Darula

Chapter Three - Conspirators of the Forlorn Soul

Missy only had one hat to wear because her AIDS treatments nearly kept her in the poorhouse.Missy waited patiently beneath the weak glow of the streetlight. Why this strange man, Doctor VanRingking, had insisted on meeting her here in front of Saint Margaret's Cathedral she had no idea. The fog was thick and Missy was nervous, afraid that the strange man who had attacked her in her bed the night before would reappear to finish his gruesome work. She did not remember him vividly, just strange pleasurable sensations and a blood-streaked face. She knew the mark on her neck well enough though, it was either the bite of a vampire or her case of AIDS acting up again, either way she contacted her hematologist and called the vampire hunter who advertised on cable access. One of them was sure to have the answer for her.

A shape took form in the mist and she grew frightened, he was roughly the same height as her attacker and she could tell from his silhouette that he had an equally protuberant chin. She back against the wall of the cathedral, fear growing in her belly. At last he broke through the mist and she could see that he was a different man. He had wild eyes and unkempt grey hair. He looked to be in his fifties but he had a powerful physique and tanned, almost leathery skin. Around his neck hung a heavy wooden crucifix on a length of red ribbon

"I am Doctor VanRingking," he extended a callused hand to her. "I can deduce from your proximity to this church that you have not yet become one of them."

"What do you mean?" She asked.

"I mean the church is consecrated ground, if you had been a vampire you would have exploded like a kitten full of dynamite. Let me see your wound now child."

She removed the small bandage from her neck and showed him the bite mark.

"Ahhhh…it is as I thought. You bear the mark of evil. Come with me to my laboratory so that I might get a sample of your blood. Then I will know how far your disease as progressed and maybe even who it is that has bitten you."

The thought of giving blood to yet another person made Missy light-headed.

"I feel weak from giving blood at the doctor's office," she explained. "I don't know that I can stand to lose any more."

"It will be fine my dear," replied VanRingking. "I have Oreo cookies and juice that will fortify your battered corpus for the troubles that may yet come."

An expert vampire hunter, Doctor VanRingking may had the answer to Missy's proverbial Jewish Question.

Missy followed Doctor VanRingking to his Honda CRX that he had modified into his Vampire Hunter Attack Car by writing exactly that on the hood in red spray paint and adding a spoiler and NOS sticker. The trip to his laboratory was brief and uneventful, and VanRingKing led her down the steps and drew her blood. As she munched on a plate of delicious and calming Oreo cookies the Doctor examined her blood in what he referred to as a "Blood Evil Spectral Photometer". It looked like a toaster oven filled with cellophane, but after roughly half an hour he returned to her side.

"Your infection is new and you may yet survive," he said, placing a hand on his shoulder and giving her a creepy look. "But we must find the vampire who has attempted to turn you."

"Where can he be?" She tried to shrug off his hand, but he put his hand back on her shoulder and even managed to brush it across her breast as he did so.

"Transylvania. Unfortunately the Vampire Hunter Attack Car cannot travel their, we will have to take the Ghoul Patrol Boat and from there book passage on the Chimera Dispatcher Eurorail."

He tried to touch her ass when she stood up but Missy managed to avoid him.