Counts of Blood

Author: Lucinda

Rated T for teen due to insanity, violence and possible swearing.

Main characters: the Count, the Master. Presence of assorted minions and mention of other muppets.

Disclaimer: the Count and any other muppets mentioned belong to Henson Puppetry. The Master belongs to Joss Whedon & his writers. The minions are mine.

Distribution – if you want it, let me know.

Notes: Post Muppet Show, pre BtVS s1.

“Who are you to challenge me in my own sanctuary?” the mage demanded.

The Count began gathering his own magical power, as well as preparing the somewhat risky method of drawing on the ambient energies of the area. Such ambient draws could vary greatly in terms of the power that they drew. Here, he suspected that there would be a lot of energy, perhaps with a water affinity, and assuredly tainted with the energies of the Hellmouth. Energies that sought to corrupt and destroy.

Looking at the mage, he bared his teeth in a smile, “I am the vun that vill destroy you.”

The velvet clad mage snarled some words in horrible Latin and made a hurling gesture with his hand, sending a gout of red flame towards the short purple vampire.

“You speak vith the accent of an illiterate svine-herd,” the Count snarled, nimbly moving out of the way of the flames. His first spell was cast silently, with only a few gestures, and caused four of the five wretched fluorescent lights to shatter, sending shards of glass everywhere. “Vun that learned from a drunken camp-follower.”

“How dare you meddle with me! I have power beyond mortal imagining! I have enslaved demons to my will!” The man’s eyes were darkening as he shouted, changing to solid inky shadow. A few more words of butchered Latin sent a shock wave towards the Count.

“Bending such demons to your vill is a simple task,” the Count retorted. He couldn’t quite dodge the entirety of the shock wave, and found himself flung back into the wall. There was the sound of cracking concrete, and he was certain that he’d now have a darker purple bruise from the iron knife he had concealed along his back.

Pushing himself from the wall, the Count landed in a crouch, glass crunching beneath his feet as he gathered power to his hands. His next spell might have been overly cautious, considering the mage he faced, one that he was starting to suspect of arrogance and perhaps senility. Rather than a direct attack against the mage, he cast a barrier around the room, one that would, for the next one thousand four hundred and fifty six minutes, prevent any demons from entering the room, as well as prevent anything from being summoned into the area. No conjuring of extra-planar spirits, no conjured demons from beyond, not even any portals. Only humans, ordinary animals, and perhaps vampires would be able to enter the room until it fell. “You vill haff to do better than that, foolish sorcerer.”

“I have done nothing against the vampires, why are you challenging me?” the sorcerer demanded, sweat gathering on his face even as darker veins spread from his eyes towards his temples, and from his fingertips up the rest of his hands.

“You did not challenge the wampires of this city, you challenged me!” the Count roared, sending his own shock wave towards the mortal sorcerer.

With a noise that was half curses and half pained yelp, the mage fell to the floor, his legs collapsing in a way that suggested broken bones.

“For vhat you haff done, you vill die,” the Count hissed, leaping across the room to crouch beside the velvet clad sorcerer.

“No, you can’t… ritual to prevent…” the man gasped out, attempting to gather magic into his hands.

“That is the problem vith most mages. The only vay you can think of to fix your problems is vith magic,” he reached out, catching and squeezing the man’s hand until he could feel the bones grinding against each other. “And so wery few of you can vork through the pain.”

The man screamed as two of the bones in his hand cracked.

Reaching behind, the Count produced his knife and ran it down the man’s arm, pressing had enough to dig down to the bones. Despite the pressure, his skin did not part, and no blood emerged. “Ahh, you haff performed rituals to prewent certain types of harm. Wery good. But there are many vays to harm somevun, and I am villing to try as many as it takes.”

Gasping words in medieval French, the man attempted to gather magic into his free hand, his eyes still the inky shadow of someone using too much dark magic without the ability to properly control the power.


Smiling, the Count poked his knife into the mass of gathering magic. Cold iron did more than inconvenience the Greater Fae and repel the Lesser. It could make working magic difficult and warp or disrupt spells. The still unfocused magic coalescing in the man’s other hand shattered, acting in a way not unlike a mass of lightning, grounding itself through the nearest conductor – which happened to be the sorcerer. Some of it stung at the Count’s hand as well, but he could work through the pain, and it caused little physical damage.

“It seems that you are not immune to pain from raw magic, though your skin vill not part for my knife. I shall try again,” Smiling, the Count ripped at the velvet robe, tearing the fabric away from the man’s torso. “This vill be easier vithout the welwet in the vay.”

“Not going to die that easily…” the sorcerer snarled, twisting and jabbing his fingers towards the Count’s eyes.

“Oho, you are a feisty vun!” The Count chuckled as he dodged the strike.

He yanked the man’s arm, hearing a wet pop and feeling it surge a bit closer as he dislocated the humerus from the rotator cuff of the shoulder joint. At the same time, it pulled the sorcerer back into the belly up position and caused his legs to flop a bit before falling back to the concrete. “This vill be enjoyable.”

Clenching his hand tighter around the sorcerer’s hand, he felt the bones grating, felt a bone in the smallest finger crack. At the same time, he changed the angle of pressure, digging his claws into the tender flesh. He could feel the skin parting beneath his claws, feel the blood welling up. Smiling, he looked into the man’s eyes, “It seems that I vill haff to… vhat is the term? Ah, I vill haff to go old school vith this.”

He stabbed the knife into the robes just below the sorcerer’s crotch, pinning him to the floor. He didn’t need to pierce his flesh to restrict his movements, after all. “Fortunately, I enjoy the older, more traditional vays of doing things.”

There was a small yelp from the sorcerer as the knife pierced the velvet robes and dug into the floor, pulling the fabric hard against the man’s genitals, causing pain despite the fact that the knife did not touch his flesh.

For what the Count had in mind, it might even be better not to pierce the man’s flesh with knives, and to only immobilize him with bits of the heavy velvet robes. “Had you vorn silk, it vould haff probably torn. But the welwet vill hold.”

“You… you can’t…”

“I haff already told you that I vill kill you. For vhat you haff done, it vill be wery painful,” he produced another blade, of poor quality and unlikely to remain useful after being stabbed into the concrete, and slammed it down by the man’s other arm, again pinning the heavy velvet to the floor. “There is a wery old tradition among sorcerers that to attack a sorcerer or their student is to invite suffering upon yourself, unless you can destroy them.”

A second pitiful blade was sufficient to pin the other sleeve, though closer to the elbow than the shoulder. “You attacked my student.”

The Count leaned closer, looking into the doomed sorcerer’s power-darkened eyes. “For that, I vill destroy you. The pain vill be for my own amusement.”

“Now let us count how many pieces you haff broken your legs into…” The Count thrust one claw deep into the left leg and pulled downwards, careful to go from the knee all the way to the ankle. There would be time to move up to the thighs when he was certain that the man couldn’t think clearly enough to escape with the reduced painful pressure against his genitals from the pinned velvet robes. Reaching in, he pulled out the first of many fragments of bone, smiling at the anguished scream. “Vun piece of bone…”

He did wonder if the sorcerer would bleed to death before he could count all the pieces of bone in his legs. Humans could be so fragile sometimes. Lifting out a jagged fragment of bone that including most of the upper end, the Count twisted it away from the tendon, running his nail along to carve the muscle away. “Two pieces of bone.”



End part 22.