THE PRINCE’S CHALLENGE (SANGRILICIOUS II)

©2008 by Richard S. Crawford

about 1,800 words

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“Mortal combat!” Cletus shouted. His voice reverberated all throughout the back room of the International Pancake Hut in downtown Roosterville where the vampire clan had its weekly meetings. There were two dozen of us there that night. Roosterville had a population of maybe 3,000. According to conventional vampire wisdom, the town should have had maybe four or five at most.

“What?” I asked.

Cletus wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his denim jacket. Blood had dribbled down his chin along with little bits of flesh. “You want to be Prince of Roosterville, Delilah, you gotta fight me to the death.”

“That’s ridiculous. That’s not how it’s done.”

“That’s the way we always done it around here.”

“Well, it’s stupid. And it’s not tradition.”

“And I suppose you know all about tradition, huh?”

“My sire taught me all the secrets of our kind,” I told him. “All the mysteries, the traditions, the codes, and that thaumaturlogical arts.”

“The thauma-what?”

“Magic.”

Cletus snorted. The other vampires around the table began to laugh. “Magic? Shit, girl, vampires ain’t magic. We’re just flesh eaters and blood drinkers.”

“Do a trick!” shouted the woman to Cletus’s left. She was wiry, with hair that had obviously been dyed, and she was covered in faded, blurred tattoos. She was Cletus’s main concubine, I’d been told, and her name was Flo.

“Yeah,” Cletus echoed, smiling. “If there’s vampire magic, do a trick.”

I hesitated. My sire had taught me about vampire thaumaturgy, but, honestly, it was all theoretical. I’d never learned any spells, cantrips, or the like. Certainly I’d never learned any tricks.

“Tell me about this mortal combat,” I said at last.

Cletus laughed again. In the two weeks that I’d been in Roosterville, I’d grown to really loathe that stupid laugh of his. “Hell, let’s just wrestle. I bet you’re a good wrestler, ain’t ya?”

“Don’t do it, Delilah!” said Flo. “He just wants to cop a feel.” At that, all of the vampires around the table laughed. Cletus’s post-mortem libido was legendary.

Flo’s comment wasn’t surprising. Men never change, not even when they’re dead. But this was seriously starting to piss me off. Everything that Cletus did, everything that he was, was an affront to tradition. It was very upsetting. When I was first Embraced, I was thrilled to learn about the whole culture of those who walk at night. My sire taught me to respect the traditions. And I’d come into Roosterville, all excited to become part of the local vampire scene, and what did I find? A bunch of rednecks who didn’t give a tinker’s cuss about the culture and history of our kind.

I mustered up all the pride I could and stood up straight to my full height, all five foot two (including heels) of it. “I won’t wrestle you,” I said, “but I accept your challenge to mortal combat.”

The lopsided grin on Cletus’s face vanished. “What?”

“Mortal combat,” I said. “I accept your challenge.”

If I’d still had a beating heart, it would have been pounding. If I’d needed breath for anything other than speaking, I would have been panting. Nevertheless, I could feel blood rushing to my face. My cheeks grew hot. In life I’d always blushed way too easy, and it pissed me off that that hadn’t changed.

“Shit, girl, you’ve got to be joking. You’re, what, five feet tall?”

“Four eleven.”

“And you weigh maybe a hundred pounds. I’m at least three times that. You really want to fight me?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Yeah, do some of that thaumatobullshit and I’ll give you the fucking town.”

“The secrets of the vampire mysteries are not for the uninitiated,” I said, improvising as well as I could.

“I’ve been a vampire for fifty years,” Cletus said. “How much more initiated can I get?”

“Well, have you performed the Rite of Cain?”

“The what of who?”

I smiled. “If you don’t know what it is, I can’t tell you.”

“You just made that up!”

He was right, of course, but I’d never tell him that. “Your ignorance is appalling. Are we going to fight or what?” I was hoping to bluff him into backing down.

One of the other vampires spoke up then. He was a skinny guy, all bones and skin, and not much taller than me. His name was Skeeter, and with his sharp proboscis, he definitely looked like he could have been a mosquito in a past life. “Hey, how about Trial by Sewer?”

“What’s Trial by Sewer?” I asked.

Flo laughed again. “What do you think, sugar? It’s how Cletus got to be the prince of Roosterville. Before Cletus was Elton. Cletus challenged Elton to Trial by Sewer, and Cletus won.”

“Well, what is it?”

