SENATOR DRACULA

Prologue

“The White House has been stolen!”

The young horseman raced down Pennsylvania Avenue through the dark Washington night, a lantern gripped in one white-knuckled hand and the reins of his frothing horse in the other, as he tried awkwardly to point with the hand holding the lantern. He shouted again, trying to make his voice heard over the clatter of hooves on cobblestone, terror creeping into his voice.

“The White House has been stolen!”

Gliding through the air alongside him, silent but for the sound of his sleek velvet cloak flapping in the air, was a tall, slender man whose pale, aristocratic face reflected the moonlight like a signal mirror. Although the horse was galloping at a full gallop, the floating man had no trouble matching its pace. In contrast to the horseman’s wild-eyed panic, his eyes were the exact opposite of wild.

Without slowing, he turned and spoke in a voice that was rich, honeyed and mysterious, like a steak dipped in honey and then hidden under a pillow.

“Simon, calm down and lower your voice. Surely you know my night vision far exceeds yours. I noticed that the White House was missing six blocks ago. But let us not jump to the conclusion that it has been stolen. Besides which - if it has been stolen, we might yet happen upon the thief, if you have not scared him off with your girlish alarm.”

The lack of a functioning circulatory system had many advantages...but one of the most important for a man in a position of power and responsibility was literal cool-headedness. Simon lowered the lantern, took a deep breath, and nodded silently. He had learned to take strength from his Dracula’s confidence and steely resolve.

“But Senator, who would want to steal the White House? And why? And more importantly, who?”

Senator Dracula’s pale, ageless eyes narrowed, and his thin, bloodless lips cracked the barest hint of a smile. “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

---

Chapter 1

January 12, 2016
Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.

Senator Dracula’s eyes opened slowly and focused on the fine-grained wood of the coffin’s interior. 

This was perhaps his favorite coffin, a sleek burgundy casket hand-carved from coastal redwood, rich and lustrous. It had been a gift from the famed conservationist John Muir in 1898, after Dracula fended off attempts by William Randolph Hearst to construct a massive redwood-fueled boiler to heat San Francisco Bay, for reasons unknown. 

In gratitude, Muir had constructed the coffin from dozens of fallen redwood branches. While Dracula thought that modern-day bans on such extravagant gifts to members of Congress were good for the republic, he treasured the coffin. Lying in its inky blackness, he traced his fingers over the engraved message Muir had left on the inside of the lid. 

Thank you, Senator. Because of your efforts, those trees you saved might even outlive you. Ha ha, just kidding. You will never die. Hope you enjoy this coffin!

Your friend, famed conservationist John Muir.

P.S. - As a reminder, I’d be ok with being turned into a vampire, and I’m not getting any younger. Just saying.

Dracula smiled, remembering the series of increasingly urgent telegrams Muir had sent near the end of his life, begging to be made immortal. The truth was, Muir would have made a terrible vampire. He was a man of his era, and had never contemplated the ecological impacts of eternal life - the guilt of buying his hundredth pair of hiking boots or his thousandth walking stick might well have driven him mad. Environmentalists are not well-suited for immortality.

The senator cocked his ear. Like all vampires, he could hear the sun, usually audible as a sort of low-pitched, cranky groan, occasionally punctuated by a solar flare, which sounded exactly like what you would think a solar flare would sound like. Hearing nothing, he pushed the lid open and sprung forth from the coffin like a novelty snake from a fake can of peanuts. 

208 years of seniority in the Senate earned a nice office, and his was second to none. On the fourth floor of the Russell Senate Office Building, it had a view overlooking the Capitol from the northeast, enough room for four of his best coffins, and 14 foot ceilings from which the senator could hang in bat-form. This came in handy when he was feeling contemplative, or -- as had happened on more than one occasion -- when he wanted to make a visiting lobbyist feel particularly uncomfortable. 

He strode to his desk and pressed the intercom button on his phone. “Miss Anderson,” he commanded, “I have awoken. What is my itinerary for this evening?”

A room away, Dracula’s personal secretary Madison Monroe sat up with a start. Even after working for the senator for three years, the late hours taxed her. She napped at her desk whenever her boss was cocooned deep in his dreamless slumber, waiting for night to descend upon the city like a smoky black shroud. 

Madison pressed the intercom button on her own phone, her finger quivering slightly. She still was not used to the raw power of the vampire’s mesmerizing charisma. After just a few words from the undead lord, Madison felt as if her blood cells in their millions were vibrating in resonance with his voice. In fact, while speaking with him, she often found herself gradually, unconsciously tilting her head to expose her carotid artery - a habit the vampire, not usually the jovial sort, never tired of joking with her about. 

His effect on her could be a little unsettling. But it was the price she paid to work for the senator she believed to be the most principled and effective legislator in history. America was a more free, prosperous and just country thanks to Senator Dracula’s service since the earliest days of the republic. And if effecting meaningful change meant living in a waking fever dream, caught in the orbit of an ancient vampire at the height of his dark powers, it was cheap at the cost. Plus, she wanted to go to law school, and a letter of recommendation from a renowned, successful vampire would help her application.

Madison took a deep breath, splashed cold water on her face from the bowl of cold water she always kept at her desk for that purpose, and responded in her most professional voice, which she thought of as “Susan.” 

“Good evening, senator. It is now 5:02 pm. Sunset was at 4:59 pm, and sunrise in Washington, D.C. will occur at 7:25 am tomorrow. 

“Your first scheduled appointment is a meeting with your senior staff at 5:30 pm to discuss ongoing projects, the beginning of the next session of Congress, and any unusual dreams or portents.

“At 7 pm, you are scheduled to appear at a fundraiser for Senator Rosenthal at The Capitol Grille. As a reminder, she asked if you would entertain her donors by allowing the chef to sever one of your fingers, and then regenerating it.

“You also have a request from the Secretary of the Interior to meet at 8 pm. He said it is regarding ‘The Blue Vanishings,’ and that you’d know what he meant.”

Madison heard a harshly uttered curse in some long-dead tongue from the senator’s office. The next thing she knew, he was gusting through her doorway as a cloud of black smoke and materializing in corporeal form just inches from her. His eyes were blazing with cold fire, and his voice gripped her like a talking clamp.

“Miss Anderson, I need you to think very carefully. Are you quite certain that he said “The Blue Vanishings?” 

She nodded, afraid but also certain. “Yes, senator. I wrote it down on a Post-It and stuck it to my computer screen. See, right there!” Dracula’s eyes darted to the note, just above one that said “don’t forget, Madison, refill bowl of water on desk!” 

Without pausing, he extended a long, pale finger to the note. Instantly, it - and the computer monitor - burst into a venomous green flame. 

Before Madison had time to even think about dousing the fire with the other bowl of water at her desk (the one she kept for putting out magical fires started by Dracula), the monitor and its notes were reduced to a pile of gray dust, crackling with sparks of green electricity. 

Dracula turned to her and frowned.

“Miss Anderson, I respect Interior Secretary Brown, but he was careless to speak so freely. Now, forget that you ever heard that phrase - wipe it completely from your memory.”

Madison frowned. “Well, I’m happy to try, senator, but you know how they say that if you tell yourself ‘don’t think of an elephant’, it’s basically impossible to stop thinking about an elephant because even by thinking ‘don’t think about an elephant’ you're thinking about one and…” 

Dracula interrupted. “I apologize - I am still half asleep. Please let me try that again.” 

He cast his hand in a slow, graceful arc, light from the overhead fluorescents glittering off his bejeweled rings in a dazzling rainbow of reds and blues. He leaned forward, his eyes drilling into her like the “eye drill” he’d kept around his castle during the middle ages, for emergencies. 

“Forget that you ever heard that phrase - wipe it completely from your memory. I command you!” 

Madison’s eyes glazed over. Sleepily, she asked, “What phrase, senator?” 

Dracula nodded. “Thank you, Ms. Anderson. Please tell the senior staff that I am ready for our meeting. And please take the evening off, starting at 8 pm. I expect my meeting with Secretary Brown will be a long one.”

