Deep in the darkened underground catacombs of the hotel, Dracula carried a burning torch for illumination whilst he sped walked down a darkened stairwell, along with Elona and Johnny following after him.
"Where are we going?" Johnny asked, as he and the blonde woman followed the grumpy vampire down the stairwell.
"I hope not to some underground pit to feed us to a giant squid." Elona grew worriedly.
Dracula rolled his eyes, sounding annoyed by this assumption. "Just getting rid of you two through a secret tunnel so she does not see us."
"So, can I ask you a question?" Johnny asked when he caught up with them. "Is that real, about the garlic thing?"
"Yes, I cannot have it," Dracula confirmed as he touched his neck. "My throat swells."
"And the holy cross doesn't repel you." Elona wanted to know more on what else does or doesn't repel vampires. "But what about holy water?"
"Neither of those things work," that is the response Dracula had given her.
The trio came to a labyrinth; a maze filled with multiple tunnels all leading to different routes. It would seem impossible on which one to take, but Dracula had to take this chance.
"Huh. Wooden steak to the heart?" Johnny asked.
"Yeah, well, who wouldn't that kill?" Dracula bluntly replied, as he led them down a side tunnel.
"What about sunlight? Do you turn to dust when exposed to sunlight?" Elisa asked, curiously.
Dracula uncomfortably didn't know why these two humans were asking him these questions confirming his weaknesses, believing they'll use them against him. But he decided to answer the human girl's question. "No, but it does burn... gradually."
"How old are you?" Elona wasn't entirely sure why she asked his age.
Her questioned distracted him so suddenly that he accidently walked into a wall, cheek first. A dead end in the tunnel. Dracula grunted in frustration at having led them down the wrong corridor and turning around. "I'm 532," he answered, not entirely sure why he had to.
Elona's eyes widened. He looked really good for his age with no wrinkles on his face and not a strand of gray hair. In fact, had he been human surely, he would have been dead a long time. "Wow! You look like a man in his thirties," she awed. "I happen to be twenty-seven."
The trio walked through a second corridor. Dracula found what he was looking for: a torch holder embedded in the wall. "Ah, here we go," he said, and pulled the torch holder down, since these torch holders were activated to open secret passages.
It revealed a ravishing room with a large bed with bright magenta coverings and the room's atmosphere gave a romantic intimate feel to it. Two tiny dots, fleas in fact, chittered loudly at them in outrage. Johnny looked at them with interest. Elona had a look of confusion.
"Oh, I'm sorry! I'm a little lost," Dracula quickly apologized for barging in on the tiny couple. "Yes, I know it's your honeymoon. I apologize. Go back to doing what you're doing."
The trio stepped out of the room, and the door closed in front of them. The two fleas kissed to resume their moment of passion.
"Are you sure you know where you're going?" Elona questioned, doubtfully. As she said this, the trio tried using the third tunnel, which only brought them back to where they started.
"I'm not down here much," Dracula responded a little defensively, as they tried a fourth tunnel which brought them back where they started once again. "It's meant to be an exit if humans ever invaded."
"So we're, like, the first humans here, huh?" Johnny said aloud in amazement. "That's really cool."
As they walked down a fourth tunnel, the trio came up to another torch holder and Dracula looked at it, unsure. "Oh, boy," he said, "I think this is it."
He pulled the torch holder down, only to have the wall reveal the same female skeleton whom Johnny had met earlier taking a shower. She shrieked when she realized this invasion of her privacy and tried to cover herself with the wash sponge, although there wasn't anything inappropriate to see due to being made of bones. "AHHH! What's happening?" she cried, fearfully.
Shocked, Elona quickly covered the eyes of a fascinated Johnny to spare the skeleton woman any dignity, while an embarrassed Dracula stuttered, "I'm terribly sorry, my mistake."
