Seamus descended the wooden ladder with the jug of Everclear
in his left hand. His right hand, he saw, was whiter and flakier than usual. In
fact, it was very dry to the touch, as though all the suppleness had left that
small portion of his body.
As Seamus stepped down from the ladder, Brok, one of the dwarves, climbed up it with a roll of buckskin over his shoulder. As he mounted the top of the golden tank, he unfurled the hairless deer hide over the rimmed hole on top, and bound it taught with a braided chord.
Seamus was beginning to walk over to Dirk, but then he saw the vampire Lugosi standing with him, conversing with him.
“One hundred and ninety proof,” Dirk said to Lugosi, “you selected adequate lioprechauns this time, master.”
Master? Seamus thought. This time?!
“M. Indeed,” Lugosi said. He was still wearing the same black clothes that Seamus had seen him in before, though without his top hat. Lugosi’s black hair was slicked back. He was holding a wine glass filled with blood.
Lugosi looked over the glass he sipped from, eyeing Seamus near the base of the golden tank he had just sterilized.
“Speaking of…” Lugosi said in an aside to Dirk, then shouted, “Little one! May I… have a word?”
Seamus stared into the couple, the elf and the vampire.
Behind and beyond reality, Dirk’s soul could be seen, radiant, self-contained, and guarded as always. With Lugosi, there was no soul to see, and that thought alone sent a chill into Seamus’s heart as he obeyed the vampire’s summon.
As he neared, the usual clarity and definition within his mind’s eye resolved itself and he could see Dirk’s soul all the more. What disturbed Seamus even more than finding nothing in place of Lugosi’s soul, Seamus felt a hole where he expected to find nothing. Seamus almost felt like he could fall into the man.
Lugosi looked down at Seamus and smiled, revealing his two sharp fangs. Seamus, Everclear bottle in hand, returned the gaze, wishing he could look away, flee, or kill the vampire then and there. Anything but standing paralyzed as he was.
Lugosi tousled the leprechaun’s hair.
“I like him,” Lugosi said to Dirk, gaze still on Seamus.
“I should retire to my lair,” Lugosi finally said Dirk’s face, “dawn is- approaching.” Lugosi said the last word a note higher than the rest.
Lugosi left the pipe shop. His footsteps could not be heard on the spiral staircase. Seamus was relieved to be rid of the hole-for-a-soul feeling he got from the vampire.
“Ah, look at your hand,” Dirk said to Seamus, “the alcohol must have dried it out. Did you get a contact high?”
Seamus did feel a little tipsy, though he hadn’t drunk anything. He must have absorbed some of the alcohol straight into his bloodstream while he wiped down the inside of the gold tank.
Seamus looked into Dirks eyes as he thought WHEN DO WE KILL HIM?!
Tomorrow night, Dirk thought in reply, then looked at the brown jug in Seamus’s hand.
“Save the alcohol,” Dirk said.
* * *
Seamus slept all day, like everyone else under the vampires’ employ, and awoke only a half hour before sunset. He ate his breakfast in the fermentarium, potatoes and eggs which he washed down with milk, then walked downstairs to the distillery to meet Dirk as previously arranged.
Seamus entered the distillery to find that Dirk had already been waiting for him by the wash basin.
“We don’t have any time, give me your flask,” Dirk said to Seamus.
Seamus approached Dirk as he took his whiskey flask out of his vest pocket and handed it to Dirk. The elf unscrewed the lid and poured Seamus’s whiskey down the wash basin.
“Hey!” Seamus cried.
“How’s your alcohol tolerance, Seamus Bennigan?” Dirk asked as the last of the whiskey dripped from the flask.
“What do you think you’re doin’?!” Seamus demanded of Dirk.
“I said, ‘how is your tolerance?’” Dirk asked.
A red hate for the elf brimmed and threatened to boil over within Seamus. Dirk took a small funnel and the brown jug of Everclear from yesterday’s sterilization and began to pour the high content grain alcohol into Seamus’s flask.
“I am a lioprechaun,” Seamus replied, “so, it’s probably pretty good, all things consid…”
Dirk filled the flask until it overflowed, then screwed the cap back on. Dirk handed the flask back to Seamus.