Madison perked up. “Oh really? Thanks! My boyfriend and I have been wanting to go see this new movie…”

Dracula again raised his hand to interrupt her. “When I said ‘take the evening off’, I really meant ‘you can leave a little early and work from home or something like that.’ I guess it’s ok if you go see part of a movie, if you use it as your lunch hour, and keep your cell phone on, and work quietly at your laptop while in theater.”

* * * * *

Interior Secretary Barnabus Brown sat in his office, gazing warily at the leatherbound tome sealed with an ancient and rusting padlock, and bearing the inscription “The Blue Vanishings” on its dusty, cracked binding. 

He remembered the day he’d first seen the book like it was yesterday. And he didn’t even have a good memory. That’s how important this book was.

Following Brown’s Senate confirmation as Secretary of the Interior, the outgoing secretary had approached him after the floor vote, gripped his shoulder, and asked in an urgent whisper, “Barnabus, do you like books? Because I have a book that is going to blow your mind.” 

Brown hated books. But he was still too new on the job to admit it, so instead he had simply nodded slowly, and said, “Books are my jam. I hope I get to read one soon. What have you got?” 

And thus began his initiation into the deepest, darkest mystery of the United States - the mystery of the The Blue Vanishings. 

Brown had listened, his jaw cartoonishly dropping lower and lower, as his predecessor told him the shocking truth. Since the earliest days of the republic, some of most important physical symbols of the nation had inexplicably vanished, seemingly into thin air. Beginning with the disappearance of the White House in 1798, this phenomenon had been going on for decades. 

Worried that these vanishings would undermine Americans’ confidence in their young country, or in objective reality itself, the Founding Fathers had decided to keep them a secret. They and their successors replaced the lost objects with copies as quickly as possible, and revised history books, newspaper archives, and personal diaries to resolve any nagging inconsistencies between the original object and its copy.

The effort to maintain secrecy had been successful. You could fit into one large, William Taft-sized bathtub the number of Americans who knew that the original White House was -- as designed by George Washington -- a featureless black marble pyramid with no entrance or exit. 

But no satisfactory explanation for the vanishings had ever emerged. And no matter what safeguards were put in place, treasures kept disappearing right under the country’s nose. Including literally, when Teddy Roosevelt’s 2,000 pound granite moustache was stolen from Mt. Rushmore in 1965, and had to be replaced overnight with a concrete facsimile designed by an amused Andy Warhol. 

The “The Blue Vanishings” book chronicled each of these disappearances, and served as a record of generations’ efforts to solve the mystery. It was passed down from Interior Secretary to Interior Secretary, each one adding any clues discovered during their tenure. Aside from the business cards that said “Secretary of the Interior,” it was the most important thing inherited by each incoming Secretary of the Interior. 

No bookworm, Secretary Brown had asked his wife to read the tome after it was entrusted to his care. She told him that one name appeared over again and again throughout the decades as the American who had done the most to try to crack the case: Senator Dracula. And so when he found himself facing a Blue Vanishing of his own, Brown knew there was only one person he could call: Senator Dracula’s scheduler, to set up a meeting.

* * * * *

Senator Dracula had been invited into the Department of the Interior many times before. So, having been invited, he had no need to go through security. He could have simply transformed into a bat and entered the building through a cracked window or mail slot. 

But if years of working in Washington had taught him one thing, it was that people resented it when you cut corners and broke with established protocols. So Senator Dracula passed through security along with the mortal visitors, politely declining a security guard’s request that he pose for a picture with him by pointing out that the vampire appeared in photos and videos only as a ghostly shimmer that was cool to the touch.

Secretary Brown was waiting in his office, idly flipping through the The Blue Vanishings book looking for illustrations. He stood and shook hands with the vampire, whom he’d known since his own days in Congress. 

“Dracula, pal, it’s great to see you, and thanks for coming on such short notice. I know my message was probably a little cryptic.”

Senator Dracula sat, crossing his long legs and leaning back into the chair, then leaning forward when he realized the secretary had a pair of pants draped over the back of the chair.

“Barnabus, you know that no subject will galvanize me like the The Blue Vanishings. I count my failure to protect this country’s historic treasures, starting with the White House, as among my greatest disappointments - second only to my failure to prevent slavery from gaining a foothold in the Thirteen Colonies.”

Secretary Brown nodded. “My greatest disappointment was probably the series finale of ‘Lost.’”

Dracula frowned. “Yes, well. What brings us together this evening, Mr. Secretary?  Have you discovered new information that might lead us to the culprit?”

Brown shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, Dracula, I’d be lying if I said we’d spent a lot of time on this lately. Honestly, these days, I’m pretty focused on the seal.”

Dracula nodded, an expression of concern crossing his smooth, ancient face. “Yes, I’ve heard about the challenges the elephant seals are facing - in fact, I’ve cosponsored a bill to ban offshore drilling in California. But…”

Brown shook his head. “No, senator, not seals. Seal. Our Departmental Seal.

“It has a buffalo on it, which used to symbolize great wide open spaces and America’s rich natural beauty. 

“But these days, focus groups are telling us that when people see a buffalo, instead of thinking about the Great Plains, they think about bison burgers. Which isn’t really on-message for us. So we’re researching whether to change the buffalo on our seal to some other animal. Maybe a seal?

“But there are some other considerations too - the American Buffalo Promotion Board wants us to keep the buffalo on our seal, and they’ve gotten the Senate Bison Caucus to lean on us, so there’s...”

The senator rolled his eyes upward...then continued to roll them all the way around until they emerged again from his lower eyelids. Brown’s words petered out and he involuntarily shuddered at the reminder of who he was dealing with. 

Dracula smiled. “Are you finished? Good. I don’t have all night - I want to be back at my office by 9:35 so I can call my secretary Madison to make sure she kept her cell phone on during the movie. Now please tell me what news you have of the The Blue Vanishings.”

Brown gulped, and nodded. “Yes, of course senator. It’s quite simple, actually. I got a report this afternoon from our Miami office that I suspect might be related to the The Blue Vanishings. But I can’t be sure, and I wanted your advice.”

Dracula leaned forward even farther than he’d already been leaning, and only his supernatural agility prevented him from toppling forward onto the carpet.

“You see, Dracula, it’s about the Florida Everglades.”

“What about them?”

Brown pounded his fist on his desk, his fury rising like a pot of ramen noodles about to boil over.

“Senator Dracula, the Florida Everglades have vanished!”

* * * * *

Dracula’s head was spinning as he left the Department of the Interior, reeling from the shocking Florida news that had been dropped on him like swampy, muggy bomb. 

As various bureaucrats recoiled in terror at the sight of his rapidly spinning head, he walked out of the building, passing from the comparable warmth and coziness of the agency’s headquarters into the cold, dark Washington night. 

A heavy snowfall had begun, and the senator paused on the sidewalk to reflect on the latest vanishing. His black cloak waving in the night breeze like a pirate flag, he tilted his face back and tried to collect his thoughts, as the snowflakes collected on his cold, lifeless skin, one by one. 

The age-old vampire’s earliest years had been spent along the Mediterranean, stalking the warm, mosquito-haunted nights along the wine-dark sea. But as the centuries passed he had moved north, to the snow-blanketed pine mountains of central Europe. 

Ever since then, he had felt most at ease in a world gripped by the cold hand of winter. And the feathery sensation of snow accumulating on his face reminded him of the countless nights he’d spent lying alongside some remote dirt road deep in the forest, still as a stone and lost in thought under a snow drift, waiting for solitary traveler to pass by.

The Florida Everglades! The Blue Vanishings thieves had not struck Florida since 1982, when they had stolen the Florida Citrus Bowl. With no time to create a convincing copy of the magnificent original, with its crystalline spires and hanging orchards, the Bowl had been replaced with a massive sports stadium in the hopes that the football-crazed locals would be too excited to remember what they had lost. The plan had worked - but only just barely. 

