s basement.
* * *
Patrick was lying on his back, counting the stones of his jail cell’s ceiling.
Suddenly, the iron door to the cell opened just long enough for a dazed, rainbow encrusted leprechaun to collapse onto the floor next to him, the door slammed shut.
“Seamus!” Patrick said.
Seamus was lying face down on the stones. His left arm was sprawled across the stones away from his body. His right arm was sandwiched between his belly and the stone floor.
“Seamus!” Patrick called again.
“…Yes Patrick…” Seamus said, groggy.
“D’they drain you, too?” Patrick asked.
Seamus considered the difference between being drained by the vampires (then having the blood stored), rather than having them drink straight from the neck.
“I’ve been drunk,” Seamus said, face still smooshed up against the stone floor.
“Clearly,” Patrick said, appreciative of the double entedre.
Seamus said nothing.
“Eamonn waits ‘til we’ve had our whiskey,” Patrick continued, “Then drinks our blood. Only way he can get his whiskey.”
Seamus knew all this, but didn’t have the energy to say so. Patrick was wrong about the situation, anyway.
Not whiskey. Not Eamonn. Seamus thought.
“Everclear… Lugosi…” Seamus said, then begun snoring.
* * *
The night is young, Dirk thought, staring up the elevator shaft to view the small circle of night sky open at the top. He was standing on the round, iron plate at the bottom of the elevator shaft, technically still in the pipe shop. The dwarves in the pipe shop began their work, stoking coal fires and beating metal into predetermined shapes. Dirk continued staring up the round, stone elevator shaft into the circle of starry sky.
Echoing through the shaft, Dirk had heard an iron door open, then slamming shut. That’s Eamonn dropping Seamus off into the jail cell, he thought. He continued watching the small, circular patch of stars at the top of the elevator shaft, listening for Eamonn. A minute later another iron door opened, then shut, the sound much closer to the bottom of the shaft. That’s Eamonn taking Lugosi to recuperate in Eamonn’s chamber…
Dirk looked down, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. Frustrated. The assassination attempt failed, and there was very little time before Lugosi’s plan would be fulfilled.
Dirk had been in charge of Lugosi’s designs for the tower and the gold piping that the dwarves were producing. Most of the material needed for Lugosi’s plan had been fabricated; all that was left was reconstruction of the upper tower followed by the installation of the tubing system.
Dirk heard the clanging of hammer on anvil. Still looking down, he opened eyes to see the circular iron plate he stood on, and the trap door next to it. The digging wasn’t complete, Dirk thought, hoping against hope that perhaps the digging operation beneath the pipe shop might run into complications, tying up Lugosi’s plans. He knew that that wouldn’t happen, and Dirk began to despair.
* * *
The crisp night air filled Seamus’s lungs. The moon hung huge in the sky. It appeared the size of a dinner plate held at arm’s length, so full and so bright.
Seamus stood at the shore of a lake, the reflection of the gigantic moon rippled on the water’s black surface.
The black terrain, jagged with the inky silhouettes of trees, had a slight silver lining thanks to the moon’s glow. Seamus watched the ripples on the moon’s reflection in the lake, only vaguely noticing that something was swimming on the surface.
A stab of pain struck his ankle. A snake had bitten and latched onto his skin. Panicked, Seamus tried kicking the snake away.
FECKINGSERPENT!!!
The snake had lost its grip on Seamus’s foot and was flung into the lake, the splash rippled through the moon’s reflection.
The silver lining that had blanketed the terrain turned red. Seamus saw that the moon, huge in the sky, had started turning brick red at one edge of it. Right before his eyes, the whole moon turned blood red.
The same stab of pain hit Seamus’s ankle again. The snake was back. Seamus began kicking again, but the snake would not loosen its grip. The panic that he had previously experienced reemerged and blossomed into full blown terror as he felt a second snake coiling up his other leg, past his knee-
Seamus began cursing incoherently, trying to kick the first snake off his ankle whilst trying to grab at the second snake crawling its way up his body. Seamus grabbed at his leg and groin as the snake wound around his upper inner thigh, then quickly around to the small of his back.
The snake tucked itself between his shirt and his vest and began crawling straight up Seamus’s spine. Seamus stopped kicking and focused on trying to grab, with both hands, the snake that was crawling up his back. Seamus was unsuccessful, as the snake had coiled around his neck.
The blood red moon in the sky was a silent, disquieting menace that seemed to watch Seamus’s torment from above.
The first serpent bit down harder on Seamus’s ankle, the second serpent coiled around his neck was now staring Seamus in the face. Its forked tongue flitted out briefly as its dark, beady eyes stared into Seamus’s face. Seamus was paralyzed with terror. As he tried to grab the snake, it lunged forward, fanged mouth open wide, and bit him in the forehead.