“…dered, all things considered…” Seamus had to stop and think about what the elf had done for him.
“I thought thess wasn’t for drinkin’,” Seamus said to Dirk.
“Not typically,” Dirk said, “I’ll tell you the rest in my office.”
Seamus followed Dirk into his office. Dirk shut the door and walked behind his desk on the opposite side of the stone room.
“Please, sit,” Dirk said.
Seamus complied.
“Lugosi will be here in a few minutes,” Dirk said with a measure of urgency in his voice, “and he will drink your blood.”
“How do you kn-“ Seamus began to ask.
“It’s been long enough since your last draining…” Dirk started with, then added as if to amend what he said, “He told me last-night while you were scrubbing the inside of that tank. He very much wants to drink your blood, Seamus Bennigan, tonight.”
“So you brought me in here for him?!” Seamus yelled.
“Yes,” Dirk said, “and you’re going to kill him.”
“How?” Seamus asked.
“Before he bites you, and without him noticing, you’re going to drink *all* of the Everclear in your flask,” Dirk said while pointing at the vest Seamus was wearing.
“It is very, very important he does not see you drink the Everclear. It is equally important that he does not discover your-… our, plot,” Dirk said.
Seamus recalled being in Dirk’s office once before, when he’d first been incarcerated.
“I kill him by getting shitfaced?” Seamus asked.
“That’s the first part,” Dirk said, then continued, “Unlike Eamonn, Lugosi can’t tolerate liquor in the blood of his victims. He needs his blood clean and without taint.”
A grin began to form on Seamus’s face.
“To clarify, the alcohol won’t kill him,” Dirk said, “but he’ll be rendered unconscious long enough for you to kill him by other means.”
“What other means?” Seamus asked.
Dirk reached into a drawer next to where is crutches were leaning, and pulled out familiar blade.
“My serpentis dagger,” Dirk said, dagger in hand.
“You mean *my* serpentis dagger!” Seamus said.
Greedy little lioprechaun, Seamus heard Dirk think.
“It’s yours if you succeed in killing Lugosi,” Dirk said.
Dirk wrapped the dagger back up in the purple cloth it had been stored in, then replaced it in its rightful drawer next to Dirk’s crutches.
“If you fail- if he notices at any one point that something’s not right,” Dirk said, “he’ll pulverize every bone in one of your feet. Maybe both.”
Seamus swallowed the hard lump in his throat.
“Believe me,” Dirk said, “I speak from experience.”
Dirk mounted his crutches, and hobbled to the door to the stairway.
Before leaving, he took a black veil that had been crumpled up on an end table and threw it over top of a golden sculpture that had been nailed to the wall next to the door.
“Remember the spell I taught you earlier,” Dirk said.
Seamus hadn’t forgot, Dirk referred to the Latin spell protected your thoughts from the supernatural vision of others.
“If he asks, I’ll be downstairs in the pipe shop. Time to drink up, Seamus,” Dirk said, leaving Seamus in his office as he descended the stone stairs to the tower’s sub-basement.
Seamus listened to the *clack* step… *clack* step sound that Dirk’s walking made.
Seamus took the flask out of his pocket and sipped a mouthful of the Everclear. His mouth immediately stung with the fire of a thousand sunburns, but he forced himself to swallow. On its way down, the Everclear burned his throat, then his stomach was filled with the warm glow of the strong alcohol.
Seamus gasped, then forced himself to quickly drink the rest of the flask dry. The same burn accompanied every gulp, but none seemed quite as bad as the first. Seamus coughed and gasped, screwed the cap back onto the flask, then sat back down in the chair he had been, facing the desk.
Now what? he thought. Seamus started drumming his fingertips on the arms of the chair. He pretended the galloping sound they made were horses racing in the distance.
Bored, he turned the chair around so that he could face the door.
To the left was the built in scale on the floor that Eamonn had used to weigh Seamus’s confiscated gold.
Between the scale’s readout and the open door was the sculpture that Dirk had tossed the black veil over.
Seamus continued drumming his fingertips impatiently as he stared at the black veil on the wall. The protruded figure of the sculpture made it look like a kite. A black kite. A loosely made black kite.
What was he hiding? Seamus wondered.
