by Jackie Rose
As his sharp white teeth grew into fangs, he raised them towards her throat. He could feel it pulsating beneath them, in mingled terror and desire. Feebly, she raised her trembling hand to the exposed area a moment before…
…before a taller, broader and much more impressive figure sailed in through the window.
“What in Hell do you think you are doing here?” Count Vlad’s younger brother demanded.
“What does it look like I am doing?” he replied, holding up the swooning female figure while hoping that his brother was suitably impressed.
“It looks to me,” Count Victor answered, “as though you are about to bite a woman…non-consensually! They will deport you for that, and good riddance. You need not think you can use my diplomatic immunity to protect you.”
“And why is it any of your business, pray?”
“Because I am responsible for good relations between our countries, and I won’t let you start an international incident here.”
Looking down at his brother’s designated victim, Victor asked, “Are you all right, miss? Miss? MISS?”
Her eyes blinked feebly as she became fully conscious again.
“Yes, of course, thank you,” she said, with a sigh. Neither of the brothers could help noticing that she sounded distinctly disappointed.
* * * *
Needless to say, “disappointed” did not begin to cover it, where Ellen’s would-be mother-in-law was concerned.
“You let your little brother come right in and walk all over you?”
“Or fly all over me, anyway,” Vlad admitted mournfully.
“Oh!” Mariutza threw her arms into the air so theatrically, you could practically hear the organ music rising at the same time. “We must do something about that.”
“Can we do it later?” he asked, slouching down in the red velvet armchair. “’Law and Order’ is on right now. It’s the really good episode where the prosecutor proves that the restaurant owner has just murdered his second wife, after he got away with killing the first one.”
“I sold my soul to the devil, so my sons could have and give eternal life, and this is my reward” his mother muttered. “But at least sit up straight!” After trying for a moment, as always, he wound up slumping even more deeply.
She could always make him feel guilty about the way he treated her…which was no mean feat, considering how he had behaved towards almost everyone else, without the least pang of remorse.
* * * *
As one of the first who had received the precious gift of Dracula’s dark kiss, Simona the former village maiden had done nothing to relieve his deep-seated sibling rivalry. After Count Vladimir himself had made her a vampire bride, she had gone over to Radu the Handsome without a century’s hesitation.
Her first master could have taken some comfort in the fact that his younger brother had recently dumped her, along with her three sister spouses, for an official wife…that awful American girl who had made his followers into yet another whining minority.
Alas, Simona seemed to have recovered, financially at least. She was now earning her own bread and plasma as a society musician. Things being how they were for her, health insurance was not a problem.
As the Romanian ambassador, Victor was using his connections to get her booked at society functions. She was always especially popular for Halloween galas, but few were more glittering than this Happy Hallo-day embassy bash.
In the spirit of the occasion, she was playing a selection of strictly secular fall-and-winter-season specials on the grand piano. Having concluded “Over the River and Through the Woods,” she was going on to “Winter Wonderland.”
The music enhanced the cozy charm of the embassy’s Victorian reception room, with its wallpaper in a lavish pattern of flowers and stripes, surrounding the equally ornate stone mantel.
The visitors, including the media, were ushered into this room to greet the ambassador and his honored guests. They included Constantin and Ingrid, the werewolf and his were-Maltese mate, who had come from Romania for the occasion.
“Yes, Luther dear, we really are ‘only human’ right now, just as you said,” Ingrid was telling an obviously disappointed child. “But just you wait until they open the curtains later this evening. Then you will see why we must always be kind to animals, rather than throwing them in gas chambers or hacking them apart in slaughterhouses…”
“And we will have cake and ice cream, too,” Countess Tiffany hastily added. “Devil’s food cake, of course. So it will be a really Happy Hallo-day.”
Having overheard the conversation, the musician cast about hastily for some music that would lighten the mood. After rejecting several that featured Santa Claus…AKA Saint Nicholas…she finally launched into “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow.” Of course, it would be at least two months before it did any such thing, especially in Northern Virginia, but that was the best she could do.
