Vinnie de Soth and the Vampire Definition


    Investigative journalist Bernice Teshmaker glared across the counter at Alto Tumour. "Don't you care about being offensive to women?" she asked.

    The proprietor of the occult bookshop looked down his paunch at his grubby T-shirt that said 'Honk if you want to be honked'. "What's wrong with that?" he asked.

    Bernice's stare was icy. "I didn't mean the T-shirt," she said. "I was referring to you generally."

    While Alto was dealing with this the reporter picked up a dog-eared flyer for Vedric Chakra Debugging. "Where is he?" she demanded.

    By now the proprietor of Alto Tumour's Occult Books was used to a succession of intimidating young women calling upon his lodger. "Vinnie's through there," he said, pointing to a shabby bead curtain.

    Bernice marched into the backroom. She found a flustered-looking young man trying to coax the lid off a jar of coffee using a sacred Maori dagger. When he saw he had a visitor he quickly dropped jar and weapon into a drawer and tried to look professional.

    "Mr De Soth," Bernice began.

    Vinnie flinched. "Are you another process server?" he asked. "If so you could just leave it on the pile there."

    The reporter noted a thick stack of legal documents threatening to fall out of Vinnie's in-tray. "That's a lot of summonses," she noted. "What did you do?"

    "Ah," winced Vinnie. "It turns out that when you shut down a website that puts you in e-mail correspondence with spirits claiming to be your dead loved ones you should really check whether the domain is registered to a prominent dead lawyer first. Otherwise you tend to get some really serious post-mortem litigation."

    Bernice Teshmaker frowned, unsure whether this strange young man was trying to make a fool of her.

    "I'd have referred this to my attorneys by now except that one is in rehab and the other has an extraordinary and very personalised fee scale."

    "I'm not here about that. I encountered something that bothers me so I e-mailed Sir Mumphrey Wilton. Then I came to my senses and e-mailed Asil. Anyway, Mumph said that you were the - and I quote his exact words - the perfect bally chap to chat to about bothering the undead, what?"

    "Did he mention my dating life at all?" checked Vinnie anxiously. "Never mind. What's the problem?"
    
***

    Mrs Blythely wasn't sure about the young specialist Miss Teshmaker had brought into the Williams case. "Are we quite certain that this consultant has had the appropriate police checks?" she checked. "I'm not actually certain that..." she examined the rectangles in her hand, "that a Bean and Donut Diner loyalty card and a Lair Legion commcard constitute appropriate authority."

    "Vinnie, this is Mrs Blythely of Paradopolis Social Services. She's looking into the safety and well-being of young Beyonce Williams, the girl who claims that she's becoming a vampire."

    "We're not at home to Mr Superstition," insisted the harassed social worker, "while of course absolutely respecting the ethnic and cultural traditions of a modern multi-faith polyglot society and the individual belief systems and life choices of contemporary civilisation."

    Vinnie looked over Mrs Blythely's shoulder at the moody sallow-faced teenager sitting in the window seat. The girl had a black choker round her neck and black nail polish on her fingers. "Perhaps while you're showing Mr Superstition the door I could have a word with Miss Williams - I mean Ms Williams. I'll try not to disrespect her individual belief systems and... whatever else it was you just said."

    "I suggest you let Vinnie talk to her," Bernice encouraged the care worker. "He might be able to help."

    Vinnie bypassed Mrs Blythely and approached Beyonce. He suspected that possibly she was really called Jane or Jill or something, but since he was actually named Vincent Arcanus Greymalkin de Soth he wasn't going to arguer with anyone's self-naming choices. "Hello," he said.

    Beyonce gave him a look of disinterested contempt.

    "How are you becoming a vampire?" Vinnie asked her curiously.

    Beyonce frowned at him. "What do you mean?"

    "Demonic pact, divine curse or misdeeds in life, or the usual fluid exchanges with a practicing undead?" the young occultist clarified.

