The Vampiress Stefanie Ingamells had been quite active in the short time that had passed since a certain very powerful demonologist and occult investigator had found it necessary to bring her back from Hell. Each night at sunset she had ventured forth into the streets of her new home, New York City, to fight a battle against the various criminal types -- human or otherwise -- who brought fear and terror to the weak and innocent. One could, if so inclined, think of it as a sort of penance for her own past life as a victimizer of the living, whom she had at one time indiscriminately slaughtered in order to drain the blood essential to maintaining her own undead existence.
This particular night, however, the tables were turned a bit. Stefanie’s enhanced vampiric instincts made it clear that she was herself being hunted! By exactly what, she couldn’t be certain as she walked down a side street in downtown Manhattan, her tall, beautiful figure clothed in a thin white gown and ankle-length black cloak. Her long, raven-black hair blew slightly in the late-night breeze and her lovely eyes flashed in recognition of the sudden danger. This was a thing of some power tracking her.
Then she saw him at the end of the street in front of her. A large, bald-headed man, his glowing crimson eyes denoting his demonic possession. He raced towards her with an unholy howl of diabolical fury, his large hands held forward in an attempt to grasp Stefanie’s throat. She swerved slightly and then hit him directly in the face with the full force of her vampiric strength. Before he had a chance to recover, she recited quickly, “By the powers of darkness I take power over thee, unclean spirit! Recognize me as thy superior and come forth from this human creature!”
The eldritch demon screamed in torment and issued forth from the nostrils of the man, dispersing into the ether. The man then fell to the ground in a faint. Stefanie quickly looked through his pockets for some clue to his identity, in order to ascertain the reason for his attack. All she found was a small red card of rather curious appearance. She carefully concealed it in the pocket of her cloak and rose into the air, headed towards the luxury apartment building nearby.
“Oy vey, little girl,” said Rabbi Jacob Solomon a few moments later, when Stefanie flew in through his window as he was relaxing in his chair, reading a book and eating from a plate of raw, bite-size vegetables, “Are you trying to give this old man a heart attack?”
Stefanie knew he was only joking. The elderly Rabbi, himself a Master of Kabbalistic Magick for more decades than anyone could remember, had seen many supernatural horrors in his time and learned to take it all with his own brand of winking, Yiddish humor. He was Stefanie’s teacher and protector, charged with helping her with her resolve to continue her existence as a creature of the night without harming the innocent, and just perhaps, to protect them when necessary.
“Just knew you would want to see this right away, didn’t I!” answered Stefanie in her charming British accent. She quickly explained to him about her attacker, adding, “Good thing too you taught me that minor exorcism!”
She handed the red card to him. It was a membership card in something called the Church of the Satanic Elite. It had the name of her would-be assailant on it: Andrew O’Filan. Below this was an authorization signature accepting this person as a member. It read “Magus Paul H. Gilmour, High Priest”.
“Do you know this ‘High Priest’ or his group, Rabbi?” Stefanie asked.
A strange look passed over the old man’s face, but he forced a smile and said, “Well, I know of them, let’s say. But I’m certain it’s not anything we can’t handle. It will be sunrise before long, child. Time for you to have some nourishment and take your rest.”
Stefanie went and poured herself a glass of the animal blood the Rabbi had gotten for her by way of his wholesale deal with a local butcher. He had seemed quite proud of this, but was nevertheless careful to get her a special refrigerator for it, kept as far away from his own Kosher kitchen as the apartment would allow. After finishing her meal, Stefanie retired to her coffin, kept in the spare room of the Rabbi’s apartment and containing a layer of her native soil, so that she could repose in safety from the rays of sunlight fatal to a vampire’s survival.
Rabbi Solomon returned to his easy chair and stared hard at the strange membership card while thoughtfully stroking his long grey beard. He couldn’t help but to shed a tear as long-buried memories of terror beyond imagining came back to him. This “Church” was no ordinary occult order, “Satanic” or otherwise. It was a continuation of an unspeakably dangerous, reprehensible, and abominable form of total, cruel hatred. The Rabbi knew what power they truly held, and shuddered to think of what it would take to defeat them.
