Phfft: Introduction 

Howdy, Buckaroos: What follows is the fourth 
installment of the fatuous saga that began with "The 
Seventh Level", and that I have come to think of as 
"The Quest for Nilo Quanta" in its entirety. Earlier 
installments may be obtained via the FKFIC archives, 
or, should anyone wish, I will be delighted to send 
ASCII files upon request. 

Part 1: The Seventh Level 
 
Part 2: The Return of the Uninvited 
 
Part 3: A Multitude of Friends 
 
Part 4: Phfft 

Disclaimers: D.t. Knight, Msr. LaCroix, Dr. Lambert, 
and associates, are the exclusive property of Tristar, 
and I have temporarily appropriated them in a spirit 
of playfulness, rather than plagiarism. 

8-Ball, the Gray Fiend, The Suggs Family, et al, are 
the exclusive property of Nyx. 

Various other characters who appear below are 
inhabitants of the public domain, and need not, I 
think, be attributed. 

Warnings: There ARE one or two mild obscenities 
lurking in the verbiage below, and I apologize in 
advance for any offense that those epithets which are 
rendered in English may occasion. Cursing in other 
languages has been narrowly avoided.

Beta Readers: Kristine Ward and Nancy Kaminski 
(Kaminski with an "I", please note) have done 
everything possible to improve what follows. I am 
indebted to them, and so is any reader who manages to 
slog through this. They are both geniuses, and, I 
suspect, saints.

As always, comments of any sort may be directed to 
Nyx, and all will be given due consideration. The 
pleasant ones will prompt very nice thank you notes; 
the less than pleasant ones will probably do nothing 
toward ending this compulsion to write absurd fan-
fiction I seem to have developed.

NOTE: Usually, when I post fiction, I will post all 
the parts at once, for the convenience of readers. 
This ridiculous piece, however, has swelled into 
something bordering on novelette length, and time 
constraints prevent me from posting the whole absurd 
thing in a single go. But I'll try not to keep anyone 
who is interested waiting for any one part too long. 

Thank you. On with the show . . . 
 
Phfft, by Nyx Fixx (Part 4 in The Quest for Nilo 
Quanta) 
 
Chapter 1 
 
Natalie Lambert was pacing the length of the loft, 
furiously, for the umpteenth time. Three hundred or so 
cats watched her with caution, being extra-careful to 
keep their delicate tails out of her path. 

She made a final complete circuit of the room, raised 
her hands to heaven in a "why me?" gesture, and then 
stamped her small feet sharply against the 
floorboards. 

Well earned tantrum completed, Nat sighed, and turned 
toward an Abyssinian tom who'd been watching her from 
the easy chair. 

"All right, Ramses," she said. "Tell me the whole 
stupid story again, from the beginning." 

"Please, Doctor Lambert. We've already told you 
everything we know," answered the cat. 

Ramses' fellow felines all nodded their heads 
solemnly. They were accustomed to Nick's soft-headed, 
soft-hearted domestic style, and this fearsomely 
bright pathologist's no-nonsense attitude had them a 
bit intimidated. 

"Nick TOLD us to call you . . ." Ramses ventured. 

"I just bet he did," snapped Natalie, coldly. 

The Siamese, mistaking the origin of her annoyance, 
said, "He did! Honest! That mean Vet guy said he 
wouldn't feed us, and he decided to go with them at 
the last minute, anyway, so Nick said - Ramses - he 
said - Call Doctor Lambert. She'll -" 

"Enough!" Nat interrupted. She could not stand to 
listen to another word. What a surprise! A new low in 
execrable behavior from the undisputed world champion 
of thoughtlessness. So. The brainless bloodsucking 
blockhead had hared off on another of his goofy, 
death-defying adventures, and taken that repulsive 
albino pit-bull no-good buddy of his along too, and 
left her, as always, holding the bag. 

Explain things at the station, Natalie. Feed my cats, 
Natalie. Solve my cases, Natalie. Hold my hand and 
massage my tattered ego, Natalie. Cure vampirism and 
raise the dead, Natalie. 

Cry me a friggin' river, Natalie! 

She broke into a prolonged and utterly crude stream of 
Russian obscenities. The only Russian her grandmother 
had taught her that she still remembered. The cats 
listened, uncomprehending. Nick had not gotten around 
to teaching them Russian yet. 

That's it, Natalie cried mentally. I'm moving to 
Switzerland and finding myself a nice, steady clock-
maker. We'll have a chalet in the Alps and I'll have 
twelve kids and put on a hundred pounds and never look 
at another corpse again as long as I live. I'll change 
my name to Gerta and eat Swiss cheese all day. I'll 
learn to yodel and if I ever see another vampire I'll 
. . . 

She paused for a moment in her mental ravings.

. . . I'll probably just tear my own heart out and 
hand it over without a peep. Just like I did the first 
time. And people think NICK is stupid! 

Natalie put aside this fruitless round of self-
recrimination. It was barren ground that she'd been 
over a thousand times before. If you were insane 
enough to fall for a mythical monster, you were in for 
some hard knocks. Nick was the most awesome calamity 
that had ever befallen her, true. But he was also her 
personal white crow, a rara avis whose very existence 
made the world a much more interesting place. He was 
as heady a brew to her intellect as he was to her 
heart.

Is that why you're going to feed his damn cats, 
genius? she asked herself, harshly. 

"How often does he feed you guys?" she asked the cats, 
perhaps somewhat unwisely. 

"Five times a day!" answered Ramses, the Siamese, and 
one extremely overweight tabby all at once.

"Six times!" 

"Eight," corrected a tortoise-shell kitten solemnly.

"He feeds us forty-nine times a day. Grilled salmon," 
another cat chimed in 

"With live mice on the side!" 

"And calves liver in braised sparrow sauce with rats 
and turkey giblets and plenty of goldfish!" 

"And he plays with us three hours every night." 

"AND pets us." 

"And he never, NEVER clips our claws or makes us take 
pills!" 

"Uh-HUH. . ." said Natalie, drily. She had lived with 
Sydney far too long not to be aware that all cats are 
pathological liars. "That sounds like . . . oh . . 
.twice a day, Friskies, I expect, and maybe a bit of 
Fancy Feast for good kitties who don't tell stories. 
Do I make myself clear?" 

Three hundred chastened cats shut their muzzles. 
Nick's regime had never been like this. 

Natalie dragged the fifty pound bag of Friskies Cat 
Chow that had been propping the loft door open into 
the kitchen. It was a huge effort, and she was puffing 
by the time she'd raised the bag to one of the 
counters. Damn Nick. Not thinking, again. For him, the 
comparative weight of the enormous bag of cat food 
would be roughly equivalent to a jar of pistachio 
nuts. For her, the damn thing weighed a ton. 

"All of you, get your dishes, and bring them in here," 
she called. "One at a time!" she hastily amended. 

I'll get even, she thought. I'll move to a seventh 
floor walk up and get Nick to move my stuff. Let's see 
how he likes hauling that convertible sofa up stairs.

She sighed. Nick could probably haul a Buick up stairs 
without breaking a sweat. Her moment of trivial spite 
passed without consequence.

As she filled an endless succession of cat dishes with 
Friskies, she tried to keep her eyes off the 
mysterious void beyond the splintered louver doors off 
the kitchen. Looking at it too long caused a sharp 
rush of vertigo and hurt the rational consciousness in 
the same way that too much bright light hurt the eyes. 
The human mind was not meant to contemplate an 
infinity of nothing for an extended period. 

Earlier, she'd chosen a knick-knack at random from the 
bookcase to try an experiment with. Well, almost at 
random, she amended mentally. Actually, it had been a 
particularly hideous Haitian voodoo fetish that she 
knew Nick was quite fond of, and that she had always 
detested. She'd tossed the ugly little thing into the 
void. It had disappeared with an odd noise, a sort of 
phfft.

She'd thought: Is that what happened to Nick? Phfft? 

It was hard not to look into that terrible void. The 
doorway was an enigma that challenged and drew, as 
well as sickened and repelled. 

It certainly had drawn Nick, hadn't it? 

Natalie knew a lot more about Nick and his ways than 
he believed she did. She knew, for instance, that Nick 
was constitutionally incapable of staying out of ANY 
situation that might, conceivably, result in his 
destruction. To give him his due, he was also 
incapable of backing down from a challenge, no matter 
how insurmountable. He lacked a reverse gear, so to 
speak. He'd blithely rush into any available lion's 
den on any pretext. It was really something of a 
miracle that he had managed to survive as long as he 
had. 

She supposed that miserable creep, LaCroix, probably 
had something to do with that. She had once gotten 
very angry with Nick over one of LaCroix' malicious 
little pranks, and had fiercely taken him to task for 
tolerating LaCroix' constant interference in his life. 

Nick had lost his temper, and said: "Oh, you know all 
about it, do you? Okay, then you tell me how to stop 
him. He's stronger than me, he's smarter than me, and 
he's been following me all over the WORLD for as long 
as I can remember! We've been a two-man cosmic 
disaster area for more centuries than I care to count, 
and I'm never quite sure where he ends and I begin, 
and I STILL have no idea why he decided to choose ME 
in the first place. So just what do you suggest, 
Doctor? I am open to suggestions."

Really, Nick could display quite a gift for sarcasm 
when truly pissed off. 

"But he's ALWAYS on your back," she'd said, startled 
into candor by Nick's anger, and by his sudden flash 
of uncharacteristic openness. "Why does he hate you so 
much?" 

Nick had laughed wearily, and all the anger had 
drained out of him, as suddenly as it had appeared. 
"He doesn't hate me, Natalie. Whatever gave you that 
idea? He loves me. To my everlasting sorrow, because 
his love is binding, and I can't not return it!" 

"But, all the terrible things he's done to you, Nick. 
That he's still doing." She'd wanted to touch Nick as 
she said this, to offer some sort of comfort, although 
it had been difficult to say which of them she'd hoped 
to reassure. But Nick had already begun to revert to 
that peculiar remoteness he most often displayed when 
LaCroix was the topic under discussion, and he had 
turned away from her, 

"And I to him," Nick had said softly, more to himself 
than to her. He'd stared into some bleak inner 
landscape for a long moment, then turned back to her. 
"It doesn't matter what he does. It doesn't matter 
what I do. I often wish it did." 

Natalie had gained a perspective on Nick's long life 
through that argument that had been, perhaps, a bit 
too clear for her own emotional comfort. She'd been 
forced to admit to herself that Nick just might be a 
touch more cognizant of his own situation than she 
was. She'd seen how extensively his character had been 
hardened in the unrelenting crucible of LaCroix' love. 
She'd come closer to comprehending a supernatural bond 
that could be as much a refuge as it was a prison, an 
inescapable connection that transcended death and 
time, personal wish and pain. 

She'd realized that these two arrogant creatures who'd 
somehow taken over her life would never know how it 
was to be entirely alone. 

She'd found herself wondering how the hell a human 
woman was supposed to compete with eight hundred years 
of intimacy beyond measure, love beyond reason. 

She'd suddenly understood WHY the evil old bloodsucker 
had followed Nick everywhere he went, throughout 
history. To keep him out of trouble, of course. And 
since Nick was trouble personified, that had taken a 
lot of doing.

And he was still doing it, wasn't he? Right through 
the louver doors and into the depths. If she knew 
anything about LaCroix, he'd been dead-set against it. 
He was a master of the fine art of preserving one's 
own precious skin, and would never have set out on 
such a risky venture willingly. It was that iron bond 
of catastrophic love that had been forged so long ago 
that had doomed LaCroix to the uncertain journey. He 
could no more have permitted Nick to go alone then he 
could have struck a match on a wet bar of soap. 

"But I love him too, you attenuated old goblin!" she 
cried, aloud.

Nat supposed, as she looked toward the louver doors, 
that she'd really already decided what she was going 
to do as soon as she'd gotten a clear version of what 
had happened out of all these cats.

No long-legged buzz-cut refugee from a haunted house 
was going to get the better of Dr. Natalie. Lambert. 
No sir. I may not be two thousand years old and 
capable of bench-pressing a water buffalo, but I do 
have my points. And I may not be a dead ringer for 
Sharon Stone, either, but I am about a zillion times 
better-looking than old Whitey. And I have as much 
courage as any forensic pathologist with extensive 
ties to the vampire community in the world! 

Nat finished serving cats their dinners and 
confiscated the cordless from a Blue Persian who was 
chatting with her litter mates in Alberta. She quickly 
dialed a number .

"Tracy? This is Nat. Let me ask you something. Do you 
like cats?"

******************************************************
******** 
Chapter 2: 
 
(wheeeeeeeeeee-rooooooooooooooooooooooow) 
(phffffffffffffffffffffffttttt) 
 
(!) 
(?) 
( . . .nothing?) 
(there's . . .) 
(absolutely . . .) 
(nothing here?) 
(that's . . . impossible . . .) 
(isn't it?) 
(hey. . . who's doing all the damn chit-chatting in my 
head? it better not be the VET!) 
( . . . not!) 
(not?) 
(not a vet, damn it!) 
( . . . uh - we think, therefore, we are . . . I 
really think we're okay . . . ) 
(. . . nicholas, descartes was an impractical nit-wit 
who couldn't pay the rent on his garret if it meant 
the firing squad and now is not the time to quote him 
. . . we are in deep trouble) 
( . . . and . . . it's all my fault?) 
(of course it's your fault . . . everything is your -) 
(can't you two stop bickering for three seconds at a 
time? it's bad enough when it's not telepathic . . . 
where ARE we??) 
( . . . nowhere) 
( . . .the world of formless thought, the limbo that 
fiction is born of . . . ) 
(cool!) 
(shush, gf . . . I think . . . all we have to do is 
wait) 
(wait?) 
(wait for what?) 
(how can we wait if we are in a state of being that 
precludes time - that is, if this is truly nowhere, 
and there is truly nothing, then -) 
(shush, nicholas) 
(well, but -) 
(no!) 
(hey! . . .I think I see something!) 
(something?) 
(what?) 
(where?) 
(there! that speck of light? I think it's . . . 
growing. I can almost make out . . . shapes . . . 
inside it) 
(fancy that! the column of truth does have a hole in 
it! something CAN come of nothing) 
(shush, 8) 
(what shapes?) 
(well . . . it's either the sydney opera house, the 
flying nun's headdress, or one humungous seagull) 
(you're joking!) 
(don't be absurd, gf . . . it's obviously a conestoga 
wagon) 
(a cona-whatsis what?) 
(a wagon . . . you know, to ride in? extensively used 
during the great population shifts in north america 
during the mid and late nineteenth century? a 
conestoga wagon . . . ) 
 
 
A Conestoga wagon might be the supreme flowering of 
cross-country transportation technology of the mid-
nineteenth century, but, as the hapless Suggs family 
was in the process of discovering, it was wholly 
inadequate as a defensible position during a redskin 
attack. 

The Sioux had started raiding their pickets on their 
first night out from Fort Independence, three days 
ago, but, aside from the loss of a few mules, that had 
amounted to little. 

Now this! A good sized, well-equipped war-party had 
suddenly appeared on a ridge about two miles to the 
north of their train like an evil conjurer's trick. 
There had been little time to debate the possible 
intent of the Sioux. The large band of merciless 
warriors had descended on the smallish wagon-train 
like the stroke of doom. 

They'd barely had time to circle the wagons. 

Now, the Suggs family, along with the twelve other 
families in the train, were fighting desperately to 
keep the braves from breaching the circle. And 
discovering, to their cost, that the linen sails of 
the Conestogas had no property of stopping bullets, or 
even arrows, whatsoever. 

