It was dark, and a small boy was carrying a full garbage bag along a garden path. He deposited the bag into a metal bin, put the lid back on slightly askew and then turned to make his way back towards the house. He stopped short, however, when he heard a loud clanging noise behind him. He turned and saw that the bin lid was rocking on its rim on the concrete path. He hesitated a moment, then went to pick it up. He looked around him, clearly feeling ill at ease. Some leaves rustled. An owl hooted. Then the boy cried out when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

'Shut up!' said a girl a little older and taller than the boy. 'It's me. What are you doing out here?'

'I forgot to take out the trash,' said the boy. 'You know what Dad's like when I forget.'

'What do you think he'd say if he knew you were out of bed at this hour?' asked the girl. 'Did you hear the noise you made with that trash can?'

The boy shrugged, and said, 'I'm only in the backyard, not the middle of the street.'

'Yeah, well, we still shouldn't be out here. Let's go back inside and hope he hasn't woken up.'

So saying, the girl put her hand on her brother's shoulders and turned him round, thus placing him inches away from an open mouth full of gleaming white fangs. The children screamed, turned and ran past the bins. The sister shook the eight-foot wooden gate at the end of the garden, found it securely padlocked and so bundled her little brother over the top. She then scrambled up after him, clearing the top of the gate just as the beautiful, white-gowned vampire was about to grab her ankle.

On the other side of the gate, the boy pulled the girl to her feet, asking her shrilly, 'What was that?'

'A vampire, of course!' said the girl. 'Quick – you got a wooden stake?'

'Of course I don't!' said the boy. 'Oh my gosh, Linda, what's that?'

'What?' said Linda, turning round to see a white vapour seeping underneath the gate. Moments later, the vampire had reformed, and was looming over them with fangs bared.

'What?' said Linda. 'They don't do that on Buffy!'

'Who cares?' said the boy, grabbing Linda's hand and dragging her along at a run. Of course, the vampire followed, moving at a more sedate pace yet never seeming to fall far behind. They led her round to the front of the house, and Linda tried the door.

'Won't she follow us in?' asked the boy, panting and terrified, watching over his shoulder.

'They can't come in unless you invite them,' said Linda, as she grappled with the locked door.

'Not Buffy again!' said the boy, clinging to Linda's pyjama sleeve in terror as the vampire advanced upon them. 'Linda, hurry!'

'MOM!' screamed Linda, banging frantically on the door. 'DAD! LET US IN!'

'Sunlight kills them, right?' said the boy, still looking behind him.

'Of course!' panted Linda, still banging on the door. 'But that's no use until dawn!'

'But it is dawn!'

The vampire reacted to this. She stopped mere inches from the boy's pointing finger, and turned to see a thin strip of light appearing above the house across the road. She hissed, held up her arm so that the sleeve of her billowing gown covered her face, and ran.

As the children collapsed with relief, the front door flew open, and there stood Dad. Purple in the face, he demanded, 'What in the Sam Hill do you kids think you're doing?'


In the firehouse, Eduardo was sitting cross-legged on the couch, hunched over a paperback with a highlighter hovering in his hand. On the seat next to him was a binder full of papers. Kylie came into the room, saw him and said, 'What are you reading?'

'Dracula,' said Eduardo, not looking up.

'Oh yeah,' said Kylie. 'How are you finding it?'

Eduardo shrugged, and said, 'It's better than Frankenstein. Not all of the characters are jerks.'

'Whoa, wait a minute, time out,' said Garrett, wheeling his way into the room with a sandwich in his hand and Roland behind him. 'Eduardo's reading classic literature?'

'It's for class,' said Kylie. 'Though why he thought he liked Gothic literature I don't know.'

'I do like Gothic literature,' said Eduardo, looking up. 'What do you think J.N. Kline is?'

Kylie snorted. 'Popular tripe.'

'Sure you do,' said Eduardo, looking down at the book again, and highlighting something. 'Anyway, I kinda like this one. That Mina chick's pretty cool.'

'Is she the one who looks like Dracula's wife?' asked Roland.

Eduardo gave him a scathing look, and said, 'Dracula don't got a wife. It's no good just watching the movie, man.'

Garrett laughed unkindly, and said, 'What's gotten into him?'