Pulling back the shower curtain, the skeleton woman's husband was outraged at these peeping toms invading on his wife's privacy. "What is wrong with you people?!" Then he threw the wash sponge directly in Dracula's face as the walls closed again before the situation got any worse.
A little later, they all walked down another tunnel which made them crouch down uncomfortably as they walked closely together. Johnny was still excited about their adventure in the underground tunnels as he exclaimed aloud, "Oh man, this place is amazing."
"As long you don't count walking in on honeymooning fleas or skeletons in the shower." Elona chuckled, teasing the vampire. Now she knew for sure that he had no idea where to go. "Why don't you admit that you're lost?"
"Okay, I could really use some silence right now!" Dracula groaned, very annoyed. "And no, I will not admit we're lost!"
The tunnel ended and the space widened to allow all three of them to stand up straight again. They made their way down a long staircase which seemed to go on forever into the darkness.
Dracula stopped short at the end of the stairs when they ended at a dark bottomless abyss, but Johnny didn't really notice as he kept walking and nearly stepped off the edge of the last step, yet Dracula quickly grabbed the scruff of Johnny's jacket, causing the younger man to yelp as he was pulled back.
Unfortunately, Elona came too close to edge of the last step. She suddenly lost her balance and nearly felt herself starting to fall. The woman cried out in fear, but she felt a strong hand grab her own and quickly haul her back to safety. Elona found herself staring into Dracula's alluring blue eyes, while he held her with one arm around her waist and she held him around his neck. His eyes and his skin glowed magnificently in the fiery torch light, and they found themselves feeling the corners of their lips twitching upward to smile.
Suddenly remembering Johnny was in their presence and he had been watching the scene unfold with great interest, they awkwardly released each other, clearing their throats. Dracula started leading them back up the stairs, his awkward smile resumed back to his usual frown.
Once again, the trio walked down another tunnel. But at last, they came to another torch holder and Dracula pulled it down, hoping this is the right one. "Alright, third time's the..."
The wall opened to reveal a room that resembled either a lounge or a bar of some kind with strange science equipment from a clichéd mad science lab, and in the room was a chaotic battle between Frank, Wayne, Murray, and a bunch of werewolf pups all beating up three helpless zombies. Murray was currently sitting on one zombie, Wayne gnawed on the second zombie, and Frank was smashing the third zombie on the bar. These three zombies were revealed to be great composers in history; Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven.
"Not exactly third time's the charm, right?" Elona muttered, stunned by what she saw.
Whilst the two disguised humans gawked at the scene before them, Dracula panicked as he rapidly yanked down on the lever to close the doors, but Frank had noticed his vampire friend and called out, "Drac!"
Dracula quickly pushed the two humans out of view as he greeted his stein friend with a sheepish smile, "Y-yes, Frankie."
"Hey, buddy," Frank asked. "What you been doing?"
"Don't move!" Still keeping that awkward grin, Dracula told the two humans from the side of his mouth. "Never mind that!" He waved his long arms in dismissal and demanded angrily, "What you been doing?"
"We wanted to practice our big number for Mavis' party and then these losers wouldn't get off the bandstand," Wayne answered, still gnawing zombie Beethoven in his jaws.
"Okay. Put down Zombie Mozart, Bach and Beethoven this instant!" Dracula ordered.
Reluctantly, the trio of monsters tossed, butted or spat out the zombies composers over to the vampire, and the wolf pups scampered off to find some more fun.
"Did you get to rehearse at all, Zombie Beethoven?" Dracula asked the zombie.
Zombie Beethoven shook his head and groaned in fifth symphony, "Eh, eh, eh, eeeeeeeeeeh."
"Listen, Drac, we wanted to play something like old times. We even thought maybe you'd sing with us," Wayne suggested.
"Ah, heh, heh…" Dracula chuckled nervously. "C'mon fellas, you know that I haven't sung in public since… Martha."
"Yeah, but we just thought how much, you know, Mavis would love it," Frank added hopefully.