Dracula brushed the snow off his face with one elegant gloved hand and walked toward the nearest Metro station, occasionally levitating to avoid a snow drift or icy patch. 

* * * * *

As the Metro train lurched into motion, the senator heard a sickening crunch, and his eyes darted opened like a pair of spring loaded roller blinds improbably being raised in unison. 

At the other end of the empty train car sat a dark figure, hunched low, its face hidden by a shapeless hat. As Dracula watched, the head moved in a bobbing motion, like a sinister pigeon drinking from a fetid, oil-slicked puddle. Maybe a puddle of blood. And with each bob of its head, there was a wet crunch, as if it had crushed a rotten bone between misshapen teeth to suck the greasy marrow within.

Or, possibly the person was eating an apple or a pear. Dracula had some experience with the sound of jaws crushing bones, and the more he listened, the more he was certain it was instead someone snacking on fresh produce. 

With this realization, anger rose in him like a disgruntled ex employee taking the elevator to the top floor to confront the boss.

Eating was specifically prohibited on the Washington Metro. In Dracula’s view, this alone kept at bay the entropic forces that had turned the New York subway into a kaleidoscopic nightmare of filth and decay. Enforcing the rule was not within the normal purview of a U.S. senator. But Dracula believed, like his old squash partner Edmund Burke, that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Dracula rose like a lightning-creased thunderhead swelling to fill the sky. His pale eyes shifted to a dull, throbbing red, and the air around him filled with an angry hum. He stood, his power crackling audibly like a bad fuse, and waited for the scofflaw to look up so he could patiently but sternly explain the Metro system’s unbending rules on food and drink. 

But the solitary figure at the end of the train car seemed to take no notice. Its birdlike, jerking motion continued, punctuated by the occasional sound of moist chewing.

For the first time in a long time - or at least since Secretary Brown had told him about the theft of the Everglades a few minutes earlier - Senator Dracula felt a hint of unease. 

The train car was empty but for him, and the cloaked, chewing fiend. Glancing past the seated form, he noticed the next car was empty as well. Fighting a hiccup of irrational fear, he turned and looked behind him. The next two cars in the other direction were empty as well. 

With growing concern and just a hint of alarm, Senator Dracula extended his senses out in either direction down the train, focusing his long-dead eardrums like radio telescopes to catch the faintest sound of a pulse or rustling cloth. There was no human sound. The entire train was empty. 

But tuned to their highest possible sensitivity, his ears noticed something else. The slightest whisper of lips over teeth. 

Under its hood, the figure at the end of the train car was smiling. 

The jerking motion and crunching sounds stopped. 

Dracula’s unease blossomed into fear like food coloring dropped into a child’s bath to distract them from trying to eat soap. 

The vampire had dwelled on the earth for centuries. But he was not immortal. He could be killed, and in his long years he had seen many careless vampires destroyed. He felt dread creeping toward him down the length of the train. This was no different than the irrational panic Dracula sometimes felt when he was climbing the stairs up out of the basement, and felt the blackness closing in behind him. He simply needed to confront this miscreant.

“You there, in the hat. There is no food or drink permitted on the this train system. I strongly recommend that you disembark at the next station and dispose of your snack, before someone alerts the transit police and they ticket you.” Dracula let that implied threat hang in the air.

The figure did not react. It remained perfectly motionless. Or rather, it was bumping around from side to side, but that just seemed to be because the train ride was so bumpy. Dracula thought the figure would have been motionless if it were sitting on the couch or something. 

Determined to press the issue, the vampire took a step toward the figure, then another, then another. 

“I repeat: there is no food or drink permitted on this train. You are in direct contravention of Metro’s rules. Why do you not respond when I address you directly?”

Dracula stood directly over the mysterious rider. It was draped in layers of heavy clothing, and Dracula could not see its face, or hands, or any other part of its body. And, infuriatingly, it still had not acknowledged his presence.

Dracula decided he had had quite enough. He was a centuries-old  vampire. He had seen the Parthenon built and the library at Alexandria destroyed. He was the seniormost member of the United States Senate. He would not be ignored.  

“I insist that you attend to me! Eating on this train is absolutely forbidden, and I command you…”

The figure’s head snapped back and faced Dracula. Its hat was still pulled low, and only a broad, moist mouth was visible, grinning widely. With one gloved hand, it flourished a half-eaten head of garlic like trophy, and sneered in a man’s voice, “Senator, your days of commanding are over!” 

Before Dracula could react, the man spat a pulpy mash of raw, chewed-up garlic all over the vampire’s face!

Dracula collapsed to the floor of the train, his mind twisted by searing pain. As he rubbed his face against the train’s carpeting, trying in vain to wipe off the garlic, a hand gripped his ankle like a vise and pulled him down the aisle. Dracula kicked, but in his garlic-weakened state it was a light kick, like playfully kicking a malfunctioning TV. He frantically tried to dematerialize into a cloud of smoke, but the agony of the burning garlic prevented it. He called out hoarsely.

“Identify yourself! It seems relatively unlikely that you just happened to be eating raw garlic on the same train car as me. So I can only assume this isn’t just another case of someone getting mad when I scold them for eating on the Metro. Who are you and why have you attacked me?”

The garlic-spitting attacker hissed in response, his voice dripping with even more derision and hate than a hissing voice usually does. Whatever you are imagining, it was even more intensely hate-filled than that.

“There is a natural order of things, Dracula. History is river. Some among us, like a majestic sturgeon, will swim its length. Others, like an old refridgerator someone dumped off the back of a pickup truck, will just sit in the muck at the bottom of the river and rust. You are sitting in the muck. You have been stuck, immobilized by your narrow-minded perspective on this country and its destiny, for the past two hundred years. It is time to haul you out and dispose of you properly so that the river can flow unimpeded to the sea.”

Dracula heard the door at the end of the car kicked open and felt himself dragged toward it. The low drone of the train’s massive wheels rolling relentlessly over the tracks was loud and close. Vampires could be destroyed by decapitation, and the senator knew immediately that his attacker meant to throw him under the train. 

Grasping for handhold with one gloved hand while frantically wiping garlic off his face with the other, he stalled for time.

“But you haven’t told me who you are. Why does history need your help attacking an old, weary vampire who is just trying to keep the Metro system clean?”

There was short barked laugh.

“The only thing keeping you in office is inertia, old man. This system is rigged to benefit incumbents - when was the last time you faced a viable challenger? So long as you’re in a position to keep funneling federal dollars to the Dracula Center for the Study of Blackout Curtains at Dartmouth, the notoriously greedy people of New Hampshire will keep electing you to one six year term after another.”

As the man spoke, Dracula suddenly remembered his pocket square. The senator wore it as an affectation and rarely thought of it as having any purpose other than to make him feel fancy. But it was made of the finest cashmere, a gift from King Malcolm II of Scotland after Dracula drove Scotland’s troublesome native ogres into the North Sea, where they turned into oil. 

The handkerchief was soft, attractive...and absorbent. Dracula ripped it from his pocket and wiped it down his long, pale face, the garlic coming away in thick wet glops. Almost instantly, his focus returned, and his terror turned to anger. But like an enraged possum bent on blood-drenched revenge, he played possum, waiting for his moment to strike. The hissing man continued his rant.

“But I, and my allies, refuse to let these New Hampshirites continue to send you to Washington, where you pose an obstacle to the ambitions of those whose vision for the future exceeds your own.”

Feigning weakness, Dracula gasped out, “But who are you? What allies? What vision? Before you destroy me, at least let me enjoy hearing the totality of your evil scheme!”

The man again laughed. “Well, I guess there’s no harm in that. You see, I…”

But before he could utter another word, the man was interrupted by the train’s loudspeaker. “This is McPherson Square, transfer to the orange and blue lines, doors open left side.”

The train lurched as the conductor applied the brakes. Unprepared for the deceleration, Dracula’s captor tumbled backwards out of the door to the next train car, arms flailing as he grasped desperately for the doorframe. 

