Dracula’s friends had been strung along from the very beginning! When that black cat first entered the forest, she rattled off a spell which created one, two doubles! (The spell for this was not Bubble Gubble Double, but the less-intuitive Fake-Me Lake-Me Crake-Me).

Eventually, slumped in defeat, Adam and Robert would rejoin Dracula at Stonehenge. In the meantime, the chief vampire laid on his back, watching the skies through irritated eyes. He said, “Ho hum.”

The majority of stars weren’t stars at all. They were aircraft, or spaceships, and their patterns were erratic, fast or slow. The more Dracula tried to focus, the less he could see. He did notice several spaceships constantly pausing to back up, over and over, which was excruciating because when you’re flying you can just steer back into place. It’s not like you’re parking, man. You’re in outer space.

But rather than cry over the disruption of the constellations, Dracula chose to accept it. Progress cannot be taken back, after all.

“Looks like warmed-over kitty litter, doesn’t it?” said a newly familiar voice.

“That is one way to describe it.”

The cat was back, without her hunters. She sat down right on Dracula’s chest and stared into his face. “So,” she said, “what brings ya to Stonehenge, Drac?”

“Even the felines have heard of the vampire!”

“Well, what, didja think I throw garlic into the faces of everyone I meet? Yeah wrong. I just purrfur to have conversations one-on-one. Rather than one-on-some.”

“I understand the feeling at times. Listen...I have heard of a cat with a storied past living in these parts and just had to beg your assistance.”

“Mrrrowr,” she meowed in lieu of “hmm.”

“As king of the night, I seek an audience with the man who did this to the night sky. But to fulfill such an impossible task, I need people with special talents.”

The cat gasped with excitement, and her eyes grew as if she had seen a sheep-sized rat. “Are you going to make him fix it?”

“I plan to stop him from doing the same to another moon and another planet.”

“What are you, kitten me?” she barked. “Why should I go out of my cat schedule to help some bat save some aliens? What have aliens ever done for me?”

“I understand that this may be much to ask for,” said Dracula, staring into the cat’s eyes, his heart genuine. “In your lifetime, you have faced far too many trials. You healed with witchcraft in the sixteenth century, and for thus intervening in the lives of countless humans, pets, and woodland creatures, you were burned at the stake. But you managed, by the skin of your teeth, to send your spirit into a cat. Townspeople grow old, but you live on, returning to this circle to renew the magic vows.

“You may try to live apart from humanity, to encounter them only as you please, but look—the forest is peeled back further and further into nothing. This ancient stone circle will not hold for long.

“Now, if you were to ask why you should help me, subjecting yourself again to the world of humans, I could not give you a proper answer…”

“There’s a ‘but’ coming, isn’t there,” she said.

“Correct. If you can bother with my silly whim and my coup is successful, I still do not believe I can give you back the sky of your youth, but...”

“I do happen to enjoy the flying stars, mind you,” said the cat as she lightly leaped from Dracula’s body. “Their colors are nothing like the white stars. A little closer to the Christmastime lights I see when I travel into town. They’re gorgeous.”

Dracula pondered this, nodded, and said, “Then I supposed it is no great loss to keep those where they are. Ah—look, you may like this.”

He pointed to the sky, and the cat turned to see. A satellite, due to a server malfunction, had just caught fire and was hurtling down through the Earth’s exosphere, due to splash and simmer in the ocean. From here it looked like any star or ship, only it was a jot brighter, glinting warmly. The cat reared up and swatted at it, and swatted at it again, and then a third time; she would never swat it.

To regain the diminutive dame’s attention, Dracula pushed himself into a proper sitting position, faced her, and, insofar as he could, bowed to her. “But I can give you the moon.”

She settled, and chuckled. “Really, meow.”

“On my pride as an immortal vampire I do swear it. I will do my best to fulfill this vow before your nine lives are up, my cat friend.”

“I’ve had longer than nine lives’ worth already,” she snarked, “but for what it’s worth, I’m Trials, Trials the witch cat. I’d say it’s a pleasure, if it was.”

“Likewise,” the vampire agreed. Then the two shook a hand and a paw, because they were a man shaking hands with an animal. This made a band of four. “Now, what of my two acquaintances”

“Go in the woods and find out, Drac.”

It was not long, however—two seconds, in fact—before the silhouettes of Robert and Adam burgeoned on the horizon. When they spotted Dracula, they began to run; when they were close enough to spot Trials at his feet, they seemed caught between joy and frustration.

“My fellows, this is Trials,” said Dracula, “a specialist of the spelling sort.”

“Oh, they know,” she said with a wink.

Robert meant it when he said, “You, really, here? That, wonderful!” So too, though, did he mourn his aching calves as he realized that the chase through the forest had been for nothing. It was all the cat’s own caprice…unless playing along was her own cat-price—!

Adam kneeled to the cat’s level and cautiously held out a fist for her to sniff. He said, half to himself, “You wanted to show us humanity’s wrath. To teach us, perhaps? To demonstrate why you fear even us, the monsters in human shape?”

Trials yawned and said, “The whole rejecting-non-werewolf-animals thing was more of a welcome coincidence. You buffoons aren’t scary. I cough up worse things than you.”

“That is…reassuring?”

Dracula, well satisfied by this reunion, clapped his hands to hurry them on. “Now, then! Our time is only getting shorter. May I escort you all to the bat?”

Trials piped up, “I don’t know, may you?”

“Ah ha! I do believe I am going to like this.”

Adam and Robert exchanged furtive eyerolls.