"I SAID NO!" Dracula shouted and then released a blood curdling roar, "RAAAAAAAAAWWW!" before his face returned to normal. "DON'T ASK ME AGAIN!" Then he spoke more pleasantly, "Okay, now let's hug the zombies, let's all make up."
The vampire's roar had thrown his friends off-track and terrified.
"Wow... He really scared you." Wayne smirked up at the stein after seeing how frightened he looked, and Murray glanced up at him with a grin.
"I wasn't scared. I was being polite, okay?" Frank tried to deny it.
As Elona watched the conversation between the vampire and his friends, she was intrigued to overhear that Dracula could sing. "Dracula can sing? Wow. First, he comes off as attractive, and second, he can sing?" However, her face turned into curiosity. "But, who is Martha?" She remembered how Eunice had at first mistook her for this Martha or even being a relative to this mysterious woman everybody knew. "If Dracula doesn't want to sing because of her, she must have been someone special to everyone, especially him." For a moment, Elona was feeling slightly jealous. Becoming tired of waiting for Dracula to finish talking to his friends, she slowly made her way out of the tunnel to look around the comfortable lounge.
A moment later, Mavis appeared upside down in front of Johnny, which startled him by her sudden presence. "Hey, what're you doing here? I thought you were planning."
"I, uh... I had other things to take care of. Uh, I never caught your name," Johnny said, trying to make an excuse and change the subject.
"My name's Mavis."
Johnny lit up at hearing her name. "Mavis? That's a pretty neat name."
Mavis blushed as she smiled shyly. "Yeah, my mom picked it. So, are you gonna tell me your name?"
"Me? Oh, my name, good question." Johnny thought nervously for a moment to try to pick a name that doesn't give away his human nature, while he touched his hair for a second, he remembered his disguise and came up with a name. "Well obviously, I'm Frankenstein."
"No, you're not," Mavis giggled, not buying it. "Frankenstein is my uncle over there, the gentleman hugging zombie Mozart." The gothic teen pointed to the golem monster and Johnny looked over to see the enormous Frankenstein, in person, holding zombie Mozart in a painful headlock.
"Right, of course he's your uncle." Johnny tried to think of another identity for his disguise. "Well, um, you see I'm not the Frankenstein. I'm his..." another idea clicked in his head, "...cousin, Johnny Stein."
"Johnny Stein?" Mavis cocked an eyebrow at this name.
"Hey Mavis," a little spider came down and greeted the young vampiress.
Startled by the talking spider, Johnny shrieked and stumbled out of the tunnel. He tripped over a table and crashed on top of it, destroying it.
This scene brought the attention of the other monsters, including Dracula and Elona (who had been gazing at the ugly skeleton fish in the fish tank). She rushed over to his side to see what had happened to him.
Seeing these two strangers, Frank stomped forward, nearly shaking the room. At the same time, Dracula placed himself as a shield between them and the scowling golem monster.
"WHO ARE THEY?!" Frank demanded, pointing at the two strangers behind the vampire.
"Oh, are these monsters gonna kill us?" Johnny asked worriedly in a whisper.
"I hope not, they all seemed so nice in the beginning," Elona shuddered.
"Not as long as they think you are monsters," Dracula whispered to them.
"Huh? That's kind of racist," Johnny looked appalled by that answer.
"We'll talk later."
Elona warily came out from behind Dracula and came close to introducing herself, rather awkwardly, "Uh, hi there, I'm-"
Johnny started groaning and grunting in imitation of the Frankenstein movie monster with his arms straight out and walking stiffly. Dracula looked worried. Elona face palmed in embarrassment.
"Is he making fun of me?" Frank looked offended.
"No, no, of course not, because he's... uh," Dracula tried to reassure Frank it wasn't what he thought it was, while he tried to get Johnny to stop what he was doing and explain the appearance of these two new monsters.
"He's your cousin," Mavis instantly appeared, sitting on the bar table, "Johnny Stein."