At this same time, in a run-down, cockroach-infested tenement building in the New York City neighborhood appropriately-enough known as “Hell’s Kitchen”, a short, sandy-haired, middle-aged man stood in a dark room. He stared with a repulsive grin at the altar before him, with its black and white candles glowing sickly to illuminate the bleached-white human skull that stood in the midst of them.
“O powers of hate,” he intoned in a voice which would have been rather comically high-pitched were it not for the hideously dangerous note of insanity of it, “Strengthen me in my purpose to slaughter the impure descendents of Shem and to exalt the supreme purity of the Master Race! What has transpired tonight is only the beginning! I, Paul H. Gilmour, Magus and High Priest, leader of our people, shall conquer! We shall take this city and then the world shall soon be our Empire! We shall rise from this stagnant morass into which the inferior ones have forced us only by their greater numbers! We shall show ourselves as creators, and shall achieve victory! Hail Victory! HAIL VICTORY!!”
With these last words, he raised his hand in salute, not to the altar of Magick, but to the revolting banner which was hung on the wall over it. The red flag with its white disc, marked in the center by the horrid, obscene sign of the SWASTIKA!!
*****
It was Christmas Day, and Rabbi Jacob Solomon insisted upon going out to have Chinese food. It was traditional for him, and it wasn’t going to be changed now that he was the protector and teacher of the Vampiress Stefanie Ingamells. So, as soon as the sun set, Stefanie and the elderly Rabbi set out for New York’s famous Chinatown.
They arrived at Sons of the Dragon Restaurant, a fairly-new establishment but very authentic in its "Oriental" décor and menu. Everyone assumed that beautiful young Stefanie was the Rabbi’s daughter or granddaughter, and she didn’t mind this at all. Her relationship with her own father, before she had become a vampire, had been less than ideal, and she found it good to think that she had found a family of sorts, even now in her undead condition.
Rabbi Solomon ordered the General Tso’s Chicken, and Stefanie the Lo Mein. As a vampire, she had no nutritional need for ordinary food, but had found she could eat and enjoy it on occasion. The waiter, an older man who seemed rather shaky, eyed them a bit strangely but took their order with a polite smile. The Rabbi was somewhat annoyed that the chopsticks he had brought them were the re-usable, plastic variety.
“Gevalt! Don’t you have any of the disposable wooden ones?” Solomon asked.
“No sir! Sorry sir!” the waiter answered in his broken English, actually appearing rather shocked that such a question would be asked in the restaurant.
The waiter returned to the kitchen to get their food, and Stefanie couldn’t help giggling when the Rabbi pulled out a cloth napkin from his jacket pocket, in which were wrapped two clean chopsticks that appeared to be made of silver and were pointed on the end in the fashion usually only seen in the Japanese variety.
“Really, Rabbi,” she said, “You do come prepared then!”
“Of course I do, child,” said the old man kindly, “You never know if someone else’s utensils have been used to handle non-kosher food, and not cleaned correctly.”
Their food arrived, and they began eating in silence. Stefanie had noticed that all the other diners in the restaurant that evening were Asians, but she didn’t say anything. She did not want to sound racist, of course, and maybe it wasn’t unusual, this being Chinatown and all.
Then it happened. The waiter came out again and raised his voice to make an announcement. It was in Chinese but the significance of it would have been clear to anyone: “All now give honor to our supreme Master and Lord, the mighty Kah-Wu, last of the Sons of the Dragon!”
The awe-inspiring creature that now emerged from the darkness of the restaurant’s back rooms appeared to be a tall, muscular, middle-aged Far-Eastern man with a shaven head and diabolically handsome features, wearing breathtakingly rich red robes and more glittering antique jewelry, much of which looked to be pure gold encrusted with innumerable priceless gemstones, than any mortal being could even stand up while carrying. Stefanie’s instincts told her immediately that it was a vampire -- indeed a very powerful and unspeakably evil member of the undead.