It was late afternoon. The would-be settlers' strategy 
had been devised within the space of thirty seconds, 
and was, perforce, simple. If the Injuns could be held 
off until nightfall, which was about two hours away, a 
volunteer would be sent out on the fastest horse 
available, to try to get help from the fort. A good 
rider on a quick mount might be able to raise the fort 
in a day and a half, if such an individual could 
somehow slip past the Sioux, who would undoubtedly be 
camped nearby. 

It was a well known fact (among the settlers) that 
redskins did not care to fight during the hours of 
darkness, but they would certainly rejoin the attack 
at dawn. If the volunteer got through, however, and 
the wagon train could hold out for, say, two more full 
days of fighting, the cavalry might, conceivably, get 
there in time to save the survivors of the siege. 

If the Sioux could be held off until dusk at all. 
Which was an uncertain proposition, at best.

These thoughts were passing through the mind of Elmer 
Jabez Suggs (in a kind of panicked Western short-hand) 
as his nineteen year old son, Jedediah, efficiently 
reloaded their battered old flint-lock front loader. 
This rifle had been a Suggs family heirloom for a 
generation, and Elmer was relying primarily on his 
more modern Winchester for the battle, but, during a 
redskin attack, you'd have to be nine kinds of fool 
not to use whatever firepower you had. His wife, Mary, 
was using her grandmother's musket, and his spinster 
sister, Loretta, was doing some real damage with a 
Derringer she usually kept hidden somewhere in her 
unmentionables. 

Bullets whizzed past Elmer and Jed and sounded like 
unusually ferocious mosquitoes. Arrows thunked into 
the slats of their wagon, all the horses were 
screaming, all the mules were braying, and the savage 
war cries of the attacking Sioux braves coalesced into 
a solid shriek of murderous sound. Nevertheless, both 
Elmer and Jed heard an odd whispery popping noise, 
behind them, slightly to the left, quite distinctly. 

A sort of phfft.

Elmer feared the Indians had begun to use fire-arrows. 
Jed supposed one of their water skins had just bitten 
the dust. Both of them instantly pivoted about toward 
the sound, and were really very surprised to see two 
men and two cats appear out of thin air just behind 
them. 

The two cats blinked in the afternoon sun and the 
pupils of their eyes shut down to slits. 

The two men appeared to spontaneously combust and both 
of them dove for the interior of the wagon quick as 
greased lightning. 

"What in tarnation was that?" Elmer asked his son. 

"Well, Pa, it looked like a pair o' city slickers on 
fire." 

"City slickers?" asked Elmer, taking the newly loaded 
flintlock from his son and handing over the 
Winchester. 

"Well . . . I don't rightly know WHAT sort of fellers 
they was. They was both snarlin' like coon hounds and 
had the teeth to match. And yeller eyes too . . . but 
they WAS dressed in some kind of fancy-pants suits."

"Thunderation! Dudes or coon hounds or hunchbacked 
possums with horns on, they got no gol-durned call to 
go makin' free with that there wagon. I've got me a 
good mind to go on in there and haul 'em out! Load 
that rifle, son." 

"Wooohoo - BAD idea," said the GF. "I guarantee you 
don't want to cross that Vet guy." 

"Excuse me, sir?" 8-Ball asked Elmer. "Am I mistaken 
in assuming we are under attack? I believe, judging 
from the headdresses and ornamentation, that those 
braves ARE the Sioux?" 

Jed and Elmer gaped at the two cats; the Sioux, the 
intruders in the wagon, and very nearly everything 
else, momentarily forgotten. 

"Well, I'll be dipped in horseshit!" Elmer breathed. 
"Talkin' cats!" 
 
Inside the wagon, another conversation was taking 
place. 

Upon entering the comparative dimness of the 
Conestoga, LaCroix had spotted a large, well polished 
hope-chest, and immediately dumped out Loretta Suggs' 
entire collection of linens, embroidered sheets, 
sunburst pattern quilts, and one pretty sexy flannel 
nightgown. Having emptied the cedar box, LaCroix 
folded his lengthy body into the comparatively small 
space and slammed the lid shut after himself. 

Nick, meanwhile, had quickly burrowed into a large 
pile of horse blankets he'd found the same way a 
terrified prairie dog might burrow into the burning 
sands of the badlands. Once completely buried in the 
wool blankets, he'd curled into a ball, and then 
rolled back and forth along the wagon-bed until he was 
as tightly wrapped in the itchy wool as might be.

Both operations, though fairly complex undertakings, 
were completed within the space of five seconds. 

Five seconds after that, a disgruntled voice emanated 
from inside the hope-chest. 

"Nicholas? Nicholas, I've been thinking. I've decided 
that the best thing to do, really, is to just kill 
you. I don't know why I've never thought of it 
before."

An equally disgruntled, but much more muffled, voice 
emanated from inside the bundle of horse blankets. 

"All you ever do is complain! I'm trying to listen to 
what's on outside. Nobody FORCED you to come, anyway." 

Soft, sinister, chillingly unpleasant laughter wafted 
out from inside the chest. There was a brittle edge of 
hopelessness in the awful mirth, and the dreadful 
tinny tinkle of flat out madness. 

"Yes, definitely, the answer is execution. Ha Ha. This 
space/time/reality/fiction continuum ain't big enough 
for the both of us, hoss. One of us'll have to go, and 
it ain't gonna be me Ha Ha Ha we've gone about as fur 
as we can go Ha Ha end of the line, pardner, adios, 
amigo, and all that other cliche Western oat-opera rot 
Ha Ha sic transit gloria mundi HA HA HA HA HA - "

"LACROIX! GET HOLD OF YOURSELF!" 

". . . ha, erk." 

"Don't you DARE crack up on me! Not NOW! Don't you 
even THINK about it!" 

"Um . . . emmm?" 

"That's right, um-emmm. Whatever you say. What's my 
name?" 

"Uh, Nicholas?" 

"Correct. What's your name?" 

"Lucius. Crux-something." 

"Think again." 

"Julius. Caesar." 

"Oh, please." 

"Hadrian? Trajan? Caligula? Tiber - " 

"Are you putting me on? What is your NAME?" 

"I know! Messalina!"

A moment of silence. Then, the occupants of both the 
hope-chest and the bundle of horse blankets burst into 
soft peals of genuinely amused laughter. It sounded 
almost entirely sane. 

"You ARE putting me on," Nick snickered. "Messalina, 
huh?" 

"Perhaps I should have said Nero?" answered LaCroix, 
and they both cracked up all over again. 

"'I AM Spartacus!'" Nick quoted, and two vampires in a 
jam went into mutual hysterics.

(Outside the wagon, despite the distractions of 
battle, and the wonder of encountering a pair of 
talking cats, Elmer Suggs still noted all the howling 
in the Conestoga, and said, "What in the Sam Hill's so 
gol-durn funny? You'd think them fellers in there was 
havin' themselves a jamboree!") 

Inside the wagon, full scale belly-laughing gave way 
to chuckling, then to giggling, then to mild 
snickering, and finally to the occasional chortle. A 
comfortable silence prevailed for a moment or two. 

"Some mess," said Nick, into the silence. 

"Quite. Do you have any ideas, I wonder? 

"Nope." 

"No. I see. I thought not. 

"Sorry." 

"Well." 

"Maybe 8-Ball can think of something." 

"8-Ball. Yes. A talking cat. Our fates have hung by 
slimmer threads, I suppose." 

"Often. She's really very bright, you know." 

"That is a comfort. This IS a Western movie we've 
somehow fallen into, isn't it, Nicholas?" 

Long pause. Perfect deadpan from the horse blankets: 

"I reckon it is, sidewinder." 
 
Another burst of vampiric hysterics floated out from 
the interior of the Conestoga wagon. The sound 
aggravated Elmer Suggs even more than the especially 
keen-eyed Sioux warrior who'd just shot an arrow 
through his favorite ten-gallon hat had done. 

"Dad-blamed, consarned jackasses! This here's an INJUN 
attack! And them fellers is in there tellin' JOKES 
like it was a gol-durned tea party." He suddenly 
turned to 8-Ball. 

"Don't they have no sense?" he demanded. "Are they 
ijits?" 

8-Ball blinked, and said: "Well, they ARE a bit 
eccentric, I'll admit. But . . . um . . . let me 
explain . . ." 
 
******************************************************
******************* 
Chapter 3: 
 
(phffffffffffffttttttttt) 
 
(!) 
(?) 
(. . . nothing?) 
( . . .nothing.) 
(. . . hmmm, I would have said that a total vacuum of 
this kind would be scientifically impossible. . . I 
must write a monograph, if I ever get out of here) 
(. . . wherever 'here' is) 
(hmmm, let's see. . . 
 A: No input whatsoever from any of the sensory 
assemblages 
 B: Phenomenon occurring immediately following 
discernible spatial displacement [EX1 subject leapt 
through louver doorway into what (appeared) to be a 
void] thus: [Postulate 1: cessation of sensory input 
possible result of spatial displacement] 
Hypotheses: 1. Subject physically occupying space that 
is empirically devoid of matter 
 2. Subject IMAGINES such a condition [see Hypothesis 
#1 above] due to sudden sensory deprivation [see 
Observation A above] 
 3. Subject is hallucinating, due to excessive stress 
factors obtaining in subject's daily life, [Postulate 
2: Subject has finally had enough of that damn nit-wit 
Nick Knight and his horrid pals and has gone round the 
bend at last] which may have led to an instability of 
perception 
 4. Subject was stupid enough to jump into a 
scientifically improbable dimensional maelstrom 
voluntarily, for inadequate reasons, and has therefore 
been condemned to Hell for modern professional women 
with unconscious masochistic tendencies and commitment 
anxiety who are prone to fixate on inappropriate and 
unattainable significant others. 
Conclusion: . . .) 
 
(. . . hellllppp!!!) 
(I'm going insane in here . . .) 
 
( . . . am I SEEING something?!) 
(probably wishful thinking . . .) 
(a speck of light? with . . . shapes in it?) 
( . . . how can that be? . . . it looks like it might 
be growing, the light, I mean [why am I explaining 
what I mean, anyway, damn it? I'm alone here!]. . . 
looks like . . . well . . . a garden?) 
(with a . . . young woman . . . in the garden?) 
(crying?) 
(is she crying?) 
(why is she crying?) 
 
 
Crying was pointless. Crying was stupid and pathetic 
and was just exactly what they really wanted to see 
most, anyway, the mean, nasty things. Crying was for 
sissies. 

So why couldn't she stop doing it? Weeping and wailing 
and sobbing away, just the biggest darn sissy in the 
kingdom, and over what? All over a stupid DRESS, 
that's what. 

True, it HAD been her only decent dress, of course, 
and she had sweated trivets making the damn thing look 
like something with the crummy materials she'd had, 
and she had spent the whole night working on it, and 
she had meant to wear it to tonight's really big party 
and once-in-a-lifetime social opportunity (which, if 
she missed it, meant the end of all of her prospects 
of having ANY kind of a life at all, ever) and it HAD 
been a pretty dress, a BEAUTIFUL dress, really, and it 
HAD made her look about as hot as an active volcano 
once she'd tried it on. 

But that was no reason for CRYING, was it? 

Actually, it was probably as good a reason as any, she 
thought, and burst into a fresh downpour of bitter 
tears. 

The young woman's sobs were the abandoned, loud, angry 
wails of an individual who knows she's alone and need 
not hold in her emotions, no matter how childish the 
form of expression. The sheer volume of her grief 
filled the garden as the day dwindled and the blue 
shadows of dusk came on. 

A colony of anthropomorphic mice happened to live in 
and around the same house the weeping girl lived in. 
These creatures had all developed quite an attachment 
to her, and listened to her sobs with real concern. 
But they were sensitive, compassionate rodents, and 
took care to keep to the encroaching shadows, lest she 
see them, and feel embarrassed to be caught crying so 
hard. 

Yet, despite the turmoil in the girl's heart (and the 
serious noise she was making) a small, rather odd 
sound to her immediate left penetrated her tears and 
caught her attention. A sort of whispery popping 
noise, like a large soap bubble popping, or maybe like 
a souffl, gone awry, blowing out. A sort of a phfft 
noise. 

The girl glanced to her left, to pinpoint the origin 
of the strange sound, and was astonished to see a 
small, attractive woman with a really fabulous head of 
hair wink into existence just beside her. 

The girl's tears halted suddenly, as though some 
internal crying switch had been toggled to "off". 

The woman looked around the garden for a moment, then 
looked at the girl. She had a penetrating, measuring 
gaze, the kind of close observation that might have 
made the subject of her scrutiny squirm a bit, had her 
face not been such a kind one. 

But the girl had already formed an idea as to the 
possible identity of the newcomer to the garden, based 
on her own observations, and was not intimidated. 
Really, any woman who could materialize out of thin 
air, just when things looked worst, and who came 
equipped with such a nice face and such pretty hair, 
and who looked at her with such interest, could only 
be one individual. 

"Are you my fairy godmother?" asked the girl. 

"Well . . . no," answered Nat. "I'm a coroner." 

"Oh, dear," said the girl, shrinking away from Natalie 
a bit. "I . . . I don't think I need a coroner just 
yet." 

Nat had to smile. There wasn't a coroner joke in all 
the world she hadn't heard. But, still, this WAS a 
novel context. 

"Well, you never know. The way you were crying, it 
sure sounded like your world was coming to an end. Why 
were you crying?" 

"Oh, it's stupid," said the girl, blushing. 

She looked to be about sixteen or seventeen, to Nat's 
eye, so blushing was likely a common phenomenon in her 
life. God knew, Nat had spent her entire adolescence 
blushing like a tomato on the slightest provocation. 
And this girl had problems Nat had never had to face 
in her own teen years. Natalie, too, based on 
observation, had formulated a probable hypothesis as 
to the girl's identity. 

"Just a dress," said the girl, trying to look brave. 

"Wicked step-sisters got you down, huh?" Nat 
commiserated. 

"They tore my dress to ribbons, the homely, spiteful 
things! Just so I couldn't go to the ball!" 

Nat pronounced her verdict on the matter with 
decision. "Jealous witches," she asserted. 
 
"And my step-mother - don't EVEN get me started!" said 
the girl, a little indignant color rising in her 
cheeks. 

"The supreme witch, I'd guess." Nat grinned at the 
girl, who'd begun to smile a little at hearing her 
wicked step-mother described so ungraciously, and yet 
so accurately. 

"Named senior witch of the kingdom by royal 
proclamation?" Nat went on, just to keep the unhappy 
girl smiling. "Picture of her next to the word "witch" 
in the dictionary? Chairwoman of the witch league, 
gets to bang the gavel at all the witch meetings? 
Carries an official witch identity card and gets a ten 
percent discount on purchases of rat poison and 
broomsticks at the witch department store?"

The girl was giggling too wildly to agree or disagree 
with Nat's satirical assessment of her step-mother's 
probable position on the witch scale. Her giggles were 
infectious and soon Natalie was giggling too. 

"Won the world witch championships three years running 
and keeps a real ugly witch trophy on the mantelpiece? 
That the kind of babe we're talking about?" laughed 
Nat. 

"TWO real ugly witch trophies," the girl guffawed. 
"Druscilla and Prunella. My stepsisters!" 

"The Witch-ettes!" Nat choked out, with wicked glee. 

The two women collapsed against each other and howled 
like hyenas. A girlfriendly intimacy grew, instantly, 
out of the shared laughter, in that good way that 
sometimes happens between people, and they'd somehow 
become bosom buddies before either of them had 
finished giggling. 

