The mighty Adam rose and roared with a savage fury not seen since the year 1818—and the orange sun disc on his headdress roared too, with relentless flame. “HUROOOOOAH! With my left hand, I invoke the name Ramses!” And that hand he raised, with fingers curled. An infinite brightness erupted from his headdress, drenching the sandscape in yellow-white!

The many myriad moons of the wolfmen shattered, perishing under such concentrated solar strength. The mob’s furred forms un-transmogrified into the human shapes natural to them. Some were fat, some were skinny, some were tall, some were short, and all, horrified.

Thus Adam retroactively realized a curious thing: every werewolf had looked the same. Their pelts had been the same shade of brown, their muzzles had maintained the same length, and even their heights had stood at precisely five feet, ten inches.

Even stranger, they were less afraid of Adam than of seeing their current skin-covered selves.

“Don’t look at me, guys!”

“Turn the werewolf back on!”

“Don’t look at my fleshy faaace!”

Adam had rolled back the clock to pre-werewolfinization days, revealing their old human faces with this light, a ghastly mirror. Now every last wolf, plagued with shame, cowered behind any and all available cover. Their faces were hidden by helmet visors shoved down, by shirt collars tugged up, and even by the sand, ostrich-style.

Dracula watched bemused. The light died down, revealing that he had phased mistily through the pet carrier and reclaimed his human shape. Good thing sunlight passed harmlessly through mist! Now he leaned coolly against the carrier's bars. “So much for being a mere candle,” he chuckled in astonishment...but the real astonisher was yet to come.

Adam’s papyrus tracks began to move on their own, the shorter ones merging to grow longer, the longer ones miraculously multiplying. They made circles along him, as if these his wrappings were paper coils. Then they, like so many snakes congregating, moved to the top of his headdress. But this papyrus did not simply drape down and waft in the wind as party streamers. Rather, it became even longer until all the tendrils reached the sand, where they strengthened and steadied themselves. Like a hut’s roof they surrounded him—save a gap in the front, for enemies to see his face. The paper snakes raised Adam a little, holding him inches aloft; now they were his feet, or, rather, his slithering serpent tails!

His eyes burned with the fury of the Egyptian summer sun...with a vampire in it. A vampire wearing SPF 5000. He declared, “With my right hand, I invoke the name...of Dracula!” And the six papyrus tails glowed with blood-red writing—not hieroglyphics, but “VROLOK” over and over again, down their whole lengths, as if by magic.

Officers behind riot shields peeked at their peril. “Oh no,” one said, “that means ‘vampire’ in Slavic!”

Then finally Adam cried out, “Wolfmen, I! Am! ADAM!” He threw his right hand before him, thus commanding dozens and dozens of the wraps to rush forward—and to weaponize! Their tips spun into the shapes of sharp fangs...just like the teeth of a vampire. Operating on their own limited sentience, these snakes fanned out and pierced the necks of all the officers, who, gasping, were too boggleminded to move. Then Adam bent his fingers. Swiftly and with the sound of many small children with bent straws slurping the last drops out of soda cups, blood was shlepped through the bandages, and it traveled their lengths into Adam’s body.

After a mere two seconds, the deed was done, and the dozens of foes all fell into an anemic nap, due to recover by next morn. The last of the copters and squad cars crashed in Giza’s sands, which, again, were famously pillowy. Just as Adam with his left hand had crushed them all in daylight and released them into night, so now did his right hand free them from a strangledom of wraps. The papyrus tails set him down, and all the other strips bolted back into place, into Adam, their king, their tape measure. Adam had won.

But wait—he was struck with fright! Was not Dracula allergic to sunlight, as in all the myths and vampire tales!?

“Fear not!” assured Dracula, returning to his side. “One might suspect that the light of the sun would reduce a man such as myself to dust, and that it does, if my flesh is too strongly or too longly exposed! I cannot remain in misty form for long, but five minutes a day has been more than enough.” With a wink he added, “I do try to avoid sunburns as best I can.”

