The Gene Wizards

Chapter 6

Chapter 6: The Storm

Curfew, drugged to the gills on prescription medication, was still finding everyday reality hard to deal with. For one thing, there was his nightmare family. Every family has its black sheep, and the Vanpyres had not escaped the statistics. They had Count Moribund's cousin Victor Mohn, who ran their French wine-making empire in the Languedoc region of France. The Vanpyres' wine-making firm was run by Victor's capable manager Henri, while Victor contrived to feel permanently hard done by. His surname, Mohn, was an elegant example of nomen omen, since moaning was his lifelong hobby. His face bore a mask that suggested injured pride qualified by imminent disaster. His mouth, when not imbibing the very best that France could offer, was held in a spasm of pleated lips intended to communicate valiant endurance.

Although Count Moribund's empathic skills were almost non-existent when it came to family members, as a good businessman he was not without his powers of observation when it came to character. He had noticed that the two most crippling traits a person can have are a false sense of entitlement and a penchant for self-pity, and he had to admit that Cousin Victor had them in bucket loads. Curfew couldn't stand him. If the Count was a fiscal vampire, then Uncle Victor was an emotional vampire. A blood-sucker par excellence.

A textbook passive-aggressive, Victor had an instinct for timing that maximized his nuisance value. The more irritating his disturbance was, the more he would spin the conversation out. He managed to phone when the Vanpyres were eating, or about to go out, or entertaining. Such was the case one particular afternoon, when the Count and his wife were having a very late lunch that day with Firball, their lawyer, Barbara his wife, and Ladislav Dvorak, who owned a weekend cottage in a Moravian forest in the Czech Republic, where a discreet clearing was home to a promising crop of marijuana. Although a dentist by training, Ladislav had made a fortune, both at home and across the border in Austria, performing the minor cosmetic procedures that had earned him the title Baron Botox. Such had been the success of several years' worth of injecting the drooping, pleating lips of Central European women that even by the Vanpyres' standards he was now seen as a potential player. Hence the invitation.

The phone rang in the hall. Phuk Yu answered. He groaned silently and his eyes rolled up to the stuccoed-surround skylight when Cousin Mohn answered in his usual lugubrious tone. His voice was at once barely audible, forcing the listener to strain at the earpiece, and yet as penetrating as a paper cut. As usual, he began with an orgy of self-effacing apology. "I'm so sorry to disturb you all at lunch. Oh dear, I really am being a terrible nuisance, aren't I, but you see, well, I need to talk to Mori rather urgently, if you wouldn't mind tearing him away from his meal for just a couple of seconds?"

Phuk Yu responded with a few carefully enunciated but completely inaudible words from Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky poem, putting the receiver down before Victor could express his confusion, and made his way to the dining room at an unusually stately pace. There he waited with exemplary patience while the Count helped himself to a couple of profiteroles, before bending down towards the Count's right ear and imparting the news, "Cousin Mohn on the line sir."

This utterance invoked the second eye-rolling of the afternoon, at least giving the Count his money's worth in terms of the stucco restorations on the ceiling. He too found himself in no great hurry to reach the receiver on the ivory inlaid hall table, but being in jovial mood after Firball had just told a rather funny dirty joke, he was not quite forearmed enough to fend off the avalanche of self-absorption that awaited him.

"Hello Victor!" he opened, intending to be cheerful. "And how are you?" A mistake, he realized instantly but too late from the dramatic sigh oozing out of the earpiece.