"My name is Natalie," said the pathologist, as she 
caught her breath. She held out a small hand to the 
girl. "But you can call me Nat. And you're Cinderella, 
aren't you?" 

"Natalie. That's pretty. Are you SURE you're not my 
fairy godmother?" 

"Well, kid, it looks like I'm about all the magic 
you're going to get, for the time being. And I can't 
even run my own life properly. But, we'll have to do 
our best. Tell me about this ball you want to go to . 
. ." 
******************************************************
********************** 
Chapter 4: 

"Gunslingers?!" squawked Nick and LaCroix in agitated 
unison. 

"Whatever possessed you to tell them such a thing?" 
asked LaCroix. "I've never fired a gun in my life!" 

This was a true fact. The last weapon LaCroix had 
wielded with any regularity had been a bronze 
broadsword which had come to be known as "Dolorex" 
among the enemies of the Roman Empire. But after 
LaCroix had been obliged to use a certain Egyptian 
pickaxe for a most tragic (but entirely necessary) 
beheading, he had lost his taste for edged weapons and 
he'd had "Dolorex" melted down to scrap. He'd never 
touched another forged weapon, of any sort, since. Nor 
had he ever needed such aids. 

"They'll NEVER believe a story like that, 8," said 
Nick. "It's much too farfetched." 

"Hmmph," snorted 8-Ball. "Maybe I should have told 
them the truth, right, Nick? I'm sure vampires from 
another dimension drop in on these folks every day! 
THAT would have gone over beautifully, of course! What 
was I thinking of?" 

"Well, couldn't you have thought of something else? 
Something we could actually pull off?" 

"Nick," hissed 8-Ball, tail switching angrily. "Did 
you or did you not tell me that you'd spent some time 
in the old West?" 

"Well, yes, but - " 

"And are you or are you not familiar with firearms?" 

"Yes, but - " 

"And does the Vet here LOOK like your average cowpoke? 
Or sodbuster? Or anything else likely to be found on 
the Oregon Trail short of a Gila monster? " 

"Well, no, but - " 

"EXCUSE me?" growled LaCroix. 

"And do either of you rocket scientists have a better 
story up your sleeves? Because if you do, you'd better 
get out there and tell it, fast. Mr. Suggs has had 
just about enough of your laughing your damn heads off 
in here, and he's in a real bad mood because he's 
having a REAL bad day, and the next time you silly 
bastards need someone to spin a cover-story for you, 
you can just go to - " 

"Okay, 8, okay. We're sorry. It's just that - " 

"Speak for yourself, Nicholas. I, for one, do not 
apologize to pack animals!" 

"You ignorant moron," snarled 8. "Cats are SOLITARY 
hunters!" 

"Cats, Gila monsters, what's the difference? All are 
lower life forms, and I have NO intention of - " 

"You know, the GF wanted to tell them YOU were a Sioux 
sympathizing horse thief/undertaker, but I talked her 
out of it. I think. You know how she is . . . " 

"Are you THREATENING me? Are you threatening ME!? ARE 
YOU ACTUALLY - " 

"Now, LaCroix," Nick put in hastily. "8-Ball's not 
threatening anybody. Because, 8, if you WERE 
threatening him, he'd certainly make us ALL regret it. 
Bitterly. Until the end of time. But, fortunately, 
she's NOT. Are you, 8-Ball?" 

"Ummm-ummmm," mumbled 8-Ball, grudgingly. 

"That's fine then," Nick said quickly. "Tell us again 
what the story is, please, 8? Oh, and did we thank you 
yet? For helping us out like this?" 

"No," snapped 8-Ball, annoyed. 

"Well, that was terribly rude and thoughtless, wasn't 
it? Entirely MY fault, of course. Please accept my 
humble thanks." 

"HUMBLE thanks?" pressed 8-Ball. 

"Absolutely. Humble. Abject. I'm perfectly willing to 
grovel if you insist, 8. Just as soon as it gets dark 
enough for me to get out of these disgusting horse 
blankets. Satisfied?" 

"Nicholas, don't you have ANY pride at all? Are you 
really going to tolerate this CAT'S abuse?" questioned 
LaCroix. 

"I've had plenty of practice when it comes to 
tolerating abuse, LaCroix," Nick retorted acidly. 
"And, if you don't mind, I'd LIKE to get out of here 
alive." He paused for a moment, considered, and then 
added: "Or - as alive as I was when we started, anyway 
. . ." 

He went on, voice rising angrily with each sentence. 
"And going along with 8-Ball's story seems like our 
best shot at doing just that. But, whatever you like, 
LaCroix. YOU can stay in that box until hell freezes, 
if that's what you really want. At least you'll still 
have your pride! Frankly, I'm surprised you could fit 
your ego into a box that size, but, hey, what do I 
know?" 

"Nicholas . . ." LaCroix began, coming as close to a 
mollifying tone as he was capable of. 

"As for me," Nick continued, voice positively dripping 
with vitriol. "I'm getting the hell out of these itchy 
blankets, and I'll crawl, grovel, genuflect, or wear a 
chicken suit if that's what it takes to do it!" 

"He's impossible when he gets like this . . ." LaCroix 
commented, to no one in particular. 

"So, if it's QUITE all right with you, LaCroix, I'm 
going to ask 8-Ball again - very, very nicely - to 
repeat the story she told those people outside! So 
please, 8, pretty please, I'm asking you, and if 
that's not nice enough, I'M BEGGING!" 

"You know, Nick," said 8-Ball. "You have a pretty 
sharp tongue when you work at it. I must say, I rather 
admire that in a person." 

"Thank you, 8," Nick said politely. "The story?" 

"Well," said 8. "I told them you guys were real 
desperate characters, like I said." 

"THAT shouldn't be difficult to put across." LaCroix 
interposed. 

"Will you stop?" Nick said. "Go on, 8." 

"Gunslingers. Just escaped from twenty years in 
solitary confinement in the Yuma Federal prison, to 
explain the pallor and the photosensitivity, you 
know?" 

"Why, that's really very clever," LaCroix reluctantly 
admitted. 

"I know that film," said Nick "'3:10 to Yuma'. Not a 
bad Western, actually." 

"And I told them that the two of you were the most 
bloodthirsty, merciless outlaws west of the Pecos, and 
you'd both kill anyone soon as look at them." 

Nick sighed sadly. "That shouldn't be too hard to put 
across either." 

"Really, Nicholas, you're not going to start whining 
about guilt and redemption right now, are you?" 

"Anyway," 8-Ball put in, before another debate could 
start between the two vampires. "I told them that if 
they bothered you before the sun went down, you'd 
butcher every last person in the wagon train." 

Nick sighed even more deeply. He hated it when people 
were afraid of him, in spite of the thousands of 
reasons why such reactions were perfectly justified. 

"But," continued 8. "If they left you alone, I told 
them, you'd take care of the Sioux for them. Oh, and 
one other little thing." 

"8-Ball," said Nick severely. "If you led these people 
to believe that I'm going to slaughter a band of 
innocent Lakota Sioux - " 

"WHAT 'other little thing', may I ask?" said LaCroix 
warily. 

"Oh, it's nothing really difficult." 

Nick managed to catch 8-Ball's slightly nervous tone, 
despite his distress over being cast in the guise of a 
murdering racist Indian fighter, and he sensed 
trouble. 

"What else did you tell them we'd do, 8? Besides 
killing off a raft of Native Americans, that is?" 

"Nick, I did not say you'd KILL the Indians. I said 
you'd take care of them." 

"Which neatly evades the question, I must point out," 
LaCroix interjected. "Nicholas here may be intensely 
committed to ethnic justice, but I am laboring under 
no such restrictions. WHAT ELSE DID YOU TELL THEM WE'D 
DO?" 

"Only one of you. You don't both have to do it." 

"DO WHAT?!!" the two vampires roared in bloodcurdling 
unison. 

"All right, all right," 8-Ball muttered. "I told Mr. 
Suggs one of you would take out his spinster sister, 
Loretta." 

A perfectly harmonized screech of unearthly 
indignation floated out of the Conestoga wagon, and 
settled, like a supernatural plague of terror, into 
the hearts of everyone outside who was unlucky enough 
to be within earshot. 

"Them gunslinger fellers must be some tough hombres!" 
Jedediah commented, half intimidated, half infatuated.

"I hope they're not skinnin' that nice Miss 8," said 
Elmer. "She shore is a right good natured, real polite 
talkin' cat." 

"Oh, they often screech like that," the GF reassured, 
a bit enviously. "They've got great voice projection." 

"I just hope one of 'em is cute," said Loretta. "I 
ain't goin' out with no UGLY fellers!" 
 
******************************************************
***** 
 
Chapter 5: 
 
"Are you SURE this is what they're wearing where you 
come from, Nat?" asked Cinderella. 

"Absolutely. I'm telling you, you look as hot as an 
electric chair. The Prince won't know what hit him." 

"But this is just a bunch of torn up black lingerie, 
Natalie." 

"Nope, it's Gothic fashion. Why, I know a club where 
you'd have to beat the men off with a sharp stick, if 
you came in wearing that. Some of the women, too, 
actually." 

"Oh, that's GROSS!" shuddered Cinderella, with true 
teenage moral conservatism. 

"Do you want the Prince to notice you or not?" 

"Well . . . but I feel really stupid." 

"But you LOOK maah-velous!" 

Cinderella giggled. "But I FEEL . . . well . . . kind 
of chilly, to tell you the truth." 

"'Brevity is the soul of lingerie'," Nat quoted. 

"This is SUPPOSED to be a ball gown." 

"You're seventeen years old. Your body is NEVER going 
to look this good again for the rest of your life. 
Trust me. You look great." 

Cinderella surveyed herself in her stepmother's full 
length mirror once more. 

Under Nat's direction, the two of them had raided the 
lingerie collections of both Druscilla and Prunella, 
confiscated every scrap of black underwear Cindy's 
wicked stepmother owned, torn every item they'd 
liberated to artful shreds, and draped all, with 
infinite care, on Cinderella's lovely young body. The 
result had been rather surprisingly sensual, given 
Cinderella's youth and relative innocence. There 
wasn't a snotty vamp babe at the Raven who wouldn't 
have turned into a pile of envious dust at the mere 
sight of Cinderella in her new look, Natalie thought. 

Actually, those bloodsucking bitches, who were always 
hitting on Nick the moment he put so much as his nose 
inside the door at the club, probably deserved some 
such comeuppance, Natalie decided . 

"I DO look hot, don't I?" asked Cinderella, with a 
small, slightly wicked, supremely feminine grin. 

"Honey, I'd KILL to have boobs like that," said Nat, 
sincerely. "I kid you not." 

Cinderella impulsively twirled around in a graceful, 
exuberant pirouette. Tantalizing wisps of sheer black 
fabric floated around her. She came to a giddy stop 
and suddenly hugged Natalie, hard. 

"You're BETTER than a fairy godmother, Nat. I'll never 
be able to thank you enough for what you've done. And 
you're about a gajillion times more fun than any old 
fairy godmother, too. You ARE coming to the ball with 
me, aren't you?" 

"Oh. Well . . . I hadn't thought about that." 

"Oh, you've just GOT to!" 

"Hmmm . . . I don't know if I should." 

"C'mon. You don't think I'm going to walk in there in 
this get-up by myself, do you?" Cinderella pleaded 
winsomely.

"Well . . . maybe that might not be such a good idea, 
at that . . ." Nat agreed, thoughtfully. A gorgeous 
girl in a drop dead ensemble like Cindy's could 
quickly find herself in deep waters, if she wasn't 
careful. Maybe having a cooler, more mature head along 
might be a wise precaution. 

But, there WAS one problem. 

"I don't have a thing to wear, though," said Natalie. 

Cinderella scooped a handful of transparent black silk 
off the floor of her step-mother's boudoir and 
brandished a pair of scissors. 

"We can fix that!" she said, with a grin. "We'll have 
to hurry. I think there's some rule about having to 
leave these kinds of balls on the stroke of midnight, 
or something." 

"That's for squares," explained Nat, holding a really 
indecent bustier up to her torso experimentally. "The 
rule, for COOL people, anyway, is this: never arrive 
BEFORE midnight, and never be the last to leave. Oh, 
and don't go home with the bartender, that's social 
disaster. But YOU'LL never have to worry about that, 
I'm sure. Ask one of those mice to bring the needle 
and thread back, will you?" 

"Sure, Nat," said the girl. 

"Hmmm . . . I don't suppose you've got anything to 
drink in this morgue, have you? Some tequila would go 
good about now." 

"Tehkeelah?" repeated Cinderella blankly. 

"Never mind. Scotch, then? Single malt? Anything like 
that?" 

"Well, we have a pretty good wine cellar. Would that 
do?" 

"That - " said Nat. " - would do admirably. It's 
always a good idea to get slightly lit before one 
arrives at a really big party. Nothing excessive. Just 
a little glow, you know, a bit of a confidence 
builder." 

"Really? My stepmother says drinking is unladylike." 

"Oh, and I guess the Exalted Grand Wazoo of the witch 
tribe knows all about acting like a lady, does she?" 

Cinderella giggled. 

Natalie began to shuck her chic, but rather 
conservative, clothing. 

"Actually, there IS a bottle of really excellent Gamay 
Beaujolais '88 I've been hiding in the coal scuttle. 
These homely witches I live with don't know a decent 
vintage from a jar of vinegar. It was my Dad who 
stocked the cellar. Taught me all about wine. I was 
saving the '88 for a special occasion." 

Nat wrapped a length of inky silk around her hips and 
stood back from the mirror to judge the effect. "And 
would you say THIS a special occasion?" she inquired. 

"You better believe I would!" laughed Cinderella, and 
gave Natalie another impulsive hug. "I'll be back in a 
jif. Oh, and definitely, the bustier, Natalie. It's 
shocking!" She bounded out of the bedroom. 

"Ah," purred Nat, smiling at her half-clad reflection 
in the mirror. "Shocking. An interesting adjective to 
use. Just the effect I'm looking for, I believe."
******************************************************
******** 
 
Chapter 6: 
 
Nick and LaCroix spent the remaining hour and a half 
or so of daylight arguing about which of them was to 
handle the Sioux, and which was to deal with Loretta. 

This argument was complex, bitter, and vituperative. 
It was filled with dazzling verbal ability, truly vile 
suggestions, re-hashings of thousands of old 
disagreements, and, here and there, some rather 
childish name calling. It might well have come to 
blows, had not the combatants both been stuck in their 
respective light-proof containers. It was also 
egregiously non-stop. 8-Ball slipped out of the wagon 
for some air after about five minutes. 

She landed in the dust at the tail end of the wagon, 
and accidentally collided with the GF, who'd been 
listening to the row inside for a moment or two. 

"Oh, I'm sorry, GF. I didn't look where I was going, I 
was in such a hurry to get out of there." 

"I can't blame you," said the Gray Fiend. "Sheesh! 
Listen to that! They ought to get married!" 

"You know, I think that whatever's going on between 
those two might make marriage look like a handshake. 
Anyway, I'm pretty sure they'll go along with the 
story I told." 

"It's a good story, 8. I'd never have come up with 
something to cover all the bases like that, the way 
you did, with no time to think about it. I hope they 
appreciate what you did for them." 

"Well, Nick does. The Vet, now, that's another matter. 
He's just a nasty bastard, and he doesn't appreciate 
ANYTHING. Honestly, I'd have cut the old wolverine 
loose, if it wasn't for Nick." 

"You know, that's something I just don't understand. 
How can Nick stand him? He's perfectly dreadful, he 
hates everyone, he doesn't like cats, and he treats 
Nick like dirt. But I sometimes get the idea that Nick 
actually LIKES him!" 