Seamus stood up from the chair and immediately felt a wobble in his knees. He walked to the veiled sculpture next to the door to have a look. It’d been nailed to the wall just above his head’s height, Seamus was standing right beneath it. Seamus raised a finger to lift the veil, revealing a vertical gold bar, the beginning of the sculpture. Lifting the black veil a little higher, Seamus saw two golden feet, human feet, one atop the other, with a single spike pinning them together to the vertical gold bar. Seamus wondered what sort of grizzly artwork would so inspire Dirk.
Seamus nearly had a look at the rest of the tortuous, gold artwork when-
“I’d rather you keep that hidden!” Lugosi said from behind Seamus, already in the middle of Dirk’s office.
Lugosi shut the door.
Seamus felt his inebriation growing. He couldn’t even tell how successful he was in standing straight up without wobbling.
Lugosi towered over Seamus, smiling. Lugosi rested an ice cold hand on the leprechaun’s head.
“Ever since I met you… I knew there was something different about you, Seamus Bennigan,” Lugosi said.
Seamus stared at the vampire Lugosi. On top of his already dizzy, drunken state, Seamus felt like he was being pulled into the vampire.
“And when I tasted your blood… I knew I had to keep you,” Lugosi continued.
It was like looking down a very deep well, Seamus thought. The sense of vertigo, the dizzy feeling of falling in just grew so strong while looking into the place where Lugosi’s soul would have been. Should have been, if he’d been human.
“Human blood is sufficient for my kind,” Lugosi explained, “but only the blood of lioprechauns and elves and dwarves supply what I need.”
“And whet d’yee need, then?” Seamus said, the alcohol in his breath making his own lips tingle.
“Magic,” the vampire said, “there’s magic in your blood and I need to store it for…”
Lugosi stopped and smiled.
“I’ll tell you what I need it for, later. When you’re ready,” Lugosi explained.
Seamus felt like he was going to fall over and into Lugosi’s eternally gravitational well of no return. His vision began to blur.
“Your blood, Seamus Bennigan, is so much more potent than elf blood. More magical than the rest of the leprechauns’. When we finish the reconstruction of this tower,” Lugosi said with an exultant smile, “you and I will go very far from here… Together.”
At that last sentence, Seamus momentarily lost control of his bladder and peed just a little bit in his trousers.
“But first, I need your blood!” Lugosi said he picked Seamus up off the floor and bit down into his neck, sucking the warm blood out of the little leprechaun. Seamus felt his own heart pounding, harder and harder and harder until the only sound in the world was the THUMP THUMP THUMP of his beating heart. A flood of thoughts and memories and plans filled Seamus’s head. Images that the vampire was willing into Seamus’s head. Visions of the tower in its former glory, pastureland, forests, cities in Eastern Europe, step pyramids nestled in a jungle, pyramids towering over a sea of dancing torch light. The torchlight stopped dancing and the pyramid disappeared. The torchlight became stars in the black of night. Then all was black.
* * *
Seamus woke up flat on his back, stairing up at the ceiling, which happened to be spinning violently. He tilted his head a few degrees to the right, seeing the limp body of Lugosi sprawled on the chair in the center of the room. Seamus’s head swam.
Very, very carefully, Seamus rose to a drunken stand. He snickered a little, then allowed himself to giggle.
Now I just get the dagger and kill ‘im! Where’d he leave it?… Seamus shuffled around to Dirk’s vacant desk. He left it in a drawer- which drawer? The one next to his crutches WHERE ARE HIS FECKING CRUTCHES?! Frustrated, Seamus scattered some loose papers off of Dirk’s desk.
“Oh yeah, he needs fecking crutches to walk,” Seamus said, more slurred.
“Clackstep! Clackstep! Clackstep!” Seamus cried out while laughing.
The drunk leprechaun pulled open and shut every drawer he could, briefly taking in what he saw in each one in search of the dagger.
In one drawer he saw a time table the names of all the leprechauns, dwarves and elves that were in the tower, as well as when all of their bloodletting sessions were and were going to be. Seamus kept looking.
He finally opened a drawer he’d opened three times prior, and recognized the purple cloth that had been wrapped around the serpentis dagger.
