Carpe Jugulum

direct approach to things, my grandfather. See the reddish-brown stains just here? Very much in the old style. And here…well, some distant ancestor, that’s all I know.”
    This picture was mostly dark varnish. There was a suggestion of a beak on a hunched figure.
    Vlad turned away, quickly. “We’ve come a long way, of course,” he said. “Evolution, Father says.”
    “They look very…powerful,” said Agnes.
    “Oh yes. So very powerful, and yet so very, very dumb,” said Vlad. “My father thinks stupidity is somehow built into vampirism, as if the desire for fresh blood is linked to being as thick as a plank. Father is a very unusual vampire. He and Mother raised us…differently.”
    “Differently,” said Agnes.
    “Vampires aren’t very family orientated. Father says that’s natural. Humans are raising their successors, you see, but we live for a very long time so a vampire is raising competitors . There’s not a lot of family feeling, you could say.”
    “Really.” In the depths of her pocket, Agnes’s fingers closed around the bottle of holy water.
    “But Father said self-help was the only way out. Break the cycle of stupidity, he said. Little traces of garlic were put into our food to get us used to it. He tried early exposure to various religious symbols—oh dear, we must have had the oddest nursery wallpaper in the world, never mind the jolly frieze of Gertie the Dancing Garlic—and I have to say that their efficacy isn’t that good in any case. He even made us go out and play during the day. That which does not kill us, he’d say, makes us strong—”
    Agnes’s arm whirled out. The holy water spiraled out of the bottle and hit Vlad full in the chest.
    He threw his arms wide and screamed as water cascaded down and poured into his shoes.
    She’d never expected it to be this easy.
    He raised his head and winked at her.
    “ Look at this waistcoat! Will you look at this waistcoat? Do you know what water does to silk? You just never get it out! No matter what you do, there’s always a mark.” He looked at her frozen expression, and sighed.
    “I suppose we’d better get some things off our chest, hadn’t we?” he said. He looked up at the wall, and took down a very large and spiky ax. He thrust it at her.
    “Take this and cut my head off, will you?” he said. “Look, I’ll loosen my cravat. Don’t want blood on it, do we? There. See?”
    “Are you trying to tell me that you were brought up with this, too?” she said hotly. “What was it, a little light hatchet practice after breakfast? Cut your head off a little bit every day and the real thing won’t hurt?”
    Vlad rolled his eyes. “ Everyone knows that cutting off a vampire’s head is internationally acceptable,” he said. “I’m sure Nanny Ogg would be swinging right now. Come along, there’s a lot of muscle in those rather thick arms, I’m—”
    She swung.
    He reached around from behind her and whisked the ax out of her arms.
    “—sure,” he finished. “We are also very, very fast.”
    He tested the blade with his thumb. “Blunt, I notice. My dear Miss Nitt, it may just be more trouble than it’s worth to try to get rid of us, do you see? Now, old Magyrato there would not have made the kind of offer we are making to Lancre. Dear me, no. Are we ravaging across the country? No? Forcing our way into bedrooms? Certainly not. What’s a little blood, for the good of the community? Of course Verence will have to be demoted a little but, let’s face it, the man is rather more of a clerk than a king. And…our friends may find us grateful. What is the point of resisting?”
    “Are vampires ever grateful?”
    “We can learn.”
    “You’re just saying that in exchange for not actually being evil you’ll simply be bad, is that it?”
    “What we are saying, my dear, is that our time has come,” said a voice behind them.
    They both turned.
    The Count had stepped into the gallery. He was wearing a smoking jacket. There was an armed man strolling on either side of him.
    “Oh dear, Vlad…playing with your food? Good evening, Miss Nitt. We appear to have a mob at the gates, Vlad.”
    “Really? That’s exciting. I’ve never seen a real mob.”
    “I wish your first could have been a better one,” said the Count, and sniffed. “There’s no passion in it. Still, it’d be too tiresome to let it go on all through dinner. I shall tell them to go away.”
    The doors of the hall swung open without apparent