* * *
“You were having a bad dream,” Patrick said.
Seamus looked up from his prone position on the stone floor to see Patrick sitting on the pile of straw.
“What was it about?” Patrick asked.
“I was by a lake. The moon was huge in the sky… it turned red, and then snakes bit me…” Seamus said.
“I think we could make our pee more potent,” Patrick said.
Seamus was thrown for a loop, not knowing what prompted Patrick to say such a thing.
“What?” Seamus asked.
“We could make our urine stronger,” Patrick said.
“Wh- why?” Seamus asked, sitting up.
“Why not!” Patrick said, “it could be like the frozen piss disc we put into Eamonn’s coffin yesterday. Only stronger! We could use the distillery to make super-piss!”
Seamus rubbed his bleary eyes, thinking about the botched assassination attempt that had gone down only a few hours prior.
“Patrick…” Seamus began, “Have you ever thought, instead of peeing on the vampires while they slept, couldn’t you just kill ‘em?”
“Aye, I have,” Patrick said, “maybe we steal into Eamonn’s chamber and drop a torch into his coffin. And then what? Lugosi finds out and he’ll kill us all!”
Seamus said nothing.
“You kill one vampire, and the other will reap his vengeance. There’s no killing the one, and we certainly can’t kill both at the same time. Eamonn might sleep in the tower during the day, but we have no idea where Lugosi sleeps.”
Seamus remembered in his mind’s eye the image of Lugosi passed out on the chair in Dirk’s office. Seamus was so close to killing him then. He wondered if he’d ever get that chance again.
“What if we timed it right?” Seamus asked, “What if Eamonn was… indisposed? What if we put something heavy on Eamonn’s coffin before he awoke and then got Lugosi drunk?”
“Lugosi doesn’t get drunk, Seamus,” Patrick said, “Lugosi likes his blood clean. Eamonn likes it laced.”
“I know, I know,” Seamus said, “But what if? It’d be easier to kill them both, then.”
Patrick saw the fresh bite marks on Seamus’s neck. The space between the teeth marks were obviously too large to be the bite of the undead leprechaun, Eamonn. Patrick wondered if that was exactly what Seamus had been up to.
“Seamus,” Patrick started, “did you get Lugosi drunk?”
Patrick got excited, leaned in closer to Seamus, then whispered,
“Did you try to kill him?”
“I drank a bunch of Everclear… Lugosi drank me… we both passed out and I-” Seamus thought about the serpentis dagger, how Patrick didn’t know it was in the tower. Seamus wanted to keep that secret.
“When I woke up,” Seamus continued, “Lugosi was awake.”
Seamus lied.
“I was too late,” Seamus said, swallowing, “we might be able to do it again in the future, though.”
Patrick eyed Seamus with a level of scrutiny.
“Maybe if I gain a tolerance to the Everclear, I can avoid passing out next time. Kill Lugosi then,” Seamus finished.
Patrick, staring at Seamus, raised a single eyebrow, then lowered it back again into the usual furrowed look of scrutiny.
“I still think we should distill our urine,” Patrick said, unconvinced of Seamus’s plan.
Just then, the leprechauns heard the heavy iron bolt in the jail cell door slide to the unlocked position.
Seamus hoped to God that his conversation hadn’t been overheard by an eavesdropping vampire.
The door swung open.
Dirk was at the doorway, leaning on his crutches. Seamus breathed a sigh of relief.
“Ye breakin’ us out, then?” Patrick asked Dirk.
“No, the vampires decided you don’t need a month in jail after bloodletting,” Dirk said.
“Why?” Patrick asked, “Don’t we need a month to recover?”
Dirk hobbled two steps into the jail cell and stared at both leprechauns with a look so stern, a look so grave, Seamus wanted to look away.
“You won’t get a month to recover,” Dirk said, “Lugosi will be done with us before then.”
Nothing.
No commotion. No sound of vampire or leprechaun.
Dirk opened the door, and as it swung wide to reveal the room, his chest tightened with anxiety, expecting the worst.
In the middle of his office, between Dirk and his cluttered desk, sat Lugosi the vampire, passed out on a chair, head tilted back and mouth gaping. Seamus was sprawled out prone over Lugosi’s chest, resting his head on the vampire’s shoulder. The two were slathered in a vivid, rainbow colored, semi-congealed crust of vomit. The serpentis dagger lay haphazardly on the floor next to a growing pool of viscous, chunky rainbows.
The assassination attempt had been a failure. Seamus’s attempt had been a failure. Dirk had to fight with his crutches for even the most menial tasks, but with Lugosi passed out, the elf could still finish the job. Dirk hobbled toward the two asleep on the chair. Transferring both crutches to one arm, Dirk carefully leaned down to pick up the dagger. Just as his fingertips touched the gold hilt, the abrupt sound of a metal door clanging open echoed up the stairway.