Seamus’s heart was filled with glee at finally locating the dagger. He threw down the purple cloth and removed the blade from the sheath. He held the dagger up to the light to admire the elegant lines that Dirk had fashioned into the weapon.
“I’ve never appreciated how beautiful you are,” Seamus said to the dagger, looking at the two gold snakes that made the handle and hilt, admiring the silver blade.
Seamus shuffled over to Lugosi, still passed out on chair.
The leprechaun grabbed Lugosi’s long knees, then hopped up into the vampire’s lap.
Seamus stood on Lugosi’s lap with unsteady legs.
Now we’re eye level, Seamus thought, looking into Lugosi’s eyes.
The iris around his pupils were blood red, the pupils themselves were completely dilated, giving the impression that the vampire’s eyes were almost entirely black and lined with only a little red.
The sensation of vertigo that Seamus got from being in the vampire’s presence grew to nearly intolerable levels. Staring into Lugosi’s vacant eyes, Seamus felt that he was going to fall into those black pupils and tumble all the way to Annwyn.
Drag me to hell, will you? Seamus thought.
“All yehr plans…” Seamus said, dangling a finger under the vampire’s chin.
“All yehr secrets… They’re gone. They’re done… You’re done. ”
Seamus lifted the Serpentis dagger high above his head, aiming the tip of the blade at the vampire’s dead heart.
Seamus’s stomach turned over. The leprechaun smiled, then said
“Nighty night!”
Instead of stabbing Lugosi, the intoxicated leprechaun vomited rainbows all over the sleeping vampire’s face.
Seamus let out sort of a gargling, coughing, wimpering roar as he continued emptying his stomach contents onto the target of his hate. What had been eggs and potatoes and milk less than hour prior was now all the colors of the rainbow. A jewel toned mess that only leprechauns can vomit had covered Lugosi’s face and neck, ran down the sides of the chair, and pooled up on the stone floor beneath.
Seamus finished vomiting and weakly propped himself up on the vampire’s chest, staring into Lugosi’s unnaturally dead eyes. The back of his throat stung, and the rainbow vomit that was on Lugosi’s chest felt warm against Seamus’s cheek.
“Nighty night,” Seamus sweetly repeated, then fell asleep.
As Seamus stepped down from the ladder, Brok, one of the dwarves, climbed up it with a roll of buckskin over his shoulder. As he mounted the top of the golden tank, he unfurled the hairless deer hide over the rimmed hole on top, and bound it taught with a braided chord.
Seamus was beginning to walk over to Dirk, but then he saw the vampire Lugosi standing with him, conversing with him.
“One hundred and ninety proof,” Dirk said to Lugosi, “you selected adequate lioprechauns this time, master.”
Master? Seamus thought. This time?!
“M. Indeed,” Lugosi said. He was still wearing the same black clothes that Seamus had seen him in before, though without his top hat. Lugosi’s black hair was slicked back. He was holding a wine glass filled with blood.
Lugosi looked over the glass he sipped from, eyeing Seamus near the base of the golden tank he had just sterilized.
“Speaking of…” Lugosi said in an aside to Dirk, then shouted, “Little one! May I… have a word?”
Seamus stared into the couple, the elf and the vampire.
Behind and beyond reality, Dirk’s soul could be seen, radiant, self-contained, and guarded as always. With Lugosi, there was no soul to see, and that thought alone sent a chill into Seamus’s heart as he obeyed the vampire’s summon.
As he neared, the usual clarity and definition within his mind’s eye resolved itself and he could see Dirk’s soul all the more. What disturbed Seamus even more than finding nothing in place of Lugosi’s soul, Seamus felt a hole where he expected to find nothing. Seamus almost felt like he could fall into the man.
Lugosi looked down at Seamus and smiled, revealing his two sharp fangs. Seamus, Everclear bottle in hand, returned the gaze, wishing he could look away, flee, or kill the vampire then and there. Anything but standing paralyzed as he was.
Lugosi tousled the leprechaun’s hair.
“I like him,” Lugosi said to Dirk, gaze still on Seamus.
“I should retire to my lair,” Lugosi finally said Dirk’s face, “dawn is- approaching.” Lugosi said the last word a note higher than the rest.