“We stick you both in the sewer in one end of town,” Skeeter said. “First one to come out the other wins.”

“That sounds pretty easy,” I said.

Cletus laughed again. He took another handful of guts from the bucket in front of him and shoved it into his mouth. “Ain’t easy,” he said, spraying bits of flesh and blood onto the table in front of him. “There’s shit down in that sewer, and I ain’t talking just the real shit like what comes out of people. I’m talking some real serious shit. Monsters. Demons. We’ll do it if you want, but it ain’t gonna be easy. You sure you don’t want to wrestle me?” He winked. “It’ll be all kinds of fun.”

“No,” I said firmly. “Trial by Sewer it is.”

“Boo yah!” shouted Skeeter. “Tomorrow at dusk at the east end of town! It’s gonna be an old fashioned spelunkin’!”

Cletus rose up to his full height, and slammed his considerable fist down on the table. “Right!” he shouted. “Now let’s get to some serious partying!”

Someone turned up the juke box, and the music began to play. These vampires had a thing for Lynyrd Skynyrd, and “Freebird” began to play at an ear-shattering volume. I sighed and sat down, trying to keep myself elegant. What is a vampire, after all, if not a creature of elegance?

Seriously. These people had no clue at all.

#

My sire had taught me that among there were many qualities a vampire must have, and among the top priorities was a strong sense of fashion. Black, he had taught me, was definitely the way to go. And for a woman, lace. Black and lace. And stockings. Long skirts (or sometimes very short) and high heels. That was the way to go.

Never one to abide strictly by convention, though, I’d added a splash of scarlet to the black. It became my trademark. Every outfit I wore had at least a little bit of scarlet somewhere, whether it was a skirt, a pair of stockings, a pair of shoes, a jacket, or even just a scarf. Who wants to look like everyone else? But I always did my best to stay on top of the trends. It was important to me to make a good impression at all times. My sire had once or twice tried to get me to dress up like Vampirella, saying it was also tradition, but I would never have anything to do with that. I knew he was doing it just to test me.

I sure didn’t feel stylish at dusk the next day, though. I had on an old pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of scarlet Doc Martins I’d stolen from a shoe store the night before. It wasn’t particularly pretty and I didn’t feel attractive in this outfit, but at least it was practical. I also had a gun.

Cletus laughed when he saw it. “You even know how to use that thing?”

“Of course,” I sneered. I lifted the gun up. I’d grabbed it from Wal*Mart because it was big and looked dangerous. How hard could it be to work a gun? You point one end at the thing you wanted to shoot, and pulled the trigger. This one was heavy, too. It would cause lots of damage to anything foolish enough to get in my way.

Cletus looked the same as he had the night before. He was even wearing the same clothes, for crying out loud. His jeans and T-shirt were stained with blood and his leather jacket had certainly seen better days. So had his jeans. Big guys like him can pull off a good look if they only try. The trick for them is balancing out their bulk. You know, a thick leather jacket on top and a pair of cargo pants on the bottom. Maybe Doc Martins or a pair of combat boots, but certainly not the cowboy boots he was wearing. Cletus just looked like he didn’t give a damn.

And, I noticed, he didn’t even have a gun. No weapons of any kind, unless you counted the spiked bracelets he wore.

“Where’s everyone else?” I asked. It was just the three of us here: Cletus, Skeeter, and myself. The three of us were standing around the manhole cover that led down to the sewer system underneath Roosterville.

“Oh, they’re all waiting on the other side of town,” Skeeter said. “At the other side of the sewer. They’re having a party, so when you get there, they’ll probably all be good and drunk.”

“Yeah, we’ll see them there,” said Cletus. The two of them looked at each other and grinned. I didn’t like the way they did that.

Still, in for a penny, in for a pound. “You ready?” I asked Cletus.

“You know it, little girl. Let’s do it.”

Skeeter reached down and lifted up the cover of the manhole. The sewer underneath was black and the smell of shit and worse wafted up with a cloud of steam.

“Ladies first,” Cletus said.

I wasn’t having anything to do with that. “After you,” I said. “I insist.”

“Whatever you say.” Cletus grinned, then stepped into the sewer. He dropped straight down, and I heard a loud splash which told me his bulk had hit the bottom.

Oh shit, I thought. This is really happening. For a moment — just a tiny moment — I thought about backing down, letting Cletus keep his position as Prince of Roosterville, and just moving on.

I took a deep breath — instinct, really, more than anything else — and jumped. I could only hope that I had prepared properly for what was ahead.