Joshua Rem's Blog: Written Off

Rufino, Restorer of Faith (novel excerpt)

This is a holiday-themed excerpt from Chapter One of my new novel, Vath's Legacy. Ever have an uncontrollable urge to indulge in some gratuitous holiday snacking? This eccentric little vampire knows exactly how you feel.

(This story takes place in a fictional world, which is why Santa cannot be referred to by name.)

* * *

Fortunately, keeping busy was easy on December 21. The bulk of Rufino’s annual solstice shenanigans revolved around a nonsensical belief held by many human children. As went the legend, a mythical gift-giving fat man with a sled pulled by flying reindeer zoomed around the world on the night of the winter solstice, descending sooty chimneys to deposit presents beneath the holiday trees of good children whilst snubbing evil children. Those shades-of-gray children who doubted their status in the fat man’s eyes could offer a bribe in the form of milk and cookies—a tradition that had no doubt contributed to the man’s thunderous bulk.

The milk was of no concern to Rufino, but the cookies were another matter entirely. He liked to think of himself as a baked-goods connoisseur—a side-effect of his past career as a master chef. Unfortunately, the standard business hours in which most bakeries operated were greatly prejudiced against those for whom sunlight was fatal, so fresh-from-the-oven baked goods were nigh impossible for him to acquire. He’d not attempted to break into a bakery since his innocence had died back at Carmen’s Artisan Sweets, which left him with no alternative but to swipe some sweets from a bunch of little kids and their mythical fat man.

On the surface, it was kind of a jackass thing to do. Stealing often was, even for marginalized persons who had no real choice in the matter. Rufino had been doing this for five years, though, and he believed he’d found a way to justify his annual misdeed. In moments of brutal honesty, most parents would admit that they’d been the ones eating the cookies. These people knew there was no fat man… or did they? What might happen if a parent or two tucked the children into bed and then returned to the fireplace only to find the cookies missing?

Faith restored, that’s what. Oh, sure, skeptical adults would brainstorm all sorts of crazy ways to explain the disappearing sweets. Maybe the dog had eaten them, or perhaps one of the kids hadn’t been able to resist. Some families, however, would be able to rule out all reasonable explanations, which would lead them to the inescapable conclusion that the fat man was real. There had to be dozens of Nyobian parents who approached the holiday season with childlike enthusiasm again because of Rufino. Were a handful of usually not-so-great cookies too much to ask for such a wonderful gift?

Not at all. Innocence was almost impossible to reclaim once lost. The little vampire knew this all too well.

His preferred window of pilfering was between midnight to 02:00. The mythical man was supposed to deliver at midnight, so the kids wanted to be tucked in by then, and the smarter parents would go to bed themselves knowing that the kids were wide awake and listening for anything out of the ordinary. The households that actually offered cookies were in the minority, but fortunately, Rufino’s extremely well-trained bat-nose could smell fresh sweets from a hundred metres upwind in a hurricane. The fresher the goods, the more compelling the scent, enabling him to triage with uncanny accuracy.

Sadly, the houses with the freshest cookies also seemed to be the houses with the largest dogs. Such were the risks of home invasion, which was why he preferred to remain outside whenever possible. Between his decent nose and his stupendous ears, however, he could usually detect pets before they detected him. It was a jolly good thing, too, because his one-pound bat form couldn’t beat up a chickadee, never mind a four-hundred-pound war dog.

Rufino’s standard operating procedure was to watch for families that left the festivities at around 22:00. That left them just enough time to get home, bake some fresh cookies, and get everyone to bed before midnight. Unfortunately, it was only 20:15, which left him with naught to do but to go somewhere else before he suffered permanent hearing damage. Know what would be nice? he asked himself as he flew. One of Kiralyn’s sound-blocking spells. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be able to cast one of those whenever I hear a guitar.

He’d have to ask for lessons sometime—assuming, of course, that she ever came back. He trusted her desire to meet up with him again, but the life of a druid-spy was so absurdly unpredictable that it was easy to imagine himself becoming an afterthought inside her mind. Not enough time, she’d tell herself. Where on the scale of importance could one tiny vampire possibly rate next to the future of an entire country?

Nowhere but the bottom.

***

Rufino eventually managed to escape earshot of the guitars, but there wasn’t a hidey-hole in all of Meridian that wasn’t being tormented by holiday carols from one tone-deaf chorus or another. Fa la la la la, blah blah blah blah. Such songs weren’t so bad the first two or three times per season, but the devout had been caroling non-stop since the middle of November. He hadn’t the faintest idea why—the winter and summer solstice celebrations were pagan, not associated with any religion or god. Why go to such excessive lengths to prove thy devotion to no one?

