A door next to the hearth swung open. She had been standing behind it the entire time. Alice removed her edgy sunglasses (for only then could she see) and hung them on the neck of a secret agent trademark: the black overcoat. Her human, unharmed, fair-skinned human face placed her age around thirty-five. Blond human hair extended to her shoulder blades, tied back with a red ribbon. With so many recognizable character design elements, it was more a wonder than ever why she usually kept the werewolf on.

Her wristmmunicator, its speaker and microphone cranked up hyper-high, not only picked up everything Alice heard, but also broadcast words from the World Capitol itself. But not from Igor.

“This is Commander Alice Liddell speaking,” said Alice, raising the ‘mmunicator to her lips just for show. “Everything is in top shape.”

“Woof! I mean, excellent,” said a feminine voice with an odd metal sheen, an imperfection which seemed to betray the limits of even the most spectacular watch technologies.

Every other body in the room went rigid.

The words of Dracula slid down the stairwell like swamp ink: “So Igor’s people are trickier than I thought.” In a flash, the Count himself was back, staring Alice down again. This time his allies and the fireplace sat between them, Trials riled, Robert rising—and Dracula told them, “Stand ready to strike, my friends, but make way.”

“H-hack…cough!” bluttered Adam, who yet wiped garlic from his tongue. His present condition was his own fault, in a way, for Alice had fed him garlic by opening and resealing his soup can. We might still pity him; his era was not familiar with craft glue.

“Here stands the murderer of a sworn friend. This is why I do not tend to associate with the non-vampiric: they’re always coming over uninvited.”

“The only time you’re wasting with your speeches,” Alice said, “is your own.”

Dracula, in one deft and fluid movement, whirled forth and thumped his forehead into Alice’s, eyes swirling in a typhoon of color. She was drinking in the Evil Eye!

But then a beacon lit the room—beacon of death! Just as soon as Dracula used the Eye, he reeled, as if forced to withdraw his blade by the weapon of a different enemy…for the sun had lanced his back! Light streamed through that single window in the pilot’s room, striking him with one long cylinder. Bistritz, his trajectory locked by that unholy bike chain, had broken through to the dawn.

The eyes of the buckling Count lost their tantalizing glamor, and his bodily strength departed with the dark. As he writhed on the carpet, that solar lamp blared across his chest, his face, his terror-stricken eyes.

While he struggled in this state, Alice kneeled and reached into his cloak to pluck out the vial of golden moon. She rose, leaving him as little more than a withered man, re-aging.

As soon as Alice popped open the vial, the gold within surrounded her in a halo. A trace of sunlight was caught in its glint, with a dread arcoiritic effect. How did the moon gather in this way? It was magnets in the moonstone did the trick! As time crawled by, the halo would clump together again, and the moon would become as it once was.

Alice intoned, “It’s not murder if they’re criminal. It’s execution.”

Through his vast twitches and wormy sweat, Dracula tried, of all things, to boast and banter. Sad display! He stammered with a vibrating smirk, “It ap-p-pears my own powers have been r-r…restricted…”

Robert roared into action, racing toward Alice. “This, not, stand!”

But Alice, with a flick of the wrist and nary a glance, seared his chin with a purple laser blast, sending him almost into the fire, the deep-seated phobia! He crashed onto the brick and thwunked to the floor. Trials pulled away her soup can just in time.

Adam, too smackjawed by the flurry of action to speak (and pinkish from the chokesome garlic), at least could begin to fight back. His mummy wrappings coagulated on his headdress now; two tendrils became false arms, propping Robert up against the wall, and the others moved to strike. Twenty lashes came together in facsimile of meat tenderizer and flew for Alice—hitting nothing but a microwave-ready bag of rice, tossed from Alice’s pocket. Rice, like a white firework, spritzed everywhere on the rugs and castle stone! Trials pulled away her soup can just in time.