With the exception of Stefanie and Rabbi Solomon, every member of the restaurant’s patronage now began kowtowing to the vampiric master whose servant had introduced as Kah-Wu. The Rabbi, being an expert on the esoteric lore of many cultures, recognized the name immediately as signifying one who had been in life a shamanic priest of the vile god of the warlocks himself -- and the establishment‘s regular patrons were his worshippers!
The servant then announced that it was time for his lord Kah-Wu to choose who would be first to have the honor of giving their blood to the master this night. The patrons moaned in ecstasy at the thought of it as the wicked vampire turned his gaze upon a pretty Chinese girl who couldn’t have been more than 14. She stepped forward meekly and obediently bared her slim shoulders and throat to Kah-Wu, who smiled with delight of blood-lust as he drew the girl closer to him and bared his long, pointed fangs.
Stefanie then sprang into action, jumping directly at Kah-Wu in order to save the girl from him. The servant stood in the way, and the mere moment it took for Stefanie to throw him out of the way -- he hit the wall with such force that he was knocked unconscious immediately -- was enough that the evil vampire’s horrid fangs began to sink into the young girl’s tender flesh.
But the foul Kah-Wu was forced to step away from his victim when the Vampiress Stefanie reached him. A vampire that opposed the works of evil was a new thing to him, and it was the surprise of this as much as her physical force that caught the villainous blood-sucker off-guard.
Kah-Wu hissed diabolically at Stefanie, the fresh blood glistening on his lips. She punched him hard directly in the face. He responded with a kick to her stomach and the fight continued, growing in such unholy violence and intensity that the mortals present could barely see it at the preternatural speed the combatants were achieving. The patron-worshippers of the dark one recoiled in terror, even their religious devotion not overcoming the fear of certain, instant death to anyone who tried to come between the two battling vampires.
Meanwhile, the Rabbi went to attend to the poor girl who had offered herself to the vampire. Not much blood had been taken from her, but she had fainted due to excitement -- whether caused by fear or pleasure at the evil one’s embrace, it is best not to speculate. Rabbi Solomon drew several Magical Sigils over the cruel fang-marks upon her neck with his finger, while saying the appropriate Kabbalistic Incantations to prevent her from the demonic infection that would otherwise possibly cause her to join the cursed ranks of the undead.
The battle raged between Stefanie Ingamells and Lord Kah-Wu. While Stefanie was generally faster, it was becoming more and more obvious that Kah-Wu was the superior fighter, at least so far as technique was concerned. As he became more accustomed to her attacks, Stefanie found it increasingly difficult to land a good hit, while his own assails were becoming much more difficult to avoid or to shrug off.
Then, after a particularly vicious blow had sent her several yards across the room, Stefanie chanced a glance at the Rabbi, who by now had finished his occult incantations over the teenage girl and had obtained his two silver chopsticks from the table. As soon as he caught her eye he tossed them to Stefanie, who caught them, immediately realizing the idea he had in mind.
Stefanie flew at the eldritch Kah-Wu with all of her might, and drove the two pointed sticks together into his ghastly, vampiric heart. The diabolical creature screamed with animal fury and then, with a shudder which seemed to shake the entire room, expired on the floor. His body immediately began to age quickly, the abhorrent flesh then rotting away, leaving only the bare skeleton of this grotesque, hideously depraved creature. His worshippers, including the waiter and the now-revived girl, fled the scene in abject fear.
Stefanie and the Rabbi left the now-quiet restaurant, returning to the comparative-normalcy of the Manhattan street. They looked back to where the Sons of the Dragon Chinese Restaurant had stood, only to see that it was now just an empty storefront, as if the entire establishment had been merely a phantasmal illusion created to serve the perverse desires of the satanic vampire lord Kah-Wu.