"Well, Nick really knows how to dress, but he does 
show some fairly poor taste in other areas. Have you 
noticed that ghastly painting above the refrigerator? 
What sort of nut would pay good money for a thing like 
that?" 

"Well, yeah, but this thing with the Vet is more than 
just a weakness for ugly home furnishings. For one 
thing, Nick is always miserable, and that creep in 
there is responsible, if you ask me!" 

"Some sort of vampire thing, then, I suspect. 
Unfathomable. It's really too bad." 

Both cats shook their heads sadly, as they listened to 
the cutting stream of invective circulating in the 
wagon. They had both conceived a genuine fondness for 
Nick, in the time they'd been with him, and an intense 
dislike for LaCroix, in the time they'd been with HIM. 
 
Inside the wagon, the debate raged on. 

Nick had taken the position that HE was best qualified 
to deal with the Indians, since he spoke Lakota, and 
LaCroix did not, and he had known some Native 
Americans, one in particular, rather intimately, and 
LaCroix had not, and he could be trusted not to simply 
massacre the whole tribe in the interest of 
expedience, and LaCroix could not. 

LaCroix had countered by arguing that he was NOT going 
to take out ANYONE'S spinster sister, and people were 
going to die if there was ANY attempt to force him 
into it. 

Neither could be budged from his respective stance by 
a single jot. 

The day slowly wore on into night. 

Eventually, the vampires were able to come out. 

******************************************************
******* 
 
Chapter 7: 
 
By the time Natalie's party duds were ready, both 
ladies were reasonably well oiled. They stood side by 
side in front of the mirror, and evaluated their 
combined appearance. 

"Staggering," Natalie pronounced. 

"Good God. We'll be arrested for inciting to riot." 

"Yeah!" said Nat, with a civilly disobedient gleam in 
her eyes. 

"Let's go!" Cinderella said eagerly. "The castle's 
three miles from here. By the time we've made the 
walk, it'll be well past midnight." 

"Walk!? Are you crazy? In these shoes?" 

"Well, what else? My sisters took the carriage." 

"Don't tell me there's no cab service in this 
kingdom?" 

"Oh. I hadn't thought of that. Of course there is. 
Pumpkin Taxi." 

"I might have guessed that one," said Nat with a 
snicker. "Well, let's call them." 

"Nat, maybe opening that third bottle of Gamay wasn't 
such a good idea after all. Pumpkin Taxi is a mile and 
a half down the road. They won't hear us calling." 

Natalie took a moment to adjust to the dimensional 
cultural displacement Cinderella had just thrown at 
her. It was a bit disconcerting to suddenly find 
yourself in a place where technology you'd taken for 
granted all your life simply didn't exist. 

"Where I come from," she explained, "we use a device 
called a "phone" to communicate over distances. No 
doubt you have some similar arrangement here." 

"Semaphore?" Cinderella asked doubtfully. 

"I'm really not sure that works after dark, Cindy. 
What else?" 

"Well, mostly we just use messengers." 

"We could send one of the mice, maybe?" 

"How long do you think it would take a mouse to walk a 
mile and a half?" 

"Umm . . . I see what you mean. Damn, there must be 
SOME way!" 

"Well, there is the bell tower. I guess I could go up 
there and ring the taxi signal." 

Natalie stared at Cinderella for a long moment. 
Cinderella blushed. 

"Of course, if I DID do that, and some of my nosy 
neighbors happened to butt in and told my step-mother 
they'd heard me ringing for a taxi-carriage in the 
middle of the night (which they WOULD, since they're 
all the biggest blabbermouths imaginable) why, my 
wicked stepmother would KILL me!" She blushed an even 
deeper shade of humiliated pink. 

"Cinderella, honey, what do you think she's going to 
do when she sees you at the ball in THAT outfit?" Nat 
asked gently. 

"Kill me," said the girl, miserably. 

Nat took a breath, considered her options, asked 
herself what she really thought about forced labor, 
child abuse, exploitation of a minor, and injustice in 
general. Then, she made a courageous decision. 

"No, she won't. I won't permit it." 

"Would you really be willing to stand up for me, 
Natalie?" asked Cinderella softly. She understood how 
great a responsibility Nat was offering to take on all 
too well. 

"I'd be HONORED to stand up for you, Cindy," Nat 
answered seriously. Then, a small, rather sardonic 
smile creased her features. "I'm an absolute sucker 
for lost causes. Believe me. Go ring that bell, kid!" 

Cinderella hugged her new friend for the third time 
that night. Really, wasn't a true friend a much finer 
thing to have than a fairy godmother? Cinderella 
thought it was. She bounded out of the room, hell-bent 
for the bell-tower. 
 
Forty-five minutes later, the Arch-Herald of the 
palace was making an Herculean effort to keep his 
voice steady as he announced the advent of two 
extraordinarily unsettling late arrivals to the ball. 

"DOCTOR NATALIE LAMBERT, AND . . . AND FRIEND," 
stammered the herald, in his suitably stentorian 
baritone. 

Something in the herald's tone of voice caught the 
attention of all those who heard it, which was every 
one at the ball, since it WAS the herald's job to make 
himself heard. 

A thousand well-dressed party-goers gazed at the top 
of the grand staircase expectantly. Five hundred 
sedate, boring, pastel taffeta ball gowns rustled as 
their wearers craned their necks to see the new 
arrivals. 

A pair of awesome enchantresses in diabolically 
seductive Gothic rags appeared at the stop of the 
staircase like some Jungian erotic dream. 

Five hundred taffeta-ed females ground their teeth in 
envy and felt like imploding on the spot. 

Five hundred male voices heaved an identical soft sigh 
of sheer joy. 

One young, rather handsome prince gazed at the younger 
of the black-clad seductresses, and started to sway on 
his feet. 

The King gazed at the older of the two darkly 
desirable visions, and suddenly felt an urgent need to 
cross his legs, lest a Royal faux-pas become too 
publicly evident. 

The Queen, who knew her husband quite well, and had 
extremely sharp eyes in addition, kicked her spouse in 
the shin with a vicious hiss. 

Nat and Cinderella had arrived. 
 
******************************************************
************** 
 
Chapter 8:
 
Nick and LaCroix emerged from the Conestoga wagon into 
the soothing shades of early evening, still wrangling 
fiercely between themselves. 

Most of the Sioux had left off the assault on the 
wagon train as soon as it had become full dark. But 
one overly hostile brave (who was known as "Rabid-
Coyote" in Lakota), could not resist a parting shot at 
the two arrogant looking white-eyes who'd just come 
sauntering out of one of the wagons as though they 
owned the entire world.

"Nicholas," hissed LaCroix, as he absently plucked the 
arrow that had been whizzing directly toward Nick's 
left temple out of the air before it could strike 
home. "I really don't know how I could make my 
position any clearer regarding this matter. I am past 
the age where blind dates are appropriate." 

He snapped Rabid-Coyote's arrow in two for emphasis. 

"Oh, and I suppose I'm what you'd call a callow 
youth?" Nick countered, not even sparing a glance 
toward the darkness where Rabid-Coyote was lurking in 
astonished frustration. The annoyed Sioux left the 
vicinity in a disgusted huff, and the two vampires 
continued to argue. 

"Howdy, gents," Elmer Suggs interrupted. "We're all 
mighty grateful for what you fellers've agreed to do 
for us." 

LaCroix turned his haughtiest, most contemptuous sneer 
loose on poor Elmer. The unfortunate pioneer wilted 
visibly, but bravely gathered his courage, and managed 
to go on with what he had to say. 

"Allow me to present my sister . . . " Elmer quavered, 
in the most formal language he knew. He was 
uncomfortably aware that this meeting was something of 
an occasion. Then, he went on: "Come on out, Loretta!" 

He turned to Nick, who struck him as rather the less 
intimidating of the two gunslingers. "She's a mite 
shy," he explained. 

Loretta Suggs emerged tentatively from some evening 
shadows beside the wagon. 

LaCroix and Nick emitted identical gasps of 
admiration, and an identical covetous gleam of 
unearthly avarice lit both pairs of vampiric eyes. 

LaCroix instantly began to radiate an intriguing aura 
of sinister fascination. 

Nick's well-favored face automatically assumed the 
endearing, bashful smile that had stopped women and 
men dead in their tracks for eight hundred years. 

"Enchante, mademoiselle . . ." LaCroix declared, in 
his most insinuating purr. 

"Delighted to know you," asserted Nick, employing the 
most silky tones he was capable of. 

They had always had extremely similar taste in women. 

Miss Suggs was astonishingly beautiful. She had a 
wealth of softly curling blood-red hair, large eyes of 
such a vivid green that the color was clearly 
discernible even in the darkness, and a complexion of 
incomparable cream. Her body was a collection of 
luxuriant curves, in perfect, spellbinding proportion 
to her height. Yet, despite this embarrassment of 
aesthetic riches, it was easy to guess why Loretta 
Suggs had remained a spinster. 

She was exactly six feet, seven inches tall. 

She towered half a head above LaCroix, and she made 
Nick look like a dwarf. 

Loretta's excessive length did not lessen either 
vampire's appreciation of her beauty by one iota. In 
fact, they had both decided privately, it was quite 
likely her best feature. They were vampires, they were 
extremely difficult to intimidate, and they both knew 
a goddess when they saw one. 

They were also experienced levitators, and both 
instantly imagined a dozen ways to overcome any 
physical awkwardness Loretta's magnificent height 
might present in a private encounter. 

"Evenin' gents," said Loretta, shyly. Her voice was 
the sort of smoky confection that plugs directly into 
certain receptors in the male brain. 

The two of them turned toward one another in the same 
moment, and each confronted a mirror image of his own 
reaction to Loretta. Both visibly bristled. 

LaCroix moved the quicker. He took Loretta's long, 
delicate hand, and pressed his lips to it as he shot a 
suggestively penetrating glance into her emerald eyes. 

The seductiveness of evil, Nick thought, irritated. 
He's got THAT down to a science! 

Nick took the lady's hand into both of his the instant 
LaCroix released it, said "Hi . . . Miss . . .uh . . 
.Suggs," in a calculatedly shy stammer, and showed her 
his white, even teeth in a heartbreakingly sweet 
smile. 

He's using The Smile, thought LaCroix, annoyed. The 
little swine! 

"Nicholas," LaCroix purred. "I've decided, on second 
thought, that your points regarding the Sioux were 
well taken. You ARE the best qualified to deal with 
the Indians. You'd best be about your business, I'd 
say." 

"No hurry," retorted Nick, who'd somehow forgotten to 
release Loretta's hand once he'd gotten hold of it. 

"Tempes fugit, Nicholas," LaCroix snarled. "The 
evening passes. I suggest you HIT THE TRAIL!" 

He smoothly interposed his body between Nick and 
Loretta, deftly retrieved her hand from Nick's grasp, 
and insinuated the contested appendage into the crook 
of his own arm in the wink of an eye. 

"Lucien LaCroix . . ." he said to the lady. "At your 
service. Perhaps we might begin the evening with a 
stroll?" 

"Oh," said Loretta. "With all them Injuns hidin' out 
there?" 

"Nonsense. My associate here will attend to that." 

"Nick," Nick explained, with a murderous glare at his 
mentor. "Knight. And I'm not leaving right this 
minute." 

Loretta dimpled to hear it. She bestowed a mind-
numbing smile on both vampires in turn and then 
giggled prettily. Loretta was unaccustomed to such 
unadulterated male admiration. All the various Western 
gentlemen she had known in her thirty-one years had 
been unable, however regretfully, to put aside their 
awe at her size. These two desperadoes, however, 
appeared not to even notice it. 

Further, she had never before experienced the 
exclusively feminine delight of glorying in the 
spectacle of two appealing males getting ready to kill 
each other over her favors. 

She hoped the little one wouldn't give up without a 
fight. He was a real cutie, about as nice-looking as 
it was possible to get. And the taller one had a kind 
of dark mystery that any gal with a little gumption 
would be happy to try and get to the bottom of. She 
sure hoped they weren't going to make HER choose. And 
she hoped they weren't going to work things out 
between themselves too quick, either. This was fun. 

"Wouldn't your partner want to walk a spell with us?" 
she asked LaCroix, innocently. 

"Certainly not - " LaCroix began. 

"Why, I'd love to, Miss Suggs," Nick interposed 
firmly. "Thank you." 

LaCroix appeared to suddenly transform himself into a 
monolith. Nick's face hardened into stubborn granite. 
Both glared at one another for what seemed a very long 
time. 

Loretta fairly shivered with delight. 

"Please excuse us for a moment, dear lady," LaCroix 
finally said, with that peculiar archaic courtliness 
he reserved for addressing the various objects of his 
desire. "My . . . friend and I must discuss certain 
matters of mutual interest. ONE of us will return 
shortly. Nicholas? Agreed?" 

"For the moment . . ." Nicked hissed grimly, and 
followed LaCroix into the darkness outside the circle 
of Conestogas. 
 
"The lady, clearly, is in no great hurry to choose. We 
must arrive at an accord between ourselves, it seems." 

Soft, sinister, beautiful voices, arguing in the 
night. 

"Arrive away. You're not railroading me on THIS one!" 

"There IS the matter of your little pathologist 
friend." 

"That's love. This is sex." 

The concept of physical fidelity was an absolutely 
foreign one to all vampires. It was the nature of the 
beast. Nick tried very hard, for Natalie's sake, to 
comprehend the reasons for such an unnatural 
restriction, but every one of his instincts was 
opposed to such insane behavior, and he found the 
whole issue almost impossible to grasp. He was, in 
fact, utterly baffled as to why such a trivial thing 
should matter to anyone. 

But then, a lot of things Natalie did were a mystery 
to Nick. He still could not imagine why a nice mortal 
woman like Nat would KNOWINGLY consent to lay so much 
as a glove on a loathsome affront to nature like 
himself. Not that he wasn't grateful, of course. In 
Nick's mind, the fact that Nat could even stand to 
TALK to him was nothing short of a miracle. 

"Nicholas, you're in an untenable position. You must 
give way. You must see that. You cannot leave the 
Sioux to MY tender mercies." 

"Don't you try blackmailing ME! The Sioux can wipe 
this wagon train off the face of the earth at dawn, 
for all I care. I have no desire to intervene at all. 
You have no idea what European Caucasians DID to the 
aboriginal peoples of this country." 

"Meaning?" asked LaCroix, bored. 

"Meaning that I do NOT intend to go running off to the 
Sioux and entrusting Miss Suggs to your tender 
mercies."

"One of us must leave, Nicholas. Neither can operate 
freely with the other in . . . constant . . . 
attendance . . . " 

LaCroix' voice trailed off as a delicious idea 
suddenly struck him. There had been a time, he 
remembered, when he and his exceptionally willful 
protege had resolved such rivalries between themselves 
sensibly, and in a mutually beneficial way. 

He moved to an accustomed position just behind 
Nicholas, crowded the younger vampire to the habitual 
precise degree, and whispered suggestively in his ear. 

"Do you remember, Nicholas," he said dreamily. "How we 
used to solve these little problems, when they came 
up?" 

LaCroix' cool breath blew across the sensitive skin of 
Nick's ear. The hair on the nape of his neck stirred. 
A soft sigh escaped him before he could think to still 
it.

Nick remembered distinctly. 

