Critical Failures II (Caverns and Creatures Book 2) (14 page)

“That's bullshit,” said Chaz, almost pleadingly. “He's got her under some kind of trance.”

“I know,” said Tim. “That much is obvious."

“Why is it so hard for you to believe that I actually like being here?”

“She's got a point,” said Dave. “It's a nice enough place if you don't go outside.”

“And the food is good,” said Chaz. “You guys are in for a treat when he gets back.”

“So if everything's so great around here,” said Tim, “then why are you so keen for us to bust you out of here?”

“Well,” said Chaz. “He's a vampire. That's pretty terrifying by itself. But there's also the torture.”

“He tortures you?”

“Not physically.”

Tim closed his eyes. “Chaz, I don't have the patience for riddles right now. What are you talking about?”

“Neil Diamond.”

Julian spoke quickly to keep Tim from punching Chaz in the dick again. “What about him?”

“When we first arrived, he asked me to play him a song. I thought my life was on the line, so I started strumming the first song that popped into my head.
Forever in Blue Jeans
.”

“So?” asked Tim.

“The fucker went nuts,” said Chaz. “He said he'd never heard anything like that before. Ever since then it's been Neil fucking Diamond.”

“That doesn't sound so bad,” said Tim. “Everybody likes Neil Diamond, and he's got a lot of songs.”

“I only know four!” said Chaz. “If I have to sing
Holly Holy
one more time, I'm going to jump out of a fucking window.”

“I like that song," said Dave.

“Who's Neil Diamond?” asked Julian. He looked at Ravenus, who seemed to be the only one paying any attention to him. Ravenus shrugged.

“I still don't get it,” said Tim. “So he's keeping you here for the music. Why is he keeping Katherine locked up in here?”

“Do you see any chains on my wrists?” said Katherine.

“I think he's lonely," said Chaz. “I don't think he's been a vampire for very long.

“What makes you say that?”

“He's not very good at it.”

“Go on.”

“I've always thought vampires were supposed to be these badass loners who take what they want and don't give a damn about what society thinks of them. People are just cattle, you know?”

“Yeah?” said Tim.

“And this Millard guy seems to be trying to go for that image, but he's not pulling it off very well. He's got his nice house, and it's decorated tastefully enough for the most part. But did you see that giant painting on the wall when you entered?”

“The one of himself?”

“Yeah!” said Chaz. “Who does that?”

“Maybe he just has a really high opinion of himself,” suggested Dave.

“I've no doubt he wants to,” said Chaz. “I kind of feel bad for him. He's like the fat rich kid in school with a bunch of expensive toys and no friends. He's just overly eager to impress people. You'll see what I mean when he brings back dinner.”

“It's not going to be a human baby or anything, is it?” asked Julian.

“No,” said Chaz. “Like I said, the food here is really good. Just do yourselves a favor and try to look impressed."

“Why don't we just grab Katherine and get the hell out of here while he's gone?” asked Dave.

“Bring it, Papa Smurf,” said Katherine. “If you think you can take me.”

“Sorry,” said Dave. “I'm just thinking out loud.”

“You guys are being cruel,” said Katherine. “Millard is a really sweet guy once you get to know him.”

“Listen,” Dave said to Tim. “Katherine seems to be safe enough here for right now. But what about the rest of us? If we don't take this chance to bounce while he's away, what makes you think he's going to ever let us go? I mean, if he's that lonely... I'll remind you that we've been stripped of our weapons. We aren't going to be able to take down a vampire.”

“He'll let us go,” said Tim. “If he keeps Katherine here, he knows we'll come back to visit her. Anyway, two permanent guests ought to be enough for him. Six guests, and a wolf and a bird... nobody wants that in their house all the time. And once he spends any appreciable amount of time with Cooper, I don't think he'll be able to show us to the door fast enough.”

“Where is Cooper?” asked Julian. “He's been gone a while.”

“I got lost,” said Cooper, emerging from the doorway he'd disappeared through before. His loincloth was noticeably bereft of conspicuous bulges.

“Last door on the left,” said Dave. “How could you get lost? You only had one direction to follow."

“Fuck you, Dave,” said Cooper. “I got confused. You know that trick where you put your hands out in front of you, and the left one looks like the letter L?”

“Yeah.”

“Well I'm illiterate now. I don't know what the letter L looks like.”

When Cooper was far enough from the others, Julian approached him and spoke softly enough so that only Cooper could hear him. “Did you really get lost, or were you jerking it to Tim's sister?”

“Both,” said Cooper.

“Did you at least wash your hands?”

“Does this place look like it has running water?”

“Just make sure you don't sit near –” A screech from outside the doorway leading out to the balcony drilled into Julian's head. It was like a thousand forks being scraped along the world's biggest chalkboard. Julian covered his long ears with his palms, but that provided little comfort. He turned to find the source of the noise.

A huge black bat, the size of a pteranodon, was hovering just beyond the balcony, flapping and screeching. When it had everyone's attention, it stopped screeching and ascended just high enough to reveal the freshly killed stag it held in its feet. It moved forward, dropped the dead deer on the balcony, and landed beside it. Standing upright, it wrapped itself in its leathery black wings and ducked its head down.

The membranes of the wings rapidly receded, leaving behind the long bony wing supports, which shrunk down into fingers. The legs and feet grew into human shape. The large pointed bat ears grew smaller and rounded at the top while the giant bat nostrils in the center of its face grew into a human nose. The whole process took less than six seconds, after which Millard, fully clothed, stood smiling at them.

Julian looked at his friends. They were all looking at each other, unsure of what the protocol for this was. Chaz started a polite golf clap, and everyone else followed suit. Millard gave a small bow, and then picked the carcass up off the floor as easily as if he was lifting a sack of tangerines.