Suddenly the tenderizer went slack, and collapsed into piteous paper.

“Curses!” Dracula belted out with a jolt upright, a move as shocking as if from a corpse. Was this a second wind? No…it was something far more curious. “Oh, curses, what a mess,” he continued, crawling to a few grains of the rice. “So…many…grains of…rice. E-excuse me, all, let me count these up. I must know precisely how many grains there are.” By compulsion he picked up the grains, one by one, to arrange in neater piles of ten, all on his hands and knees.

“Oh, rice,” muttered Adam, sounding exhausted. He dragged himself to Dracula’s side to help…help him count rice, that is. Actually, he was making himself a burden, taking some rice from Dracula’s piles to bolster his own.

“Stop that,” Dracula said, and he took some back.

“Hm! That old trick works even better with two vampires,” Alice observed. “I’m a woman who knows all your weaknesses. Call me superstitious if you must, but I have been raised among far stranger beings than you lot!” With hands plunged into her nefarious pockets, she turned to the fish, then the cat reluctant. “Fire for fish, water for cats. Correct?”

The two could not suppress their audible gulps!

Alice lobbed a vial of holy water at Trials, but Robert, diving before her, absorbed the blow, taking it like a succulent. “Ree!” he shouted in his famous wild-boar tone; glass and his body shimmered on the carpet.

“Me-yow!” cried Trials. “Looks like we’re outta here. Transport Blood-Sport Tennis Court!”

Nothing happened.

“Thought, you, could, just, make, up?” said Robert, fish of frustration.

Alice had just unsheathed a flamethrower, a fold-out model which went from pocket size to over-the-shoulder bigness, when a strange twinkle-twinkle sound punctured the room…almost like that puncturing sword of light now hovering inches from Dracula, except this time for the ears. The sound hung in the air. The commander now stood frozen, terror-stricken. Robert and Trials watched her and gulped, but it was a gulp of a different color, one of vigilance.

They heard a coming patter of tiny feet.

Alice stared ahead, at the wall. “They’re here for me,” she whispered.

“Who?” said the metal voice in her wristmmunicator.

She screamed, with a fury beyond anything even the World President had witnessed, “Wonderland!”

“Rice,” breathed Adam. Dracula slapped his hand.

“Oh, no,” rasped Robert, shoving himself off the floor, “not, Wonderland!”

“Wonderland!” Trials repeated with some elation, remembering it as the home of a feline relative (Uncle Smiles).

Robert mumbled with rollened eyes, “Maybe, good, you, join.”

Then the patter reached the room: nothing but a tiny squirrel in adorable human clothes, running on two legs. Clearly he was only passing through—in delightful fashion. “I’m late!” he was chirping. “I’m late! Somebody follow me out of curiosity, or to make sure I safely reach my destination! I’m laaate!”

Too many times had Alice followed squirrels, rabbits, and similar tardy animals; she well knew that whosoever followed that furry psychopomp would be led to Wonderland, a place of utmost nonsense. No, they did not even need to follow; if the squirrel’s offer had no takers, he would grow tired of the game, his character would change, he would be forceful and devious…as had been experienced by many a soldier in her employ. Treating the squirrel like a lobbed hand grenade, she fled the scene by twirling into a closet.

Trials also knew the dangers, but, evidently, did not mind or care…for when the critter passed by, she was off, kicking up carpet in her wake!

“Oh, you,” Robert moaned, and whatever the opposite of humor may be, it echoed in his voice. He watched her chase the squirrel into the hall, heard the faint beginning of a spell—and then they were gone. And still Alice hid, as if some fallout left by the squirrel needed to die off before she would risk emerging. Ah, well…

Robert knew that Alice was anything but defenseless. Rather than go for a foe he could not beat, he surely needed to pack some heat—or find some other Alice-harming wolfsbane. So Robert, too, disappeared into Bistritz’s depths, only in a direction entirely other. And the vampires remained counting, counting.