Dracula leapt up, all pretense of weakness gone, and reached out to grab the man before he fell onto the tracks, determined to hear the end of his story. But his clawlike fingernails hooked only the man’s weird hat. Without another word, the man lost his balance, fell off the end of the train, and was crushed beneath the wheels like a misplaced sack of rats someone lost on the subway. 

Dracula stood in the doorway, the man’s shapeless hat in his hands, looking down at the tracks as they rushed by. It had been a close call - not his closest ever, but close. A close call to being his closest close call. 

And he was not sure what to make of the man’s strange ramblings. The hissing, garlic-spitting commuter had spoken of “allies,” and “those whose vision exceeds yours.” Was he an assassin sent by a shadowy cabal bent on imposing some sort of dark, terrifying “vision” for the future? Or a lone gunman, his soul poisoned by a violent hatred of the Senate, or vampires, or New Hampshire, or all three? And most importantly - was this related to the disappearance of the Florida Everglades?

Only one thing was certain. The enigmatic man had spouted a lot of nonsense about Dracula only winning elections because he was an incumbent. Hearing that kind of crap made Dracula feel like resigning his seat then running as a challenger, just to prove that he could.

---

Chapter 2

July 14, 1967
San Francisco

Senator Dracula looked out over San Francisco Bay, his black cloak whipping in the wind like a velvety sting ray having a seizure. 

The moon rose large and milky white over the water, illuminating a scene of frantic, breakneck construction. Hundreds of steelworkers, clad in black jumpsuits and communicating only via hand-signals and the occasional obscene gesture, were placing the final beams of a magnificent span across the bay. 

Hovering aloft were four firefighting helicopters whose water tanks had been filled with reddish orange paint. Dracula knew that the instant the last steelworker finished screwing in the last bolt, the bridge would be sprayed down with quick-drying paint. 

By morning, no one would ever suspect that the Golden Gate Bridge had been stolen.

“Quite a sight, isn’t it, senator?” 

The woman next to Dracula was gazing at the bridge through binoculars with a wolfish grin. The binoculars were large, but not even the largest binoculars could conceal her stunning, icy beauty. In fact, the length, curves and binary symmetry of the binoculars seemed to accentuate those same qualities in her long, curvy, symmetrical body. 

While Dracula’s own carnal desires for women were literal rather than figurative, he understood why his aide Todd kept stealing glances at her. To keep from having to memorize too many new names over the decades, Dracula always called his aides Simon. And while this Simon was better than most, he was, like the others, disappointingly human.

The vampire responded to the woman's question by nodding. Then he realized she couldn’t see him nod with the binoculars on, and spoke.

“I will admit that it is quite a sight. Although it cannot help but fill me with sadness, because it reminds me of the original bridge that was stolen just hours ago, and this is but a shallow imitation.”

The woman’s full, pillowy lips twisted into a sneer like a pillow twisted by a long night of tossing and turning. “I’m sorry you feel that way, senator. Although my company has created a bridge that looks identical to the original, so as to keep the theft a secret, we have also improved on the original bridge in dozens of ways. For instance, it now has two spans. And it’s made out of steel, instead of fool’s gold left over from the rush of 1849. It’s now a much stronger bridge.” 

She lowered the binoculars and turned to face Senator Dracula. “Why, it might even outlive you, senator.” 

Dracula met her gaze, suspecting that her comment was a veiled threat, or possibly even a regular threat. He decided to respond in kind. As chair of the Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee, he could have prevented her company from winning the secret contract to replace the Golden Gate Bridge - and he could easily block government work for her company in the future. 

“Nothing lasts forever, Ms. Evil. Not bridges, not the ageless undead, and not even corporations. What percentage of your firm’s revenue derives from federal government contracts?”

Elsebeth Evil shrugged. “It’s well known that Evil Industries does a lot of work for the government - that’s been the case since my great, great, great-grandfather Horatio Evil wove blankets out of cobwebs for George Washington’s army at Valley Forge in 1778. But you’d be mistaken to assume that we rely on your committee’s money, Senator - or on anyone else’s. Evil Industries’ history of smart investments means we literally have more money than we know what to do with.”

As if to punctuate her point, Elsebeth took off a garishly large diamond earring and threw it into the bay. Dracula made a mental note to retrieve the ring when sea levels dropped during the next ice age. Oblivious to his mental glaciation period calculations, she continued. 

“In fact, we took on this project not because we needed the money, but out of a sense of duty as good corporate citizens. I expect to lose money on this project - I’m sure you noticed that our bid was quite low.”

Dracula frowned, and nodded. He had noticed. It was the only reason he had allowed the contract award to proceed in the first place.

* * * * *

Four days earlier, the crimson red phone in Dracula’s office that connected directly to the Oval Office had begun to ring. The senator had put his flagon of blood down on the desk and eyed the phone with concern, worried that an old cycle was beginning anew. 

In his experience, presidents reaching the end of their administrations became increasingly obsessed with securing their legacies. And, more often than not, this meant calling on the vampire to use his unholy powers on their behalf. 

Sometimes it meant asking him to solving a thorny policy problem. Sometimes it meant begging for the dark gift of immortal life, so that they could continue to write tedious, score-settling memoirs long after their political adversaries were gone. And sometimes it simply meant asking Dracula to talk them up whenever future generations of historians were compiling “best presidents” lists. 

So when Dracula saw that President Lyndon Johnson was calling, he frowned. He had already offered to help Johnson extricate the United States from Vietnam by conjuring an otherworldly, disorienting fog over the whole of Southeast Asia. At the time the proud Texan had denied him haughtily, but he might now have changed his mind.

As it turns out, Senator Dracula had misread the situation entirely. 

“Dracula? This is Lyndon. Are you there?”

The Texan’s accent always reminded Dracula of the Magyar-accented German of the Hungarian nobles who had ruled over his lands in the Carpathian Mountains during the 16th and 17th centuries. Much like President Johnson, while they they held nominal power over the vampire, they admired his wisdom and approached him with respect and caution. 

“Yes, Mr. President, it is I, Senator Dracula. To what do I owe the pleasure?” .

“Well, Dracula, it’s a helluva thing. I guess you know about The Blue Vanishings, don’t you?”

Dracula hit the ceiling, literally. Then, taking a deep breath, he calmed himself and slowly drifted back down to the floor. 

“Drac, are you there? Hello? Hellooooo?” 

The vampire cleared his throat.

“Yes, Mr. President. I am, of course, familiar with the The Blue Vanishings. In fact I helped investigate the very first one - the theft of the White House, where you sit at this very moment.”

Johnson interrupted. “Dracula, let me stop you right there. I’m not sitting, I’m standing up. Helps with the circulation.”

Dracula responded curtly, anxious to get to the topic at hand. “Well, on behalf of vampires everywhere, thank you for maintaining a robust circulation. Now, you were about to reveal tidings of The Blue Vanishings?”

“Yes, of course. Dracula, at approximately six o’clock this morning California time, a commuter reported the Golden Gate Bridge missing. A Park Ranger confirmed that fact about 15 minutes later. He tried walking out on it and it wasn’t there, so this definitely isn’t an invisibility situation. It’s just gone.”

Dracula nodded. “Has anyone else noticed? As you know, historically we’ve managed to keep these disappearances out of the public eye.”

“Well, as luck would have it, the boys in Langley were already running an operation involving pumping massive amounts of nutmeg into the San Francisco water supply in order to freak out hippies. So, we’ve just had them quadruple the dose. 

"My advisers say there may be some long-term affects to the area’s economy, but for now things are ok. Anyone who claims that the bridge is missing is being told they’re in the middle of a dream. 

“But Dracula, this is a short-term solution at best. Our strategic nutmeg reserves buried under Mt. Hood are running low, and pretty soon folks are going to catch on to the fact that bridge is gone. I know you’ve been involved in a lot of these situations in the past, and so I wanted to reach out to you for help.”

Dracula leaned back in his chair. From his desktop, he picked up a small glass vial filled with crumbling dirt - a memento from the cavernous hole left behind when the White House had gone missing. He had sworn that he would keep the dirt until the day he solved the mystery.