Sometime near the close of the eighteenth century, 
Nick had made a difficult decision. He had faced up to 
the fact that he was NEVER going to achieve the 
autonomy he'd come to crave if he didn't stop sleeping 
with LaCroix. It had been one of the hardest things 
he'd ever done, and his formidable sire hadn't taken 
the news at all well, but, once he'd resolved on this 
new chaste direction for their relationship, he'd 
stuck to it doggedly for two hundred years. Aside from 
the occasional lapse, like that one time when he'd 
been recovering from total amnesia, or that time when 
it had been LaCroix' birthday, he'd never touched the 
old archfiend from that day to this. 

Of course, that hadn't meant he hadn't wanted to, 
often. He could be in a towering, white-hot rage with 
his mentor, it seemed, and still be completely 
susceptible to him at the same time. Perhaps the more 
susceptible, under such conditions, Nick had 
occasionally speculated. 

Matters of heterosexual versus homosexual orientation 
were as essentially meaningless among vampires as the 
idea of physical fidelity. They all knew that mortals 
set a great deal of importance by such things, but, 
again, were universally baffled by this. As far as 
vampires were concerned, sex was sex, blood was blood, 
and both commodities were unreservedly desirable. 

Fine distinctions escaped them. 

"I remember . . . " Nick admitted softly. 

"Menage a trois . . . mon ami, mon fils . . . " 
LaCroix sighed. 

"Mais oui . . . avec moi, et la Suggs . . . avec vous 
. . . mon cher LaCroix . . ." Nick murmured, reverting 
to his cradle language as memory (aided by LaCroix' 
familiar, oddly accented French) seized his passions 
and wreaked havoc with all his best intentions. 

"Would Miss Suggs be agreeable, do you think?" LaCroix 
asked in English, seizing the moment. 

Am I agreeable? Nick asked himself, calculating. How 
much trouble, exactly, would something like this cause 
me later? 

"I'll broach the subject to her, if you wish, while 
you sort out the Sioux, Nicholas," LaCroix offered 
sweetly. 

Probably quite a bit of trouble, Nick answered 
himself. 

He was a bit amazed to find he was grinning amusedly. 
LaCroix' Byzantine machinations had driven him to 
despair for hundreds of years, and yet, in a strange 
way, they'd always been one of the old serpent's most 
endearing aspects. 

As far as vampires were concerned, blood was blood, 
and love was love. Vampires were really rather simple 
creatures. 

Nick suddenly levitated to a height of about six feet, 
prior to take off, and called down to his mentor. 

"I'll be back in about an hour. And if you start 
without me, I'll break your neck." 

He swooped off into the night sky. LaCroix watched him 
until he was lost to sight, chuckling softly. 

"No danger of THAT, my dearest young briar thicket. I 
fully expect a memorable evening."
 
******************************************************
*********** 
 
Chapter 9: 
 
Natalie and Cinderella were surrounded by a large knot 
of new-found admirers, each desperate to scribble his 
name on one or the other of their dance cards, or, 
even better, on both. 

This common desire, among such a large number of eager 
swains, occasioned quite a bit of jockeying for 
position, a steady, fairly loud rumble of raspy, 
competitive male voices, and even one or two fist-
fights, on the outskirts of the crowd. In all the 
commotion, Nat and Cindy never noticed the approach of 
an interesting pair of gentlemen until the crowd 
grudgingly parted, and revealed the pair to the 
ladies' view. 

One was a puffy, short statured individual with an 
elaborately waxed mustache, who resembled nothing so 
much as a plump, extremely supercilious catfish. The 
other was a darkly handsome young man of about twenty-
one, dressed in a white, heavily decorated uniform 
jacket and blue slacks with braid stripes down the 
sides. 

The two dignified gentlemen marched loftily through 
the crowd, completely oblivious to the resentful looks 
they were receiving from all sides. They came to a 
superior lockstepped stop once they'd come within 
proper introduction distance to the two ladies. 

"Good evening, mesdames," said the catfish looking 
guy, in a gratingly nasal, affected voice. "I have the 
honor to be Sir Hiram Yakima Flett-Ick, Lord High 
Chamberlain of the Kingdom, and Official Confidante to 
His Highness, the Prince. Greetings." 

He bowed with a fussy, rather silly flourish. 

He went on: "May I present His Highness, Crown Prince 
Rupert Egbert Humphrey Excalibur, the XXXIII." 

Natalie tried to think of a good reason for saddling 
thirty-three innocent male infants with such a bad 
name, and found she could not do it. 

Prince Rupert bowed deeply to Natalie, and even more 
deeply to Cinderella. It was a bit of a wonder he 
didn't fall over and land on his face in the process, 
the courtesy was so exaggerated. 

"Welcome, ladieth, to thith little thoiree of mine," 
said Rupert. "Ith a real pleasure to meet thomeone new 
at one of theethe dreadful thingth." 

Nat found herself automatically comparing Rupert's 
mode of speech to Nick's superbly precise diction. 
Rupert came off decidedly lacking. 

Cinderella found herself suppressing a giggle with all 
her might. 

"May I have the honor of thith danth?" Rupert said to 
Cinderella. 

"Ummm . . . Your Highness," Cindy answered, in a 
somewhat strangled voice. "I believe the orchestra is 
on a five minute break." 

"Thothe inthubordinate rathcalth," said Rupert with 
awful hauteur. "I authorithed no thuch breakth. I'll 
have them thoundly thrashed at thun-up tomorrow!" 

"Oh, dear," Nat interjected. "That does seem a bit 
harsh. And they're such a good orchestra, too. I'm 
sure they'll be back at work any minute." 

"No, no, dear lady," Rupert explained. "One mutht not 
permit underlingth to give themthelveth airth. The 
rethulth of exthetive lenieth can be anarchy." He 
bestowed a patronizing smile on Nat and Cindy in turn. 
"But thith ith no time to dithcuth the burdenth of 
Printhhood. Tonight ith for gaiety! Thinth we cannot 
danth, jutht now, O, angel of beauty," he said to 
Cinderella. "Perhapth you will conthider marriage 
inthtead?" 

Young Mushmouth certainly works fast, thought Nat, 
cynically. He's probably never been turned down in his 
whole coddled, aristocratic life. 

"Ummm . . . this is awfully sudden, Your Highness," 
Cinderella temporized, with a desperate glance at Nat. 

"The maleth of my line are well known for their 
dethithiveneth, madame," he lisped proudly. "And I 
have made my dethithion in regard to your lovely 
thelf, I assure you. Bethideth," he added, with a 
repulsive, cutesy wink at the two ladies. "My mother, 
the Queen, inthitht it ith high time I produthed an 
heir." 

"Oh," said Cinderella, at a loss. 

Nat intervened. "Cindy, I think I've got a speck in my 
left eye. Would you mind coming to the ladies room 
with me and seeing if you can help me get it out?' 

"Oh, that ITH dreadful!" asserted Rupert. "Shall I 
thend for the Royal Opthamologitht? Getting a thpeck 
in one'th eye hurth like blatheth!" 

"No, no, Your Highness, I'm sure we can handle the 
emergency ourselves," said Nat, unable to keep an 
ironic dryness out of her voice. But such subtleties 
were likely to sail straight over young Rupert's head 
unimpeded, anyway, Nat assured herself. "Cindy? Shall 
we?" 

"Right away, Nat," Cinderella said gratefully, and the 
two women beat a hasty retreat. 

Once they'd reached the comparative safety of the 
powder room, they took a moment to compare notes. 

"What do you think, Natalie?" Cinderella was asking, 
doubtfully. 

"I don't know what to tell you, Cindy," answered Nat." 
The important thing is what YOU think."

"Well, he is handsome . . ." Cinderella said. 

"Yes . . . there's no doubt of that," agreed Nat. 

"But looks aren't everything, are they?" Cindy 
speculated. "Actually, looks can be pretty deceptive, 
I guess." 

Nat, who had plenty of firsthand experience regarding 
this particular principle, nodded vigorously. 

"I suppose he must be fairly well off, too," she said, 
in the interest of fairness. 

"This is a prosperous kingdom, Nat. The whole Royal 
family's filthy rich." 

"And he IS the Prince," said Nat. "One day he'll be 
the King, I suppose." 

"And one day," Cinderella went on. "I could be Queen." 

"Yes. You could. Do you WANT to be Queen, Cindy?" 

"The Queen gets to do lots of interesting stuff," 
Cinderella argued, not quite sure just who she was 
arguing with. "She presides over the Genealogy 
Society's annual tea, judges the Lower South-East 
Regional Rose Show, oh, all kinds of things. I could 
do that, couldn't I?" 

"Yes, you could. If you wanted to." 

"He IS the Prince . . . " Cindy asserted, again. 

Nat wasn't denying it. She watched her new friend in 
an agony of suspense. 

"And he's also an obnoxious, self-important pompous 
ass with a really apocalyptic speech impediment, isn't 
he, Nat?" Cinderella asked, smiling at last. 

"He thertainly ith, Thinderella," Nat lisped, and 
broke into a burst of relieved laughter. 

"And I'd be condemning mythelf to a life of 
thtultifying boredom if I married a geek like that, 
wouldn't I, Natalie?" Cinderella inquired, giggling. 

"An accurate athethment, I believe," said Nat. 

"Let's get out of here!" Cinderella cried. "I think I 
saw a postern gate on our way in." 

"Now that was heads-up forethought, Cindy. Always 
locate your exits before you walk into a party like 
this." 

"Check. I can see why that would be good advice. I 
think it's to the left, just past that corridor? Where 
we came in here?" 

"Let's go," said Nat, and they both ran toward the 
door of the ladies room. 

In their haste, they collided with the Queen, who was 
on her way in. 

"D-AH-HH-WING!" drawled the Queen, taking Cindy into a 
motherly embrace. "Wupeht has just infohmed me of the 
gweat news! I couldn't be moh dewighted!" 

"nummchk . . . " said Cinderella. 

"No time wike the pwesent, I ahways say," gushed the 
Queen. "We've sheduwed the wedding foh thwee A.M. 
tonight. We weawy must bustle, deah, if weah going to 
get you weady in time.Would youah fweind Doctah 
Wambeht wike to be youah matwon of honah?" 
 
******************************************************
*************** 
 
Chapter 10: 
 
After about fifteen minutes of aerial reconnaissance, 
Nick had located the encampment of the Sioux. He 
settled into an easy holding pattern for a minute or 
two while he considered what he was going to say to 
them. It was an interesting problem in cross cultural 
adjustment, and if he hadn't had a rather intriguing 
engagement elsewhere, he would very likely have 
enjoyed it. 

Things being as they were, however, it was basically 
just a nuisance. Best to get it done quickly. 

A direct approach, then, he decided. 

A moment later, seventy-five Sioux warriors were 
flabbergasted to see a lone white man come barging 
into their camp as though he hadn't a care in the 
world and was totally impervious to bodily injury. 
Which, of course, though they couldn't know it, he 
more or less was. 

"Good evening," Nick said in Lakota. "What's all this 
about attacking the wagon train?" 

"Painted-Horse," said the chief, Eats-Ants-For-
Breakfast, to his second in command: "Go kill the 
sentries." 

Nick switched to Whammy-mode. "Don't you move a 
muscle, Painted-Horse. In fact, none of you move. I'm 
pressed for time and we need to talk. Are we clear on 
this?" 

Seventy-four braves nodded their heads obediently. The 
seventy-fifth, Rabid-Coyote, who was a very difficult 
personality indeed, just happened to be a resistor. 

He had no idea why his fellows weren't trying to kill 
the obnoxious white man who spoke Lakota with such a 
barbarous accent, but he didn't really care. He 
uttered a blood-curdling war-cry and rushed Nick with 
a war-lance. 

Nick absently side-stepped the murderous Sioux, and 
then sent him flying with a gentle push to the small 
of the back. What a pest, he thought distantly. 

Nick scanned the faces of the assembled braves for a 
time, satisfying himself that they would not try to 
attack him, en masse, for the moment. Then, he 
released them from his vampiric spell. "Who is leader 
here?" he asked. 

Eats-Ants-For-Breakfast stepped forward. Painted-Horse 
followed, a cautious second or two later. 

"Why do you want to attack the wagon train?" Nick 
asked again. 

"Who ARE you??" Eats-Ants-For-Breakfast retorted, a 
bit hysterically. 

"Ummmm . . . I'm a spirit messenger. I've been sent by 
the Great Spirit," Nick lied. 

"That's absurd!" snarled Rabid-Coyote, limping back 
into the circle of firelight. "That's fork-tongued 
talk if ever I heard it! As if the Great Spirit would 
use a WHITE as a messenger, anyway! I saw this 
paleface right in the middle of the wagon train not an 
hour ago!" 

"So YOU'RE the one who shot at me!" Nick accused, 
annoyed. It seems one need not be white to be a 
racist, he reflected, getting even more annoyed. He 
shot a red-eyed glance at the hostile Sioux, and 
Rabid-Coyote shivered, in spite of himself. 

"This idiot is wasting my time," Nick muttered to 
himself. Then, he addressed the gathering at large. 
"I'M telling you people that I am a bona fide 
supernatural entity, and I don't intend to argue about 
it!" 

"Let's scalp him," suggested Rabid-Coyote. " I haven't 
seen hair that color since Custer." 

Nick sighed. This was really turning into a drag. Now, 
he supposed, he'd have to put on a show. He hated 
having to do that. It was so embarrassing. 

He rose three feet in the air, wrinkled his nose in a 
fang-revealing snarl, and emitted a yellowish-greenish 
glow from both eyes. 

"IS THERE ANYONE HERE WHO STILL THINKS I'M LYING ABOUT 
THE GREAT SPIRIT?" he asked. 

He'd dropped his pitch to an uncanny rumble, and added 
about six cycles of reverb. It was over-kill; he knew 
it, but he was too irritated at being forced into this 
foolishness to consider the principles of artistic 
restraint just then.

An intimidated silence prevailed for quite some time. 

"THAT doesn't mean anything," Rabid-Coyote finally 
argued. "He COULD just be an evil white-man medicine 
man." 

Am I really going to have to KILL this maniac? Nick 
asked himself unhappily. 

"Can't you shut up?" Painted-Horse snapped at Rabid-
Coyote. "Are you BLIND?" 

"What message does the Great Spirit wish to convey to 
us, Unnatural Thing?" asked Eats-Ants-For-Breakfast, 
solemnly. 

Oh, thank you SO much, Nick thought, insulted. I just 
LOVE it when people call me spook names! 

He took a moment to put aside his pique, and then went 
on with the charade. 

"THE GREAT SPIRIT WISHES TO DISCUSS YOUR FUTURE WITH 
YOU," said Nick, maintaining full vampire format. 
Apparently, subtlety wasn't going to work with this 
audience. 

"What about our future, Unearthly Creature?" 

"YOU HAVE NONE," Nick explained brusquely. 

"We . . . we don't understand, exactly, Being of 
Terrifying Aspect. When you say none', do you mean - " 

"NICK!" Nick interrupted, out of patience. "MY NAME IS 
NICK! JUST PLAIN NICK! CAN YOU DO THAT FOR ME? 
PLEASE?" 

Another moment of intimidated silence took hold of the 
camp. This "Nick" was certainly a touchy spirit-
messenger-demon-whatever-thingy. 

 "Ummm . . .sorry, uh, Nick. Now, about our future - " 

"THE WHITE MAN WILL INUNDATE YOUR LANDS IN VAST 
NUMBERS," Nick explained. "MOST OF THE SIOUX WILL BE 
DESTROYED IN REPRISALS FOR THE LITTLE BIG HORN. THOSE 
THAT SURVIVE WILL BE CONFINED IN RESERVATIONS AND 
SYSTEMATICALLY EXPLOITED. YOUR DESCENDANTS WILL BE 
ASSIMILATED INTO THE CULTURE OF THE WHITES, OR WIND UP 
EKING OUT THEIR LIVES SELLING CIGARETTES AND RUNNING 
BINGO GAMES. ANY QUESTIONS?" 