'Beats me,' said Kylie. 'Unless he's just crushing on Mina Murray.'

'Harker,' said Eduardo. 'She's married now.'

'Oh,' said Kylie, sheepishly enough to give herself away.

'Haven't you been reading it?' Eduardo asked, surprised.

'I got a lot of other reading to do,' said Kylie. 'I'm only a little behind with that one. Anyway, I've read it before.'

'Then you should read it again,' said Eduardo. 'What would Professor Love say?'

Kylie frowned at him. 'It's Hart and you know it.'

'How long since you read it, Kylie?' asked Roland.

'Oh, a long time,' said Kylie. 'About five years.'

Janine, appearing with Egon on the spiral staircase behind them, said, 'I remember when I thought five years was a long time. What happened about five years ago?'

'Kylie read Dracula,' said Garrett. 'It's a riot down here, Janine. You guys don't know what you've been missing.'

'Dracula?' said Egon. 'Slimer and I could tell you something that not many people know about Bram Stoker's inspiration, if that's any good to you.'

'Yeah!' said Slimer, appearing suddenly, and dripping slime onto Eduardo's book.

'Thanks, Egon,' said Kylie, 'but that won't score any points with Professor Hart.'

'Right,' said Eduardo, scowling as he tried to shake the slime off his copy of Dracula. 'He wants "isolation" and "subversion" and "the sublime".'

'Well,' said Janine, 'Egon is sublime,' and she turned round on the stairs and wrapped her arms around Egon's waist.

Eduardo looked at them and scowled, then stood up abruptly and made his way downstairs.

'Was it something I said?' asked Janine.

'He's probably just stressed out about this term paper,' said Kylie. 'I guess we all can't get away with not reading every single word and highlighting the most important ones.'

Roland, standing behind the couch, looked down at Eduardo's papers and read aloud, 'Women in nineteenth-century Gothic literature are confined entirely to the roles of victim or villain. Discuss with reference to two texts you have studied.'

Garrett snorted, and said, 'English lit. is such a crock. Hey Egon, if you meet Professor What's-His-Name in the faculty lounge, don't let on that Kylie's been slacking off, will you?'

'Unlikely, Garrett,' said Egon. 'Professor Hart and I work in difficult faculties.'

Just as he finished speaking, the alarm bell rang. Roland and Kylie ran for the pole. Garrett, wheeling his way past the spiral staircase, grinned and said, 'You shouldn't keep Janine away from her desk so much, Egon. Eduardo's doing her job.'


The Ecto-1 pulled up in front of the house where Linda and her little brother lived. Roland led the way to the front door, where a nervous-looking woman answered his knock.

'Good morning,' she said. 'Thank you for coming. It's my children. They say a vampire chased them last night. I don't know if I really believe that, but they insisted I call you.'

'Vampires again,' muttered Garrett, as they made their way into the house.

'Maybe you'll have to believe in them after today, Garrett,' said Kylie.

'So,' said the children's father, appearing in front of his wife and blocking the hallway. 'You called them, huh? Vampires! What a crock! They're just making it up to get out of being punished.'

'But you are punishing us!' Linda called from the top of the stairs, where she was on her knees polishing the banister.

'Linda, honey, come downstairs,' said her mother. Then she called, 'Gary, come up here, sweetie!'

Linda came down, and Gary appeared from a door under the stairs, covered in dust and cobwebs.

'You call that cleaning the basement?' fumed his father. 'You'll get that stuff all over the house!'

'You'll have to make us clean it, then,' said Linda, scowling at him. 'Won't you!'

'Kids,' said their mother. 'The Ghostbusters are here.'

'You might have noticed,' Garrett added, as the two children turned to face the quartet of heavily armed people in their hallway.

'It was a vampire!' Gary told them. 'Honest it was! She had fangs, and she chased us!'

'It was just some nutjob,' said his father. 'That's exactly why you don't go out at night!'

'Well,' said Kylie, 'vampires would be another good reason for staying in after dark. There was definitely something supernatural here in the last few hours, whether it was a vampire or not.'

'It was too a vampire,' said Gary, looking sulky.

'No one's saying you're wrong, Gary,' said Roland. 'Can you tell us what happened?'

'She was in the backyard when Gary was taking out the trash and I went to find him,' said Linda. 'She chased us to the front of the house, and then she ran off when the sun started coming up.'