That day had not yet arrived. He replaced the vial next to the long series of similar ones, each of which represented another missing monument. And another failure.

When visitors asked about the strange vials of soil, he told them they held soil from his many graves around the world, and that only if every one of these graves were blessed and exorcised of his otherworldly energy could he himself be destroyed. Then, when they looked confused, he would sigh and say, “like a horcrux.” 

This was, of course, a lie. Any sunny day could bring an end to his long tenure in the Senate. But the tale distracted people from the terrifying truth: no fewer than 32 of America’s most powerful national symbols had been mysteriously stolen.

“Mr. President, thank you for calling. I am at your service. I have walked this earth for many years, but in all that time few mysteries have vexed me like this one. I am, of course, sorry that another treasured monument has been stolen. But if there is a silver lining, it is that this theft affords us a fresh opportunity to rain vengeance down on the culprit. 

"My advice is that we act swiftly, before any pertinent clues evaporate. And needless to say, we also need to act quickly to replace the bridge, before anyone notices it missing and a general panic ensues.”

Johnson agreed. “I agree, senator. I’ve got a plane fueled up at Andrews and ready to fly an FBI team out there. We’ve already spoken with a few contractors who handle large-scale construction work and solicited bids. Evil Industries, out of Bethesda, came in with the low bid. We’re expediting the approvals now.”

Dracula leaned back in his chair, frowning. “Mr. President, I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but I am not among Evil Industries’ admirers. Precisely how low was their bid?”

“Dracula, you’re not going to believe this. Their bid was one dollar! To build a whole bridge! Admittedly, we’re talking 1967 dollars, but still, that’s a pretty low bid!”

The vampire raised one soot-black eyebrow. He reached up with a pale finger and brushed the soot out of it, smiling as he remembered the wastepaper basket fire he’d started earlier that evening in the men’s restroom. “Mr. President, that sounds a little too good to be true.”

Johnson make a little “hmph” sound by blowing air out of his nose. “Dracula, that’s still a dollar more than we would have had to spend if the bridge hadn’t disappeared. From my perspective we should be thanking Evil Industries.” 

Johnson paused to take a breath, and Dracula started to wonder if all this audible breathing was some sort of typical Lyndon Johnson alpha male power display to make Dracula feel self-conscious for not needing to breathe. While the vampire pondered this thought, Johnson continued. 

“And they’ve assured me that they can keep this a secret. Their attractive CEO Elsebeth Evil told me none of their construction workers would ever breathe a word about it anyone. Specifically, she said that as soon as the workers finish that bridge, they’re not going to be saying anything to anyone about anything.

“But Dracula, here’s my question: should we keep this a secret?”

Senator Dracula stood, walked to his office window, and gripped the windowsill. On the street, a parade of citizens strolled by in their bell bottoms and beads and fringed leather jackets and Afros and paisley shirts, enjoying the night air and the freewheeling spirit of the 60’s. 

And, perhaps, enjoying their ignorance.

He sighed. Johnson had asked a good question; one he himself had pondered for centuries and debated with some of the nation’s greatest minds. Should the American people be told about The Blue Vanishings? 

Throughout history, there had been those who insisted yes. How can a government ruled by the people endure if the people were kept ignorant of the greatest threats facing them, they would ask, a little sanctimoniously. 

On the other hand, there were those with a darker view of the human heart. They argued that the country’s freedoms, such as they were, could not survive the revelation that a shadowy, unstoppable power could strike into the heart of America and steal its greatest treasures at will, like pigeon swooping in and stealing hot dogs from a picnic table, one after another, until all the hot dogs were gone.

Dracula could still hear the arguments echoing throughout the ages. Then he realized it was just Lyndon Johnson’s voice, squeaking tinnily from the phone receiver. He returned to his desk and lifted it to his pointed ear. 

“Dracula, hello? Helloooo?”

“Yes, Mr. President, I am here. I was reflecting on your question. It is one that occurs to every president at one time or another.” 

“Dracula, that’s exactly what I thought. Because listen: do you think this missing bridge counts as a great challenge? People always say presidents can only be truly great if they’re faced with great challenges, and I’m worried my window is closing to be presented with a great challenge. So is it a mistake for me to keep it a secret, and pass up this opportunity to be remembered?”

Dracula closed his eyes, feeling the weight of the ages upon him. “Mr. President, in this case, I think it would be best to maintain secrecy.”

* * * * * 

Dracula fixed Elsebeth Evil with his mesmerizing stare and nodded. Seagulls spun overhead, scrying the choppy waters of the bay for fish.  

“Yes, Ms. Evil, I am perfectly aware that your company submitted the lowest bid. Unbelievably low, in fact.” The vampire gathered his cape about him and rose up to his full height. “And now, if you will excuse me, I intend to continue my investigation of the crime scene.” 

Elsebeth nodded and smiled. “Of course, senator. May I accompany you? I’d love to see a master at work. I understand you’ve investigated many, many of these crime scenes over the years. Many of them.” Her smile had turned into a smirk by the time she was done talking. 

Dracula rolled his eyes and looked over at his aide Simon, who was humming a Janis Joplin song and reading The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and otherwise trying to help everyone remember it was the 60's.

“It is a free country, Ms. Evil. I will not tell you where you can and cannot go. But do not impede my investigation.”

The three of them approached the bridge through a broad, grassy field. Dracula glided inches over the ground, dew from the grasstops collecting on the toes of his jet-black boots and soaking into the leather of some long-dead and best-forgotten creature. 
Elsebeth, wearing stiletto heels, picked her way carefully across the ground like some kind of long-legged, sexy insect wearing impractical shoes. 

Dracula knew they had left the grass and reached pavement when Elsebeth’s heels began to click, and Todd’s sensible loafers began to make a sensible rubbery sound. They’d reached a large, circular parking lot located just at the entrance to the bridge. 

The vampire had only owned a car once, during the 1920s, when he had engaged in a race from New York to Los Angeles against F. Scott Fitzgerald. So he was admittedly no expert. But still, given that there were no cars in it, and there were no nearby buildings, and that it was not connected to any road, it seemed like an odd parking lot. 

Then lowered his feet to the ground and discovered something even more odd. 

Dracula’s internal body temperature matched that of a frozen grave in dead of a wintery night, so he was particularly sensitive to heat. He could sense the presence of a warm-blooded creature from dozens of yards away, even through thick walls. And so he noticed immediately that the pavement was warm. 

“Simon, reach down and feel the surface of this parking lot.” 

Dracula immediately sensed Elsebeth tensing ever so slightly, like a guilty thief who is tense because you just discovered an important clue that could unravel her whole evil plot. Simon was limited by his mortal senses and, oblivious to her sudden discomfort, he reached down and touched the parking lot. 

“Do you notice anything unusual?”

Simon frowned. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Touch your cheek to it.”

Simon, with unfailing trust in the senator’s instincts, bent over and touched his cheek to the pavement. “I think maybe it feels warm?” he said, uncertainty in his voice. He sat back up...and his cheek was covered in yellow paint. 

“Simon, your cheek is covered in yellow paint!” Dracula looked down at the parking spot the congressional aide had pressed his face against - the yellow line demarcating the spot was slightly smeared. “This parking lot is warm, and freshly painted.” 

He turned to Elsebeth. “Is this your doing? A new parking lot is not included in your scope of work.”

She laughed nervously. “Senator, I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe the city hired a contractor to build a parking lot who used some kind of child's watercolor instead of road-grade paint? As to the warmth, it’s just the sunlight from the day. You wouldn't know, but it was an uncharacteristically warm and sunny day today. Case closed.” She made a gavel-banging motion with her hand. In the meantime, Simon knelt back down on the pavement and again pressed his cheek against it. 

“Senator, there’s something else strange. I use a pumice stone to exfoliate, to keep my skin looking young. And this parking lot, sir - it’s made out of pumice.”