A third horrified silence encompassed the camp. 

"He's lying," said Rabid-Coyote, appalled. "He's got 
to be!" 

"Quiet," said Painted-Horse, softly. 

"Is there anything we can do, umm, Nick? To prevent 
this terrible prophesy from overtaking us, I mean?" 
asked Eats-Ants-For-Breakfast. 

"YES. STOP WASTING TIME ON WAGON TRAINS AND GET OVER 
THE NORTHERN BORDER INTO CANADA. YOU'LL HAVE A BETTER 
CHANCE UP THERE. BESIDES, CANADA IS A VERY NICE 
PLACE." 

"But, Nick, this is a Western movie. It's our JOB to 
attack wagon trains." 

"YOU KNOW PERFECTLY WELL THAT THE CAVALRY IS GOING TO 
COME AT THE LAST MINUTE, AND WIPE OUT THE LOT OF YOU. 
THAT'S HOW THESE MOVIES WORK. WHY GO ON WITH IT? YOU 
DON'T REALLY HAVE ANYTHING AGAINST THE WAGON TRAIN, DO 
YOU?" 

"You know," said Painted-Horse to Eats-Ants-For-
Breakfast. "Actually, we don't." 

The Sioux all looked at one another uneasily. 

"SO JUST LEAVE," Nick encouraged. "BEFORE THE CAVALRY 
GETS HERE." 

"Can we do that?" Rabid-Coyote asked, musing. It was 
the least hostile tone of voice he'd employed that 
night. "I mean, I'm supposed to act like your 
standard, bloodthirsty savage, but that doesn't mean I 
really want to. It's really kind of a burden, being so 
cruel and merciless all the time." 

"ANYBODY CAN CHANGE ANYTHING, IN TIME," said Nick. "IF 
I DIDN'T BELIEVE THAT, I'D HAVE KILLED MYSELF A LONG 
TIME AGO. TRUST ME ON THIS. YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU 
WANT TO DO." 

A fourth silence filled the encampment. 

"He's right!" Eats-Ants-For-Breakfast finally said, 
and suddenly, he laughed. "We COULD just leave! Go to 
Canada, or whatever!" 

Thank God, Nick thought, and floated back down to the 
ground. He was sick to death of shouting at these 
Indians. 

"So you'll forget about the wagon train, right?" he 
asked, in a normal speaking voice. 

"Wagon train, schmagon train," said Rabid-Coyote. 
"I've got to get back to the main camp and start 
packing. I've got three wives and fifteen kids! You 
can't imagine how much junk you accumulate with a 
family that size." 

 "We owe you a debt of gratitude, Nick," said Eats-
Ants-For-Breakfast. "Stay for dinner, why don't you? 
We'll probably do a Ghost Dance after the feast. That 
ought to appeal to you." 

"Oh," said Nick, surprised and rather genuinely 
touched. "That's very kind, but - " 

"Ixnay," advised Painted-Horse, quietly. "I doubt we'd 
want to find out what someone like . . . Nick . . . 
eats for dinner. You don't want to get him upset 
again, do you?" 

"Hmmm . . . good point. Well, Nick, thanks again, and 
if there's ever anything we can do for you . . . " 

"Thank you. I'll remember," Nick said. "But I really 
must be going." He'd just realized that he'd left Miss 
Suggs alone with LaCroix for over an hour, and he 
really wasn't sure that was such a good idea. His 
mentor's patience was rather limited, in some ways. 

Nick waved to the Sioux one final time, and leapt into 
the sky. He ascended as the Indians watched, and soon 
had disappeared into the night. 

"You know, he wasn't such a bad spirit-messenger-guy," 
said Rabid-Coyote. "For a white man, that is." 

"Good thing he didn't know about those mules we stole 
from the wagon train," said Painted-Horse. "THAT might 
have REALLY pissed him off!" 

"WHAT mules?" asked Eats-Ants-For-Breakfast. "I didn't 
authorize any raiding!" 

Rabid-Coyote looked sheepish. "Well . . . " he said, 
shrugging. 

"You're absolutely impossible! If that Nick finds out, 
we could ALL be in serious trouble." 

"Why should a spirit-messenger-supernatural-spooky-guy 
care about a few mules?" Rabid-Coyote argued. 

"Who the hell knows WHAT a horrible-ghost-being like 
that cares about? Did you see those teeth? We'll have 
to return the mules right away!" 

"All right, all right," muttered Rabid-Coyote. "I can 
take a hint. I'll take the mules back." 

"No WAY!" retorted Eats-Ants-For-Breakfast. "We can't 
trust YOU with a delicate mission like this. You're 
the most incredibly tactless Lakota in the whole 
tribe! We'll ALL take the mules back!" 

The entire encampment scrambled to obey their chief; 
some braves broke camp, others retrieved the stolen 
mules from the string of ponies tethered outside camp, 
others prepared to ride. 

"I'm really not sure that scary-Nick-whatever-creature 
wants us to be going anywhere near the wagon train 
again," Painted-Horse put in, diffidently. "He seemed 
pretty clear on that. At least, that's the impression 
I got . . . " 

But, in the hustle and bustle of getting ready to go, 
no one heard Painted-Horse. 

He was considered something of an egg-headed bore 
among the braves, anyway, and it's doubtful anyone 
would have listened to him even if they had heard him. 
Shortly thereafter, the Sioux rode out. 
 
******************************************************
*********** 
 
Chapter 11: 
 
A detachment of the Palace Guard awaited Nat, Cindy 
and the Queen just outside the powder room. 

"An Escoht of Honah, my deah," explained the Queen. 
"It's the weast we could do foh the Pwincess-to-Be." 

"Military arrest," Nat translated to Cinderella in a 
whisper. "I guess they're pretty determined to get 
Rupert married off." 

"We weawy must huwwy, wadies," said the Queen with a 
titter. "Wupeht just HATES to wait, you know. We can 
take these back staiahs to the Woyal Bwidal Wetiwing 
Chambeh. We wouldn't want the gwoom to see you befoah 
the wedding, now would we? Bad wuck, you know!" 

The Palace Guard double-timed the three women up seven 
flights of steps, through several twisting corridors, 
up a last spiral staircase that seemed to ascend 
through a disused tower, and finally down a dusty 
hallway to a stoutly built oak door. The Captain of 
the Guard produced an enormous iron key and fitted it 
to the lock. Oak timbers groaned eerily as the two 
men-at-arms had to sweat to swing the massive door 
open. 

A small, circular stone chamber was revealed to view. 
It was clearly the top-most space in the tower they'd 
just climbed, and was rather sparsely furnished. There 
was a stone bench, a single small window with iron 
bars on it, a flyblown full length mirror, a dressing 
table, and a large iron and copper trunk. There was 
nothing else. No carpets, no curtains, no upholstery, 
and no exits, so far as Nat could see. 

Oh, this is just swell, Nat was thinking. A prison 
cell at the top of a tower in a fairy tale castle. 
What a fun trip! First I meet Cinderella, what's next? 
Rapunzel? Rumplestilskin? Is there ANY way I could 
have screwed things up worse than I already have? 

"Heah we ah, wadies. A nice wittle wetweat foh the 
bwide-to-be. Ah, I wemembeh my own wedding. Do you 
know, I haven't been up heah since?" 

"Really?" said Nat, drily. "You've left a lovely room 
like this unused all that time?" 

"I'm sentimental," explained the Queen. 

"Fond memories," Nat snapped, sarcastically. 

"Quite," the Queen retorted, with a sharp glance at 
Nat. She'd suddenly recognized a likely adversary in 
the pathologist. 

Cinderella had crossed the room to the barred window 
and peered out. The window, she determined, provided a 
really spectacular view of most of the kingdom, but, 
barred as it was, no means of escape whatsoever. 

"I'd wove foh you to weah MY old wedding dwess foh the 
cewemony, deah," the Queen said to Cinderella. "In 
fact - " 

"Oh, I couldn't!" Cinderella interrupted. 

"In fact," continued the Queen, as though Cindy hadn't 
spoken. "I insist." 

You wouldn't think a gal with such a bad speech 
impediment could manage to sound so steely, Nat 
reflected. 

"The dwess is in that twunk. I just know youah going 
to wook wovewy in it, dahwing!" 

"It probably won't fit, Your Majesty," Cinderella 
said, grasping at straws. 

"Don't be widicuwous, child. I'm cehtain it'll be 
pehfect. And pwease . . . do call me Mom'. I want you 
to think of me as youah vewy own mothah." 

She smiled brightly at Nat, then turned back to 
Cinderella.

"Actuwy, I suppose I ought to expwain the facts of 
wife' to you, deah," said the Queen, coloring 
slightly. "You being a bwushing maiden and all, and me 
being youah new mothah-in-waw. The bihds and the bees 
and all that?" 

"That won't be necessary," Nat interjected hastily. "I 
can handle that. After all, I'm a doctor." She felt 
reasonably certain that Cinderella would attack the 
Queen bodily if forced to submit to a woman-to-woman 
chat just now. 

"Oh," said the Queen, looking relieved. "That's fine 
then. I'll weave you wadies to it, shall I? We member, 
the wedding's at thwee shahp. Mustn't keep Wupeht 
waiting, you know!" 

One of the Guards brought out a huge hourglass, and 
placed it, with a hollow, ominous clang, upon the 
stone floor. 

"Oh, I'm SO-O happy," gushed the Queen. She sounded 
absolutely sincere. 

I guess if that repulsive toad Rupert was my son, I'd 
be happy to unload him too, Nat admitted to herself. I 
really can't blame her. 

The Queen beamed at Cinderella one last time, shot 
another measuring glance at Natalie, and then left the 
room. 

The enormous oak door banged shut. 

The iron lock outside the door clicked as it was 
engaged. 

Sand trickled relentlessly through the hourglass. 

"Natalie!" wailed Cinderella. "What are we going to 
do?!" 
 
******************************************************
************** 
 
 
Chapter 12 
 
 After another fifteen minutes or so of aerial 
reconnaissance, Nick finally located his mentor, along 
with Miss Suggs, in a stand of dogwood trees, a fair 
distance outside the circled wagon train. 

Nick made quite a bit more noise landing than was 
strictly necessary. But he had an idea what was 
already going on, without him, and he was inclined to 
be peevish about it. 

"OOO-ooo!" gasped a breathless feminine voice. "Did 
you hear that, Crawsie?" 

"Crawsie"? Nick thought, becoming more deeply peeved 
than ever. Why, the sneaky old tarantula! 

He picked up the faint thump of Miss Suggs heart, and 
was irritated to note that it was beating at least 
fifteen percent faster than was normal. He followed 
the sound to its source and discovered Miss Suggs, and 
LaCroix, of course, seated on a bed of prairie grass, 
in a moonlit bower of dogwood shadows, in what could 
only be described as a fairly compromising position. 

"Why, Nicholas," LaCroix drawled. "We were beginning 
to think you'd never get here." 

"I KNEW IT!" Nick snarled, and immediately turned on 
his heel to leave. 

"He's a bit . . . impetuous, my dear," LaCroix 
explained to Miss Suggs as he gently disentangled 
himself from her ardent grasp and rose to his feet. 
"I'll have to talk to him." 

"Ooo, I hope he's not too upset with us," she said, 
pouting. "Not after all those nice things you told me 
about him." 

LaCroix caught Nick by the arm just before he could 
get completely out of range. 

"Now, Nicholas - " he began. 

"You reptile! Whatever possessed me to think I could 
EVER trust YOU?" Nick cried, shaking LaCroix off 
angrily. "I might as well trust the sun not to shine! 
Isn't that right, 'Crawsie'?" he added, sarcastically. 

LaCroix probably would have blushed over that last 
barb, had he been capable of blushing. Further, using 
the sun in an analogy was one of the most insulting 
figures of speech one vampire could inflict on 
another. 

Still, LaCroix could not afford to give his own temper 
free reign just now. Not if he wanted the evening to 
progress according to his plans. It was darned tricky, 
maneuvering the insanely ethical Nicholas into any 
kind of an intimate encounter, and it had gotten 
harder and harder with every passing century. LaCroix 
had come too far to give up just yet. 

"Nicholas," he said. "Look at that woman." 

Miss Suggs was well worth looking at. Nick found 
himself obeying LaCroix' suggestion almost 
automatically. It seemed Miss Suggs was revealing 
slightly more skin than she had been during their 
first meeting, and she showed no particular urgency 
toward neatening her costume, nor toward adopting a 
more formal attitude, though she seemed well aware of 
his scrutiny. In fact, she waved at him in an 
unmistakably friendly manner. 

Nick imagined how she might look if all six feet, 
seven inches were fully revealed, and had to suppress 
an urge to drool. 

"THAT one can call me "Pooky" if she feels she has 
to," LaCroix asserted. 

Nick had to admit that he could empathize with his 
sire's attitude on this one point. 

LaCroix sensed Nick's slight unbending, and began to 
subtly drift back toward the dogwood grove where Miss 
Suggs awaited. Nick drifted along in his wake, almost 
unaware he was doing so. 

"Please believe I've given her only the most glowing 
reports about you, Nicholas. She's been most impatient 
for your return." LaCroix purred. 

"And so have you, it seems," Nick retorted. 

"Only a few . . . preliminaries, I assure you. The 
lady was not of a mind to brook an excess of delay. 
Still, much remains to be done." 

"Much seems to be UNDONE," Nick complained, referring 
to Miss Suggs' state of dishabille. 

"And much left to undo. There are one or two things 
Miss Suggs feels some slight unease about. It seems 
she's a - " he broke off and whispered in Nick's ear. 

"WHAT?" said Nick, shocked. "A stunning woman like 
that? How is that possible?" 

"I can only deduce that the males of this dimension 
are eunuchs," LaCroix said, shaking his head sadly. 
"When I think of that lovely creature, withering away 
on the vine, simply because she's a bit tall . . . 
well, it makes my blood boil." 

"Disgusting," Nick agreed. 

"I've told her that YOU are particularly adept at 
easing certain rites of passage. She was most 
interested to hear it." 

"Truly?" Nick asked, gradually forgetting to be angry 
with LaCroix. He looked toward the shadows where Miss 
Suggs was fetchingly curled. "What else did you tell 
her?" he asked, still a bit suspicious. 

"Why, I told her you were as gentle as a summer 
breeze, playful as a kitten, inventive as a Da Vinci, 
understanding as a priest, sweet as a - " 

"Oh, please. I'll never be able to live up to all 
that." 

"Oh, I don't know. I've never found you lacking." 

"Flattery . . ." said Nick, smiling. 

"Still angry?" asked LaCroix. 

Nick had to laugh. Out-maneuvered again. The old 
silver-tongued devil! 

"One thing," said Nick. 

"Yes?" 

"We're not going to kill her, right?" 

"Nicholas! I'd sooner deface the Mona Lisa!" 

"Good. I'm glad you see it that way. You'll also 
remember, I think, that I don't drink human blood?" 

LaCroix' mouth pursed in a moue of distaste. Drinking 
the blood of animals was considered a rank perversion 
among any vampires not of the carouche breed. LaCroix 
knew that his otherwise appealing Nicholas habitually 
sank to such depths, but he disliked thinking about 
it, and he did not permit ANYONE of their mutual 
acquaintance to mention it aloud. 

"Perhaps your delicate sensibilities won't be too 
grossly offended if we keep the . . . sanguinary 
activities between ourselves?" he suggested, somewhat 
ironically. 

