Carpe Jugulum

sofa.
    “Enjoying it?” he said.
    “It’s fine so far,” said Agnes, not looking at him.
    She felt him touch her wrist. There was no real sense of pressure, but the fall stopped. She felt as light as the air again.
    “Why are you doing this?” she said. “If you’re going to bite me, then get it over with!”
    “Oh, but I couldn’t be having with that!”
    “You did it to Granny!” said Agnes.
    “Yes, when it’s but against someone’s will…well, they end up so…compliant. Little more than thinking food. But someone who embraces the night of their own volition…ah, that’s another thing entirely, my dear Agnes. And you’re far too interesting to be a slave.”
    “Tell me,” said Agnes, as a mountaintop floated by, “have you had many girlfriends?”
    He shrugged. “One or two. Villages girls. Housemaids.”
    “And what happened to them, may I ask?”
    “Don’t look at me like that. We still find employment for them in the castle.”
    Agnes loathed him. Perdita merely hated him, which is the opposite pole to love and just as attractive.
    … but Nanny said if the worst came to the worst…and then he’ll trust you…and they’ve already got Granny…
    “If I’m a vampire,” she said, “I won’t know good from evil.”
    “That’s a bit childish, isn’t it? They’re only ways of looking at the same thing. You don’t always have to do what the rest of the world wants you to do.”
    “Are you still toying with her?”
    Lacrimosa was walking toward them on the air. Agnes saw the other vampires behind her.
    “Bite her or let her go,” the girl went on. “Good grief, she’s so blobby . Come on, Father wants you. They’re heading for our castle. Isn’t that just too stupid?”
    “This is my affair, Lacci,” said Vlad.
    “Every boy should have a hobby, but… really, ” said Lacrimosa, rolling her black-rimmed eyes.
    Vlad grinned at Agnes.
    “Come with us,” he said.
    Granny did say you need to be with the others, Perdita pointed out.
    “Yes, but how will I find them when we’re there?” said Agnes aloud.
    “Oh, we’ll find them,” said Vlad.
    “I meant—”
    “ Do come. We don’t intend to hurt your friends—
    “Much,” said Lacrimosa.
    “Or…we could leave you here,” said Vlad, smiling.
    Agnes looked around. They had touched down on the mountain peak, above the clouds. She felt warm and light, which was wrong. Even on a broomstick she’d never felt like this, she’d always between aware of gravity sucking her down, but with the vampire holding her arm every part of her felt that it could float forever.
    Besides, if she didn’t go with them, it was going to be either a very long or an extremely short journey down to the ground.
    Besides, she would find the other two, and you couldn’t do that when you were dying in some crevasse somewhere.
    Besides, even if he did have small fangs and a terrible taste in waistcoats, Vlad actually seemed attracted to her. It wasn’t even as if she had a very interesting neck.
    She made up both minds.
    “If you attached a piece of string to her I suppose we could tow her like some sort of balloon,” said Lacrimosa.
    Besides, there was always the chance that, at some point, she might find herself in a room with Lacrimosa. When that happened, she wouldn’t need garlic, or a stake, or an ax. Just a little talk about people who were too unpleasant, too malicious, too thin . Just five minutes alone.
    And perhaps a pin, said Perdita.

Under the rabbit hole, down below the bank, was a wide, low-roofed chamber. Tree roots wound among the stones in the wall.
    There were plenty of such things around Lancre. The kingdom had been there many years, ever since the ice withdrew. Tribes had pillaged, tilled, built and died. The clay walls and reed thatch of the living houses had long since rotted and been lost but, down under the moundy banks, the abodes of the dead survived. No one knew now who’d been buried there. Occasionally the spoil heap outside a badger sett would reveal a piece of bone or a scrap of corroded armor. The Lancrastians didn’t go digging themselves, reckoning in their uncomplicated country way that it was bad luck to have your head torn off by a vengeful underground spirit.
    One or two of the old barrows had been exposed over the years, their huge stones attracting their own folklore. If you left your unshod horse at one of them overnight, and placed a sixpence on the stone, in the morning the sixpence would