'This is why you don't forget to take out the trash!' said her father. 'Anyway, how are people getting in and out of my backyard? I need to get some barbed wire on the top of that lousy gate!'

'What for?' said Linda. 'No one wants to steal your stupid action figure collection.'

Her father went purple. 'Now listen, young lady –'

'Not now, Trev,' said his wife. She looked at Roland. 'So, what happens next?'

'We'll go after the entity and contain it,' said Roland. 'If it really is a vampire –'

'It is!' said Gary.

'– she should be holed up somewhere, right?' He looked at Kylie.

'Seems likely,' said Kylie. 'We'll get right on it, Mrs, um...'

'Thomas,' said Eduardo, frowning at Trev for a moment before following Garrett and Kylie back out onto the street.

'Which way did she run?' Roland asked, looking at the children. Linda went with him to the door, pointed and said, 'That way.'

'Thanks, Linda,' said Garrett, and the four Ghostbusters set off on a vampire hunt, which brought them to a boarded-up house in the next street.

'I guess she's in there,' said Roland, standing over a bashed-in basement hatch with a very excited PKE meter in his hand.

'So what are we doing out here?' said Garrett, propelling himself at top speed towards the hatch, and falling through it rather spectacularly. His three teammates exchanged anxious looks, then followed him down and found him sprawled on the floor in a patch of sunlight. The rest of the basement was dark, cobwebby and falling to pieces.

'Are you okay?' asked Roland, righting Garrett's upturned wheelchair.

'Of course,' said Garrett, hauling himself into the chair.

'Good,' said Kylie. 'So, where's our vampire?'

She moved her PKE meter around, decided on a direction and put one foot outside the patch of sunlight. Immediately, Eduardo grabbed her arm and pulled her back in.

'Hey!' she said, shaking him off.

'What are you, loco?' said Eduardo. 'Don't anybody move out of this sun!'

'So how are we supposed to find her?' asked Roland.

'Shouldn't be too hard,' said Eduardo. 'This basement's only so big.'

So saying, he peered through the darkness, in the direction where Kylie had been about to step. In the deepest, darkest corner of the basement was a white-clad figure, hunching and snarling and obvious once you knew she was there. She glared at the Ghostbusters from beneath strands of straggly hair, bared her fangs and hissed.

Garrett shot first, illuminating the whole basement, and bringing a fair amount of wood and plaster down on the vampire's head. She ducked, screeched and darted out of the line of fire. The other three Ghostbusters joined in the shooting and, though the creature was clearly frightened and angered by the light and the noise, they soon realised that the proton streams weren't holding her.

'What is it this time?' Garrett asked irritably, as they all shut off their streams.

'Let's try the trap,' said Roland, taking it from Kylie's back.

'It won't work,' said Garrett, as the trap opened, and sure enough he was right. The vampire shielded her eyes with her arms, hissed and ducked out of the light.

'Well, this sucks,' said Garrett. 'No pun intended.'

Then, suddenly, the vampire spoke. 'Arthur...'

Eduardo stared at her. 'What?'

'Is it you?' the vampire asked, in a low and seductive English accent. She was shielding her eyes against the light in which they stood, unable to see anyone. 'Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together.'

Eduardo looked at Kylie. 'You remember this part, right?'

'Well,' said Kylie, 'I...'

'You're kidding me!' said Eduardo. 'This is one of the most important parts!'

'That's just your opinion,' said Kylie. 'I bet Professor Hart wouldn't say – AAH!'

Eduardo reached for her too late, as the vampire pulled Kylie's feet out from under her and dragged her into the darkness.

'Oh my gosh, what do we do?' Roland panicked. 'The equipment doesn't work against her!'

Eduardo, throwing off his proton pack, said, 'Then we'll just have to do it the old-fashioned way!'

Kylie was pinned to the ground, struggling to fight off her attacker. Eduardo hurled himself at the vampire and succeeded in knocking her clean across the room. He then grabbed both her wrists, and dragged her like a sack of vegetables into the patch of sun. Roland and Garrett moved out of the way as the vampire, screaming and thrashing in Eduardo's grip, began to blister in the light. Then, at last, she was still. Eduardo dropped the dead wrists and stepped back with a sigh of relief. Kylie appeared at his side and looked down at the body.