“Oy vey,” said Rabbi Solomon in seeming complete seriousness, “But at least the food wasn’t all that bad.”
*****
“I am the High Priest of the Church of the Satanic Elite! I really am, you know!” said Paul H. Gilmour, sitting in an oddly-stained easy chair in his rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.
“I know you are, Paul,” said his wife, Maggie, without looking up from the gallon of off-brand ice cream she was steadily spooning into her flaccid, middle-aged lips.
Paul Gilmour was a little person. That being the polite term for what used to be referred to as a midget or dwarf. Maggie, on the other hand, could easily have made it as an old-style circus fat lady. She sat spread out on the couch in her hideously-decorated muumuu.
“Soon we will go forth, as the chosen representatives of the Master Kind, and conquer the world!” continued Paul, “We will begin by destroying Jacob Solomon,” -- Paul Gilmour had especially hated Rabbi Solomon since the latter had corrected him concerning some magical formulae in a letter to the underground magazine Gilmour wrote, edited, and published, The White Fire, -- “and that slutty little Vampiress of his!”
“Stefanie Ingamells?!” snarled Maggie, “I hate that skinny bitch! When will people learn that thick girls like me are better than boney things like her? I’ll show them! The demon I contacted using that ritual you wrote said it will help me to destroy her! The demon’s name is ‘Natremia‘, and it said it is now possessing me!”
“You should go kill her now,” said Paul off-handedly.
“I will!” said the disgusting Maggie, getting up with a gasping groan, “I need to pick up more ice cream anyway! Oh, while I’m out, be sure to take Adolf for his evening walk.”
Paul grunted that he would. Adolf was their pet Yorkshire Terrier. Paul hoped that the magical defenses he had been practicing would be enough to keep him from getting mugged again this time.
“Natremia?” said Gilmour to himself after his sickening wife had gone out, “Isn’t that a blood disease or something?”
Downtown, Stefanie Ingamells, The Vampiress, stood atop a skyscraper surveying the city around her. The myriad lights of New York shone through the dark of night and illuminated her beautiful features. Then, without warning, a repulsively obese figure bounced -- literally bounced up from the street below and landed in front of her.
“Bloody Hell!” exclaimed Stefanie, “Who are you then?”
“I am Priestess Maggie Gilmour,” said the repellently corpulent woman before her, whose now-glowing red eyes showed that she was indeed demonically possessed, “I am better than you, you skinny barely-legal bloodsucking tramp!”
Stefanie couldn’t help smiling at the idiocy of Maggie’s response. “Bitter much, Maggie?” she said.
“Shut up, slut! You are not only a vampire, a boney bitch, and a mere child, you aren’t even an American! I, on the other hand, am the avatar of Natremia the demoness of real, curvy women, who are what all men really want!”
“Really?” the lovely young Vampiress answered, “Then why do rich guys continue to date ultra-thin supermodels?”
“Shut the hell up!” screamed the enraged Maggie, her trailer-park accent now in full evidence, “I gonna kill you for that!”
The disgusting Maggie Gilmour then lunged at Stefanie and shoved her with the full demonic power of the one called Natremia. Stefanie flew back and upward, high above the city skyline before her own vampiric power managed to regain control and she landed back on her feet before Maggie.
“Natremia?!” said Stefanie in sudden realization, “Isn’t that a blood disease?”
Before Maggie could reply, Stefanie hit her square in her revoltingly flabby face, propelling her then out and upward. The grotesque Maggie hung for a moment, suspended over the street 40 stories below, and then the demon exited her sickening body, leaving her to fall to her death. She hit the ground with a decidedly loud, if rather humorous noise, and her blood and viscera splattered for several blocks in all directions. Stefanie looked down briefly from the building before shrugging and flying away to patrol the city elsewhere.
