Part 2

Then there is the clown. Or harlequin, or patchwork fool, or whatever it fancies itself.
It comes to you with some argument on Nature, "This isn't you, pal. There was once a time you wanted to be loved."
And it's true. But you were a much younger wizard then. Those were the days before the one, perfect joke was loved. Where it could be spoken at dark street corners to send a bench full of hard leftovers into fits of laughter. The days before the endless heckling. So you grunt to acknowledge your clown friend's wisdom and with a gesture you set the leg of a mong back into its socket: your good deed for the day. These guys, you decide, aren't so bad. Some of them look like you could have a beer with them. But there's sorting to be done and you draw a couple handfuls of fur-clad warriors toward you and question them on whereabout this vampire is, and the one's who don't speak your language you ball up into a ragged handful of meat until the message gets around that you mean business - not that you do. One cannot always act perfectly and strive towards some goal. Sometimes you have to find satisfaction in the present, to enjoy the here and now, and pulling apart he-man toys is as good a pastime as any. The clown is sad, disappointed, showered with blood, but things can only go on in one direction, as far as you're concerned, and that is the complete rending of everything into coherent shapes.
The deeper you get into the tearing and snapping the more introspective the exercise makes you. It wasn't long ago you thought you knew everything. It was a simple life in your tower by the forest. A respectable distance from all kingdoms but still within range for a pail of milk to survive the walk. There, you thought you could birth your pig wife safely and anonymously, but something didn't sit quite right with all that. "Normalcy," "complacency," Those most powerful spells of all. They were an illusion cast on you from before this onset of violence. Now that things were picking up it was starting to get weird again, and weird should be the station at which a wizard is arriving at all times. Things are never truly normal as long as you are in motion. Never safe. The food is never good. The company never agreeable. The view, however, startling. And that view came up in a diabolical panorama and indeed the suffering you were causing did start to disagree with you a bit.
"Sorry, boys," you call out over their injured moaning, "a simple misunderstanding".
The clown you don't feel you can address at the moment. It looks miserable, and you know better than to try to mend the lost trust while matters are still unsettled. You tell yourself it's not hard to cheer up a clown. The matter can be forwarded to tomorrow.
The rest of the long, dark hall offers no insights into the vampire, but some of the towers yield some dusty personal affects that indicate this was not just any vampire, but Dracula himself. You let the soft parchment slip to the ground, it was news you didn't want.  You're tired of his books. His movies haven't been good since the 30s. Your one interaction with him was texting "Die, bich..." to one of his accounts. Probably run by an intern. You slip your cellular from your wizard to sleeve to call up the account for any clues as to his current whereabouts and while you're fucking around trying to input your four digit password onto an oily screen he slips from the shadows and bites the wrist, your wrist, the one you're holding the phone with. Not hard enough to do any damage, but like a dog trying to show you it means business. Hard enough that you drop your four hundred dollar phone.
"THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?" You ask, still thinking as though you're in polite company.
"I am Draculaaaaaaa!" His voice is thin and textured.
You don't know how to respond because that's a statement and you were expecting something with a bit of play to it. You're caught off-guard, blinking at him. Holding your bitten hand as the sting winds down in intensity. "I'm here for my wife. I want my wife back."
"I am your wife! Drrrraaaculllaaa wiiiiiife!"
You are not having this. Maybe on a better day you would have reacted with more civility, but today you send out a quick reflexive jab, and you've been hitting those isometrics hard so you're sure it'll drop him, one hit, but he snatches that fist out of the air like it was a football sailing towards a Jets wide-receiver. In the exchange, however, you catch a little slip-up of his own. . .
"You snorted."
"No I didn't."
"You did. I heard it."
"You heard something elssse."
He twists your wrist with high intensity but you twist back and now you have that Dracula rascal's arm all locked up tight and you're drawn in near enough to smell his duck sausage breath, "give up the wife, Dracula." With your free hand you snatch his throat and your fingers probe the playdoh of his larynx until you find what you're looking for. And with an expert twist of the pipe you dial out the right tone and frequency for your wife to speak through that servant of satan.
"Honey," her voice is distant and interrupted by the Dracula struggling in your steadfast grip. "You couldn't look after me for a four month gestation cycle?"
"I was in that fucking forest looking after a wild fucking pig for two weeks. I left because I contracted something. I thought my kidneys were giving out - you couldn't have picked an easier fucking host to be reborn to?"
"I'm the victim here. You couldn't look after a pig for four months so now I'm a Dracula."
This was a response measured to incite feelings of guilt. I knew I was in the wrong. And, you know, you want to show you're willing to be reasonable and listen to your wife's concerns but the damn vampire starts bucking in your arms so suddenly and violently that he snaps his own damn neck. Not dead, but incapacitated. He'll be fine in the morning. Whatever. It gives you time to think. You set yourself down on the cold flagstones to have yourself a really big think. Big think time. Big boy mensa-style wizard think. "Hurts mah head." You soothe your big, throbbing head with a temple massage as it thinks and thinks.


*******THE CONTINUATION TO THIS STORY WAS LOST DUE TO HARDWARE FAILURE IT IS LOST TO TIME I AM SORRY SWEET GOBBOS**********