To her relief, she saw that the moppet was now standing before the First Lady, who held out a black cat to be petted. That poor little creature would have been mewing loudly in protest, if the First Lady had not promised to transform her into a reasonable facsimile of the young Jacqueline Kennedy later that night. The puss knew that her mistress could do it, having already turned her litter mates into Dolley Madison, Eleanor Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin.
“Of course, you may touch little Midnight…but do it gently,” the First Lady instructed. “She will also have a special surprise for you later tonight. I am sure you will enjoy it, and she certainly will. She told me so herself! Of course,” she added, with her warmest smile, “She can only tell me things because I am a witch…but, as you know now, witches are your friends and black cats are, too. And banshees. And vampires.”
This was her way of gently passing the child along to the next notable in the receiving line…namely, her son-in-law the vampire congressman and her daughter, the banshee. Her undead bodyguard Ylenia also beamed at the complement.
“Are you really a vampire?” the child breathed.
“Some of us prefer being called Undead Americans,” Rep. Zagorsky (D-CA) responded gently. “Many of us are war heroes, too. You might wind up serving right along with them, thanks to our new recruitment policy...’Don’t Ask, Don’t Bite.’ And for the UN-undead veterans, we have patriotic banshees to wail for them…like my wife here.”
“You mean, the banshee do not steal their souls?” Luther asked, in some disappointment again. “I saw a rerun of ‘Charmed,’ where…”
“We have all seen many unfair and untrue things,” the First Banshee answered firmly. “But it is a great honor to have the banshee wail for you. It means you were a war hero.”
“Well, I guess so,” Luther answered. “My mother said that your father, the president, sends you to do it for his biggest contributors, even if they never fired a shot in their lives.”
“I hope you watch reruns of ‘Angel,’ too,” the Ambassador interrupted hastily, before the president’s daughter had had time to get angry, which could have led to a screaming fit that would have shattered every window in Sheridan Circle
. “Some people say that he looks a lot like me.” And he gazed down with his most soulful David Boreanaz stare.
“But he shouldn’t do everything Buffy tells him.”
“So where is your mother?” the count asked, obviously wishing that she would show up and wisk him away.
“She’s over there looking for PFC Irving Loftig, the vampire World War II hero,” he said. “She wants to ask him about the Transylvanian undead underground. She teaches European history, so she loves that stuff.”
“As we all do,” Count Victor assured him.
“I know about European history, too,” Ylenia assured him, coming hastily from behind the First Lady. Obviously, she had decided that the best way of rescuing the president’s wife right now was by changing the subject. “Have you ever heard of Josef Stalin? I knew him, and he was a PIG!”
As it always did when she
mentioned the disgusting Russian dictator, her voice soared higher than she had intended. On this occasion, it was high enough to bring Luther’s mother to their side. “Finally!” Count Victor muttered, as he saw her coming. His obvious relief grew even greater as she firmly pulled her son away, but soon shrank again as she took the child’s place before him.
“I wanted to thank you for rescuing me,” she said, in a tone that strongly suggested she did not want to do any such thing. “I am also looking forward to hearing you and your brother debate the Halloween question before for my students.”
More brightly, she added, “Now I have another favor to ask. I teach European history, and I am so grateful for this opportunity to ask someone who really knows it. When you say that Chairman Stalin was a pig, are you talking about the Hitler-Stalin Pact?”
“I am talking about HIM!” Ylenia retorted, her eyes turning as red as Comrade Stalin’s flag…or, alternatively, Simply Red by Elizabeth Arden, her own favorite hue. “He invited me to a dinner party once, and I was so very flattered…until he threw orange peels and bread slices at me, right across the table! He was never anything but a Georgian peasant PIG!”