Dracula was a little surprised by this false story his daughter had revealed, but he decided to play along as it sounded like a good cover story. "Yes, yes, yes," he said with a smile as he patted Johnny's shoulder.
"I don't have no cousin." Frank was a bit skeptical, not sure whether he had a cousin or not.
"No, no, you do," Dracula tried to prove it. "He's your sixth cousin, three times removed."
"On your right arm's side," Johnny went along as he pointed to his own right arm.
"You have a cousin?" Frank looked his right arm curiously.
"Frank, if your arm could talk," Dracula began to explain, "He'd tell you that the original owner had a brother..."
"...who married a woman..." Johnny went on.
"...who was hanged..." Dracula made a gagging noise as he made the head slicing gesture across his throat.
"...for strangling a pig," Johnny finished.
"Pig strangling? Seriously?" Elona cocked an eyebrow of disbelief at this weird backstory.
"I have pig-strangling blood in my arm!" Frank reacted in shock, but then he grinned excitedly at the thought of it. "That's kind of cool. Well, cuz, great to meet you."
The gentle giant golem shook Johnny's arm in a powerful handshake. He made the young boy bounce up and down in a comical almost cartoonish way, causing Mavis to giggle amusingly.
"And who's she?" Wayne asked, his gaze entirely focused on Elona to study her facial features. "That can't be Martha. She wasn't a bansee."
"Whoa, the resemblance is unbelievable!" Murray gasped in awe, and possibly in love since he thought of himself as a ladies' man.
"Yeah!" Frank agreed, whose mouth was so wide open that his own wife would have been jealous of his gawking.
"No, this is not Martha!" Dracula grew disgusted at how everyone had the gall to believe this human girl was his late wife when she's nothing like Martha. "This is, um..."
"Hello, everyone," Regaining her composure, Elona greeted politely as she held out her hand to shake their hands, or paws. "My name's Justina. It's nice to meet you."
"Enchante Mademoiselle," said a seemingly disembodied voice. A blushing Elona felt an invisible hand take hers and unseen lips kissed her hand beneath a pair of floating glasses. A look of irritated jealousy appeared on Dracula's face as the voice teased, "Is this your new girlfriend, Drac? She's a real looker."
"Wah! What was that?!" Startled, Johnny jumped back and leaned against the imposing Frank.
"Oh, sorry, I should really clear my throat before I speak," Griffin, the Invisible Man, explained as he released Elona's hand. No longer afraid, Johnny looked at him in amazement. "So anyway, what brings you two here?"
"Oh... uh, party planner..." Johnny replied, regaining Dracula's earlier cover story.
"Yes, I have recruited Mr. uh, Stein here to help me with Mavis's birthday party," Dracula said with a smile as he pointed his thumb to Mavis behind him, and then placed an arm over Elona's shoulders and brought her closer to his side. "And I recruited Miss Justina to, uh, be my new assistant manager while I help Mr. Stein plan the party."
This is something new for the monsters to hear, while Murry sounded a little alarmed by this. "Wait a minute. You asked someone to help you?"
"Captain Control Freak?" Wayne asked, credulous at the vampire's idea.
"It's 'Count,'" Dracula corrected the werewolf on his given title. "And yes, with so much planning needed for the party I needed assistance," he explained while he straightened out his high collar. "And I thought having a Mavis contemporary would be useful."
"Yeah," Johnny agreed, "He totally needed a fresher perspective." His words made Dracula scowl at him.
"I guess even the most stubborn people need a little help." The little tease Elona had made caused Dracula to glare at her.
Wayne smiled. "Okay, guys. Mr. Tight Coffin over here wanted to have these powdered lameos play at the party." He gestured to Dracula first (whose expression remained stone-faced at the nickname), then he gestured to the three zombie composers, all moaning sadly.
"So anyway, we thought we could liven things up a bit," Frank explained as he held the three of them together and flashed hopeful, innocent smiles.