Dracula’s brow furrowed. “Simon, I appreciate that you try to look your best. But my skin cells are just as immortal as every other part of my undead body, so I have no need for exfoliation, and no idea what pumice is.”

“Senator, it’s lava stone. This parking lot isn’t asphalt - it’s cooled lava.” 

The vampire’s furrowed brow became even furroweder, and he smiled, which is a difficult facial expression to pull off, even for a vampire. “Well,” he said, “not completely cooled.” 

He turned to Elsebeth, his entire body pivoting to face her like an antiaircraft battery tracking an enemy fighter. “Ms. Evil, how does this new finding fit your theory?”

The CEO took an unconscious step backward. Even in the pale moonlight, Dracula saw her pupils dilate as adrenaline pumped into her system, and he heard the deep thrumming of her blood quicken. But she quickly mastered herself. As the vampire gazed at her, her heart rate returned to normal, and she smiled and shrugged. 

“You’re the detective, senator, not me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go supervise the final stages of bridge construction, and make sure the workers...get what’s coming to them. I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again.” She turned and walked away.

“Of that, you can be sure,” said Dracula.

Simultaneously, Simon said, “Not if we see you first!” which made no sense in context of the situation. Dracula frowned at him. 

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Chapter 3

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Chapter 4

Chapter 5

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Chapter 6

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Chapter 7

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Chapter 8

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Chapter 9

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Chapter 10

February 28, 2016
​The Oval Office, The White House, New America
("New America" is a gigantic cavern miles beneath the ocean floor, in case you’ve skipped straight to Chapter 10.)

 

Senator Dracula stared at Aaron Burr in shock. How was the man alive, in 2016? And what was that contraption he was wearing?

Dracula spoke. “Burr, how are you alive, in 2016? And what is that contraption you are wearing?”

The contraption was a massive, intricate metal exoskeleton, buzzing with electric motors and pneumatic pistons. Burr was encased within the complex machine, controlling it with a series of levers and toggles. And while he was not a tall man, his head brushed the ten-foot marble ceiling of the room.

The former vice president laughed. And in the power of that voice, Dracula knew the truth even before Burr spoke it.

“Do you like it, Senator? I built the first version many, many years ago, not too long after you last saw me. At that time, it was powered by a rudimentary coal-fired steam engine. But I have improved it over the decades, and today it is powered by three coal-fired engines. It greatly magnifies my speed and strength. And I was an impressively swift and strong vice president to begin with!

“And as to how I am alive in 2016, 199 years after you and I last spoke? The answer simple, Senator Dracula. I am no more alive than you are.”

Burr smiled, revealing long, sharp fangs. Aaron Burr had become a vampire.

Well, that, or he was wearing fake fangs. But Senator Dracula was 95% sure they were real. Without a moment's hesitation, he darted forward too fast to see, both arms outstretched and his hands twisted into claws, ready to rip Burr from the robotic machine. But he was far too slow. Burr’s piston-augmented arm whipped out and batted Dracula away, sending the vampire thumping against the room’s black marble walls so hard the entire pyramid shook.

Senator Dracula leapt to his feet. Burr was shifting from left to right, the exoskeleton’s motors whirring. Dracula lunged at him again, this time feinting left. But again, the combined speed of Burr’s vampiric reflexes and his powered armor was too much for Dracula. The vice president’s gigantic metal fist grasped the senator by the neck and threw him into the office's massive wooden desk, exploding it into splinters with the vampire's impact. One shard of wood pierced Dracula’s back, and he gasped in pain. The wound had missed his heart, but not by much, and it would take a long time to heal.

He rose, this time more slowly and warily. “Burr, that desk was hand-carved by George Washington from one of the cherry trees he was constantly chopping down at Mt. Vernon. You’ve just destroyed a priceless piece of American history.”

Burr, who hadn’t moved from his position on the far side of the room, laughed again and shrugged, his metal exoskeleton amplifying the motion. “Dracula, I cannot tell a lie. I’ve enjoyed having Washington’s desk. See, I carved my initials in the top here, and for a while I put a notch on it every time I came up with a great idea. But I come up with great ideas all the time, so the desk was pretty marked up. Plus, I always forget to use coasters on it, so it’s gotten to have a lot of stains.

“At the end of the day, it’d been around for too long, and its time had come.” He smiled. “Much like you, Dracula.”

While Burr was talking, Senator Dracula had furtively grasped a long shard of wood from the shattered desk, and he now flung it across the room at Burr’s chest, slicing through the air like one of those shards of wood that pierce all the way through a tree during a tornado. But again, he was too slow. The robotic, vampiric vice president easily snatched it in midair and tossed it aside. Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Dracula darted up toward the ceiling, attempting to to fly over and behind his opponent. But Burr grabbed him by the ankle and whipped him to the floor, rattling his ancient fangs in their sockets.

Before he could rise, Burr was on him. One motorized arm pinned Dracula to the ground by his neck, while the other plucked a particularly jagged piece of wood from the floor and pressed it against his chest. Dracula called on all his ancient, supernatural strength to break free, but it was nowhere near enough--he felt like a child, struggling in the grasp of a some kind of evil, robot child.

Burr drove the wooden spar down harder against Dracula’s chest. It tore through his tie, then his shirt, and broke the surface of his bloodless skin. If Dracula’s blood could have gone any colder, it would have.

He looked into Burr’s eyes hoping to find mercy in them, but instead saw only fierce, supernatural power, and bloodlust. In fact, it was almost like looking in a mirror. And in any other circumstance he would have found it comforting in its familiarity. But if anything can dilute the solace of meeting a vampire, it’s having that vampire try to kill you.

“Now, Dracula, really. This flailing about is beneath someone of your standing. I’m not going to kill you, unless you give me no choice. In fact, I’m going to give you a second chance to make the decision you should have made in 1815. I’m going to give you the opportunity to join me in making a better world.”

Dracula’s eyebrows raised in skepticism, and Burr quickly corrected himself. “For us, I mean. A better world for undead vampire lords. Realistically, it’ll probably be a worse world for everyone one else.”

Burr lifted Dracula up into the air, still grasping the senator by the neck. “Now Dracula, please be reasonable, and stop struggling. I don’t care about destroying Washington’s desk, but there are a lot of other historical treasures in this building that I would have to throw you into if we keep fighting. There’s my vice presidential portrait. There’s my diploma from Princeton. There’s the ticket stub from when I snuck up to the surface and caught an original-cast performance of Hamilton, with my exoskeleton disguised as a forklift. I’d hate to see things of such value and importance destroyed because you persisted in these foolish attempts to defeat me.”

As he named these items, he shook Dracula left and right, swinging the vampire’s legs like a pendulum.

“And even a slow-witted vampire like you must realize by now that you cannot match my machine for speed or strength. So let’s behave like gentlevampires. If you don’t struggle, I won’t kill you. Well, at least not yet. Not until you’ve had time to hear my offer.” With that, he tossed Dracula across the room, but this time gently, like you’d toss a wad of paper into the wastebasket. 

Senator Dracula got out of the wastebasket, trying unsuccessfully to maintain his dignity, and eyed the vice president. The wounds in his back and on his chest ached. He knew that they would slow him down, and he also knew that it didn’t matter. Burr was right--in the metal exoskeleton, the vampire vice president was far too fast and too strong.

“Very well, Burr. What is your offer?”

Burr smiled broadly, stretching both steel arms out in a gesture of magnanimity and welcome. “Ah, Senator. I am so happy to have the chance to explain the situation to you.” He then tried to rub his chin in a thoughtful manner, his massive metal fist clanging against the exoskeleton’s helmet. “But, on second thought--why tell you, when I can show you?”

Inside the great metal robot, Burr’s fingers moved over a small panel with buttons and switches. With a deep groan, a section of the Oval Office’s black marble walls swung outward, opening the room completely on one side and exposing a view out into the vast cavern. The room was only a few feet above the fog that clung to the cavern’s floor. And off in the distance, Dracula could see the stolen monuments poking above the fog like a child’s patriotic toy set left abandoned in a bubble bath. The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. The Washington Monument.