    "Ripper," the girl clarified. "Ripper drinks my blood."

    "And Ripper's a vampire?"

    "Well duh!"

    "And... how do you know he's a vampire?" Vinnie checked. After all, in a city where Beeping Reg kept pulling the old alien abduction pickup on unsuspecting college girls anything was possible.

    "Because he doesn't reflect in mirrors. And because he drinks my blood."

    "Good tells," admitted the occultist. "So how often does this... drinking happen?"

    "None of your business."

    "Well, technically since I'm acting sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse it is. I'm told there should be some sort of certificate but frankly the powers and principalities are a bit backlogged right now so..."

    "If you don't let Ripper come and get me he'll slaughter you all," Beyonce warned.

    "Now, Beyonce, that's no way to talk," Mrs Blythely chided. "We're not at home to Mr Threats."

    "And if we were, we shouldn't invite him in," Vinnie added for clarification.

    "Who is this Ripper person?" Bernice demanded. "Did you meet him online?"

    "Ripper's eternal," Beyonce declared. "Ripper will make me eternal."

    "Well, the theology on that varies," Vinnie admitted. "He could certainly make something that looks a lot like you eternal."

    "This Ripper person might well be a sex offender," Mrs Blytheley worried. "I should call in Counselling."

    "I think you need it," Bernice admitted.

    Vinnie focussed on the main problem. "Okay, Beyonce. Next diagnostic question. This vampire of yours. Does he tend towards being moody and sparkling at all?"

    "No," the girl answered, puzzled.

    "Shame. Because then all I'd have had to do was give his name to the other undead and they'd have taken him to a back alley and sorted him out."

    "Using intervention therapy?" suggested Mrs Blythely.

    "Using a chair leg and kerosene. And possibly a good deal of sarcasm."

    Bernice stirred. "So to be clear, Mr De Soth, you're claiming that not only are there vampires but that they have professional standards?"

    Vinnie shrugged. "It's a PR thing. Um, I'm not about to become a three column expose in some newspaper, am I?"

    "Perhaps later. I'm still putting together my shocking piece on the lapses of the Paradopolis Social Services system."

    "What?" gasped Mrs Blythely. "But you said..."

    "I am totally at home to Mr Tell The World How Crap Your Department Is," Bernice promised her.

    Vinnie returned to the point. "Beyonce, listen to me. This is very important. How many times have you drunk Ripper's blood?"

    Beyonce blushed.

    "I need to know," the young occultist persisted.

    Beyonce looked away. "I'll get the hang of it. It just tastes so icky that I always spit it out. But tonight..."

    "Don't be ashamed. It's great that you're sanguine-intolerant. That's what keeps saving your life," Vinnie comforted her.

    Bernice had caught something else though. "Wait. Did you say tonight? This Ripper's coming here, to... drink you or whatever, and he's going to do it tonight?"

    Beyonce nodded. "And if you try to stop him he'll kill you."

    Mrs Blythely made a note on her PDA. "That would certainly be against our code of customer/staff conduct," she warned.

***

    At midnight, the vampire let himself into the youth hostel where Beyonce was lodged. He used a key from his own time there.

    "Hi," Vinnie greeted him. "You must be Ripper."

    From the overstuffed sofa where she sat with Bernice and Mrs Blythely, Beyonce waved apologetically. "I told them to leave me alone, Ripper, really I did. But they wouldn't."

    Ripper smiled a fanged smile. "They'll wish they had," he promised.

    The vampire wore black leathers and a Metallica t-shirt. Vinnie winced. "How long have you been undead, Ripper?" he asked.

    "Doesn't matter, meat," the vampire snarled. "You're between me and my babe."

    "Bride. They're called brides," Vinnie clarified. "You ready to be his lawfully deaded wife, Beyonce?"

    The girl looked disconcerted for the first time. "Married? I'm only sixteen."

    "I never said married," ripper insisted. "I only want her blood. And, y'know, sex."