The demon that had called itself Natremia descended back into Hell happily -- or at least as happily as is possible for an evil spirit. It had succeeded in ridding the Satanic community of Maggie Gilmour, a thoroughly revolting and nauseating person who falsely claimed to be a high-ranking member of the Devil’s cult of followers. Surely, Lord Astaroth himself would reward the demon for this. Perhaps even a promotion was in order. After all, His Infernal Majesty has a strict rule concerning Priestesses of Satanism: NO FAT CHICKS!
*****
Rabbi Solomon was quite pleased with himself for having talked The Vampiress out of working on Friday nights. That was the only night of the week when she didn’t go out patrolling the streets of New York City doing what she could to protect its people from spiritual evils of the type she had once been, before she spent time and Hell and then was resurrected to become the elderly Rabbi’s student and ward. But he couldn’t keep her from going out shopping that evening. After all, she had been a young girl when she became a vampire, and being undead doesn’t change everything.
So Jacob Solomon was alone in his Manhattan apartment that night, already having lit the Sabbath Candles and recited the Shema and other prayers. He was just relaxing in his big easy chair with a book of Talmudic legends when there was a knock at the door.
The Rabbi got up to answer it. He lived in a secure building and no one could come up to his door from outside without buzzing first, so he assumed it must be building maintenance come to check the smoke detectors or some such thing.
When he opened the door, no one was there. Odd, he thought, and then stepped out into the hallway absentmindedly -- without assessing the fact that in so doing he was moving beyond the Kabbalistic Magical protection barriers with which he had fortified the apartment.
Suddenly, two men with shaved heads and military-style fatigues bearing swastika armbands came around the corner of the hallway. They moved so quickly that Rabbi Solomon could tell they were possessed by demonic forces. Before he could move or say a word, they threw the Rabbi against the wall, stuffed a gag in his mouth and had his hands bound behind his back.
“Now, you circumcised freak,” snarled one of the skinheads at the now-helpless old man, “We’ll take you away to a place where you can 'concentrate' for a while.”
Elsewhere, The Vampiress Stefanie Ingamells was having problems with her shopping expedition. Oh, she hadn’t encountered any demons, vengeful ghosts, or hideously deformed monstrosities, but then she had become more accustomed to dealing with that sort of thing than with the usual delays and frustrations of existence. She had been out for hours more than she had planned, and it had crossed her mind that perhaps some malevolent force was indeed working against her, but she quickly dismissed the notion. Just the things normal people had to put up with, she thought.
Before she returned home she wanted to purchase a dozen bagels to bring back to the Rabbi. He really had become the only worthy father-figure she had ever had, after all, so she tried to do something nice for him when she could. Every grocery store open that late had been out of them, and she found herself farther and farther away from the apartment’s neighborhood. She finally found an all-night convenience store that had some freshly made bagels which had just been delivered, and as she paid for them the humor of being a British vampire-girl buying a gift for a Rabbi at a Lebanese grocer’s briefly entered her mind. Only in America, she thought.
It was long after midnight before Stefanie got back to the apartment building. She assumed Rabbi Solomon would be asleep by now. Indeed, it wasn’t long until sunrise, when she herself would have to return to her coffin to rest. She was quite concerned, then, to find the apartment door unlocked and slightly ajar. Searching the apartment, she found no sign of the Rabbi. This was quite alarming, as she knew he would not go out on Shabbos except in the case of an absolute emergency.
Stefanie wished the Rabbi would agree to carry a mobile phone so she could call him, but distrusting certain types of technology was one of his eccentricities. Time was passing, and The Vampiress was becoming increasingly worried and uncertain what she should do about it when suddenly the home telephone rang.
She grabbed the receiver immediately, hoping it would be Rabbi Solomon. It was not. The voice of the man on the phone was high-pitched and would have been somewhat comical if not for the absolute, dangerously lunatic intensity of it.