Eamonn.
Dirk’s heart raced. While he had had enough dexterity to kill the vampire passed out on the chair, he stood no chance against the undead leprechaun who had just awoken downstairs.
Eamonn had appeared in the doorway to Dirk’s office just as Dirk had shut one of the drawers to his desk.
“Somebody’s been drinking,” Eamonn said, seeing Seamus and Lugosi in their somnolent embrace.
“Do you mind cleaning up the mess?” Dirk asked Eamonn.
Eamonn’s red eye gazed into Dirk piercingly, his white eye looked everywhere and nowhere.
“I can’t concentrate with these two in here like this,” Dirk added.
“You. OUT!” Eamonn ordered.
Dirk got up from his desk, mounted his crutches and left the room. Eamonn watched him begin his descent down the stairway to the metal shop in the tower’s basement.
* * *
Patrick was lying on his back, counting the stones of his jail cell’s ceiling.
Suddenly, the iron door to the cell opened just long enough for a dazed, rainbow encrusted leprechaun to collapse onto the floor next to him, the door slammed shut.
“Seamus!” Patrick said.
Seamus was lying face down on the stones. His left arm was sprawled across the stones away from his body. His right arm was sandwiched between his belly and the stone floor.
“Seamus!” Patrick called again.
“…Yes Patrick…” Seamus said, groggy.
“D’they drain you, too?” Patrick asked.
Seamus considered the difference between being drained by the vampires (then having the blood stored), rather than having them drink straight from the neck.
“I’ve been drunk,” Seamus said, face still smooshed up against the stone floor.
“Clearly,” Patrick said, appreciative of the double entedre.
Seamus said nothing.
“Eamonn waits ‘til we’ve had our whiskey,” Patrick continued, “Then drinks our blood. Only way he can get his whiskey.”
Seamus knew all this, but didn’t have the energy to say so. Patrick was wrong about the situation, anyway.
Not whiskey. Not Eamonn. Seamus thought.
“Everclear… Lugosi…” Seamus said, then begun snoring.
* * *
The night is young, Dirk thought, staring up the elevator shaft to view the small circle of night sky open at the top. He was standing on the round, iron plate at the bottom of the elevator shaft, technically still in the pipe shop. The dwarves in the pipe shop began their work, stoking coal fires and beating metal into predetermined shapes. Dirk continued staring up the round, stone elevator shaft into the circle of starry sky.
Echoing through the shaft, Dirk had heard an iron door open, then slamming shut. That’s Eamonn dropping Seamus off into the jail cell, he thought. He continued watching the small, circular patch of stars at the top of the elevator shaft, listening for Eamonn. A minute later another iron door opened, then shut, the sound much closer to the bottom of the shaft. That’s Eamonn taking Lugosi to recuperate in Eamonn’s chamber…
Dirk looked down, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. Frustrated. The assassination attempt failed, and there was very little time before Lugosi’s plan would be fulfilled.
Dirk had been in charge of Lugosi’s designs for the tower and the gold piping that the dwarves were producing. Most of the material needed for Lugosi’s plan had been fabricated; all that was left was reconstruction of the upper tower followed by the installation of the tubing system.
Dirk heard the clanging of hammer on anvil. Still looking down, he opened eyes to see the circular iron plate he stood on, and the trap door next to it. The digging wasn’t complete, Dirk thought, hoping against hope that perhaps the digging operation beneath the pipe shop might run into complications, tying up Lugosi’s plans. He knew that that wouldn’t happen, and Dirk began to despair.
* * *
The crisp night air filled Seamus’s lungs. The moon hung huge in the sky. It appeared the size of a dinner plate held at arm’s length, so full and so bright.
Seamus stood at the shore of a lake, the reflection of the gigantic moon rippled on the water’s black surface.
The black terrain, jagged with the inky silhouettes of trees, had a slight silver lining thanks to the moon’s glow. Seamus watched the ripples on the moon’s reflection in the lake, only vaguely noticing that something was swimming on the surface.
A stab of pain struck his ankle. A snake had bitten and latched onto his skin. Panicked, Seamus tried kicking the snake away.
FECKINGSERPENT!!!
The snake had lost its grip on Seamus’s foot and was flung into the lake, the splash rippled through the moon’s reflection.
The silver lining that had blanketed the terrain turned red. Seamus saw that the moon, huge in the sky, had started turning brick red at one edge of it. Right before his eyes, the whole moon turned blood red.
