“THE CASTLE!?!”
In a flash the couple turned and sprinted away from me down the road.
“Monster!! Help!! MONSTER!!!”
I actually spun and looked down the road behind me, trying to spot the object of their terror. Looking at the empty road, however, it slowly began to sink in. They were afraid of me? Monster?
Of all the reactions I had tried to anticipate for our reception in this new land, I had never in my wildest imaginings expected this.
Me? A monster?
“I think we’ve got problems. High Roller,” Massha said as she and Guido emerged from the brush at my side.
“I’ll say. Unless I’m reading the signs all wrong, they’re afraid of me.”
She heaved a great sigh and shook her head.
“That’s not what I’m talking about. Did you see their teeth?”
“I saw his,” I said “The canines were long and pointed. Pretty weird, huh?”
“Not all that weird, Hot Stuff. Think about it. My bet is that you were just talking to a couple of vampires!”
Chapter Five:
“To survive, one must be able to adapt to changing situations.”
-TYRANNOSAURUS REX
“VAMPIRES,” I said carefully.
“Sure. It all fits.” Massha nodded. “The pale skin, the sharp fangs, the red eyeliner, the way they turned into bats….”
“Turned into bats?”
“You missed it. Boss,” Guido supplied. “You were lookin’ behind you when they did it. Wildest thing I ever saw. One second they was runnin’ for their lives, and the next they’re flutterin’ up into the dark. Are all the other dimensions like this?”
“Vampires….”
Actually, my shock wasn’t all that great. Realizing the things Aahz and I had run into cruising the so-called “known and safe” dimensions, I had expected something a bit out of the ordinary in this one. If anything, I was a bit relieved. The second shoe had been dropped . . . and it really wasn’t all that bad! That is, it could have been worse. (If hanging around with Aahz had taught me anything, it was that things could always be worse!) The repetitive nature of my conversational brilliance was merely a clever ploy to cover my mental efforts to both digest this new bit of information and decide what to do with it.
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