Whatever. Tall people were weird, but he wasn’t about to chomp the hand that fed him cookies. To be honest, he would have preferred cinnamon-and-apple bagels to cookies, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. His bagel-hunts had a way of going horribly wrong, so he’d take what he could get as long as it wasn’t chocolate. Sadly, humans seemed to be obsessed with chocolate. Everywhere he went, it seemed to be chocolate-chip-this or double-fudge that. Blechh.

Last year, however, Rufino had stumbled upon some oatmeal-raisin cookies that had been spectacular even to his unforgiving palette. He’d promised himself at the time that he was going to remember the address of that house and raid it again this year, and he did still remember the house number—1369. Alas, somewhere along the way, he’d forgotten the street name. Guess I’ll just have to visit every 1369 until I get the right one.

Perhaps it wouldn’t come to that. Rufino did have a vague memory of what that gorgeous house and its neighbours had looked like. He also had an edge on the wager in that he vividly recalled visiting the ex-site of Carmen’s Artisan Sweets not long before he’d flown north and found the house in question. All he needed to do was to retrace his steps, which he was only too eager to do. Spitting on the building that had once been the mafia bakery would be immensely satisfying, and he needed something to feel good about after endless hours of holiday carols.

It’s settled, then. He could die of old age and still never forget where to find Carmen’s, so he set a course toward Candlestick Road along the eastern edge of Meridian’s most prominent entertainment district and set off at top speed.

Five minutes later, he reached his destination. Carmen’s had been a vacant building ever since he’d led that squad of trainee undead-hunters to its secret cellar full of illegal weapons and armour—probably due to building-code violations pertaining to the aforementioned cellar. Those issues had apparently been resolved, though, because a new business had finally moved in during the seven months since his last visit. Intrigued in spite of himself, he descended for a closer look at the white writing on the panoramic window.

Daniel M. Sprott
Personal Injury Law

A lawyer! Rufino snorted with derision as he manoeuvered into position above the building. Is that a step up or a step down from the mobsters?

That was a debate for another time. After performing his therapeutic ptooie upon the roof of the offensive building, the little vampire turned north and flew for a few minutes until he was back among houses. The neighbourhood was upper-middle class, with almost every residence being built of brick and most having more than one floor. Many of them had gardens, as well. The gardens weren’t precisely the same as they’d been last year, but they were starting to ring some bells in the deepest recesses of his memory. Not far to his right was a house with a huge oak tree out back, and he distinctly remembered sniffing out their chimney only minutes before striking oatmeal-raisin paydirt. Which direction had he gone after that, though? He knew he’d gone further north, but had it been northwest or northeast?

A question that was easily answered by checking the house’s number. It read 1760, which meant the 1300s were four blocks to the west. Excitedly, Rufino climbed back to fifty feet and zoomed down the avenue to the appropriate block. He then proceeded north for a few blocks until he came across another recognizable landmark: a house surrounded by an imposing stone wall that put the one surrounding Augustus V’s castle to shame. I wouldn’t want to live next to that beast, he remembered thinking a year ago. The people who built such walls always seemed to have lots of enemies.

The fortress-house was useful, though, in that he remembered it being only a block or two south of the cookie-house. Rufino flittered north to the next avenue only to rule it out immediately due to the houses being the wrong shapes. The block after that, however, looked very familiar, so he descended to twelve feet and started searching for numbers. The first residence was numbered 1389, so he turned west and encountered a duplex made of wood that he vividly remembered as being right beside the promised land. Now giddy with anticipation, he moved on to the next house…

…Only to encounter an empty lot surrounded by temporary fencing.

You’ve got to be kidding me. It had taken him years of sampling inferior cookies to find this place, and now it was gone! Utterly demolished, not unlike his morale. Why in the world would someone flatten a perfectly good house with an absolutely divine oven? Argghh…

Once again, there was nothing to do but to move on. Another therapeutic ptooie later, he picked a random direction—east—and flittered forth hoping to find a new pot of gold. There had to be more than one kid in this town with a gift for baking and a belief in bribery. If not, he was going to write a scathing letter to whatever passed for the school board around here and demand that a heavier emphasis be placed on home economics. It had been a required course in his school.

It was just as well that this wasn’t Rufino’s hometown, though. Galensdorf was full of evil children who knew that the fat man was deeply prejudiced against them. Ergo, no cookies.