Then, another section of the room’s oval walls slid open. Behind it was a glowing control panel with multiple keyboards and screens. The largest of the screens showed a map of the world. On it, a blinking icon shaped like a stylized drill hovered over Concord, New Hampshire. “You are here” was superimposed above an empty spot in the Southern Ocean, a few hundred miles north of Antarctica.  

Burr, in his exoskeleton, walked over the ledge that looked out over the cavern. With every step of the titanic machine, the building shook, and dust drifted from the stone ceiling. He looked out over the foggy vista, his back to Dracula. For a moment the senator thought to use this fact to attack him, but immediately thought better of it. Burr was a vampire, no less powerful than him. If Dracula sprung forward, the undead vice president would immediately sense it. And Dracula wasn't ready, emotionally, to get tossed in the wastebasket again. 

There was a long pause, as Burr looked out over the fog, lit an eerie green by phosphorescent cave moss. Dracula fidgeted, starting to get bored. Finally, Burr spoke.

“Dracula, I should have been president. I was America’s best and brightest. But I was betrayed by small-minded men who lacked my soaring vision for what this country could be.” He stopped, as if waiting for a response. After a few moments Dracula spoke, but mainly because it felt so awkward just standing there in silence.

“Burr, don’t be absurd. I don’t want to get into a whole alternate history game with you, but your career didn’t end because you were betrayed. You chose to challenge Alexander Hamilton to a duel and kill him. You chose to launch a conspiracy to create your own separate country. No one betrayed you.”

Burr spun towards Dracula, his eyes flashing, the gears and pistons in his exoskeleton screaming with activity. “America betrayed me, Dracula. I gave this country everything! I spent four long, boring years in the powerless post of vice president. I killed one of America’s most obnoxious and off-putting Founding Fathers. And what did I get for all that? Nothing! If, by “Nothing” you mean “I didn’t get to be president,” which is in fact what I mean.”

Burr turned back to the cavern, and pointed angrily with one massive steel arm at Mr. Rushmore, far in the distance. When he spoke, his vampiric voice dripped with contempt.

“Washington. Hmph. Jefferson. Ugh. And Teddy Roosevelt and Lincoln, those guys sucked too! I mean, they are all a poor-man’s version of Aaron Burr. In fact, that’s what I’ve renamed that particular monument, now that it is here in New America. ‘Mt. Poor-man’s Versions of Aaron Burr.’ Actually, a lot of the monuments down here now have names like that.”

Dracula cleared his throat. “But, Burr...what is New America?”

“It is exactly what it sounds like. The original America was ruined at birth, fatally flawed by its failure to elect me as president in 1800. This is a second chance.” He paused. “Well, a third chance, actually. When I realized that the first America had failed and it was my responsibility to create and lead a second version, I tried to do it in the arid southwest territories. But as you know, that attempt failed when I was charged with treason.”

“Well, Burr, to be fair, you did try to carve out a separate country for yourself. You were trying to undermine America.”

“I was trying to make America great again! But I learned my lesson: to create a new America, I needed isolation, and secrecy. I needed a pristine, empty land. And I needed power, Dracula. Power to compel men to do my bidding, power to bend the arc of history to my will, power to live long enough to shape the course of a nation. Power like yours.

“That’s why I asked to meet you in that New York tavern, so many years ago. I had just discovered, while secretly burying things deep in my backyard, of the existence of a vast empty world beneath the surface of the earth. The first time I visited it, I knew it would be perfect as the blank slate upon which to inscribe a new America. But this time an America led by me, not that hack Jefferson.

“But on that first visit, I thought to myself, ‘I’m a pretty handsome man. Do I really want to spend all my time down here in the dark, where people won’t be able to admire me?’

“And that’s when I had the epiphany, the one that has driven my every action for more than 200 years. I knew another statesman who wouldn’t mind ruling in the dark, far from the sun. A statesman who had the otherworldly powers I needed to build my new nation. And who possessed the immortality that could allow me to carry out the long, slow work of nation-building over the course of generations.”

Dracula figured Burr was probably referring to him but thought he should probably ask, just in case Burr knew another vampire politician. “Who? Was it me?”

Burr’s metal-encased head nodded. “Yes, Dracula. I realized I could use vampiric powers such as yours to found a new country, deep underground. And so I needed you to turn me into a vampire. After which I would rule my subterranean republic forever, with you serving by my side, as my butler.” Dracula frowned at that, but Burr still had his back to the senator, and continued.

“But you rejected my vision of a new, sunless America where vampires could rule.”

Dracula snapped his fingers with sudden realization, green sparks flashing. “And that is why you tried to assassinate me! Because I’d declined to join your conspiracy, and so you needed to kill me to keep your secret from leaking out!”

Burr turned and glared at him. “Dracula, I know you’re not a Princeton grad like me, and so you probably don’t know ancient Greek, but the “mono” in “monologue” comes from the Greek “monos” meaning “single,” meaning me. I'm the one explaining this sinister conspiracy.” The senator gazed coolly at him. Dracula did, in fact, speak ancient Greek. But this was not the time to point that out. Burr continued.

“Yes, senator, that’s why I tried to assassinate you. But despite basically doing everything but give you a notarized memo explaining the conspiracy, you failed to figure it out, so I decided it wasn’t important to kill you. Instead, I found another vampire who was willing to induct me into the dark undead brotherhood.” Dracula cocked his head to one side, confused.

“But wait, Burr - if you’d decided way back in 1816 that you didn’t need to kill me to keep the secret of New America safe, then who tried to assassinate me on the Washington, D.C. Metro, way back in the first ‘chapter’ of this long, strange, somewhat internally inconsistent journey I’ve been on?”

Aaron Burr laughed. “Oh, that was me who sent the assassin to kill you on the Metro, but it had nothing to do with New America. I just can’t stand you, so every few dozen years I send an assassin to try to murder you.” He shrugged. “Do you remember that time someone sewed a wooden stake inside one of your t-shirts, so it would stab you when you put it on? Remember when someone installed a tempting-looking tanning bed in your office? That was all my minions.” He smiled, reminiscing.

“Speaking of minions: even after I became a vampire, adding to my already-formidable powers as 'Aaron Burr,' I needed some minions to help me build New America. And so I set to work. Industrialist and merchant Horatio Evil was a friend, from his days as a defense contractor for both sides during the Revolutionary War. I made him a simple proposition -- help me acquire the necessary infrastructure for New America, and you, your descendants, and your employees can join me in New America. First as guest workers, and then we’ll see how things go. Maybe down the road I’d create a path to New American citizenship for particularly loyal and obsequious subjects.

"Because, you see, I needed their help. I knew that even having beloved American hero Aaron Burr as president would not be enough to make people believe that this was, in fact, a new America. I needed the artifacts and objects that make America America. So, with Evil Industries’ help, I set out to steal of all of America’s most essential national symbols.

"Because once I was in possession of the White House, the Washington Monument, the Eads Bridge, the bones of Vice President George Clinton...who could say that this was not the true America? Not that boring has-been country on the surface...but here, in this giant, green, glowing cave, ruled by me, cyborg vampire Aaron Burr?”

Burr pause as if expecting applause. But instead, Dracula still had one question for him.

“I still have one question, Burr. Where does the FEAR Act fit into all this? Why are you drilling for magma?”

“Safety, Dracula. To keep people safe.”

Dracula cocked his head to the side. “How does venting magma to Concord keep the people there safe?”

“Oh, well not those people, Dracula. No, they’ll burn to death when an ocean of magma rolls over New Hampshire like a flaming tidal wave. Every single person who lives on the surface will die, as the lava floods the earth and boils the sea. I meant that it’ll keep me and the Evil Industries staff down here safe.

“You see, the only real threat to us is that the United States will raise an army and send it on an expedition to the center of the earth, discovering and conquering us.