    "I'm afraid that's not allowed," insisted Mrs Blythely. "I have a pamphlet about it somewhere here."

    "And who's going to stop me?" Ripper leered. "Who can stop me from tearing all of you to bits?"

    Vinnie help up his hand. "Um, I'm kind of acting sorcerer supreme. I might."

    "Who?"

    "Sorcerer supreme? Of the Parodyverse? Kind of the top gun occult policeman? No? Wow, you are new."

    "I have every sympathy for the needs of young offenders, Mr Ripper," Mrs Blythely assured the vampire, "recognising the tragic cultural forces at work on their traumatic lives, but if you drink any of Beyonce's blood I shall have to report you to your probation officer."

    Bernice reached into her purse and prepared her taser. She wasn't sure if it would take down a vampire, but it was comforting to know it would certainly floor Mrs Blythely.

    "Now I'm going to kill you all," Ripper promised. "I am darkness, and blood, and horror, and death. I am power. I am the night. I am vampire!"

    Vinnie stuck his hands into his pockets. "Do you know who Don Calmet is, then?"

    Ripper delayed his lunge, confused. "I don't know any guys named Don."

    Vinnie sighed. "Don Augustin Calmet, 1672-1757. Wrote a twenty volume bible commentary. But he also wrote Dissertations sur les Apparitions des Anges, des Démons et des Esprits, et sur les Revenants et Vampires."

    Ripper and Beyonce looked at him blankly.

    "Dissertations on the Apparitions of Angels, Demons, and Ghost, and on the Revenants and Vampires," Vinnie translated. "Sold out in 1746 and was republished and expanded in 1749 and 1751. Gathered together vast amounts of lore from all kinds of obscure sources. Even had certified accounts of vampire autopsies. Major best-seller, a century and a half before Bram Stoker hit it big."

    "Who?" puzzled the vampire.

    "Author of Dracula?" Bernice prompted.

    Vinnie sighed. "Lord protect us from undead who get all their vampire factoids from the internet and True Blood. Look, any serious vampire who knows anything has heard of Don Calmet, just like any newbie who's hardly found his fangs yet can't spell Nosferatu." The young occultist pointed to Ripper. "That'd be you."

    "I'm going to kill you now," Ripper told him.

    "Can you even turn into bats or rats?" Vinnie challenged. "Even one bat or rat? Or a wolf? Or mist? Can you crawl up walls like a spider? Control vermin and the lower animals? Summon storms?"

    "What?" Ripper shrugged. "Why?"

    "Vampires today," Vinnie scorned. "And how many attempts has it taken you to chance Beyonce here into your bride? What is it, performance anxiety?"

    "He never said bride," Beyonce clarified urgently.

    "I bet you don't do the coffin thing, right? Or the graveyard soil?"

    Ripper shook his head. If he'd had blood circulation he'd have flushed with anger by now.

    "If you don't stick to the old forms you never grow in power and you'll never be able to shapeshift or charm or do any of the good stuff," Vinnie warned him. "Really Mrs Blythely needs to get them to do a pamphlet for new vampires. Maybe with a helpline."

    "I could mention it in my next evaluation," the social worker offered. "Although with budget cuts as they are I don't know if we'd be able to translate it into the Eastern European languages properly."

    Bernice interrupted. "Vinnie, aren't we supposed to be saving Beyonce from her corpse boyfriend, not offer him handy tips and tricks?"

    "Sorry. It's just when I think how many hours a day I had to study Don Calmet, and Montague Summers, and the Lesser key of Solomon, and De Verminous Mysteriis and all that stuff, it really makes me cross when undead can't be bothered to do their homework!"

    Beyonce looked even more disconcerted. "There's homework?" She looked at Ripper accusingly. "You never said there'd be assignments."

    "There isn't, babe. He's just messing with us. Messing with our heads. I'll just kill him and..."