Five seemingly endless minutes later, his nose caught wind of some baking-in-progress from within a lovely two-storey heritage house made of wood. Unfortunately, upon locating the kitchen, he saw that it was currently occupied by four adult cats and at least ten kittens of various colours, causing him to shudder involuntarily. One might assume that cats were less bothersome than dogs due to their relative lack of size, but they were still much larger than his bat form with its less-than-majestic eight-inch wingspan. More to the point, cats were anti-rodent specialists, and what was a bat if not a flying rodent? If I go down this chimney, I’ll have six balls of fur coming at me in five seconds flat. No thanks.

He resumed his search, stewing in silence over the sheer number of dogs and cats in human households. What’s wrong with birds and goldfish, pray tell? He had yet to be attacked by a fish during his six-plus years of undeath, and birds were usually kept in beautiful cages that prevented them from disturbing his business.

Cages didn’t protect him from all forms of abuse, though. A few years back, he’d gone down one particularly inviting chimney only to encounter a parrot that’d been armed with an incredible repertoire of sarcastic remarks. He’d long since gotten used to having his unfortunate green mohawk haircut teased by lumbering humans and holier-than-thou elves, but to hear “nice hair, dude” from a bloody parrot was something that could stick with a guy for a long time.

The holiday revelers were starting to return to their homes now, which necessitated that he maintain a higher altitude to avoid being spotted. This lessened the effectiveness of his sniffers, but perhaps they wouldn’t be necessary. One little girl, walking along the sidewalk with her parents, was making repeated inquiries of, “Can we make the cookies now?” Rufino liked this kid already, so he followed the family west to their neighbourhood, which turned out to be only a few blocks from the western city wall.

Their home turned out to be a modest two-storey detached brick house that was separated from its neighbours on both sides by no more than seven feet. The dwelling itself couldn’t have been more than twelve hundred square feet, but that was more than enough space for a quality oven and a top-notch cookbook. Good things came in small packages, as was repeatedly demonstrated by Rufino and the entire halfling race. Why were humans so obsessed with square footage, anyway? What was all that excess space for other than to fill with worthless crap to impress people they didn’t even like?

This house, on the other hand, was almost sensible by halfling standards, and the two windows for the kitchen were possessed of six-inch windowsills on both sides of the glass. This delighted Rufino no end, for it enabled him to land and supervise the creation of his future plunder. Alas, what he saw failed to inspire confidence. Less sugar. More oil. No! Not that much! More molasses! Less flour! Even six-and-a-half years removed from his career as God of the Kitchen at the Good Eats restaurant in Galensdorf—even six-and-a-half years removed from his need to eat—he was still an unyielding perfectionist when it came to food.

Telepathy. That was what he needed. If ever he met the sick bastard who’d engineered this new strain of vampirism, he’d have to campaign for one or two useful additions.

One hour later, eight cookies—amateur-grade lumps of dough yet fresh from the oven nevertheless—were almost ready for consumption. All that remained was for a professional like Rufino to make sure that the goods hadn’t been accidentally poisoned or otherwise made dangerous. His undead condition rendered him immune to everything that wasn’t garlic, so he was the logical choice to assume this selfless duty. However, instead of arranging the cookies on a plate for testing, the little girl and her mother placed them on a tray and stashed them away in a cupboard.

What the hell? Why were these people making cookies on the eve of the solstice if not to leave them out for Rufino?

Whatever their purpose, his window of opportunity was about to be slammed shut. Sure, he could steal cookies from a cupboard as easily as he could jack them from a fireplace, but the fat man wasn’t known for ransacking kitchens to find what hadn’t been offered. The little vampire wanted to restore faith, not to scare a family half to death with evidence of a break-and-enter. Maybe a little encouragement….

“Mom?”

The woman was extinguishing candles and had only four left to go. “Yes, honey?” she said over her shoulder.

“Why is that bat head-butting the window?”

The bat was head-butting the window because it was the only way he could make a knocking sound without his natural arms and legs. Now that he had the pair’s attention, he gestured repeatedly in the direction of the living room, hoping the human and the mini-human would take the hint.

“I don’t know,” the mother admitted.

“Is it a vampire?” the girl asked.

Whoops. Time to leave. The amateur-grade lumps of baked cookie-dough now long forgotten, Rufino hopped off the windowsill and initiated a rapid ascent, but his ears were nevertheless able to catch the mother’s response. “Don’t be silly, dear,” she said. “It’s much too small to be a vampire. It’s probably just stunned.”

It was stunned, all right, but not for the reason she believed. Unconscionable, it was, to bake cookies on the eve of the winter solstice without any intention of leaving some out for him! Why hadn’t they done their baking in the morning if they didn’t intend to share?