“Perhaps you could come and talk to my students about that,” the teacher responded. “It is the kind of thing that youngsters are interested in. If nothing else, it will encourage them to use better table manners.”
* * * *
Mariutza Tepes was, as always, encouraging her eldest son to have better posture, as they raced through the white columns framing the embassy front door, with a flock of bats flying after them.
Adding to her usual exasperation with him, he had halted before the entrance. “No one has invited us in,” he told her.
“No one has to,” she answered, throwing her hands up, literally and figuratively both. “You are the rightful master of all Transylvania, this embassy included.”
On this basis, he was able to rush inside, with his mother beside him and a host of vampires following after, now in their human form.
And I do say “vampires” advisedly. No Undead Americans these, but the real McCoy (or, rather, Mirescu). They were shrieking as they raced through the entrance hall and into the reception room, with their red eyes blazing and their shrouds flying behind them. They had, indeed, come to Put the Hell Back in Halloween.
Simona soon got back into the spirit, by dropping “Frosty the Snowman” cold, in favor of the “Danse Macabre,” while trying her best to make the perfectly-tuned grand piano sound like a screechy, scary old violin.
At those sights and sounds, even the children trembled, as their parents dragged them towards the emergency exits. Only a few of the bolder ones, like Luther Reinecke, turned back to whisper with reverence, “Su-WEET!”
He could do it for only a moment before his mother pulled him firmly towards the door.
Even she felt compelled to stop, stunned, as Vlad Tepes loomed up before her.
“Now do you believe me?” he demanded. “I am the true Vlad Tepes. I-AM-DRACULA! And I had the great pleasure of drinking your blood.” Less dramatically, he added, “Or trying to, anyway.”
“You may very well think that you are,” she admitted, obviously fighting hard to keep her voice from shaking. “But all you are doing is frightening the children.”
“That’s the whole idea!” he shrieked. “THAT is what Halloween is all about!”
“Luther, you go home with Mrs. Turker,” she said firmly, pointing at a fellow teacher. To his disappointed wails of protest, she answered firmly, “Now!”
As her son was dragged to safety, she stood bravely between him and the four shrieking vampires who hurled themselves towards her, their fiery eyes blazing and their crimson talons clawing the air. Staring back firmly at them, to keep their attention from Luther, she felt sure that she recognized one.
“Aren’t you Ms. Marbury, the student teacher?” she asked.
“Why, yes, Ms. Reinecke,” the girl answered, her eyes fading once again from Revlon Certainly Red to their natural blue and her matching talons to sensibly short fingernails, lightly painted with Revlon Beam of Pink. “I hope you gave me a good report. I mean, I know that I can only be there in the late afternoons, due to my handicapping condition…but I try my best then.”
“You certainly know your history,” her supervisor assured her. “But you must be more assertive with the students and not let them get away with so much. Of course,” she added, glancing at her blood sisters, “not quite as assertive as they are.”
“I will try harder to do that,” she promised.
“Aargh!” her blood sisters snarled in reproach.
“Aargh,” Ms. Marbury agreed, as her features turned red again. Even in her literally blood-thirsty state, she remembered that this would-be victim was writing her evaluation, after all. Accordingly, she led her companions away to greener pastures...or, in their case, redder ones.
Turning back to the vampires’ master, Ellen Reinecke added, “You, sir, have made your point. If it makes you happy, you have won the War for Halloween. Now tell the children who you really are…because I am sure you are an Undead American of some kind, and they need to see that your people are their friends.”
“Aargh!” charging back into the foyer, he clattered back up the ironwork stairs, where he seemed, for once, as tall, as his younger brother. Suddenly, those ridiculous black and orange crepe paper streamers above him did not look foolish at all. “I say it again!” he cried. “I-AM-DRACULA!” Now fully involved in the spirit, Simona’s piano screeched on.
“He is Dracula!” Ms. Marbury and her fellow followers cackled in response.