'Huh,' said Garrett. 'I thought they burst into flames.'

'Buffy don't gotta be right about everything,' said Eduardo.

'I thought they crumbled to thousand-year-old dust,' said Roland.

'She wasn't a thousand years old,' said Eduardo. 'She wasn't even dead one year.'

'How can you possibly know that?' asked Garrett.

'Well,' said Eduardo, but Kylie interrupted him.

'Eduardo!' she said sharply. 'It was not Lucy from Dracula!'

'Why not?' Eduardo asked defensively. 'How do you know?'

'Because how could it be? Anyway.' She looked at Garrett. 'Do you believe in vampires now?'

Garrett frowned at her, and said, 'Do you believe in letting it go now?'


Later in the day, Eduardo was at college and had just finished some business in a room labelled English Literature: Office 1B. As he closed the door behind him, with his binder of notes under one arm, he was surprised to find Kylie dozing off in one of the chairs outside. He shook her gently awake, and as she came round he said, 'Weird place to fall asleep.'

'Yeah,' Kylie said groggily, straightening up in the chair. 'Guess I'm ready for the school year to end. So, how was it – did he help you?'

'Yeah, kinda,' said Eduardo. 'He said my ideas about Dracula were good, but I still don't know which other book to use. Nothing else really jumps out at me.'

'Well, it's good that you're enjoying Dracula. I mean, it is heavy going, isn't it?'

Eduardo shrugged. 'Easier than Frankenstein. I need to finish reading it before I write the stupid paper. Y'know, I'm kinda worried about Mina. She doesn't become a vampire, does she?'

'I don't remember,' said Kylie. 'Go read it and find out.'

'Yeah, okay.' Eduardo made as if to leave, then stopped abruptly when he noticed something about Kylie, and that something was on or around her neck. 'What's that?'

'What's what?' she asked, wriggling self-consciously in her seat.

'That,' Eduardo said, reaching down and almost touching her. She caught her breath, but he didn't seem to notice. He sat down on the chair next to her to take a closer look. 'Oh no. She bit you!'

'Who did?'

'Who do you think?'

'What? No, she didn't bite me – I would have noticed.'

'So what's that?' He nodded at the pair of little red puncture marks.

'It's probably just a spider bite or something.'

Eduardo looked doubtful. 'Look at it in a mirror and see if you still think so.'

'Anyway,' said Kylie, 'what if she did bite me? I'm still alive, aren't I?'

'You could still die. Then you'll become a vampire.'

'Wouldn't I have had to suck her blood first? I definitely didn't do that.'

'Hasn't anybody but me read Dracula?' Eduardo said, frowning. 'You all watch too many movies. In the book, if you're killed by a vampire, then you become one no matter what.'

'But she didn't kill me,' said Kylie, 'and I promise you I'm not a vampire. See?' She opened her mouth and showed him her teeth.

'You could still have a problem, though,' said Eduardo. 'Man, I really need to finish that book.'

'It's just a book, Eduardo. Our vampire couldn't have been Lucy herself.'

'Why not? Didn't Egon say Dracula was based on a true story?'

'No,' said Kylie. 'He didn't say anything because we stopped him.'

'I'll have to ask him, then,' said Eduardo, standing up to leave just as the office door opened, and Professor Hart popped his head out.

'On time as usual, Kylie,' Hart said, smiling warmly. 'I don't suppose you need much help with your essay, but it's always worth going over things, isn't it?'

'Yes, Professor,' simpered Kylie, smiling girlishly at him as she made her way into the office.

The door closed, and Eduardo took a moment to scowl at it before he left.


'You've done a lot of work on this,' Professor Hart said, sitting at his desk and flicking through Kylie's notes.

'Of course,' said Kylie, sitting opposite him. 'You won't catch me working up to the last minute.'

'You're brave to choose Jane Eyre as one of your texts. After all, it only has Gothic elements.'

'I know, but I can't help it. I just love it too much.'

Professor Hart smiled cynically, and said, 'Is it better than ghosts and vampires and such? But of course, you see those every day, don't you? Perhaps you like the escapism of the ridiculous levels of romance.'

'I can see why you don't teach romantic literature,' said Kylie.