There were advantages to including LaCroix in such 
assignations beyond the more immediate motivations of 
love and desire, Nick reflected. It certainly provided 
a measure of safety to any mortal third party 
involved. Besides, he secretly hated beef blood like 
poison. A change would be wonderful. 

"That sounds . . . actually, that sounds . . . very 
nice, LaCroix," Nick purred, with a slightly famished 
smile. 

Ah, thought LaCroix. Purring and smiling and looking 
starved. Three auspicious signs. 

"You boys sure talk a lot," Miss Suggs called out, 
somewhat impatiently. 

The vampires exchanged a startled glance, and then 
hastened to join Miss Suggs among the dogwood trees. 

LaCroix sat down behind the lady, and curled himself 
around her comfortably, his chin resting on her 
shoulder as he peeked out through her hair at Nick. He 
looked something like a white cobra guarding a 
precious jewel in its coils.

Nick knelt down in front of the lady, and leaned 
forward so he could look the more directly into her 
green eyes. 

"LaCroix tells me you'd like to broaden your 
horizons," he said quietly, and put a companionable 
kiss on the tip of her upturned nose. "I'd be 
delighted to assist in any way you'd like." 

"Why, you're just as cute as a button, ain't you?" 
cooed Miss Suggs. "He said you would be." 

He gave her a shy shrug, a bashful head-tilt, and a 
full megawatt smile. This was MUCH better than being 
called an unearthly creature and a lot of other nasty 
things by a bunch of ill-mannered Sioux, Nick decided. 

"There IS somethin' I've always been kind of curious 
of," she said, shyly. 

"What's that?" Nick murmured, one hand already 
entwined in her red silk of her hair. 

"Oh, I don't know as if I ought to tell you. You'll 
think I'm a kind o' Jezebel, like as not," she said, 
and her brow furrowed prettily. 

"No. I promise I won't." he reassured, affectionately 
rubbing noses with her. 

"Well, Crawsie said you could do things. Said you 
would do things, if I asked you real nice-like." 

"Ask me," Nick sighed. "Please." 

"Oh, it's foolish. But, well . . . I've never seen a 
feller, you know, altogether . . . nekkid, before." 

LaCroix, who'd been listening carefully, burst out 
laughing. He knew perfectly well that his protege had 
never been entirely comfortable with nudity. He looked 
over Nick's black wool jacket, which was neatly 
buttoned, charcoal knit vest, which was also fully 
buttoned, and pewter pinstripe silk shirt, which was 
meticulously buttoned to the chin. He cracked up 
again. 

Hardy-har-har, Nick thought resentfully. As if HE 
likes running around in the buff any better than I do. 
I haven't seen HIM completely bare-ass since the 
Renaissance! At least I look halfway human in the 
nude! 

"Miss Suggs," said Nick, "I'll make a deal with you, 
how would that be? Give me your hand," he took the 
lady's proffered hand and guided it to the first of 
the approximately seventy sensibly fastened buttons 
which stood between him and exposure to the elements. 

"You can start here . . ." he went on, and then put 
his own hand to one of the many intricate fastenings 
that still encumbered Miss Suggs. "And I'll start 
here. And we'll see who gets finished first. And we'll 
both just pretend "Crawsie" isn't here unless he 
agrees to stop laughing at us at once. What do you 
think?"

Miss Suggs giggled. "Why, that sounds right fair," she 
said, and undid the first of many buttons. "Besides, 
it sure is hard to concentrate with him snarking away 
like that." 

"Him?" asked Nick, with a mean grin. "Whom do you 
mean?" 

"Oh, I don't know. Some feller who was here a spell 
before. Wonder where he's got to, anyhow?" 

It was a full five minutes, twenty buttons, and thirty 
fastenings before they relented and deigned to 
acknowledge LaCroix' presence again. 
 
Meanwhile, back at the wagon train, Jedediah was on 
guard duty just outside the ring of wagons. It was his 
task to watch over the extra animals the wagoners had 
tethered, beyond the circle, for sanitary reasons. 
Young Jed would not be relieved for several hours to 
come, and the prospect of hours of unremitting, 
solitary boredom stretched his tolerance almost to the 
breaking point. 

How come he had to watch over these smelly old mules 
and horses, anyway? Those gunslinger fellers had said 
they would handle the Injuns, and Jed believed any 
fellers who could screech like those two must be able 
to handle just about anything. He'd never heard such 
awful hollering in his life! 

"Hello," said a well-spoken voice out of the darkness. 
"It's Jedediah, isn't it?" 

"Oh, evenin' Miss 8-Ball. What brings you out here?" 

"Oh, just cruising, you know. The . . . um, gunslinger 
gentlemen I came with seem to be occupied at the 
moment and my friend the GF is busy asking everyone in 
camp for Fancy Feast. I keep telling her there's no 
such thing here, but she doesn't want to listen. 

"Fancy Feast?" asked Jed, blankly. "What's that?" 

"Exactly," answered 8, her point made, at least to 
herself. 

"Care for some company?" 

"Why, sure! It's right lonesome out here." 

"This really isn't necessary, you know. My furless 
colleagues are eminently qualified to deal with any 
difficulties that may arise." 

"That's what I TRIED to tell my Pa! But he wouldn't 
listen. He never listens to ANYTHING I say." Jed added 
glumly. 

"So, you got stuck watching the livestock?" 8-Ball 
asked gently. 

"I sure DID! And I'll tell you somethin' else, Miss 8, 
if you promise not to tell my Pa." 

"No. Of course not." 

"I don't even LIKE horses! Nor mules neither. Fact is, 
I don't like this whole consarned wagon train trip, 
and I sure didn't want to go west like Pa and them. I 
don't WANT to be a pioneer." 

"Really? Did you have some other career you'd prefer?" 

"Yep. What I really want is to move to a big city and 
open a fancy restaurant! That's my dream," he sighed. 
"Guess that's one dream that'll never come true." 

"Well, you're young yet, Jed. Maybe - " 

"Maybe nothin'! With me and Pa and Ma and Aunt Loretta 
homesteadin' in some ol' lonesome, godforsaken 
wilderness where we'll never even SEE folks but once 
or twice a year? Why, them two womenfolks won't even 
ever let me cook! They think it's unmanly. And I make 
better vittles than the both of them put together!" 

8-Ball was really very kind, as cats go, and 
Jedediah's frustration dismayed her. All the more 
because she could think of no workable solution for 
the unhappy young man. "I . . . I really don't know 
what to say, Jed," she admitted. "I'm so sorry you're 
feeling so blue. I wish I could help." 

"Nah, that's all right, Miss 8. It's good just to have 
a body to talk to." 

8-Ball jumped up into the boy's lap. "You can pet me 
if you'd like," she said. "That seems to help people 
relax sometimes, I notice." 

"Why, that's right nice of you, Miss 8." said Jed, and 
ran a hand over her sleek black fur. Boy and cat 
relaxed into a companionable, slightly melancholy 
silence. 

This peaceful interlude went on for about ten minutes. 
And Jed, eventually, really did come to feel 
comforted. Unfortunately, the mood was abruptly 
shattered by the sudden arrival of Chief Eats-Ants-
For-Breakfast, and his band of Sioux warriors, leading 
a string of stolen mules. 

"INJUNS!" cried Jed, jumping to his feet, alarmed and 
astonished. "What do we do, Miss 8?" 

"We GET NICK, Jed. THAT'S what we do! Follow me!" 

They both turned and ran, and had only gotten a few 
yards, when Jed tripped over the GF, who'd been 
rushing toward them from the direction of the wagon 
train. 

"8-Ball!" panted the Gray Fiend, eyes wide and tail 
puffed out. "You'll never believe what I found in the 
chuck wagon!" 

"No time, GF!" 8-Ball gasped. "Where's Nick? We need 
him, quick!" 

"Oh, he and the Vet are hiding out with that lady in 
some dogwood trees. But - " 

"Where?" interrupted 8-Ball. "Show me!" 

"But, 8 - " 

"Right NOW, GF!" 8-Ball cried, and butted the smaller 
cat along until she obeyed. Jed scrambled back to his 
feet and started to follow the two cats. 

"Umm . . . 8-Ball," the GF whispered, on the run. "I'm 
really not sure Nick wants to be disturbed right now. 
And it may not be a good idea for this boy to come 
with us, either. If that Suggs lady was a cat like us, 
she'd have been in heat, know what I mean?" 

8-Ball never even broke stride. "Jed, go alert the 
wagon train. But tell them not to do ANYTHING until 
Nick gets back, understand?" 

Jed obediently veered off toward the camp. 

"8, can we please talk a minute?" asked the GF. "What 
I found in the chuck wagon was - " 

"Not NOW, GF. Those Indians are back, and we need to 
get Nick. I don't care if he IS mating!" 

"But he hardly EVER gets to - " 

"GF, please, please shut up and show me where he is? 
Okay?" 8-Ball cried 

"But, the chuck wagon - " 

"STOP!" 

"Oh, okay, okay. It's this way . . ." 
 
******************************************************
******************** 
 
Chapter 13: 
 
"Cindy, stop crying, please? We'll rush the guards the 
moment they open the door. We'll have the element of 
surprise on our side." 

Cinderella gave Nat a long, wet look, and Nat 
eventually had to drop her eyes. Oh, sure, right - 
they'd rush the guards, battle their way down the 
stairs, cut through whatever guards must be stationed 
at the postern gate, run all the way back to Cindy's 
place without being followed, and get there just in 
time for a fourth bottle of Beaujolais. It was a 
BRILLIANT plan, and, if nothing went wrong, and if all 
their bionic circuits didn't blow at the critical 
moment, it'd be SURE to work perfectly! 

"It's all MY fault, Natalie. I just HAD to come to 
this stupid ball!" 

"How could you know the Prince would turn out to be 
such a dweeb? Every girl wants to marry the Prince. 
It's a given." 

"Not me! I didn't! Not really! All I really wanted was 
to open a nice wine and cheese cafe . . . you know, a 
place where real connoisseurs could come for wine 
tastings and things like that? But no, I had to sell 
out and try for the whole enchilada! Marry the stupid 
prince, and become the Queen one fine day! As if I 
could actually STAND being the Queen! Just look what 
it's done to HER! She's completely bananas!" 

Cinderella had worked herself into a perfect rage of 
self-hatred with this last speech. Nat did what she 
could to ease the girl's torment. 

"Ummm . . . are there many female small business 
owners in this kingdom, Cindy?" Nat asked gently. 

"Well, no," Cindy answered tearfully. "Actually, there 
aren't ANY." 

"So you were really doing the best you could with what 
you had, weren't you?" Nat pressed. "Isn't that right? 
I guess they're not really big on women's rights 
around here, are they?" 

"Women's rights, Nat?" Cinderella asked, confused. 
"WOMEN don't have rights. Everybody knows that. It's 
the natural order. Males are the superior gender." 

"Good God," said Nat, revolted. "Have YOU got a lot to 
learn! I had no idea this was such a barbaric 
dimension." 

She took a moment to shudder, and then went on. 
"Listen, Cindy, you really had very little 
alternative. It seems to me that the ONLY way you 
could have gotten out from under your wicked step-
mother would have been to 'marry up'. You can't start 
blaming yourself for doing the only thing you could." 

"Natalie, it doesn't matter. I CAN'T marry that 
aristocratic twit! I'll die first!" 

"You're not to talk of dying, Cindy. Understand? 
That's RIGHT out! I'll think of something. I promise," 
said Natalie. 

Cinderella made a determined effort and somehow 
managed to pull herself together. She dried her eyes 
and wiped her nose and gave Natalie a look of such 
utter trust and faith that Nat was tempted to start 
crying herself. 

The bald truth was, Nat admitted to herself, she 
really had absolutely NO ideas whatsoever. She found 
herself fervently wishing that she really WAS a fairy 
god-mother, instead of just a perplexed pathologist in 
the middle of a seriously deranged and distinctly 
unpleasant fairy-tale. 

They'd already tried the great oaken door, and found 
they couldn't budge it. 

Then they'd ransacked the drawers in the dressing 
table, and found nothing but a collection of moldy 
cosmetics. 

Maybe MacGyver could have constructed a nuclear 
fission explosive or something with such materials, 
Nat thought, but her home dimension was more Gothic 
than Sci-Fi, and tended to be short on technical 
detail. SHE could not work such a miracle. 

She supposed she could threaten to perform advance 
autopsies one anyone who came within six feet of 
Cindy, but didn't think she could really carry 
something like that off. She wasn't really a very 
intimidating person, physically. 

Of course, she thought, drifting aimlessly toward the 
window, Nick wasn't all that intimidating to look at, 
either, in his human phase. But HE could have made 
mincemeat out of all these palace dingbats in nothing 
flat, if only he were here. 

Never a vampire around when you need one, she 
reflected bitterly. OR a cop. And if you happened to 
know an individual who was both a vampire AND a cop, 
why then, you were COMPLETELY out of luck! You could 
be dead and buried and lost to memory before such a 
tardiness-prone person would come to save the day! 

Her small hands tightened around two of the bars on 
the window as she indulged in a capsule revenge 
fantasy involving an infuriated Nick, a slavering 
LaCroix, and two high-handed speech impediment 
sufferers with extremely blue blood. 

Both bars came loose in her grip. 

"Cindy!" she cried. "Come here." 

The bars were old and rusty, the mortar they'd been 
set in was crumbling with age, and nobody had been up 
here to repair things in who knew how long. With both 
women tugging and pulling determinedly, all five of 
the bars were soon dislodged. Either of them could now 
scoot through the window easily. 

They both stuck their heads out the window and craned 
their necks to try and spy a way down. 

"If we could just reach that ledge . . . " Cinderella 
murmured. "That goes across to the east tower. We 
could take the stairs from there." 

"It's about ten feet," Nat calculated. She suddenly 
realized what had to be done, and accepted it, without 
hesitation. She really was an unusually courageous 
forensic pathologist, and, though small of stature, 
she had a spine of pure stainless steel. 

She slowly turned to Cindy. "YOU could reach it. If I 
lowered you." 

Cindy's eyes widened. Since her father had died, when 
she was a small child, there had been very few 
kindnesses shown her. And never, in all her life, had 
she been offered such a selfless act of friendship. 
Tears sprang to her eyes, unbidden. 

"Then . . . how would YOU get down, Natalie?" she 
asked, though she already knew the answer. 

Nat avoided looking directly at her. "I'd . . . come 
when I could, Cindy. The important thing is - " 

"No," interrupted Cinderella flatly. "We go together. 
I'm not leaving you here." 

"We can't go together, honey. We don't have a rope, 
and there's not a thing in this room we can use to 
lower ourselves down. Someone has to stay, and it 
shouldn't be you. The Lisping Wonder isn't interested 
in marrying me." 

"Natalie, when that crazy witch mom of his comes up 
here and finds me gone, what do you think she's going 
to do to you? They were going to have the darn 
orchestra beaten just for taking five! I'm not leaving 
you, and that's final!" 

"Cindy - " 

"No!" 

Cinderella angrily dashed a fresh spate of tears from 
her face and sat down emphatically on the iron chest. 
A hollow thud emphasized her gesture. 

This sound conveyed an identical idea to both women in 
the exact same moment. 

"The CHEST!" cried Cinderella. 

"The DRESS!" cried Nat. 

"We can make a line out of the wedding dress!" cried 
both women in unison. 

MacGyver can just eat his technological heart out, Nat 
thought, laughing shakily. 

