Later, back in Chicago, Dema's family was gathered in Sedna's sitting room, anxious to hear all about her recent adventures. They listened attentively as Cern and Dema recounted their days in Denmark and Germany, tracing the heritage of the Stag-Horned Man. They perked up at the story of the crop circles, the Green Man, and the meeting with Dame Agatha, and listened even more attentively. But when Dema told them about Avram, they could not keep still.

Kore spoke up first. "He was a ghost, and you didn't even know it?"

"Not just a ghost, he was a vampir."

"You mean a vampire? Did he want to suck your blood?"

"You might say he was a reformed vampire. But he admitted he was tempted."

"Were there other vampires?"

"Lots of them. Not like in the movies though. They were all really just ghosts."

"It's never like in the movies," Sedna added, "But as usual there is a grain of truth in the old stories."

"In this case the truth was Vlad Dracul."

"The real Count Dracula?"

"The very one. And he at least had managed to maintain a corporeal appearance. He was quite a gentleman."

"Until his thirst overcame his self control?"

"You might say that."

"By then we had learned enough about vampires to recognize him for what he was," said Cern. 

"We did not really know how strong he had become."

"We thought we had him fooled, and maybe we did. But we were wrong to think he would be easy to handle."

"True. He might have killed us both, as he had many others, if we hadn't been in the cavern."

"The cavern?" Sedna perked up. "You mean..."

"Exactly. The very cavern where the Lamia was born."

Naga said, "You found it?"

"Vlad found it. He invited us there for a concert. It was grand, wonderful. All the guests enjoyed it immensely."

"Other guests? Did he...?"

"He let them go. They never knew."

"He wanted only you," Sedna stated with certainty.

Dema nodded, and so did Cern.

"He couldn't take his eyes off of her. He called her a truly classic Romanian beauty." Cern said this proudly, looking at her, and Dema blushed.

"He knew who you were all the time?"

"No, not until the end. I was hiding that from him."

"We began baiting him, trying to break his self-control. It worked, but then he got angry and violent." 

"With one backhand swipe he knocked Cern over the railing and off the platform. I stood up to face him, to keep him from going after Cern in his rage. I thought he would attack me physically too, but he didn't. Instead he froze. 

"For a moment I thought he was afraid of me, but then I felt myself—my body—being drawn closer to him. It was a physical compulsion, not acting on my will, but on my bodily substance. Feeling the threat, my body instinctively tried to shift to Lamia form."

"Big mistake," muttered Sedna.

Dema nodded. "In the instant when the shift began, he struck."

"Like when Chaos turned you into goo?" asked Kore.

"Worse. He sucked all my substance into himself. I was bodiless, and he had become physically huge. I thought I was done for."

"But...you weren't."

"No. I would have been, and Cern too, except for the one big mistake he had already made."

"The cavern."

"Right. He didn't know it, but I was at home."

"So...what did you do?"

"Being bodiless, I did the only thing I could do. I reached out with my shaman awareness. First to Cern. He was okay, still groggy but coming around. Then to my surroundings. Vlad had locked onto my body matter, I couldn't draw it back. But he was totally focused on himself, holding his own body together. 

"I realized he had trained himself in this, because it took a lot of his attention just to hold the form of his body. I knew the reason it took so much effort was that he didn't have much external agreement with being what he was. The only reason he could succeed at all was that he did not have much disagreement either. In fact, he had constructed a world for himself where he was accepted as what he appeared to be.

"But that was in the world above, in the fortress. Alone, in the cavern, it was different. I reached out to the life around me, the layers of bacteria coating the walls of the cavern, permeating every tiny crevice, deep into the rock. Through them I could feel how the life in the cavern resonated with the deeper life essence that is Gaia, permeating the whole biosphere of Earth. 

"She responded, if that's the right word, reinforcing my sense that Vlad was not just an anomaly but anathema to all that life represents, a parasite, a deceiver, diverting the essence of life to no purpose beyond his own deviant ends. By channeling that added agreement with my own will I was able to draw my substance away from Vlad, and assume my Lamia form. 

"And more. I enhanced the physical presence of the Lamia by borrowing substance from the cavern biomass, so that I stood there as more than a match for Vlad. But he did not relent. He remained stonelike, focusing all his will on holding his form in defiance of the Lamia, and of Gaia herself."

"What happened then?"

"Cern saved the day. While Vlad was focused on me, Cern snuck up behind him and stabbed him with a stalagmite."

Kore clapped her hands. "Did it work like a wooden stake? Did he go poof?"

Cern was grinning. "Near enough."

Dema grinned too. "Last we knew, his ghost had taken up residence in a swarm of bats."