“I apologize for the delay,” he said. “Dinner will be in about another thirty minutes.” He hefted the dead deer over one shoulder and walked into the kitchen. It was impossible for Julian to tell how he had killed the animal. Outside of being dead, it looked to be in pretty good shape. There were no smears of blood on its fur. The body wasn't broken or mangled in any way that he could see.

Dinner, not surprisingly, consisted of roasted deer. Chaz was right. It was delicious. But Julian might have found shoe leather delicious as hungry as he was.

Chaz ate as much as he could as quickly as he could before Millard called on him to perform. Everyone else started out greedily wolfing down as much venison as they could stuff into their faces, but soon slowed their pace as they transitioned from starving to reasonably hungry. Before everyone had eaten their fill, Chaz had sung
Holly Holy
six times, and
Sweet Caroline
twice.

Millard, naturally, did not eat. He merely sat back, enjoying the music and the company. Julian felt a little sorry for him.

Even Tim's spirits seemed a little lighter, suggesting that his sister's abduction was only partially responsible for his crankiness. Nobody likes an empty stomach.

Wine lightened the mood even further. Julian was no aficionado, but he knew that whatever they were drinking hadn't come out of a cardboard box. Millard was nothing if not a generous host. He even managed to scrounge up a bottle of hard stuff for Dave. By the fifth round of drinks, everyone had their arms draped over one another's shoulders, destroying
Sweet Caroline
. By the end of the night, they had talked Millard into letting Chaz have a go at some songs not by Neil Diamond. The playlist included songs by Elvis Presley, Billy Joel, The Beatles, and a few of Chaz’s favorite bands that Julian hadn’t heard of before.

Julian didn't remember how the night ended exactly. All he knew when he woke up the next morning was that he didn't feel well rested at all.

*

“Rise and shine, pumpkin!” said Cooper, slapping him on the back.

Julian's stomach turned, and he knew he had about five seconds before he was going to eject a night's worth of wine and venison from his mouth. He scanned the room frantically. There was only one option. He ran to an open window, stuck his head out, and let the previous night's dinner spray into the crisp morning air. That done, he hung his head. The thousand foot drop he saw between himself and the ground brought on one more heave, and he dribbled vomit down the side of the stone wall.

His clothes were filthy, and a little vomit wasn't going to make much of a difference, so he wiped a sleeve across his face.

Julian turned around a little too quickly and had to lean against the wall to remain upright. Cooper and Dave looked as well as they ever did, packing their things and ready for whatever the day had in store. Tim looked pretty rough, but not half so much as Julian felt. Chaz and Katherine were not in the room with them.

“Feel better?” asked Dave.

“No,” Julian groaned.

“You look like shit,” said Cooper.

“And you smell like shit.”

Cooper lowered his big head. “Yeah, well Dave healed me while I was sleeping. It's very relaxing. Mind you don't move that mat.” He indicated a mat on the center of the floor. It was plain, whereas the rest of them had a blue and white striped pattern. Cooper's mat was obviously upside down, no doubt glued to the floor with drying shit.

“Let's just find Katherine and get out of here,” said Tim.

“Do you even know where here is?” asked Dave. “I don't remember coming here. Do you?”

Tim shook his head. “I don't remember anything after the Macarena. Did you rem—”

The solitary door in the room swung open.

“Good morning!” Katherine stood grinning and Butterbean wagging his tail. A split second later they both recoiled. “Jesus Christ!” she said. “What's that smell?”

“It’s Cooper,” said Tim. “You get used to it. Since when are you so plucky in the morning?”

Katherine led the party out of the room and into the hall before answering. Cooper was the last to exit, and Katherine coughed and gestured for him to close the door behind him.

As soon as the air had cleared a bit, she smiled and said, “Since I became acquainted with Professor Goosewaddle’s Magical Bath Salts.”

“Is that a euphemism for cocaine?”

“Come on,” Katherine said as if Tim hadn't even spoken. “You've got to see my room.”

She led them to the other end of the hallway, which mirrored the side they had just come from. An identical wooden door stood before them. When she opened the door, however, the inside was anything but identical to the room they had slept in.

The dimensions were the same, but instead of shit-tainted air wafting out at them, they were engulfed in a cloud of sweet-smelling steam. There was also a trickling sound, like someone taking a long, continuous piss.

“Ooh, that's nice,” said Dave.

The room was furnished with a plush bed, complete with a translucent canopy. Vines crept up the bedposts and purple roses adorned the tops of them. A small dressing table stood next to the bed with a steamed-over mirror on top. Under the window sat the answers to the steam, the trickling sound, and the pumpkin that had led them here.

A hollowed-out pumpkin about the size of a small car had been painted over with lacquer until the surface shone like porcelain. Above it, a small metal pitcher rested on a hook, tipping forward, an endless stream of water trickling from it. Below the pitcher sat a small bowl containing one burning coal. The water spilling out of the top of the pumpkin was caught in an irrigation system which fed into the rose vines on the bed.

Katherine dipped her finger in the water. “It's always the perfect temperature.”

“That's brilliant,” said Dave. Tim glared up at him.

“I know, right? You should have seen how quickly Millard threw all of this together. He said in his former life, before he became a vampire, he was an engineer.” Katherine picked up a clay jar, dunked it in the water, and poured the contents out the window. She repeated this two more times.

“What are you doing?” asked Tim.

“Making room for you,” said Katherine. She picked up a glass of aquamarine crystals from her dressing table and sprinkled some of them into the bath. “And Professor Goosewaddle.”

“No, Katherine,” said Tim. “Really, I'm fine. Let's just –”

“Trust me, Tim. There's no hangover this can't fix.”