Lugosi left the pipe shop. His footsteps could not be heard on the spiral staircase. Seamus was relieved to be rid of the hole-for-a-soul feeling he got from the vampire.
“Ah, look at your hand,” Dirk said to Seamus, “the alcohol must have dried it out. Did you get a contact high?”
Seamus did feel a little tipsy, though he hadn’t drunk anything. He must have absorbed some of the alcohol straight into his bloodstream while he wiped down the inside of the gold tank.
Seamus looked into Dirks eyes as he thought WHEN DO WE KILL HIM?!
Tomorrow night, Dirk thought in reply, then looked at the brown jug in Seamus’s hand.
“Save the alcohol,” Dirk said.
* * *
Seamus slept all day, like everyone else under the vampires’ employ, and awoke only a half hour before sunset. He ate his breakfast in the fermentarium, potatoes and eggs which he washed down with milk, then walked downstairs to the distillery to meet Dirk as previously arranged.
Seamus entered the distillery to find that Dirk had already been waiting for him by the wash basin.
“We don’t have any time, give me your flask,” Dirk said to Seamus.
Seamus approached Dirk as he took his whiskey flask out of his vest pocket and handed it to Dirk. The elf unscrewed the lid and poured Seamus’s whiskey down the wash basin.
“Hey!” Seamus cried.
“How’s your alcohol tolerance, Seamus Bennigan?” Dirk asked as the last of the whiskey dripped from the flask.
“What do you think you’re doin’?!” Seamus demanded of Dirk.
“I said, ‘how is your tolerance?’” Dirk asked.
A red hate for the elf brimmed and threatened to boil over within Seamus. Dirk took a small funnel and the brown jug of Everclear from yesterday’s sterilization and began to pour the high content grain alcohol into Seamus’s flask.
“I am a lioprechaun,” Seamus replied, “so, it’s probably pretty good, all things consid…”
Dirk filled the flask until it overflowed, then screwed the cap back on. Dirk handed the flask back to Seamus.
“…dered, all things considered…” Seamus had to stop and think about what the elf had done for him.
“I thought thess wasn’t for drinkin’,” Seamus said to Dirk.
“Not typically,” Dirk said, “I’ll tell you the rest in my office.”
Seamus followed Dirk into his office. Dirk shut the door and walked behind his desk on the opposite side of the stone room.
“Please, sit,” Dirk said.
Seamus complied.
“Lugosi will be here in a few minutes,” Dirk said with a measure of urgency in his voice, “and he will drink your blood.”
“How do you kn-“ Seamus began to ask.
“It’s been long enough since your last draining…” Dirk started with, then added as if to amend what he said, “He told me last-night while you were scrubbing the inside of that tank. He very much wants to drink your blood, Seamus Bennigan, tonight.”
“So you brought me in here for him?!” Seamus yelled.
“Yes,” Dirk said, “and you’re going to kill him.”
“How?” Seamus asked.
“Before he bites you, and without him noticing, you’re going to drink *all* of the Everclear in your flask,” Dirk said while pointing at the vest Seamus was wearing.
“It is very, very important he does not see you drink the Everclear. It is equally important that he does not discover your-… our, plot,” Dirk said.
Seamus recalled being in Dirk’s office once before, when he’d first been incarcerated.
“I kill him by getting shitfaced?” Seamus asked.
“That’s the first part,” Dirk said, then continued, “Unlike Eamonn, Lugosi can’t tolerate liquor in the blood of his victims. He needs his blood clean and without taint.”
A grin began to form on Seamus’s face.
“To clarify, the alcohol won’t kill him,” Dirk said, “but he’ll be rendered unconscious long enough for you to kill him by other means.”
“What other means?” Seamus asked.
Dirk reached into a drawer next to where is crutches were leaning, and pulled out familiar blade.
“My serpentis dagger,” Dirk said, dagger in hand.
“You mean *my* serpentis dagger!” Seamus said.
Greedy little lioprechaun, Seamus heard Dirk think.
“It’s yours if you succeed in killing Lugosi,” Dirk said.
Dirk wrapped the dagger back up in the purple cloth it had been stored in, then replaced it in its rightful drawer next to Dirk’s crutches.
