That was no tranquil glow—it was the light of squad cars bathing riot gear! Who should alight on Giza this night but a full hundred officers ready to spring a trap? Whose squad cars, being futuristic, hovered over the sands? Whose allies, being snipers, set sights from helicopters high above—whose copters had no rotors, being futuristic?

Who waited armed with helmets, shields, nightsticks, and rifles with tremendous muzzles? Who had muzzles themselves, being, as they were, werewolves, shaggy soldiers with keen fangs, keener ears, and a strong desire to bite criminals down to the bone (metaphorically, as they were civilized)?

And riddle me this: how could werewolves, a super-pack of snarling werewolves, have assembled at all when the moon was not full—when the moon had long since been massacred by careless space miners?

This moon lived on not just as space debris, but also in pieces which circled the heads of every last patrolwolfman. The full moon whirled about every helmeted head...in miniature. Each one was a sphere of utter perfection, entirely full on any night of the week. Or even every day.

Dracula, a criminal wanted across the globe with a great bounty on his head, had been followed. Yet here he was in the pyramid's exit, grinning at Adam like the village simpleton. "Welcome to the year 3001!" he shouted, as if this were merely Adam’s re-rebirthday party.

“SURRENDER NOW, GRR, OR WE WILL USE LETHAL FORCE! GARR!”

“Three thousand...” The number rolled from Adam’s tongue and tumbled into the abyss-like lagoon of time and despair that still represented his mind. Empires had risen and fallen in the years he’d slumbered! “O brave new world...that has such furred people in’t...”

“You are speaking of the werewolves, yes?” Dracula casually indicated the crowd.

“THAT’S RIGHT, RAISE ‘EM HIGH!” the speaker boomed. “THE SAME GOES FOR YOUR FRIEND IN THE HAT! HANDS UP OR YOU WILL BE SHOT, AR-AR-AROOOOO!”

With the same whimsy Dracula said to Adam, “We do as he says for now, my friend.”

“How dare you, my fair vampire,” decried Adam even as he raised his hands aloft. “You revive me, only to seal me away in yet another dungeon? Beest thou blind? They will us to prison!”

“Fear not. As a creature of the night, I have many powers,” said the up-handed vampire gentleman. “I sup on the blood of humans and werewolves alike. I leave no shadow, no reflection. My strength is that of several soldiers, my gaze pierces the will, and I can not only compel bats, wolves, and men to follow my command, but I can become the bat, become the wolf, become the man…” He flashed his fangs. “And become the wolf-man!”

All at once he became an undead top, spinning with such speed he kicked up a veil of dust and produced a distinct drilling sound. Adam, yet and still uncomprehending, knew only that the werewolves readied their guns.

“ALL OFFICERS! CONCENTRATE FIRE ON DRACULA! REPEAT: BARK BARK BARK!”

“My companion of the night!” shrieked Adam to the whirring blur. “Keep thine eyes on thine prize, beware the danger at all angles! I leap for your life!” And he did—leaping into the line of fire!

With a single simultaneous click, a deadly cross-hatch of pink rectangles issued from these their future-guns. Lasers!

But the mummy felt no ravage of light, only the safe thud of his body on earth. He scrambled to his knees. Not a scratch or burn on him...but how? The answer lied in the thick cloud of stirred-up sand surrounding him and the enstillened Dracula.

“I neglected to mention,” hummed the Count. “Whirling sand is perfect for absorbing rays of light.” The shimmering clouds fell to earth, uncovering his person. And his person…was now werewolf in form. The searchlights bouncing off mini-moon hordes fed him more than enough lunar light. His present aspect, brown-furred and moist-nosed, was bizarre to Adam; logically speaking, his hair should have been silver. “Oh, and as well, if I run around in place at sufficient speeds, it awakens the werewolf’s blood within me.”

Adam gaped. “Great Scott!”

“And now if you will excuse me—though you are free to accompany me if you wish!” And with that, the lupine Dracula bolted into the crowd of cops with the speed of a gale.

Most officers raised their riot shields, but one, a new recruit on the very front lines, was scared witless. “Oh no! Here he comes!” he gulped. Even the mini-moon ‘round his head was shaking!

Dracula, running with his cape raised like wings, made a batline for him—and disappeared.

“WATCH THAT SHADOW!” the loudspeaker howled.

‘But Dracula has no shadow,’ you say? You’re right—he was the shadow! In this form had he slipped into the crowd, become as the sand beneath their feet...and cast aside those feet, flinging soldiers left and right! Helpless as pups in his wake, they banged into riot shields and shattered squad car windows.

Adam watched agoggling as the shadow vampire cleaved through, leaving a tunnelish path. Then a pink stripe burned past Adam’s chest—all too close—and he followed the werepire, choiceless, breathless.

The senior officers knew all too well what was transpiring, and they had the perfect counter. One shouted, “Men—wolves, I mean! Track him! We practiced this!”

They had to stop Dracula’s clear, now-predictable path of destruction. One brainy mass of troops, in a whirl of shields, bunched together at just the right moment, catching his shadow like a snake in a cage—and, as a bonus, Adam too. Now frozen, Dracula had no choice but to rematerialize.