'Indeed I don't. Gothic literature does for me instead. I mean, Kylie, isn't the vampire at least as seductive as our friend Edward Rochester?'

'Um,' said Kylie. 'I guess.'

'By the way,' said Hart, 'I heard you killed one the other day. A vampire, I mean. I wish I could have seen it. Will you tell me if you find any others?'

'Well,' said Kylie, fidgeting in her seat, clearly struggling for the right answer. 'They're really not so great in person, Professor. Best enjoyed in books and movies, I'd say.'

'How funny. That's just what I say about romance.'

'Oh, Professor,' said Kylie, batting her eyelids a little. 'I don't believe you're past all hope.'

Professor Hart stared at her a moment. Then he closed Kylie's file of notes, pushed it across the desk towards her and said, 'This all looks fine. You just start writing it up, and email me if you want another tutorial.'


The dreamscape was something like a dim and foggy Victorian England. Kylie was there, wearing a red dress that might almost have belonged in that time, except that it was slit to the thigh and skimpy around the shoulders and bust. She had a knife in her right hand, and a long wooden stake in her left. She was sharpening the stake to a point, but she stayed her hand when she caught sight of Eduardo emerging through the fog. A red-lipsticked smile spread across her face.

'So, Eduarrrdo,' she said. 'I hear you're hankering after Mina Murray these days.'

'Harker,' said Eduardo. 'She's married now.'

'Aww,' said Kylie, pouting her lurid lips and tilting her head. 'That's too bad for you.'

'No it's not,' said Eduardo, taking a step towards her. Then suddenly he grabbed her around the waist and kissed her so passionately that she dropped her stake and her knife.


Kylie woke up suddenly with a tremendous gasp. She was on the couch in the firehouse, lying on her stomach and hugging a cushion. Her audible inhalation attracted the attention of Eduardo, who was reading and highlighting Dracula in an armchair a few yards away from her.

'You okay?' Eduardo asked.

'Why wouldn't I be okay?' Kylie said irritably, scrambling into a sitting position. 'What are you doing there anyway, hovering over me while I'm asleep?'

'I'm reading,' said Eduardo. 'What's with you? Were you having a nightmare or something?'

'I'll say,' said Kylie, scratching at her right ear and not looking him in the eye.

'How's your spider bite?' Eduardo went on. 'I didn't ask Egon about Dracula yet. He's shut himself up in his lab, and I wanted to get this read. It says here –'

'Will you shut up?' said Kylie, now scratching feverishly at her left ear, then returning to her right.

Eduardo frowned. 'Have I done something?'

'Yes. You hung around me while I was sleeping, and you won't shut up about some stupid bite.'

'Looks like it's itching.'

'Spider bites do that,' said Kylie, now scratching frantically at both her ears. She frowned at Eduardo a moment, then dropped her hostile tone to say, 'It's not the bite, actually, it's my – ow! I think it's my earrings! What the heck is happening here?'

She was in obvious pain by the time she tore out her cross-shaped gold earrings, and when they were in her hand, she sucked in her breath sharply and threw them clean across the room. As she did so, a thin column of smoke rose up from her palm. Wide-eyed with alarm, Eduardo grabbed her wrist and looked at her hand. Two small crosses were branded into the fleshy area by her thumb.

They both stared at the tiny twin burns. Then Kylie grabbed Eduardo's arm with her free hand, and said in a frightened squeak, 'What's happening, Eduardo?'

'I don't know. Well... I guess we do know, don't we?' He gently pushed back the hair from her left ear, and winced when he saw that the lobe had turned an angry red. 'Listen, Kylie, don't panic. That happened to Mina, with a Communion wafer. But they're gonna save her. Van Helsing says she'll be fine if they kill Dracula before she finishes transforming. I guess that's where that idea of killing the head vampire comes from.'

'But,' said Kylie, 'we did kill the head vampire, didn't we? Well... you did.'

Eduardo looked at her a moment. Then he said, 'You seemed pretty sure she didn't bite you.'

Kylie laughed bitterly, and said in a high and trembling voice, 'So what, Count Dracula's here as well?'

'It'll be okay,' Eduardo said, squeezing her arm, just as Egon appeared on the spiral staircase. At once, Eduardo jumped to his feet and said desperately, 'Egon!'