Dracula, Ergo, Terror!

  Chapter 6

  The vampire woman clutched Ergo’s neck all the more tightly, causing his rich, juicy carotid artery to swell in an invitation.

  Ergo squeezed his eyes shut and tried to hold his breath. He felt the creepy creature move closer, closer, smelled the stench of her warm, fetid breath that stank like week-old ricotta.

  He shuddered in icy terror, not wanting to join the league of the undead. What would happen to him, to his dreams of being a magician, or his hopes of seeing his father-figure Roc again and traveling in space together on fun adventures? A tear trickled down the poor puppet creature’s furry red face.

  Then it was too late. The freakish vampire woman lunged in and dug her teeth into his neck, puncturing the skin and causing poor Ergo to cry aloud in anguish. Suddenly, with a hideous screech, the vampire recoiled and staggered backwards.

  “Your blood… it tastes like… chemicals and battery acid and…”

  As Ergo watched, the vampire woman reached for one of her sharp teeth and extracted a small tracking chip — apparently implanted there by the public school system — that her fang had accidentally impaled and dislodged from Ergo’s neck. She studied the tiny electronic device and then trembled and staggered again, started to hiss and billow with sparkling clouds of smoke, and then, in a sequence of events far too grisly to describe, dissolved hideously into a fiery blob of putrid ooze.

  Ergo was horrified and clutched his bleeding neck in pain, but then sighed deeply with relief. He had forgotten how his blood had actually been replaced with thimerosal mercury many years ago by secretive government vaccination experiments, and apparently that compound had a very nasty effect on vampires. None of the other vampires, however, had seen the event transpire, and Ergo, considering the situation, did not want to spend the rest of the dark night being repeatedly bitten by curious vampires, even if it would rid the village of the evil creatures forever.

  So he turned and continued his sliding descent down the hill, leading his pursuers farther and farther from the castle. Other vampires screamed and wailed nearby. Having been alerted to his presence by the screech of the doomed vampire woman, they were now closing in on his position.

  Ergo had one idea left, but he was rapidly growing wearier and, if Dracula and the other vampires caught on to his ruse and realized how useless his blood was for their diabolical purposes, he would be doomed…