“Grrses,” he growled. “This bodes a little less well for me.”

“ALL IN THE CIRCLE, AIM!” advised the loudspeaker. “MOSTLY FOR DRACULA! HOWWWL!” The shields turned aside and the muzzles came forward.

“Adam, I have one more techniques to share, one that is guaranteed to astound you. You have watched me shift to werewolf shape, watched me melt into shadow; now watch again, if indeed you can believe your eyes!”

They shot their guns. He snapped his fingers. Dracula, sire of the eventide, disappeared, and as Adam ducked, the laser rays crossed harmlessly through thin air. Commend the soldiers for their aim; during one sublime moment the beams intersected in perfect asterisk. They had not missed, but their target was…for he had become mist, particulate moisture! As for the disruption that ensued, thank none but Dracula, ruler of gloom. Every laser hit the hand of an officer, and the pain was so great that they needed to shake their smoking hands and blow on them, after flinging their guns backward—a full hundred meters.

A squad hovercar’s driver, a lieutenant close to panic, raised his wristmmunicator and commanded, “All hands! On guard! Stay calm, wait for orders! He’s gone into an invisible werewolf state!” Rookie cops yelped with fear! The lieutenant added, “He’s...he’s mist, guys. Just look for air that looks kind of damp—”

A wild scream cut him off. The cops around his car were collapsing into chaos!

“Oh no, I meant don’t look! He’s using the Evil—”

Everywhere the wolves broke ranks and ran screeching. Adam held his position in the bedlam, crouched under the tramping boots that, momentarily, forgot him.

The lieutenant yelled, “Shut your eyes, I say!” But his men and women mobbed his car, as though he were foe!

Suddenly one comrade opened the door, tossed the lieutenant to the rabble, and snatched the wheel. The lieutenant gawked. “Goodness sakes, officer, have you gone mad?”

The burglarizing hound turned to him with a deranged look in his eyes and said, “Yes!” Then he stomped the gas and rocketed off, straight upward, into space.

At least the rotor-lacking hover-copters high in the sky were safe, probably. “ALL PERSONNEL BE WARNED!” cried a sniper with a loudspeaker. “DRACULA IS USING HIS EVIL EYE WHILE INVISIBLE! TO AVOID BRAINWASHING, PLEASE CAPTURE HIM WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED!” His vehicle was knocked to the sands by three rogue squad cars, landing with a pouf in a soft (but regrettably distant) dune. The nine other copters, by twenty-seven cars, met the same fate.

Was the crouching Adam defenseless, or were his instincts at the ready? As unruly policewolves scattered like ants, one crafty team, with their wits still about them, sought the answer. The most daring member stealthily creeped behind Adam, stopped her own head-moon in mid-orbit, and with it smashed him in the back of the head. He reeled, falling to his side.

“Blazes!” he cursed.

“Pile on!” The team jumped onto his back, their heaping bodies pressing him into the desert. He struggled and winced. Though his strength was massive, their mass was stronger.

Dracula, witnessing this, cried out. He could not be seen, could not be located; he was crying out from seemingly anywhere. “My friend! I will assist you shortly! Struggle lightly if you can!”

Somehow he was found. A large net was thrown from a squad car. It draped gently over a person-shaped patch of air—bullseye.

In that instant, the craze of the wolves was smothered by a hush and stillness. They wiped their eyes...and became exultant.

“We caught ‘im!” marveled the squad car driver, he who had cast the final trap. “We got ‘im with the bat net!” He and five passengers left the car and jigged victoriously.

Swiftly Dracula melted into mist and deflated the net, leaving through generous holes. That’s when the wolves stopped their dance, opened their trunk, and initiated stage two: the humongous pet carrier and the cordless blow dryers. Their warm gusts blasted him into his new home.

Dracula revisibilitized behind bars. “Curses! Myself, foiled!”

“LET’S GET THEM INTO CUSTODY, WOLFRYBODY,” said the loudspeaker cop from earlier, who had just finished his return trek from a soft dune two kilometers south. Rather than risk removing the wolfpile to take Adam away, he decided to play it safe and call an Egyptian forklift company.

“We have not lost yet, Adam, my fellow in vampirism!” cried Dracula as two officers began the slow and cumbersome process of lugging him away. “I have fallen but I still believe you can get up!”

“How, I beseech you, how?” inquired the vampire mummy with muffled voice (which Dracula could hear with his monster hearing). “How, when you are done? You, who have the powers of all manner of magic, yet have fallen to lupine forces? I am not even a candle against your heat and radiance! I am nothing but a mere Frankenstein’s monster!” His dried tear ducts manifested tears.

“You have spent your entire life running,” said Dracula. “From your creator. From hunters. Even from Mary Shelley herself. But this is a new era, for the world just as much as for your very being! You are no longer the same Adam you once were; even a casual glance assures me of this! I may have the blood of the wolvy with me, but there is a juice running through your veins far richer than my own aristocratic plasma: that of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ozymandias!”

That flicked a switch inside of Adam. He truly was anything but the man he used to be. Now, in fact, he was one, maybe two more people.

Dracula roared, “It is the era of Adam! You must do the chasing from now on! Spread your vampire wings and fly!”

And the wolfpile burst asunder!