“Hello, Miss Ingamells,” said the man, “This is Magus Paul H. Gilmour, High Priest of the Church of the Satanic Elite. This city and then this world will soon be mine to rule as Most Supreme Leader of the Master Kind. You will interfere with us no longer. We have your friend, the inferior known as Jacob Solomon. We will kill him at the end of the coming day if you do not comply with my orders as follows, you vampire slut. Soon the sun will rise, and as it burns bright this day, you will walk out into it. Burst into flames, turn to dust and ashes, or whatever it is you things do. It is the only way you will save his life. Be certain you understand me: You, Vampiress, will cease to exist this day or the Rabbi dies!!”
*****
“Understand me, Vampiress,” again hissed Paul H. Gilmour into the telephone, “During the coming day you will walk out into the sunlight and turn to dust. Do it on the roof of your building. My men are watching and will know when it is done. We have your friend, Rabbi Jacob Solomon, and if you do not do this by the end of this day, he will die!!”
Gilmour chuckled as he hung up the phone. He was at the run-down, abandoned warehouse in New York’s “Hell’s Kitchen” slum neighborhood which he, as the self-proclaimed “High Priest and Magus of the Church of the Satanic Elite”, had appropriated as the fascist pseudo-Satanic cult’s secret lair.
Paul Gilmour sauntered over to the other side of the room -- or at least as much as a 4’ 3” man can “saunter”. He stared with an absolutely maniacal glee and intense hatred at the elderly Rabbi Solomon, bound and gagged in the corner. The room was filled with swastikas painted on the walls and floor in some disturbingly blood-red substance. They had been charged with ancient Scandinavian Magical Rites that Gilmour hoped would counteract any Semitic Sorcery the old man might attempt. Though he considered himself a far superior human being and indeed “the rightful Leader of the Master Kind”, Gilmour wasn’t taking any chances.
Back at the Manhattan apartment which the Vampiress Stefanie Ingamells shared with the Rabbi, Stefanie was as worried as she was furious. Rabbi Solomon was her best friend, her mentor, the only truly respectable father-figure she had ever had. She had to save him, even if it meant succumbing to the wishes of Paul Gilmour and sacrificing herself in the sunlight. Then it occurred to her -- No, she thought, Gilmour is a bloody insane Nazi liar. He would probably murder the Rabbi anyway. Then he would have neither of them interfering with his plans of world domination. There must be another way…
Stefanie reached underneath the Rabbi’s easy chair and removed the ornate wooden box he kept hidden there. She opened it and removed a small, round plate of copper, only about 4” square. On it were engraved numerous Magical symbols and words of power in Hebrew Letters.
Then, Stefanie sunk her long pointed teeth into her own arm and tore it slightly open. She smeared some of her blood on the copper Talisman, and then laid it on the table before the still-lit Sabbath Menorah. The air seemed to crackle around the Talisman, as if with a gradually building field of energy and phantasmal power.
The sun would be rising in a few minutes. Stefanie retired to her coffin, closed the lid and rested upon her native soil within.
Back at the grotesque secret lair of Paul Gilmour, the day wore on without any news of the Vampiress. Gilmour decided to pass the time by taunting the Rabbi.
“Soon! Soon this world will know the true glory of the Satanic Elite!” shouted Gilmour, “Soon I will rise as the superior man, and will rule all! Soon the underlings shall be wiped out, cleansing the human race to achieve its greatest glory under my leadership! Superior shall conquer inferior! Predator shall vanquish prey! For victory is the basis of right!!”
Rabbi Solomon was bored. He had heard this all before from maniac dictators better known than Paul Gilmour. Certainly better-looking ones as well, he thought with some mirth. Not to mention, of course, taller. The Rabbi wondered if it had ever even occurred to Gilmour's twisted mind that, in any true “survival of the fittest” situation, it is indeed Gilmour, with his crippled and poverty-stricken existence, who would be among the first to be exterminated as “prey”.
But Gilmour continued his little tirade, becoming so enrapt in it that he did not hear the steadily-growing sound, the low droning buzz which gradually heightened in intensity and pitch. By the time he even perceived it the noise was quite loud -- and very near.