“If you fail- if he notices at any one point that something’s not right,” Dirk said, “he’ll pulverize every bone in one of your feet. Maybe both.”
Seamus swallowed the hard lump in his throat.
“Believe me,” Dirk said, “I speak from experience.”
Dirk mounted his crutches, and hobbled to the door to the stairway.
Before leaving, he took a black veil that had been crumpled up on an end table and threw it over top of a golden sculpture that had been nailed to the wall next to the door.
“Remember the spell I taught you earlier,” Dirk said.
Seamus hadn’t forgot, Dirk referred to the Latin spell protected your thoughts from the supernatural vision of others.
“If he asks, I’ll be downstairs in the pipe shop. Time to drink up, Seamus,” Dirk said, leaving Seamus in his office as he descended the stone stairs to the tower’s sub-basement.
Seamus listened to the *clack* step… *clack* step sound that Dirk’s walking made.
Seamus took the flask out of his pocket and sipped a mouthful of the Everclear. His mouth immediately stung with the fire of a thousand sunburns, but he forced himself to swallow. On its way down, the Everclear burned his throat, then his stomach was filled with the warm glow of the strong alcohol.
Seamus gasped, then forced himself to quickly drink the rest of the flask dry. The same burn accompanied every gulp, but none seemed quite as bad as the first. Seamus coughed and gasped, screwed the cap back onto the flask, then sat back down in the chair he had been, facing the desk.
Now what? he thought. Seamus started drumming his fingertips on the arms of the chair. He pretended the galloping sound they made were horses racing in the distance.
Bored, he turned the chair around so that he could face the door.
To the left was the built in scale on the floor that Eamonn had used to weigh Seamus’s confiscated gold.
Between the scale’s readout and the open door was the sculpture that Dirk had tossed the black veil over.
Seamus continued drumming his fingertips impatiently as he stared at the black veil on the wall. The protruded figure of the sculpture made it look like a kite. A black kite. A loosely made black kite.
What was he hiding? Seamus wondered.
Seamus stood up from the chair and immediately felt a wobble in his knees. He walked to the veiled sculpture next to the door to have a look. It’d been nailed to the wall just above his head’s height, Seamus was standing right beneath it. Seamus raised a finger to lift the veil, revealing a vertical gold bar, the beginning of the sculpture. Lifting the black veil a little higher, Seamus saw two golden feet, human feet, one atop the other, with a single spike pinning them together to the vertical gold bar. Seamus wondered what sort of grizzly artwork would so inspire Dirk.
Seamus nearly had a look at the rest of the tortuous, gold artwork when-
“I’d rather you keep that hidden!” Lugosi said from behind Seamus, already in the middle of Dirk’s office.
Lugosi shut the door.
Seamus felt his inebriation growing. He couldn’t even tell how successful he was in standing straight up without wobbling.
Lugosi towered over Seamus, smiling. Lugosi rested an ice cold hand on the leprechaun’s head.
“Ever since I met you… I knew there was something different about you, Seamus Bennigan,” Lugosi said.
Seamus stared at the vampire Lugosi. On top of his already dizzy, drunken state, Seamus felt like he was being pulled into the vampire.
“And when I tasted your blood… I knew I had to keep you,” Lugosi continued.
It was like looking down a very deep well, Seamus thought. The sense of vertigo, the dizzy feeling of falling in just grew so strong while looking into the place where Lugosi’s soul would have been. Should have been, if he’d been human.
“Human blood is sufficient for my kind,” Lugosi explained, “but only the blood of lioprechauns and elves and dwarves supply what I need.”
“And whet d’yee need, then?” Seamus said, the alcohol in his breath making his own lips tingle.
“Magic,” the vampire said, “there’s magic in your blood and I need to store it for…”
Lugosi stopped and smiled.
“I’ll tell you what I need it for, later. When you’re ready,” Lugosi explained.
Seamus felt like he was going to fall over and into Lugosi’s eternally gravitational well of no return. His vision began to blur.
“Your blood, Seamus Bennigan, is so much more potent than elf blood. More magical than the rest of the leprechauns’. When we finish the reconstruction of this tower,” Lugosi said with an exultant smile, “you and I will go very far from here… Together.”
