Ty thought about it for a minute, then nodded. “That sounds good. I reckon if they didn’t have to hunt for food for their babies, I never would have run afoul of the papa.”

  “Yeah, but papa turned manhunter. It was only a matter of time before some hiker or camper ended up out here and became lizard food. This way they’ve got a safe place, and we don’t have to kill ‘em,” I said.

  “What are we gonna do with that?” Ty asked, pointing to the dead lizard.

  I looked at it for a long minute, then grinned up at him from my spot on the ground. “Well, son, I’ve heard fried lizard tastes like chicken. Be a shame to let all that meat go to waste.”

  “I’ll call Vanessa, tell her to break out the big skillet.” He helped me to my feet, and we started back to the truck.

  We got about twenty feet when something hit me. I looked over at Ty and said, “You know the rule she’s gonna enforce, right?”

  “What’s that?”

  “We killed it. We gotta clean it.”

  THE END

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  5

  Family Reunion

  A Lucas Card Short Story

  There was a man in my parlor when I awoke. He was no stranger to me, although I had often wished we had never met, and would do so many more times over the next few years. I hadn’t seen him in half a decade, and never intended to see him again. He was the reason I departed my beloved castle, the reason I kept watch on my dear Mina and Jonathan mostly from afar, the reason I was now described with that most appalling of words - famous.

  I was between assistants at the time of his intrusion, so I had no one to blame but myself for my lax security. And the old man warming himself with my brandy in my favorite armchair by a roaring fire, of course. I had many things to blame him for, not least of which was my current difficulty in Trans-Atlantic travel and subsequent confinement to England.

  “Oh good, you’re awake,” he said as I walked into the room. I didn’t speak, just walked over to the table beside my chair, the chair currently occupied by his old, graying ass, and picked up the brandy. I then walked to the bar, poured myself a large glass, and pointedly returned the bottle to the liquor cabinet. He was not welcome in my home, he was not welcome in my chair, and he most certainly was not welcome to my libations.

  His expression completely blasé, he watched as I strode across the room, picked up another heavy armchair with one hand, and walked back to the fire. I set the chair down facing him on a diagonal, careful to keep my dressing gown from getting close enough to be caught by any errant sparks. My guest had neglected to replace the screen that normally occupied the space before the fire. He undoubtedly did not have to take the same care around open flame that I do.

  I sat, sipped my brandy, and crossed my legs. I stared at him, drinking in the sight of the most famous man to ever attempt my murder. He was a rotund little man, years of drinking toasts to my demise obviously agreed with him. His beard, a new affectation, was shot through with grey, and his bushy eyebrows were almost completely white. Piercing blue eyes nestled in the hollows of his face, hidden somewhat by his ponderous facial hair and his newly-minted jowls, but beaming out at me with the sharp intelligence I remembered from our previous encounters. He still looked strong, albeit with his muscles buried under layers of good brandy and rich food, but his eyes were sharp as ever, and he never let his right hand stray far from the arm of his chair. I suspected a pistol tucked between his thigh and the cushion. He wouldn’t need it tonight. Not on my account at least.

  “You got fat,” I said.

  “You haven’t changed an iota,” he replied without rancor.

  “I had a gaping hole in my chest the last time you saw me. I have corrected that problem, at least.”

  “I am glad.”

  “Are you?” I raised an eyebrow and let the question hang for a moment. “As I recall, you were the one who put the hole in me, at least indirectly, and now you are glad that I live?”

  “I am. I have need of you.”

  I laughed. It was a genuine laugh, partly born of surprise and partly of sheer gall. “You need me? What in the world do you need from me, you fat louse? And what in the world do you think could ever persuade me to lend you any aid, even if it were at my disposal? Why would I help you do anything, except die an agonizing death?”

  He drained the las dregs of his brandy and set the glass down on the small table I kept for books. I was gratified to see that he didn’t set the glass atop the novel I was reading, a pile of tripe about a man diving under the sea to fight monsters or some such silliness. “A child has been taken. She is not the first, but I fear witchery. I need your help to return her to her parents whole and hearty.”

  “I ask again, why would I care? These local sheep are nothing to me. They are less than nothing, they are food. Why should I care if one of their stupider lambs wanders off into the woods and becomes lost?”

  “The child is five years old. All of the children within two hours’ ride of this place have disappeared within two months of their fifth birthday.” He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees and steepling his fingers. His belly got in the way, but the intensity of his gaze pinned me to my seat.

  I felt a nagging disquiet in my head, but continued to affect a disaffected air. “So, the girl is young. What is that to me?”

  The man leaned back in his chair and laughed, his rolls jiggling with the motion. “You are good, aren’t you? Be serious, Vlad. May I call you Vlad?”

  “No.” There was not even a hint of a smile on my face or in my voice. I didn’t want to give this fat shite any idea that I liked him enough to be on a first name basis.

  “I suppose that is fair. But we are in England now, so you will need a name that suits you better than Tepes.”