    "Make very sure you kill me properly and don't turn me into an undead," Vinnie warned him.

    Ripper sneered. "Why?"

    "Because I would be very good at it," Vinnie warned. "You know what I'd do?"

    "What?" demanded Ripper reluctantly.

    "Well, you know how vampires can grow massively more powerful by drinking the blood or eating the ashes of older vampires?" the occultist began.

    "No," Ripper said; but he sounded interested.

    "Right. Well they can. Gives them all kinds of extra options, like... like levelling up on Grand Theft auto. So if I was an undead, that's what I'd do. Find some old vamp's ashes, scarf them down, become powerful. Repeat as necessary. Rule the world."

    "Um, Vinnie..." Bernice said warningly.

    "That's what I'm gonna do," Ripper decided. "You're gonna find me those ashes, dude - I mean mortal. Take me to vamp dust or I'll tear these chicks throats out."

    "Not a chick," Bernice told him severely. "I'm not going to be objectified by someone who doesn't know who Bram Stoker was."

    "And I'm not giving you what you want," Vinnie warned him. "Last thing we need is an ultra-powerful teenage street-punk with the power to do anything to anyone."

    Ripper chuckled. "That's too bad... because I didn't come here alone."

    Then the rest of the vampire gang trouped in. There were around thirty of them, all young thugs and goth girls. Ripper had been busy.

    "This is going to have to go in my report," warned Mrs Blythely.

***

    "Where are we?" Bernice Teshmaker asked, shining a torch around the old brick tunnel.

    "We're under the Busiek Street Grand Central Rail Terminal," Vinnie told her. "Deep under it."

    "There is no Grand Central Rail Terminal in Paradopolis," the reporter objected. "Or Busiek Street."

    "Well, not now," Vinnie answered. "But there was. Now it's all cleared away for Parody Plaza and the Twin Parody Tower. But mad old Leyland Reed built a railway station here back in the 1840s, just like he built St Jude's Cathedral and the old Variety Theatre and City Hall on four of the five major ley conjunctions round here."

    "He missed the fifth?"

    "He only refurbished the old mansion on Parody Island. And he completely missed the site that's now Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital- but that's another story."

    Ripper and his gang were not interested in lectures on history. "You better get us to where we're going fast, man," he warned. "We're getting hungry."

    "I'm not marrying you, Ripper," Beyonce warned.

    "We're not at home to Mr Paedophilia," explained Mrs Blythely. "In fact Mr Paedophilia is required to be properly registered and stay a statutory 200 yards away at the very least."

    Each of the humans was dragged along by a pair of vampires. Vinnie steered his pair under an old arch to a tunnel of even older construction. "You need to bust through that bricked-up doorway," he told Ripper. "Shouldn't be a problem for a full-strength vampire."

    Ripper gestured for some of his boys to kick the barrier down. They struggled.

    "How many undead have you made?" Vinnie asked Ripper confidentially. "You do know that every time you do that it weakens you a little bit. And the undead you spawn are successively wimpier as well?"

    "We are not wimpy!" shouted one of the nosferatu kicking at the archway.

    Vinnie shrugged. "You also know that your control over them gets thinner the more minions you have? And that if one of them breaks control and drinks you they get to be boss?"

    "Shut up!" Ripper warned the jobbing occultist. "Just shut your mouth about that!"

    Vinnie looked around. "Perhaps you should stand over there," he advised Ripper. "With your back to the wall."

    "We are plenty powerful," Ripper told him. "Dark lords of the night and... stuff."

    "Can I quote you?" asked Bernice sarcastically. "Beyonce, I'm begging you, a woman to woman, please ditch the loser!"

    Beyonce looked back at the reporter and thought about it.

    "Perhaps if you kick a bit harder?" Vinnie advised the undead.

    "Perhaps if we drink the chicks?" the vampire hacking at the brickwork snarled.

