Schmutzplunk the Vampire arduously extracted his teeth from the clump of epoxy cow dung in which they had become embedded.
"Never again," he muttered to himself, "will I try to feed in a glue factory for the lactose tolerant."
It had been a difficult week for Schmutzplunk, what with his disastrous appearance on a local talk show with two werehamsters and a dyspeptic ghoul. The host, a Katie Couric-lookalike who sniffed disdainfully at Schmutzplunk's ratty roquelaure and cheap Payless boots, refused even to shut up the hammy hamsters, who monopolized most of the discussion on that week's topic: "Humans: Better with Oregano?" The ghoul just retreated to a corner and moaned, but then, most of them do.
Barely had he managed to scrape the last accretions of epoxy polymer from his left front fang (the sensitive one), when a booming, inauspicious knock reverberated through his crypt, suggesting the presence of a visitor on his front cenotaph, of which he had, in a given week... well, none, and so this could not be considered a good portent.
"Open, O miserable spawn of Satan... or Santayana... one of those bad guys, anyway! Knowest thou not that he who fails to study hemoglobin is doomed to imbibe it?"
Schmutzplunk shook his head. Another ersatz blood salesman. Who came around to your private crypt anymore, for Spike's sake? Didn't these guys know enough to resort to telemarketing?
Chapter One - Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyeteeth
It was a dark and stormy midafternoon, and the sun shone brightly, but somewhere else. Puffy, Pillow and Pander had spent three unavailing hours picketing Vlad's Meatless Burgers (Juice Only), the latest in a series of specialty fast blood emporia catering to the local vampire population, ever since the Endangered Bloodsuckers Protection Act had been forced through by Meshuggadale's (heavily Republican) city council, nine months ago. Chiles, Puffy's mentor and a defrocked member of the Voyeur's Council, had already given up in disgust and returned to Islington to open a Scone Shoppe. The business was proving successful, alas (insofar as any business located in Islington could be said to, really, which meant that it hadn't closed), so Puffy was momentarily Voyeur-less, and had had to donate a whole closet-full of lacy nighties to the Salvation Army.
"Oh, patent teleological fallacies," mumbled Pillow, feeling annoyed and seeking to be more intelligible than usual.
"Huh?" replied Pander, likewise exhibiting the depth of penetrating insight that so impressed everyone who didn't meet him.
"We have to find something more productive to do with our afternoons," Puffy finally concluded, doing a backward somersault just so a passerby couldn't possibly fail to be dazzled, disconcerted and rather annoyed by the evident lack of restraint of what appeared to be a visiting circus troupe. He hastened off before the mimes could arrive.
"What about convoluted rituals involving ancient, unpronounceable languages and dead chickens?" Pillow tentatively suggested.
"No, no, we did that last week," Pander complained. "What's with the unpronounceable languages, anyway? Can't we have a decent ritual without choking up on pharyngeal fricatives and ingressive clicks?"