  “I have operated as Alucard for many years, but that name is ruined for me, thanks to some hack writer and a slanderous pile of tripe that someone obviously converted into too much wine and rich food,” I said, indicating his belly.

  “Well, Bram is a good friend,” he said mildly, with no hint of offense. Apparently if I wanted to rile him, I would need to attack something other than his middle. “How about Card? Lucas Card seems a fairly innocuous moniker, does it not?”

  I thought for a moment, sipping away at the last of my brandy with a dour frown pulling my face to the side. He should not have known that I often used the moniker Luke when traveling incognito. No one that he encountered should have been able to tell him that. It seemed that my old adversary had done his research. I waved a hand through the air, forcing a disaffected mien across my face. “Fine,” I said. “You may call me Lucas. But you still have not explained why you think I care about a handful of missing toddlers in the English countryside?”

  “Oh, I thought it would be obvious what is happening, particularly since you took such great pains to hide them here. Someone is hunting Jonathan and Mina Harker, and they are stealing babies in hopes of kidnapping young Quincy and luring you out into the open. It’s a genius plan, honestly, and one that I might have thought of, were I an absolute monster willing to use the lives of children as a bargaining chit.”

  He was right, of course, and I had known it from the very moment he first mentioned a child of five years. Mina’s son was barely five, and he was growing quickly into a bright, inquisitive child with physical gifts beyond what I had seen in other children his age, although my experience with child development was admittedly limited.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I told my old adversary, unwilling as yet to admit to him that I was working to keep Mina and her family hidden from the public eye. That Stoker fool’s book had not even bothered to change the names of those involved, so in addition to rendering my Alucard alias useless, it thrust Jonathan and Mina into a spotlight that they were unprepared for, especially given their newlywed status.

  “You are a horrible liar, Lucas,” the fat man said as he heaved himself out of the chair and waddled over to the bar. He poured himself another glass of my brandy and waggled the bottle in my direction. I nodded, and he refilled my glass, setting the bottle on top of my book when he returned to his chair. “You have retreated here, to the English countryside, after seeing Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray married in London. Bram’s book destroyed any opportunity the young couple had for a normal life, and for that I am truly sorry. But here we are, you looking over them and their son Quincy like a mother hen, and me here trying to atone, in some small way, for the trouble that I brought into their lives.”

  “Not to atone to me?” I asked, one eyebrow climbing.

  “Of course not,” he said, sipping my brandy while sitting in my favorite chair, smiling at me like a Cheshire cat sitting on a branch. I restrained myself from reminding him exactly why I was feared by all of the Romany people for decades, but just barely. “Trying to atone to you would be not only hypocritical, as I feel I did nothing wrong, but also ridiculous, as you suffered no lasting harm from my efforts.”

  This time I did stand. I sprang to my feet, sloshing brandy on my leg. “You put a stake in my chest, you smug bastard! You broke into my home, stabbed me while I slept, and tried your best to murder me. And you call that suffering no harm?” I loomed over the man, glaring down at him, fangs extended. I was ready to rip his throat out and drink every drop of his essence, but somehow pulled myself back from that edge.

  Abraham Van Helsing smiled up at me. “Good,” he said. “The monster does still live inside you. I was concerned for a time, but now I believe we will be fine. Don’t pack him too far away, we shall need that monster again try soon. After all, it takes a monster to hunt a monster.

  The child he spoke of was Little Agnes Porter, daughter of Silas and Amelia Porter. They lived in a small town some miles from the farm where I had Mina hidden away with her family. Jonathan was ill-suited to the farming life, but I took some amusement from his struggles with livestock, and supplemented their income as needed. I still had access to my funds, thanks to accounts Renfield set up for me before the dissolution of our arrangement.

  Van Helsing and I stepped out of my front door to find a carriage waiting for me. “You were quite confident that I would agree to aid you,” I said. “To pay this man to await your departure with me.”

  “To be fair, he was waiting for me, with or without you,” Abraham said.

  “Then you were quite confident that I wouldn’t kill you.”

  “I am not so easily murdered as that,” he said, patting a lump in his coat that I took to be a pistol. I didn’t try to dissuade him of his illusions. Let him think he could best me were we to engage with me fully conscious and unwounded, such a mistake may be the edge I eventually needed to rid myself of this troublesome hunter.

  I opened the door and climbed into the carriage, and Van Helsing heaved his bulk in after me. I sat facing the man, unwilling to rub shoulders with him in such a confined space. He rapped on the roof of the carriage with a cane he picked up off the seat and smiled across at me.

  “This is as unlikely a partnership as I believe has ever been seen,” he said.

  I thought back to my association some years ago with Adam, a reanimated corpse, and wondered if this was truly any stranger than that. I decided after a moment’s internal debate that it would be determined entirely based upon Van Helsing’s survival. If I didn’t drain him to a husk, then yes, it would be one of the strangest alliances in history.