The answer came to him a moment later. To fake me out, of course. He’d long suspected that one of the gods took a perverse pleasure in toying with him, and now he had one more piece of evidence to add to the pile. It was a large pile—the result of almost non-stop divine harassment since his conversion back in July of 1505N. If ever he found himself having drinks with King Augustus V again, he’d have to suggest a law making it mandatory to share anything baked on December 21. Though Nyobi was a nation of fiercely independent city-states, His Majesty did have some pull in Meridian, and he had liked the green-haired halfling. New legislation did seem to be within the realm of possibility. The tough part would be in how to stop the king from asking awkward questions as to why, but he’d cross that bridge when the time came.

There was nothing to do now but to select another house. There were plenty to choose from now that the clock was approaching midnight, so he flittered around town for a few minutes until his sniffers caught wind of a strange scent emanating from one of the few single-storey homes in this neck of the woods. One of the short-but-wide brick house’s front windows had been left open, so he opted to forego the chimney for the less festive but considerably cleaner point of entry. One minor incident with some curtains later, Rufino found himself perched atop a sofa in the living room. Though the streetlamps outside were providing trace amounts of light, his bat-eyes couldn’t see much of anything.

No problem. Whoever had designed the bat form for this strain of vampirism had done a stupendous job of it. Batfino possessed almost every unique ability of almost every kind of bat—including echolocation. A handful of exploratory clicks later, he’d constructed a three-dimensional picture of his surroundings inside his mind. Though his echo-pictures were blind to textures and colours, they were far superior to his eyes when it came to shapes and distances.

It wasn’t a large room. Two leather sofas dominated the near and right walls, and a decorated evergreen tree currently sat between them at the southeast corner of the room. There were no presents beneath the tree as yet, which informed Rufino that time was of the essence. Milk and cookies had indeed been set out upon the raised hearth of the fireplace at the far side of the room, but he was still unable to pinpoint the sweet scent that was tantalizing his olfactory nerves.

He did, however, know a terrific way to learn more.

Seconds later, after hopping across his sofa and the glass table in the middle of the room, the intrepid bat found himself right beside the plate—close enough for his eyes to be useful. The pair of cookies—positioned one atop the other—were brown, had been cut to resemble the shape of humanoids, and had been given facial features and crude clothes made of icing. The brown cookie-man on top was smiling broadly, which almost made Rufino not want to take a bite out of his head.

Almost. Though he derived no pleasure from demolishing a symbol of happiness due to the lack of such in his life, he took a tentative nibble anyway and made a startling discovery. Cinnamon! There was cinnamon in these things! His love for the heavenly brown spice was so absolute that, back in Galensdorf, he’d been known to forego the baking and eat the stuff straight out of the measuring spoon.

Excitedly, he took a second bite. Then a third, followed shortly thereafter by a fourth. Before he knew it, he’d devoured the entire first cinna-man and had started on the second. It was sorely tempting to shift forms because his bat-stomach was too small for both of these things, but he didn’t dare use his humanoid form whilst the occupants of this house were unaccounted for.

Besides, he was willing to trade sickness later for euphoria now. He was going to eat this second cookie, or he was going to die trying.

So, he went on, wolfing down the cinna-man like a dragon eating a real man. He’d only made it halfway through, however, when trouble came knocking. A toddler crawled through the doorway not ten feet away, and its priorities were apparent right from the beginning. With complete disregard for the concept of salvage rights, the baby picked up speed and approached the plate that Rufino was in the process of sacking.

At that moment, the little vampire felt a twinge of uncertainty. It would be a simple matter for him to incapacitate a baby, but he had a personal rule that he’d never broken: don’t chomp kids. He wasn’t at all confident that a small child could survive the vampiric virus, and the last thing he wanted was to take a chance like that only to be proven wrong. The killings of Martin Scirocco and Teo’edal were still prominent in his memory—as they probably always would be—and those had been some of the worst excuses for men that he’d ever encountered. To kill an innocent, even by mistake, would surely torture him forever.

Fortunately, there was an alternative to fighting. As the clumsy-but-determined baby’s approach thundered throughout his enhanced ears, Rufino hopped onto what remained of the second cookie and dug in with his razor-sharp claws. Then, with a triumphant smile, he spread his wings and started flapping.

Nothing happened.

Oh, bullshit. Adrenaline coursed throughout his tiny rodent body as panic began to wrap itself around his soul. The relentless toddler, moving faster than anyone that age had a right to, was mere seconds away from grabbing range, and that was undoubtedly the horrible fate that awaited Rufino if he didn’t get out of here now. Unlike most bats, he was capable of taking off from the ground, but the added weight of the cookie was apparently screwing up his lift factor.

A little momentum, however….