    "Not without Ripper's permission," Vinnie told him. "You're the slave. He's the master. That's how it goes."

    "I ain't his slave!" the undead objected.

    "You're in my gang. You do what I say!" commanded Ripper.

    "Right against that wall there," Vinnie advised him. "Maybe holding a stake."

    Cracks appeared in the stonework. The blockage began to clear.

    "You've warned your children of the things that can harm them, haven't you?" Vinnie checked with Ripper. "Garlic, crosses, holy water, all of that."

    "Hey, we seen the movies," the belligerent not-slave insisted.

    Vinnie shook his head. "It's more than wearing leather coats and hair care product, being undead. There's plenty to watch out for. Sacred rice, running water, holy wafers, church bells, whitethorn, pickles, mayonnaise, anything yellow..."

    "You making that up!" Ripper objected.

    "Really? You don't even know how to transform into an animal. Or a weather phenomenon. Or a big truck."

    "That's it. I'm gonna..."

    The archway bricks collapsed. Behind was a deep chamber carved with sigils.

    "What is that place?" wondered Bernice.

    "This is the tomb of Lord Sanguinus Alancon, who was destroyed by the Improbable College in 1679. The carvings on the wall basically say 'And don't come back'."

    "This is a real tomb!" one of the vampire girls said enthusiastically. "With a real stone coffin."

    "Sarcophagus," Bernice corrected her; she couldn't stop herself.

    "This may well be breaking and entering," Mrs Blythely warned.

    Vinnie pointed to the casket. "There'll be dust in the bottom there. Whichever of you want the power should..."

    "Hold on," the arch-kicking vampire interrupted. "What'd'you mean, whichever one? We all get the boost!"

    Vinnie shook his head. "It doesn't work like that. You can't all be master-vampire. Haven't you people ever seen America's Got Talent? One of you spills his blood on the ashes - and it had better be vamp blood not human blood because otherwise you've got a very pissed elder vampire reforming instead and you do not want that to happen. You mix your ichor with the dust, lap it up again, and suddenly you know everything old Sanguinus knew about undeading and you get the total upgrade package. And then you let us mortals go, like you promised."

    "Vinnie, you didn't actually believe that part, did you?" Bernice whispered.

    "Hold on," objected Beyonce. "Ripper, Scab's trying to bleed in the coffin!"

    Vinnie winced. "Ah. We'll just cower over in this corner until the vampire fights have finished, shall we?"

***

    Ripper staggered to his feet, covered in the blood of his gang, torn, battered, but victorious. "You were right, dweeb," he told Vinnie. "Drinking vampire blood does boost me!"

    "I don't think that's a proper diet for a person," Mrs Blythely warned. "Not that I'm judging about anybody's dietary choices but..."

    "Vinnie, Mumph said you knew what you were doing," Bernice cut in. "So far you seem to have got rid of a pack of fairly useless undead and created one big nasty one."

    "He's not big and nasty yet," Vinnie warned her. "He hasn't mixed his ichor with Sanguinus' dust."

    "But now I shall," the triumphant vampire proclaimed. He hefted the stone lid easily and tossed it across the room. One red gash later he had the sticky paste he desired.

    "I don't think I want to date him any more," Beyonce admitted.

    "Good," approved Vinnie. "That was pretty much the whole reason for letting things go this far. Taking out the vampire wouldn't have stopped you wanting to be undead. Or dead. So we had to go the long route."

    "By creating an ultra-powerful uber-vampire?" Bernice critiqued.

    Ripper swallowed down the gory mash. He seemed to grow and darken.

    "You've just become a very serious undead," Vinnie congratulated him. "Right up there. By now you probably know about Don Calmet, and Summers, and Nosferos, and Vrykoulakos, and Graf Hertzog and all the rest, right back to the sinking of Mu. You've got all the powers of a major undead. You can probably read what it says on these walls."

    Ripper looked around, focussing on the signs, cringing. "Holy..." he hissed.