  We rode in silence, if not an entirely comfortable one. I watched Van Helsing throughout the trip, wondering if he would be useful at all were we to encounter anything out of the ken of normal creatures. When we last met, he was a formidable opponent, but the past several years of expansive living had taken a toll on the man, and he was fat, slow, and quite possibly ill besides. I will admit to more than a passing thought of rescuing the child but leaving Van Helsing to whatever fate befell him at the hands of who- or whatever took her.

  “What is it?” Abraham asked, and I realized that I must have let a small smile creep across my lips.

  “Nothing, dear fellow. Just thinking of letting you die a lingering death.”

  “Oh, come now, can we not let bygones be bygones? It was years ago, after all.”

  My eyes flew from the passing scenery to look upon his grinning face. “Are you mad? You destroyed my brides. You tried to murder me in my sleep. You took…” I let my words trail off as I remembered, not just my dear, sweet Lucy, but Mina as well. Young, innocent, lovely Mina, who I loved as much as I had loved any woman since my own dearest Justina, so many years ago. But she was Harker’s now, and I could not touch her, would never hold her, would never kiss her…

  “You sicced your band of merry idiots on me, forced Harker to try to decapitate me, and got that idiot Morris to stab me in the chest with a giant knife. If he had used wood, or a blessed implement, it might well have killed me. Certainly, had his blade been silver, I would have died a final death. So, no, Van Helsing, I will not let bygones be bygones. In fact, the only reason that I have not ripped your throat out and feasted on your blood is—”

  “The child,” he said, a faint smile touching his lips. “You care about the boy, Vlad. You think of him almost as your own, even though there is nothing of you in him. That is why you are in this carriage. That is why you will not kill me. That is why you will help me find what is hunting the child and destroy it.”

  “You are wrong,” I said, but refused to elucidate. I couldn’t. He didn’t deserve the truth about my relationship with the child, which went far deeper than he could know. The fat shite. “But I will help you, because I do feel a slight debt to Mina and Jonathan. They did suffer somewhat at my hand, and I do feel slightly protective of the child.”

  “Of course you do,” Van Helsing said, that irritating smile flickering across his face again.

  I pointedly ignored him for the rest of the ride, and when the carriage stopped, I was out the door before he could move, leaving him struggling to squeeze his bulk through the door. I looked around the small cluster of homes, too small to even be considered a village. There were a few cottages, tine farmhouses that couldn’t have held more than three rooms, and a well in the center of town. It was delightfully parochial, the kind of place that barely existed even deep in the English countryside at that point in the twentieth century. London’s dank, wretched, smoke-laden fingerprints were plastered across the whole of the country, but this little sliver of the past was free from the taint of the city.

  “The child’s home is there,” Van Helsing said, stepping up beside me and pointing to a home mostly indistinguishable from the others around it. Certainly, there was no indication that a child resided there. No toys littered the yard, there was no fluffy puppy cavorting on the front step or anything similarly cliché. It was just a house, like all the others, with a poorly-hung front door and a pair of boots sitting outside so as not to track mud in from the field.

  “Where does the father plow?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “The father tends a garden or a field,” I said, pointing to the boots. “Where is his patch of dirt?”

  “Why does that matter?”

  I spun on the man. “We have less than five hours until the sun rises and I am unable to set foot outside. I can either explain myself to you, or I can try to find this child. As it happens, I worry that her father may have dug up some relic and become cursed, so I want to look at the field he has been working to see if there is any indication of such a thing. His shoes are caked with mud, and it hasn’t rained significantly in over a week, so he must be plowing. That is the only way he would get that dirty, unless you mean to tell me that he has been wandering through a bog looking for his daughter?”

  “Um…no, not at all. Let me take you there.” He turned and walked off toward a section of fields east of town. I followed, wreathing myself in satisfaction. This examination of dirt would likely yield nothing, but I felt it important to rule out. Besides, a certain detective in London would consider me remiss in my duties had I not presented at least a minor flair for the dramatic in my investigation.

  I was right, of course. The tilled earth gave no indication that anything had been unearthed other than stones and the bones of a rodent or two. But scouring the soil for half an hour gave me time to work through some elements of the disappearance for myself, identifying the pieces that Van Helsing hadn’t given me.

  “When was she taken?” I asked.

  “Three nights ago.”

  “Why do you think she yet lives? If some beast took her, for food or some nefarious sacrifice, isn’t it more likely than not that she is long dead?”

  He shuddered, a reaction out of proportion for a hired paranormal hunter, furthering my suspicions about my old adversary’s motives. “I can but hope that is not the case, Vlad. She is a bright child, vibrant and full of life. It would devastate her parents to lose her.”

  “I am sure it would,” I agreed. I swept an arm toward the cluster of homes. “Which house is yours?”

  Van Helsing started, then made a feeble cough to cover his slip. “Whatever do you mean? I am merely here—” He stopped at my upraised hand.

  “Abraham, if you lie to me once more I will go home, finish off a bottle of brandy, and forget I ever heard of this girl. If you pursue me, I will feed you your heart with salt and butter.”

 

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