At that last sentence, Seamus momentarily lost control of his bladder and peed just a little bit in his trousers.
“But first, I need your blood!” Lugosi said he picked Seamus up off the floor and bit down into his neck, sucking the warm blood out of the little leprechaun. Seamus felt his own heart pounding, harder and harder and harder until the only sound in the world was the THUMP THUMP THUMP of his beating heart. A flood of thoughts and memories and plans filled Seamus’s head. Images that the vampire was willing into Seamus’s head. Visions of the tower in its former glory, pastureland, forests, cities in Eastern Europe, step pyramids nestled in a jungle, pyramids towering over a sea of dancing torch light. The torchlight stopped dancing and the pyramid disappeared. The torchlight became stars in the black of night. Then all was black.
* * *
Seamus woke up flat on his back, stairing up at the ceiling, which happened to be spinning violently. He tilted his head a few degrees to the right, seeing the limp body of Lugosi sprawled on the chair in the center of the room. Seamus’s head swam.
Very, very carefully, Seamus rose to a drunken stand. He snickered a little, then allowed himself to giggle.
Now I just get the dagger and kill ‘im! Where’d he leave it?… Seamus shuffled around to Dirk’s vacant desk. He left it in a drawer- which drawer? The one next to his crutches WHERE ARE HIS FECKING CRUTCHES?! Frustrated, Seamus scattered some loose papers off of Dirk’s desk.
“Oh yeah, he needs fecking crutches to walk,” Seamus said, more slurred.
“Clackstep! Clackstep! Clackstep!” Seamus cried out while laughing.
The drunk leprechaun pulled open and shut every drawer he could, briefly taking in what he saw in each one in search of the dagger.
In one drawer he saw a time table the names of all the leprechauns, dwarves and elves that were in the tower, as well as when all of their bloodletting sessions were and were going to be. Seamus kept looking.
He finally opened a drawer he’d opened three times prior, and recognized the purple cloth that had been wrapped around the serpentis dagger.
Seamus’s heart was filled with glee at finally locating the dagger. He threw down the purple cloth and removed the blade from the sheath. He held the dagger up to the light to admire the elegant lines that Dirk had fashioned into the weapon.
“I’ve never appreciated how beautiful you are,” Seamus said to the dagger, looking at the two gold snakes that made the handle and hilt, admiring the silver blade.
Seamus shuffled over to Lugosi, still passed out on chair.
The leprechaun grabbed Lugosi’s long knees, then hopped up into the vampire’s lap.
Seamus stood on Lugosi’s lap with unsteady legs.
Now we’re eye level, Seamus thought, looking into Lugosi’s eyes.
The iris around his pupils were blood red, the pupils themselves were completely dilated, giving the impression that the vampire’s eyes were almost entirely black and lined with only a little red.
The sensation of vertigo that Seamus got from being in the vampire’s presence grew to nearly intolerable levels. Staring into Lugosi’s vacant eyes, Seamus felt that he was going to fall into those black pupils and tumble all the way to Annwyn.
Drag me to hell, will you? Seamus thought.
“All yehr plans…” Seamus said, dangling a finger under the vampire’s chin.
“All yehr secrets… They’re gone. They’re done… You’re done. ”
Seamus lifted the Serpentis dagger high above his head, aiming the tip of the blade at the vampire’s dead heart.
Seamus’s stomach turned over. The leprechaun smiled, then said
“Nighty night!”
Instead of stabbing Lugosi, the intoxicated leprechaun vomited rainbows all over the sleeping vampire’s face.
Seamus let out sort of a gargling, coughing, wimpering roar as he continued emptying his stomach contents onto the target of his hate. What had been eggs and potatoes and milk less than hour prior was now all the colors of the rainbow. A jewel toned mess that only leprechauns can vomit had covered Lugosi’s face and neck, ran down the sides of the chair, and pooled up on the stone floor beneath.
Seamus finished vomiting and weakly propped himself up on the vampire’s chest, staring into Lugosi’s unnaturally dead eyes. The back of his throat stung, and the rainbow vomit that was on Lugosi’s chest felt warm against Seamus’s cheek.
“Nighty night,” Seamus sweetly repeated, then fell asleep.
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