After making sure that his grip on the cookie was secure, Rufino relaxed his tiny leg muscles and tried to jump. It took the entirety of his strength just to make it an inch off the ground, but that might be enough. His next jump, aimed away from the approaching threat, was accompanied by the renewal of his wing-flapping. It took him a bit longer to land from that second jump, so he maintained what momentum he could by jumping again at the earliest possible moment. Then again, and again, picking up speed ever so slightly each time and probably looking quite ridiculous all the while.

The sixth jump was the charm. Triumphantly, he accelerated into the air, putting insurmountable distance between himself and the grabby little kid. Bwahahaha! Kiss my ass, twerp. Getting past the curtain and out the window would be awkward with his style being cramped by cargo, but no challenge was too great for a prodigious intellect such as his. The trick…

Rufino never got to finish that thought. Beneath him, the toddler had started to cry. This wasn’t one-or-two-tears-streaming-down-the-face kind of crying, either—this was unmitigated bawling. The parents would be looking at flood damage if this went on for any length of time. With this realization, the scope of his crime trampled him like a stampede of cattle. I stole a cookie from a baby. That’d look great on his resume if ever he ran for office, but it didn’t speak well of the half-man that he aspired to be. I’m a horrible person.

Fortunately, it wasn’t too late to make things right. Now more than ever, though, time was of the essence, because wailing like this was certain to attract the attention of the little one’s parents. Without a moment’s hesitation, Rufino came in for a landing about three feet in front of the miserable baby. Then—though it pained him greatly—he released his hold upon what was left of the cinna-man and hopped backwards.

The baby continued to cry, so it was clear that Rufino had to be a little more obvious. Kiddo doesn’t know much about body language at this age. He hopped back up to the cookie and gave it a shove toward its intended recipient.

Again, his gesture had no effect. Oh, come on, he urged. There wasn’t much time left, and he was fresh out of ideas except for one. It was risky, to be sure, but it might be the only way to make this kid happy again. Being the impulsive creature that he was, he acted.

He reverted to his halfling-form.

As expected, nobody had yet told the little tyke that it was supposed to be afraid of vampires and other shapeshifters. Instead of fleeing in horror, as a grown man might have done in its place, the baby merely stopped crying and looked inquisitively at the halfling. “Gurgle?”

That could mean anything, and Rufino didn’t have time to play Twenty Questions. Guided now by his superior humanoid eyes, he picked up the cookie and extended it toward the child, whom he now saw was dressed in blue. Surely it knew what was meant by this gesture.

Indeed, it did. After only a second, the child reached out with a stubby arm of its own to seize that which it had so desperately craved. Its objective now acquired, its conflicted expression instantly morphed into one of unbridled glee. “Aaaahh… hic!”

Rufino was about to say, “You’re welcome,” when he heard the first footsteps approaching at speed. Another pair was right behind the first—not that it made any difference. There was no time for goodbye, just time enough to get back into his bat form and set a new airborne speed record. Seconds later, he was through the open window.

His bat-ears might as well have still been inside that living room. “Jordan,” a deep voice that was probably the father said in an affectionate tone, “did you escape from prison again?”

Rufino had to smile at that. Cinnamon and jailbreaks. This might be my long-lost brother.

“We should have let him have one before we put him to bed,” a woman spoke up. “When he gets an idea in his head….”

“Remind you of anyone?” the man asked.

There was a brief pause before the reply came. “I remember Samantha outgrowing the crib quickly,” the mother recalled, “but I don’t remember any cookie-cravings…”

“Green!”

The word stunned mother, father, and vampire alike, for it hadn’t been spoken by any of them. “Oh, Paul!” the mother positively gushed as soon as she found her voice. “Jordan’s first word!”

“I was there,” the man remarked in a tone that suggested he was smiling broadly.

“But why ‘green’?” she asked.

Take a wild guess. It now seemed inevitable that poor Jordan’s earliest childhood memory would be of an emerald-green mohawk haircut. Hopefully baby’s first word won’t become baby’s first police report.

Rufino remained on the hunt for the next three hours, and he did locate and scarf some more oatmeal-raisin cookies, but they failed to satisfy as they had last year. I’ve been corrupted, he realized sadly. Now that he’d experienced cinnamon cookies for the first time, there was no going back. Everything else would be second-rate in comparison.

I must have that recipe. A recipe wouldn’t do him much good without ingredients and an oven, of course, but there was a gaping hole in his knowledge that desperately needed to be filled. He’d have to ask around the local taverns tomorrow night—hopefully someone would know what he was talking about.

And hopefully those taverns would have some ginger ale. He was starting to feel sick.​