The same stab of pain hit Seamus’s ankle again. The snake was back. Seamus began kicking again, but the snake would not loosen its grip. The panic that he had previously experienced reemerged and blossomed into full blown terror as he felt a second snake coiling up his other leg, past his knee-
Seamus began cursing incoherently, trying to kick the first snake off his ankle whilst trying to grab at the second snake crawling its way up his body. Seamus grabbed at his leg and groin as the snake wound around his upper inner thigh, then quickly around to the small of his back.
The snake tucked itself between his shirt and his vest and began crawling straight up Seamus’s spine. Seamus stopped kicking and focused on trying to grab, with both hands, the snake that was crawling up his back. Seamus was unsuccessful, as the snake had coiled around his neck.
The blood red moon in the sky was a silent, disquieting menace that seemed to watch Seamus’s torment from above.
The first serpent bit down harder on Seamus’s ankle, the second serpent coiled around his neck was now staring Seamus in the face. Its forked tongue flitted out briefly as its dark, beady eyes stared into Seamus’s face. Seamus was paralyzed with terror. As he tried to grab the snake, it lunged forward, fanged mouth open wide, and bit him in the forehead.
* * *
“You were having a bad dream,” Patrick said.
Seamus looked up from his prone position on the stone floor to see Patrick sitting on the pile of straw.
“What was it about?” Patrick asked.
“I was by a lake. The moon was huge in the sky… it turned red, and then snakes bit me…” Seamus said.
“I think we could make our pee more potent,” Patrick said.
Seamus was thrown for a loop, not knowing what prompted Patrick to say such a thing.
“What?” Seamus asked.
“We could make our urine stronger,” Patrick said.
“Wh- why?” Seamus asked, sitting up.
“Why not!” Patrick said, “it could be like the frozen piss disc we put into Eamonn’s coffin yesterday. Only stronger! We could use the distillery to make super-piss!”
Seamus rubbed his bleary eyes, thinking about the botched assassination attempt that had gone down only a few hours prior.
“Patrick…” Seamus began, “Have you ever thought, instead of peeing on the vampires while they slept, couldn’t you just kill ‘em?”
“Aye, I have,” Patrick said, “maybe we steal into Eamonn’s chamber and drop a torch into his coffin. And then what? Lugosi finds out and he’ll kill us all!”
Seamus said nothing.
“You kill one vampire, and the other will reap his vengeance. There’s no killing the one, and we certainly can’t kill both at the same time. Eamonn might sleep in the tower during the day, but we have no idea where Lugosi sleeps.”
Seamus remembered in his mind’s eye the image of Lugosi passed out on the chair in Dirk’s office. Seamus was so close to killing him then. He wondered if he’d ever get that chance again.
“What if we timed it right?” Seamus asked, “What if Eamonn was… indisposed? What if we put something heavy on Eamonn’s coffin before he awoke and then got Lugosi drunk?”
“Lugosi doesn’t get drunk, Seamus,” Patrick said, “Lugosi likes his blood clean. Eamonn likes it laced.”
“I know, I know,” Seamus said, “But what if? It’d be easier to kill them both, then.”
Patrick saw the fresh bite marks on Seamus’s neck. The space between the teeth marks were obviously too large to be the bite of the undead leprechaun, Eamonn. Patrick wondered if that was exactly what Seamus had been up to.
“Seamus,” Patrick started, “did you get Lugosi drunk?”
Patrick got excited, leaned in closer to Seamus, then whispered,
“Did you try to kill him?”
“I drank a bunch of Everclear… Lugosi drank me… we both passed out and I-” Seamus thought about the serpentis dagger, how Patrick didn’t know it was in the tower. Seamus wanted to keep that secret.
“When I woke up,” Seamus continued, “Lugosi was awake.”
Seamus lied.
“I was too late,” Seamus said, swallowing, “we might be able to do it again in the future, though.”
Patrick eyed Seamus with a level of scrutiny.
“Maybe if I gain a tolerance to the Everclear, I can avoid passing out next time. Kill Lugosi then,” Seamus finished.
Patrick, staring at Seamus, raised a single eyebrow, then lowered it back again into the usual furrowed look of scrutiny.
“I still think we should distill our urine,” Patrick said, unconvinced of Seamus’s plan.
Just then, the leprechauns heard the heavy iron bolt in the jail cell door slide to the unlocked position.
Seamus hoped to God that his conversation hadn’t been overheard by an eavesdropping vampire.
The door swung open.
Dirk was at the doorway, leaning on his crutches. Seamus breathed a sigh of relief.
“Ye breakin’ us out, then?” Patrick asked Dirk.
“No, the vampires decided you don’t need a month in jail after bloodletting,” Dirk said.
“Why?” Patrick asked, “Don’t we need a month to recover?”
Dirk hobbled two steps into the jail cell and stared at both leprechauns with a look so stern, a look so grave, Seamus wanted to look away.
“You won’t get a month to recover,” Dirk said, “Lugosi will be done with us before then.”
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