The large metal door of the old warehouse burst open and Gilmour's neo-Nazi skinhead follower who had been guarding it was thrown against the far wall with such force that his brains spewed forth and splattered in all directions.
Gilmour's mouth fell open in amazement and abject horror as the terrible, darksome mass of infernal spirits rushed into the room. An eldritch cacophonous voice, itself the melding of many hellish voices, echoed through the room: “We are the 40 Legions in service of Lord ASTAROTH! We have been called to punish the one who falsely claims to serve our Dark Prince! Behold, His Infernal Majesty comes now to pronounce judgment upon the worthless creature known as Paul H. Gilmour!!”
Then, with a sound as of the tortured screaming of countless damned souls, another form began to appear, slowly approaching. It was a large, nude male figure with feathered wings, wearing a glorious crown, holding a writhing serpent in his left hand, and riding upon a dragon with leathern wings and a long, scaly tail. It was, indeed, Astaroth the Arch-Devil himself!
By now Rabbi Solomon had freed himself from his bonds, as if it were something he could have easily done all along. He stood up, and briefly surveyed the Legions of Demonic Spirits filling the sizeable room, the hideous-yet-beautiful form of Lord Astaroth approaching, and the pathetic figure of Paul H. Gilmour, cowering in terror in the far corner.
Then the Rabbi calmly spoke one word, “Cease,” and all was quiet. The demons were gone. The only sound was Gilmour's fearful sobbing.
Night had fallen. It seemed too early for it, but it had. Magical Evocations of the strength of what had just occurred can do odd things to the usual stream of time.
From the unnatural dark of that night a drifting white mist entered the room. It formed into the beautiful, youthful body of The Vampiress -- Stefanie Ingamells.
“Rabbi!” she said, “Are you alright, then?”
“I’ll be fine, little girl,” the old man said with a smile, “I see you remembered how to activate the Talisman.”
“Yes,” Stefanie answered, “It was the only way I could be certain of helping you.”
Then Stefanie saw Paul Gilmour cringing pathetically in the corner. A look of utter disgust and anger came upon her lovely features at the sight of this sickening excuse for a human being, this thing who had so torturously held captive her friend and mentor.
The Vampiress glided over to Gilmour and lifted him up off the ground easily with her undead strength. She then bared her teeth with a livid snarl and prepared to rip out his throat.
“No, my child,” said Rabbi Solomon, “Don’t do that. Let us be civilized… unlike him!”
Stefanie looked at the Rabbi in shocked amazement at the old man’s kindness, and then let Paul Gilmour, now unconscious with wretched fear, drop to the floor.
The Vampiress and the Rabbi then left the ruined warehouse where so much unspeakable evil had occurred, and returned to their posh apartment downtown. The police found Paul H. Gilmour, who was now a babbling idiot -- the Rabbi would say that he always had been, but now it was more obvious -- and took him to Bellevue Hospital were he was placed in the psychiatric ward.
Rabbi Solomon took a few days rest at home after his ordeal. It had all affected him more than he would like to admit, but he would certainly recover in time. The possible long-reaching consequences of the Evocation of Astaroth and his Legions were particularly troubling to him.
But even the Rabbi never found out how Paul Gilmour died the next night. The hospital staff and police investigators were at a complete loss to explain how that happened to him -- alone as he was locked in his padded room under heavy sedation -- but madmen can do unusual things, so all inquiries were soon enough dropped.
No one had been there to see the ghostly white mist drift into Gilmour's hospital room from under the door and take the form of Stefanie Ingamells, the look of the predator that she actually was still haunting her dark eyes. Gilmour had harmed the only person she knew whom she truly considered family, and despite the clemency the wise old man had taught her, that demanded vengeance.
Stefanie -- THE VAMPIRESS -- approached the sleeping form of Paul Gilmour lying on a mattress on the floor. The tranquilizing effects of the medication on which he had been placed prevented him from even waking when she raised his head in her hands. Then, with a quick, violent twist, she broke his neck clear through.