"Whoa! You all play?" Johnny gasped excitedly. "Let's check you guys out!"
The group went up on stage and took their places; Griffin was at the drums, Wayne was at the electric piano, Frankenstein and Murray both had bass guitars and microphones. A slow tempo beat began to play.
"Girl..." Frank started to sing, "I can't believe it's your big night."
In front of the stage, Dracula, Elona, Johnny and Mavis all shared looks of utter speechlessness.
"Seems like only yesterday, you were eating mosquitoes," Murray joined in.
"But now you're eating frogs and mice," Wayne and Griffin sang together.
"Scoffing them down like Doritos," Frank continued.
"Tell me, where did the time go, girl..." They all sang together.
However, their music didn't liven up the scene. Everyone in the lounge seemed bored with the music as they played, almost ready to fall asleep to such soft music like a child's lullaby.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold on, guys, stop!" Having witnessed enough, Johnny spoke up and waved his hands to get everyone's attention as the Drac Pack stopped in the midst of their song. "That's cute, but kind of old school."
"Yes, thank you, Johnny," Dracula agreed in a glad, almost smug, smile. The zombie composers looked out from behind the vampire in hopes for a chance to play from behind him.
"You gotta totally tempo things up," Johnny continued.
Dracula suddenly looked very confused, and so did the baffled zombie composers.
"Here, we'll show you. Let's go, woman!" In a flash, Johnny had grabbed hold of Elona's arm and practically dragged her on stage with him, and then he grabbed Murray's guitar.
"No, wait! I haven't sung on stage in a long time," Elona objected. A flush of embarrassment crossed her features.
"Just roll with it!" Johnny paid no mind to it, further encouraging her to do it, and then turned to Wayne. "Werewolf Man, give me a jam!"
Not sure why he's doing it, Wayne did as he was told and no sooner did his paws touch the piano keys, Johnny counted to a hard rock jam.
"Two, three, four! Vampire girl with the fangie fangs, hair real cute with the bangie bangs!"
Blushing, Mavis watched in admiration. She brushed a strand of dark hair away behind her ear. This strange new tune caught the attention of every single monster in the lounge, so they gathered around the stage in amazement.
"Little princess gonna be a queen, legal bat lady turning 118!" Johnny imitated a guitar solo before he shouted with the crowd.
"118!" The crowd cheers.
"Yeah! Hit it, woman!" Johnny shouted as he continued to jam on the electric guitar and she was tossed a microphone, and despite the hesitation, Elona mustered up the courage and began to sing with exhilarated passion.
"Oh, yeah! Tonight, it's your big night! Flying to the moon till you're out of sight!"
The whole time, Dracula had a look of utter shock and disbelief on his face while the two humans rocked the stage, clearly never expecting anything like this and wondering what on earth was going on as these humans were creating such chaos in his well-ordered world. However, the second Elona opened her mouth and sang with such passion, that look of shock became something like fascination when he heard her voice. It felt like it called to him, like the call of a siren luring him to her. He immediately shook his head to snap out of it.
"It's gonna be the best night you've ever seen cause tonight, girl, you're turning 118!"
"She's 118!" Johnny sang.
"118!" The crowd chanted.
Getting overly excited, Johnny yelled, "Yeah! Stage dive!"
And he leaped over the crowd when the guitar was passed back to Murray, who enthusiastically continued playing the jam, while Johnny jumped into the crowd expecting to be caught. Instead, the crowd parted, and he crashed face first to the floor. Clearly the monsters did not understand what they were supposed to do.
Having nearly lost her balance when caught up in the moment, Elona would have fallen off stage if Murray had not caught her, and he looked like he enjoyed holding a lady by the hand, to which she had to let go because it felt slightly weird.
Not the least hurt, Johnny sat up with a goofy smile and simply remarked, "Awesome."
"I am so blown away right now!" Mavis was so impressed and excited by what she saw. The second she came up to Johnny, Elona had been escorted to the center with Murry.