“And thus have I saved my savior,” laughed Adam. He inhaled the air of a liberated man. Now he was free, free of loneliness, of helplessness, of sarcophagi. He truly was a vampire and a mummy...and a Frankenstein. Technically.

“The night may be young, but I say we have had too much excitement,” Dracula reckoned. “Come! Let us take our leave and have respite. There is still so much work to be done, and so much to tell!”

“Where, pray tell, shallst we be headed for?” inquired the curious Adam.

“My house, my home, my aircraft—and my pet. Come, Bistritz!”

Not far away, an enormous and, come to think of it, conspicuous sand dune wobbled apart and revealed a gigantic castle in fourteenth-century style, built to perfection save its utter lack of windows. It was borne by a truly titanic vampire bat, to whom the dune was naught but a little dust to shake from his back and furry head.

The valiant vampires strode over. Dracula gave Bistritz’s chin a hearty rub and chucked three strawberries into his mouth. “I raised him from birth with special techniques. He is not only a loyal friend, but also my Castle Dracula, undetectable to radar. Let us enter from the sides, much faster; note these stairs.” Bowing and showing the way, he said, “I invite you into my home, my fair Adam.”

Those were the words Adam had wanted to hear for almost one thousand and two hundred years.

***

There once was an American governmental institution known as “The White House.” Alas, by the year 3001, cultural tastes had risen and fallen, and the people had voted for a remodeling. As such, it was now “The Brown House,” and shaggy with furs.

In an oval-shaped office, its walls lined with moon rocks in commemorative cases, a wolfman sat at his desk. He stared up and ahead, watching a screen built into the wall above the doorway: a routine transmission from the moon’s remains, plus newsflashes and stock prices racing along the bottom.

“Mr. President, sir.”

The wolf looked down. There in the doorway was a stateswolfwoman in shades and a sharp suit. There was, aside from clothes, no physical difference between them, but she did speak with a British twang.

“It appears that Dracula has been spotted in Egypt raiding tombs.”

“Ah, Dracula,” the president sighed with what definitely sounded like a French brogue. “My old friend.” The sarcasm was bitter and—forgive the pun—biting. Beneath his muzzle sat a name plaque reading, “PRESIDENT IGOR.” “Tell me, Alice, how is he doing?”

“Bad, Mr. President. Obviously.” Her tone was level despite the gall of her words. "You may outrank me, but I feel the need to put my foot down this time. Given recent affairs in the Brown House, he has to have something planned, and as for what it is, I have—pardon the expression—a hunch." As all who had read Igor's memoir knew only too well, his immaculately backed wolf form concealed his human self's hunchéd spine. "Give me free rein and I’ll sniff him out, and put him away for good.”

“I have always had faith in your survival instincts, Alice. But why, pray tell, should I let my Head of Defense run into harm’s way to track down a single vampire?”

“We are not looking at a single vampire anymore. The situation has turned into vampires.”

The president's expression hardened. “Do you mean to tell me he’s revived a mummy from ancient Egypt?”

Alice unfolded her paw-like hand to present a small floating future technology screen. It showed a miniature mummypire assisting the world government’s public enemy number one. “I have reports from officers stationed near Giza that he hasn’t gotten just any mummy. It’s Frankenstein.”

“You...you don’t mean...with the bolts in the neck?”

“Sir, do you see any bolts?” she said. “I don’t. I don’t see any bolts."

"An honest mistake."

"Get back on topic."

"After you."

Alice didn’t miss a beat. "This creature destroyed a squadron’s mini-moons in one blow with the power of the sun god Ra...allegedly.”

“That’s Horus. Horus was the sun god.”

“I know,” she said, laying a hand across her forehead. “It’s nonsensical and I hate it. You see now why I must end this.”

“Of course,” he said with a dash of sympathy. “You are certain you can arrest the man who has run from me for a thousand years?”

“It would be a wonder if I couldn’t, arooooo,” she swear-howled. She took her leave triumphant, but stopped short to turn back and ask, “Just double-checking. Are the world delegates still slated to meet with you at the end of the week?”

Igor smirked. “Which world are you asking about, exactly?”