“It already almost happened once, when Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson tried to get the Senate to fund an expedition to center of the Earth in 1823. I was able to use some of my old Washington connections to get his measure defeated, but it was a close call. And I knew then that either the people living on the surface of the Earth would destroy New America, or it would destroy them. The world isn’t wide enough for America and me, you might say.  

“Evil Industries had already developed an impressive machine for drilling tunnels, which we had been using to steal national - the ‘Plot Boring Device’ Archibald Evil told you about back in 1872, when I stole the Eads Bridge from the people of St. Louis, and I guess also from the people of East St. Louis. I realized we could use this machine to drill the ultimate tunnel--one connecting the Earth’s surface to its molten core.

“And now, finally, the time has come. The moment I have waited for lo these many years. The panel that remotely operates the drill is here in this very room, ready to send the signal that will activate it and send it burrowing downward.

“And so, Dracula, the time has come for you to make a decision. I am going to activate the drill. And once I do, the die is cast. The surface of the world will be destroyed, New America will be the planet’s only inhabited country, and I will be its leader. You can join me, swearing allegiance to New America as its second citizen. Or, you can die.”

As Burr said “you can die,” a strong vibration traveled through the floor. The vice president turned, confused, wondering if he had just discovered a new vampire power, since new ones seemed to pop up all the time. To his surprise, he saw that Senator Dracula had moved, and was now standing by the drill’s control panel.

“A very interesting plan, Burr. Very complex. Honestly, maybe a little too complex. A little TLDR.” The floor vibrated again, and this time it was accompanied by a deep-pitched crushing sound. Burr’s eyes darted around the room, looking for its source.

“But you overlooked one thing, Burr. When I rode your little train here, there was a built-in screen that said “travel to NA yes or no” when I sat down. And after several minutes of giving it stern commands, I tried touching it. And you see, Burr, it was sensitive to touch! It was a “touching-screen”! I had no idea such technology existed! But I am not a slow learner. And so when I saw your control panel here, I knew just what to do. I simply touched the drill and moved it. Then, when the screen asked ‘Are you ready to get this party started?’ I pressed ‘Oh yeah.’”

The senator stepped to the side, so Burr could see the control panel’s main screen. On it, the drill icon had changed from green to a blinking red. And it was no longer over Concord. It was over “You Are Here.”

Burr gasped. “Dracula, what have you done? How is it it possible that the drill has moved all the way from New England to just off the coast of Antarctica!?”

Senator Dracula smirked, one fang poking past his lip. “Burr, I don’t know if you realize it, but your monologue went on for a long time.”

The floor shook violently, and from the cavern there was the sound of a booming explosion. Several hundred yards away, a massive, still-spinning drilling machine plummeted from the ceiling of the cavern, vanishing into the green fog and, unseen, shattering against the stone floor. Then, tracing the same path down from above came a thick white column of ice-cold seawater, pressed through the borehole with the force of a million tons of ocean above it, the cataract blasting through empty space and impacting on the ground with a deafening roar.

Burr began to rush forward toward Dracula, but the senator raised one slender pale figure in a somewhat condescending wagging motion. “Burr, are you really going to attack me, instead of trying to seal that hole before it floods the cave? The Washington Monument looks like it’s the perfect size to plug that hole and save your republic.” Burr hesitated, glancing first behind him at the water plunging into the cavern, then back at Dracula. “I’ll deal with you later, Senator.” With that, two jets of blue flame erupted from the the back of Burr’s exoskeleton, and he launched out into the cavern, toward the Washington Monument.

* * * * *

When Burr arrived at the base of the monument, the icy seawater was already chest deep, lapping against the giant obelisk’s sides. The thick white fog had been scattered by the water jetting into the cavern, and he glanced at the monument with trepidation. Dracula had been right -- it did look like the perfect diameter to seal the borehole. But he also knew that it was incredibly heavy. Stealing the monument had required a massive fleet of Evil Industries earthmoving equipment, and that task had only required lowering it down into the earth, not lifting it up. He knew even a vampire would not have the strength to lift it. But augmented by his powered exoskeleton, he thought he could do it. And with the water rising quickly and flooding the many stolen national treasures, there was no time to waste.

He dropped down into the water to get his hands underneath the bottom of the monument -- and heard a hissing sound. The electric motors of the exoskeleton ground to a halt, locking the suit into position, and Burr smelled a whiff of sooty steam. And that’s when he remembered the thing ran on coal. And as an energy source, coal has one single, minor flaw: you cannot burn it underwater.

The water still rising, Burr scrambled to release the exoskeleton’s latches and escape from the now immobile machine. He had no worries about drowning, but he wanted to seal the borehole before the cavern filled up any further. As he wrestled to free himself from the massive steel contraption, Senator Dracula floated down to hover next to him.

“Hello, Burr. You seem to be having some difficulties with your machine there?”

Burr glared at him. “Dracula, you would be smart to flee now, while you still can. I have other tools and weapons at my disposal, and once I manage to claw my way out of this thing I’ll destroy you, with or without it.” As he continued to grapple with the exoskeleton’s various switches and levers, the former vice president grew visibly exasperated, and switched tactics. Giving Senator Dracula the famed Aaron Burr puppy-dog look, he asked, “Although if you’re just going to hover there, it would really help me out if you could push the green button on the back part of the exoskeleton that opens the rear hatch, since I’m having a hard time reaching it. As a friendly gesture between vampires?”

For a moment, Dracula seemed genuinely sad. “I’m sorry, Burr. I have known you a long time, and I regret doing this to a fellow Founding Father of the United States. But I cannot push that button. There is something else I need to push.” And with that, the ancient vampire senator moved to the far side of the Washington Monument, and began to push it over.

Burr instantly realized what he was doing. “Well, now, uh, Dracula, come on, old buddy! I mean, let’s not overreact here!”

As Dracula’s pressed against the side of the monument, his fingertips creating hairline fissures in the marble as all of his ageless strength was brought to bear, the monument shifted ever so slightly, its center of gravity moving a handswidth towards the imprisoned Burr. No mortal would have noticed, but both vampires did, and Burr tried to escape his exoskeleton even more frantically.

“Dracula, I know you! You’re a vampire who believes in the rule of law! You’re not some kind of one-vampire judge, jury and executioner! If you disagree with my noble efforts build a new nation, then take me before a trial of my peers, if you can find twelve people as smart as me. There’s no call for this sort of extra-judicial vigilante execution!”

Undeterred, Dracula heaved against the base of its monument. At its peak, the aluminum capstone shifted several feet, beginning to dip  toward Burr like a dowsing rod. The vice president, white-eyed, watched as the obelisk’s motion quickened. Dracula spoke.

“No, Vice President Burr. I am not an executioner. I have taken the measure of your exoskeleton. It is, I will grudgingly admit, incredibly well-constructed, and it will bear the weight of the monument. You will not be killed. Only imprisoned, pinned under the Washington Monument, in this inky, flooded cavern, for all eternity.”

The water rising up to his chin, Burr started to respond. But then Dracula’s mighty strength forced the monument past its tipping point, and 81,000 tons of stone accelerated down toward Burr like George Washington himself dropping his mighty presidential fist down on the renegade vampire vice president.

Just before the great obelisk’s impact on Burr’s exoskeleton and the surface of the water, Dracula shouted out to him. “Burr! You’re going to have a lot of time to think things over! Take advantage of this opportunity to reflect on the true meaning of America! It’s not about monuments! It’s about ideas ideals! It’s about the freedom to live and speak and believe as we please!”

Burr rolled his eyes, looking almost relieved as the water finally rose past his ears. And then the monument crashed against his exoskeleton, crushing it, like a steel coffin, deep down beneath the icy water.   

Will Senator Dracula float underwater next to the trapped Aaron Burr for all eternity, using silent hand gestures to lecture the vampire vice president about the greatness of the American experiment? Has Senator Dracula actually been in Purgatory this whole time? Will this story end with an exposition-heavy denouement, after JD and Kate go back and read all ten chapters of this thing and realize how many loose ends they'd forgotten all about?  You'll have to subject yourself to the Epilogue to find out!