    "Yeah. Kind of like dogs can hear high-frequency sounds we miss, now you're so powerful you can pick up on the wardings you just weren't undead enough to notice before."

    Ripper shielded his eyes. "Kill you..."

    "You might want to read the small print," Vinnie pointed out. "The wardings that prevent a vampire from harming anyone in here? They're right below the bit about you not being able to leave the room."

    Ripper leaped at Vinnie - and was hurled away with bone-shattering force. His body boiled where it hit the wall.

    Bernice took Beyonce and Mrs Blythely and firmly led them out of the room.

    Ripper snarled at Vinnie. "You did this to me!"

    "Yes I did," agreed the jobbing occultist. "And do you know what? I was being kind." He closed on the steaming vampire and fixed him with a stare. "I could have led you to Vrykolakas the elder vampire, or to the Shrine of Messenger, or to the ghoul-tunnels under All Saints Cemetery. I could have taken you to the Laundry of Doom, or shown you what lies under Phantomhawk Memorial. I could have brought you to Parody Island and let a banshee shred you. I could have dropped you in the lair of the Groper out of Grossness! Or I could have got nasty! Because I Do - Not - Like amateurs preying on little girls or bullies who think their power lets them do whatever they want."

    Ripper took a step back.

    Vinnie took a breath. "So here you are. Trapped by your own power. All the strength and abilities of a vampire lord, and all of his limitations." He turned to go, then added another piece of information. "You remember I said a proper vampire has to sleep in a coffin scattered with his graveyard soil? If he doesn't return to that coffin by daybreak he's destroyed. Nothing to do with sunlight, that's just for newbies. With great power comes a whole new rule-book unless you learn to manage your condition. Frankly I think you'd flunk the exam."

    "Wait..." Ripper gasped.

    Vinnie checked his watch. "About three hours to sun-up. I'm guessing you didn't stuff your pockets with your native earth? Ouch. Rookie mistake."

    Ripper lunged at him again. He really wasn't a fast learner.

    Vinnie ignored him, returned to Bernice, Mrs Blythely, and Beyonce, and headed back to the surface.

    "I really don't know where on the forms I'm going to put all of this," the social worker fretted.

    "Just tick the box at the bottom that says Lair Legion related incident," Bernice advised her. "That usually works."

    "Sooo..." Beyonce said to Vinnie, "are you seeing anyone?"

    "Sorry, " Vinnie told her quickly. "I'm being summonsed."

***

The Footnotes of the Night:

Bernice Teshmaker is a free-thinking radical independent journalist given to paradigm-shattering exposes. While embedded with eccentric English hero Sir Mumphrey Wilton during the Parody War she ended up embedded with Sir Mumphrey Wilton.

Asil Ashling is Sir Mumphrey Wilton's amanuensis and modern-world translator.

Mrs Blythely has previously complicated the lives of Visionary and Kerry Shepherdson since Heart of Darkness #6: "He Apparently Has an Unexploded Hand Grenade Lodged in His Bowels" by Dancer

Leyland Reed's plans for Paradopolis were central to the plot of http://www.chillwater.org.uk/HH//untold%20tales%20of%20ll%2057.htm">Untold Tales of the Lair Legion #57: Past Tense, Present Articles, Future Imperfect

The Improbable College were a mysterious cabalistic seventeenth and eighteenth century forerunner to the Lair Legion.

Nosferos, and Vrykoulakos, and Graf Hertzog are three of the more significant vampires in the Parodyverse. Nosferos was one of the notorious Hellraisers team and was destroyed in final battle with the Lair Legion when he encountered the Night Nurse Grace O'Mercy. Vrykolakas is a "consulting vampire", ancient and deadly but mostly passive. Graf Hertzog is a persistent undead foe of Sir Mumphrey Wilton.

More background at:
The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
Who's Who in the Parodyverse
Where's Where in the Parodyverse

***

Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2012 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2012 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.