“I am sure you all BELIEVE…” Ellen Reinecke started to say. Her reasonable words were drowned out by the howling of all the wolves in all the hills between Washington and West Virginia, not to mention the National Zoo and the Wildlife Preserve.
“Now do you believe me?” he demanded.
“I believe, I believe!” she cried, careful to stay at the bottom of the steps, so she would not loom over him again. “Take me, Master!”
Her words were almost drowned out…along with every other sound…by Maeve O’Neill Zagorsky’s shriek of ear-splitting, window-shattering rage.
“You ruined our reception,” she howled, between her mindless fits of wailing.
Rep. Zagorsky was pulling his banshee bride towards the nearest “emergency exit only” sign. Film buff that he was, he stopped long enough to murmur reverently, “It’s like ‘Miracle on 34th Street’…with Dracula instead of Santa Claus.”
But Kris Kringle had never turned a reception into a riot. This Dracula did just that, when he led his followers in storming the reception room, tearing down the crepe paper as they came.
“You!” he shouted at his brother. “You—traitor! You say you represent Romania, but I never gave you permission to do so.”
“I never asked!” Count Victor shouted back, glaring down at him from over his muscular folded arms. “You do not rule Romania any longer, so I don’t even know how you got in here.”
“Because he believed that he could!” Ellen Reinecke cried rapturously, at his left hand. Vlad at once decided against telling her that his mother was the one who had believed it.
“Well, I believe he’d better get right out again, before I kick his scrawny little butt…as usual,” his brother retorted. “These people are my guests, which is more than I can say for him.”
Enraged at this threat to their leader, the evil undead tried to rush the former Radu the Handsome. Since he was still Radu the totally buff as well, he had little trouble holding them off…or, rather, throwing them into the marble mantel, which was fortunately unlit. They bared their claws, raised their fangs, glared through their blood-red eyes and shrieked in mindless rage.
“Radu, I’m your mother!” Mariutza cried, just in time to avoid the same fate. He pushed her to the side instead, ignoring her lamenting wail, “I sold my soul to the devil, so my sons could have and give eternal life, an
d this is my reward?”
Having benefited from that very gift, the vampiric bodyguard Ylenia raced back to help her sire. By a happy coincidence, he was also the First Lady’s host at the moment and thus he was officially entitled to her aid. That left her with a clear conscience…for a vampire, anyway. So she used her martial arts training to hurl her cold-blooded brothers and sisters against the striped-and-floral wallpaper and onto the gleaming floor.
Fortunately or not, her professional partner Matt Mader, who was also her spouse, was not there to aid her. This was supposed to be an occasion for the paranormal minorities to put their best feet…or paws…or claws…forward. She would have the opportunity to prove the PN’s could handle any crisis by themselves.
The were-creatures helped her prove it. Eight feet turned into paws and claws in one moment, as Radu pulled down the curtain, letting the moonlight stream in. The towering Transylvanian male with his shaggy red hair was slowly transformed into an equally shaggy werewolf, while his slim, pale blond American bride turned into a fluffy little white were-Maltese. She soon proved once again, however, that that softness was only fur deep.
As he bounded towards the nearest cluster of the evil undead and then leapt on them, his snarling and howling drowned out their shrieks of terror and rage. Ingrid echoed his growls with her yipping, as she jumped at their ankles. In vain, they tried to kick her away before she returned to the attack.
Hearing the barking, Midnight jumped from her mistress’ arms and raced back into the fray. The First Witch could think of only one way to protect her little pet and cast her spell accordingly. A moment later, the young Jacqueline Kennedy stood in the black cat’s place.
Noting the TV cameras that were taping at a frantic rate, she said in her softest, calmest, best boarding-school tones, “The Embassy of Romania was inspired by the fine Parisian townhouses of the 17th Century.”
All the screeching, shattering, shrieking, snarling, howling, barking and architectural interpretation were soon drowned out by the sirens. Showing true American know-how, the ambassador’s lady had called the cops.