"I think my cuz and this chick," Frank announced proudly as he stomped up to them and picked up both the two disguised humans up by the scruff of his jacket and her dress, "is gonna make this the BEST. PARTY. EVER!"
Johnny shrank a little by Franks' big voice, and so did Elona whilst she leaned back a little, but Mavis patted her shoulder, giving her a friendly smile to calm her nerves.
"Yeah! Maybe they find a way to get me some chicks around here," Murray suggested with a big smile.
"We should have a dance competition," someone in the crowd suggested.
Almost every monster started talking at once for fun party activities for Elona and Johnny to plan.
But a sudden gust of wind blew throughout the lounge when Dracula suddenly levitated high over everyone, his cape billowing behind him as he tried to maintain order and control. "We're not doing any of that! We've got to stay on schedule, alright?"
"Alright, Dad, alright," Mavis moaned. "Guys, you're coming, too, right?" she looked at the two hopefully.
"I don't know. Is it cool with Dracula? Gotta be sure he's cool with it," Johnny smiled nervously.
"We can find room in the schedule for some more activities," Elona further added. "Something new, something you have never done at the hotel before." Though nobody challenged the strict vampire, everyone thought the blonde-haired banshee's idea sounded better, so the crowd eagerly voiced their favor in her plan.
This made Dracula glare daggers at her for even daring to suggest such a thing. He landed back on the ground, abruptly and swiftly took Elona aside by gripping her arm a little too tightly, and whispered with a hard edge in his voice, "What do you think you're doing? I won't have humans disrupting my schedule for my daughter's party!"
"We're just trying to make things more fun around here," Elona explained, calmly. "It seems to me your guests could use some new experiences."
"We don't need new experiences!" Stubborn as ever, Dracula refused her suggestion. "As I said, we need to stay on schedule because I have worked too hard to make this hotel a perfect sanctuary, and that requires a lot of order. And you forget, you're not really my 'assistant manager,' you're just an irritating human intruding in my hotel."
Elona scowled; she was growing tired of his overbearing need for constant control of everything. This reminded her of her father all over again. Fed up, she stood her ground. "You know, the stories I heard say Count Dracula is a cruel, terrifying ruler of the night or something, but from what I see is Count Jerkula who doesn't know fun if it bit him in the butt!"
Her words made Dracula extremely tense and enraged by the insult. Enough was enough. He began leaning in very closely to Elona's face, scowling at her with glowing crimson eyes, frightening her into taking a few steps back. Her rear end bumped against the bar's edge, and he slammed both of his arms on either side to keep her from trying an attempt to escape. Nobody, none the wiser, overheard them.
"Listen to me," he hissed quietly, "I don't care what the humans' stories say about me. You are in my hotel and my word is law here, and I say we stay on schedule. So, you and your little friend keep it down until you both leave this place and never return!" He eyed her neck with malicious interest and, in attempt to intimidate her, the vampire smiled wickedly as he began stroking it. "Hmm, I wonder what your neck will taste like if you continue to ruin my hotel. Keep this up, or I shall take these fangs and sink them into your throat and drain every drop of blood from your body until you're no longer alive! Do you understand?"
The gleam of his eyes held Elona firmly in place, even with the strokes of his fingertips touching her neck made her skin crawl. She had always stood up to bullies in the past, but to be cornered and threatened by a vampire made her lose all her nerves. Staring up into his menacing eyes, Elona timidly nodded out of terror, but the threat of feeling his fangs in her throat was the worst.
Satisfied that she got the message, Dracula squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breathe to calm down. Then he leaned his head over her shoulder to whisper in her ear, "And for your information… I invented fun." He breathed on her neck, sending a frightened chill down her spine.
The Count then turned his back on the woman while he announced the next fun activity, and everyone should go the library to begin the game. Elona stood with her back to the bar for a few moments longer before rejoining her friends in the gathered crowd.