Nat ran to the stone bench, and started tugging it 
toward the window as best she could. The thing weighed 
plenty, and would make the perfect anchor point for 
their makeshift rope. 

Cindy jumped up from the chest, and began to undo the 
rusty iron latches that held it closed. 

Natalie had managed to move the bench to within three 
feet of the window when Cinderella finally defeated 
the last of the time stiffened latches and threw the 
chest open. What she saw inside moved her to an aghast 
silence for quite some time. 

"Natalie," said Cinderella, finally, in a very small 
voice. "Natalie, there's . . . nothing . . . in here." 

"WHAT?" cried Nat. "That can't be! She couldn't have 
been mistaken about her own wedding dress! Look 
again!" 

"No," said Cindy, backing away from the chest 
unsteadily. "I mean there's NOTHING. In the chest. 
Literally." 

Nat turned the bench loose and slowly came to peer 
into the chest. 

There was no old wedding dress in the chest. There 
were no items of apparel of any sort. 

There WAS, however, an unthinkable, limitless void. 

Here we go again . . . thought Natalie, and her heart 
both sank and leapt simultaneously. 

"Cindy," she said, after a second or two had passed. 
"Listen to me very carefully. You're going to have to 
be very, very brave . . . " 
 
******************************************************
********************* 
 
Chapter 14: 
 
Nick was down to a mere eight buttons, LaCroix had 
stopped laughing and been rehabilitated into the trio, 
and Miss Suggs, who had only three fastenings left, 
had begun to suspect there was a little something odd 
about her two gunslinger/beaux. 

Although Nick had maintained a constant, plausible, 
gentle stream of explanation and encouragement, Miss 
Suggs wasn't entirely sure MOST feller's eyes glowed 
like harvest moons just because they were really, 
really happy. And she was certain even the most 
sophisticated of city-fellers didn't often haul off 
and bite a hunk out of each other, even as a gesture 
of affection, as Nick had explained. Not that this 
biting business didn't look . . . well . . . kind of 
interesting . . . 

But, she supposed it didn't matter. The evening so far 
had exceeded every one of her maidenly expectations, 
and only promised to get better as the night 
progressed. These boys might be a mite peculiar, and 
the little one might be the most thoroughly dressed 
feller in all Creation, but they sure knew what they 
were doing when it came to pleasing a lady. She'd 
never guessed a body could feel so much pleasure; at 
least, not without dying and going straight up to 
heaven on the spot. 

Miss Suggs tingled as LaCroix did something startling 
and wonderful near the base of her spine. And only 
eight buttons to go, she thought, with a fond glance 
at Nick. Now, HE was a sweetie-pie if ever there was! 
She shivered expectantly. 
 
Meanwhile, the Gray Fiend, under duress, had led 8-
Ball to the shadowy grove of dogwood trees. 

Once there, both cats were able to discern a faint 
hint of murmuring voices, coming from the most deeply 
shadowed portion of the grove. Both pairs of pointed 
ears swiveled toward the muffled sounds, and the cats 
easily tracked the quiet voices to their point of 
origin. 

Superior night vision permitted the felines to make 
out a shifting mass of darker shadows among the 
lighter, less substantial ones in the grove. 

"Mating . . . " whispered the GF. "I TOLD you, 8!" 

"Nick!" shouted 8-Ball. "Whatever you're doing, STOP! 
We're coming in!" 

The mass of shadows emitted a variety of startled 
curses, and resolved itself into three separate 
silhouettes. Social amenities observed, the cats came 
forward. 

"This had better be good, 8-Ball," Nick rasped, 
furiously. 

"Well, it's NOT good," 8-Ball retorted tartly. "In 
fact, it's terrible! Those Indians are back!" 

"WHAT?" growled a very put-out LaCroix. 

"WHERE?" squeaked an extremely disappointed Miss 
Suggs. 

"WHY?" cried an deeply annoyed Nick. "Those IDIOTS! I 
distinctly told them to go to Canada!" 

"Well, you'd better tell them again, hadn't you, Nick? 
They're right outside the wagon train, right now, with 
the extra livestock. Stealing horses, most likely." 

"Unbelievable!" Nick snarled, rising to his feet and 
hurriedly re-fastening as many of his undone buttons 
as he could. 

"I quite agree, Nicholas," LaCroix hissed, as he, too, 
stood up. 

"Oh, POOH!" pouted Miss Suggs, also rising. "Just when 
we were really beginnin' to get somewhere!" 

"Doesn't ANYONE want to hear what I found in the chuck 
wagon?" the GF put in plaintively. 

"Not NOW, GF!" said Nick and 8 in harassed unison. The 
two of them marched off in the direction of the wagon 
train. They were moving so fast, the rest of the group 
had to hustle a bit to keep up. 
 
 The Sioux had almost finished securing the string of 
stolen mules to their fellow beasts of burden, when a 
stern voice assailed them out of the darkness. 

"Hold it right there, redskins! Let go of them mules. 
We got you hoss-thievin' snakes covered!" 

(The members of the wagon train, upon hearing 
Jedediah's slightly hysterical report of Indians in 
the camp, had immediately disregarded his warning to 
do nothing until Nick got there, and, under Elmer 
Sugg's direction, had sneakily encircled the Sioux and 
gotten the drop on them) 

As it happened, none of the Indians spoke English, and 
so, unfortunately, they were unable to obey Elmer's 
directive, or even to understand it. The Indians all 
jumped, startled, and then began to scramble to 
escape. 

Elmer and the rest interpreted this as a flagrant 
violation of perfectly clear instructions, and things 
would have gone very badly for the Sioux if Nick and 
his party had not arrived at the penultimate moment. 

"NOBODY MOVE!" Nick thundered, resorting to full 
vampire phase for the second time that night. He'd 
accurately evaluated the tenseness of the situation at 
once, and had decided that desperate times called for 
desperate measures. 

No matter how embarrassing, damn it, he thought, 
floating, at a height of six feet, out toward the 
surrounded Sioux. He didn't know which was worse; 
appearing before both the settlers AND the Sioux in 
unvarnished supernatural form, or having to do it 
while not completely buttoned down. His shirt collar 
was still gaping indecently open. At least an inch and 
a half of his throat was exposed to view. He felt half 
naked. 

"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?" he asked the assembled 
braves and pioneers severely. 

Every one of the gathered mortals swallowed nervously 
and could think of nothing sensible to say, for the 
moment. 

LaCroix snickered into the stillness. His malign 
funny- bone had been tickled by the abashed silence. 
That's my Nicholas, he thought, laughing. He certainly 
is a card! Why, he's kept me in stitches for eight 
hundred years! 

Nick fired a withering glance toward his mentor. "It 
wouldn't kill you to back me up here, you know," he 
hissed quietly. Then he addressed the rest of the 
gathering. "WELL? JUST WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE THINK YOU'RE 
DOING?" 

"Ummm . . . Nick," said Painted-Horse, finally. "We're 
just returning some mules we . . . umm . . . seem to 
have, well, sort of . . . stolen . . . " 

"DIDN'T I TELL YOU TO LEAVE THE WAGON TRAIN ALONE AND 
GO TO CANADA?" Nick asked in Lakota. 

"Them sneaky Injuns was tryin' to steal some more of 
our animals!" the camp dentist put in, aggrieved. 

"QUIET, MORTAL FOOL," LaCroix commanded, in awesome 
vampire- speak, in English. He'd decided to help his 
embattled prot,g, out after all. "ANY SIMPLETON CAN 
SEE THAT THESE INDIANS AREN'T STEALING ANYTHING. LOOK 
AT THOSE MULES THEY'RE TETHERING TO YOUR ANIMALS. 
OBVIOUSLY, THEY'RE RETURNING LIVESTOCK THEY'VE 
LIBERATED AT SOME EARLIER DATE. ISN'T THERE ANYONE 
WITH HALF A BRAIN AMONG YOU?" LaCroix followed this 
statement up with some rather showy levitation and 
fanged snarling of his own. 

Indians and Whites alike emitted a variety of 
horrified gasps in response. A doubly intimidated 
silence took hold. Nick nodded gratefully toward 
LaCroix. 

"They're RETURNING the mules?" Jedediah asked, 
surprised. "I didn't know redskins ever did that . . . 
" 

"Hellfire!" cried Elmer Suggs. He'd been thinking 
carefully ever since Nick had first floated into view, 
and a disturbing thought had finally found completion 
in his mind. "Just WHAT kind of gunslinger fellers ARE 
you two, anyhow? And what in the SAM HILL have you 
boys been up to WITH MY SISTER?" he demanded. 

Loretta Suggs let out a guilty gasp, and suddenly made 
herself scarce. 

LaCroix floated over to Nick, and spoke to him 
confidentially. "I'd estimate we've just worn out our 
welcome, Nicholas. I believe you'd better wrap this 
up." 

"Nick," said Eats-Ants-For-Breakfast. "We'll just 
finish tethering these mules - and then were out of 
here - okay?" 

"These white-eyes are so cranky," Rabid-Coyote 
observed. "All this fuss over a few measly mules!" 

"FINE," agreed Nick, in Lakota. "HURRY IT UP, WILL 
YOU? WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE TOO." Mr. Suggs 
outraged comment about his sister had not been lost on 
Nick either. 

The Gray Fiend, who DESPISED being ignored more than 
anything in the world, chose this moment to put her 
own two cents in: 

"DOESN'T ANYONE WANT TO HEAR WHAT I FOUND IN THE 
GODDAMNED CHUCK WAGON??!!!!" she screeched, at full 
blast feline yowling volume. These conceited vampires 
aren't the only ones who can raise their voices, she 
thought resentfully. 

Both vampires clapped their hands over their 
exquisitely sensitive ears with tandem cries of pain. 

I'm going to KILL that little monster, LaCroix 
thought, in agonized fury. That's the SECOND time 
she's done this to me! 

"Okay, GF, okay," said 8-Ball, once her own ears had 
stopped ringing. "WHAT did you find in the for 
chrissakes CHUCK WAGON?" 

"Well . . . " began the GF, milking the moment 
shamelessly, now that she had the floor. "I'll tell 
you what I found, since you ask. I found - " 

A loud bugle call sounded from someplace quite nearby, 
and whatever astonishing revelation the GF had been 
about to make was completely lost to hearing. 

"THE CAVALRY!" Nick shouted in Lakota. "WHAT DID I 
TELL YOU? DIDN'T I TRY TO TELL YOU?!" he asked the 
Sioux, distraught. 

"THE CAVALRY!" the alarmed Sioux agreed, paralyzed 
with fear. 

"The Cavalry!" shouted the pioneers in jubilant 
unison. "You redskins are sure gonna catch it NOW!" 

"I ain't exactly sure we actually NEED the cavalry, 
just now . . . " Jed speculated quietly. "Them Injuns 
WAS returning the mules, after all." 

As usual, nobody paid young Jed the slightest 
attention, except for 8-Ball, who threw an approving 
look at the boy. He was likely to go places, with a 
sharp mind like that, she thought, privately. 

"NICK!!" wailed the appalled Sioux, appealing, so they 
believed, to the nearest available representative of 
the Great Spirit they worshipped. "HELP US! DO 
something!!" 

Nick looked at LaCroix, at a loss. LaCroix shrugged 
uncomfortably, unable to think of any bright ideas on 
the spur of the moment. Both vampires turned as one to 
8-Ball, who, equally bereft of direction, shrugged 
helplessly herself. 

8-Ball, on the outside chance, turned to the Gray 
Fiend, not really expecting anything productive. 

"I bet you big brains would REALLY like to know what I 
found in the chuck wagon, NOW, wouldn't you?" grinned 
the GF smugly. "Well, follow me. Anyone who isn't too 
busy to look into a way out of here, that is," she 
added sarcastically. 

Nick, LaCroix, 8-Ball, and seventy-five demoralized 
Sioux warriors made haste to follow the small, fluffy 
gray cat to the chuck wagon. Jedediah thought over his 
options for a moment, and then followed the rest. 
Loretta Suggs slipped out of some shadows where she'd 
been hiding, and brought up the tail of the impromptu 
parade. All were soon swallowed in the shadowy 
darkness of night on the open prairie. 

Five minutes later, Troop 1106 of the U.S. Cavalry, 
Fort Independence posting, came roaring into the 
clearing where the pioneers still stood with their 
animals, trying to decide what to do about recent 
developments, if anything. 

"Which way did they go?" asked the standard bearer, as 
he checked his fiery mount momentarily. 

The pioneers all grinned at each other evilly. Now 
THIS was more like it! 

"They went THATAWAY!" screamed the would-be settlers 
in triumphant unison. 

"CHARGE!" shouted the Captain of the detachment, and 
the cavalry galloped off to assault the chuck wagon in 
force. 
 
******************************************************
********************** 
 
Chapter 15: 
 
"So . . . let me see if I understand what you're 
saying, Natalie," Cinderella said. "My choices are as 
follows: One, you lower me down to the ledge, and if I 
don't kill myself on the way, I get to go back home 
and continue slaving my guts out for my wicked step-
mother and step-sisters for the rest of my natural 
life. Two - " 

"Cindy -" 

"Two, I stay here and marry Prince Rupert the 
Mushmouthed, and be the Crown Princess of Mind Numbing 
Boredom for twenty or thirty years, until the King 
kicks off, and then I get to be the Queen of Trivial 
Public Appearances and Useless Court Functions. Or, 
three, I - " 

"Cindy, what I'm saying is I have no idea WHERE you'll 
wind up if - " 

"Or, three, I COULD take a quick trip through limbo, 
and maybe come out someplace where there's no such 
thing as wicked step-mothers, OR brainless Crown 
Princes, and where I might have SOME hope of a decent 
life. That about the size of it? Hmmmm . . . gosh, 
Nat, it's just so hard to choose!" 

She certainly has a well developed sense of irony, for 
a seventeen year old, thought Nat. 

"Cindy, the phenomenon seems to be entirely random. 
You COULD wind up someplace even worse than this." 

"So could you. And YOU'RE going. In fact, you went 
through once already." 

"Cindy, I'm not like you. You're a normal young woman. 
I'M an eccentric coroner stuck in a tortured affair 
with a mythical monster, who's a ferocious predator by 
definition, but who ALSO happens to be obsessed with 
the ethical ramifications of everything in the 
universe. But, we're still a good match, because we're 
BOTH completely nuts!" 

She took a deep breath, and then went on. "In my home 
dimension, Cindy, there's not one of us who DOESN'T 
have a screw loose. Our relationships, sub-
relationships, and interrelationships are so 
unbelievably complex that it's driven us ALL a bit 
mad." She waved a hand at the dimensional void in the 
chest. "This kind of crazy stuff is standard operating 
procedure for ME." 

"Your home dimension sounds like fun, Natalie," 
observed Cinderella, smiling. "Maybe I'll wind up 
there." 

"Well, we DO have a devoted following, so I suppose 
it's fun for SOMEONE," Nat admitted. "From our 
perspective, unfortunately, it's just a lot of 
unrelieved suffering and moral and sexual ambiguity. 
Still, we do have a picturesque setting," she added, 
thoughtfully. "Great skyline. I'm really not sure 
you'd like it there, though, Cindy. Most of us don't." 

"Nat, the point is, ANYPLACE is better than here!" 

As if to punctuate Cinderella's assertion, the iron 
clunk of the door being unlocked filled the stone 
room. 

A petulant voice floated in from beyond the door: "I'm 
not interethted in theeth thilly thuperthtitions! I 
inthitht on theeing my bride thith minute!" 

"Weawy, Wupeht, this is MOST untwaditional! The 
cehwemony will begin in anotheh five minutes. I should 
think y