In their capacity as Team Girl! Inc., Dr. Mabuse has hired Eile and Sunny to perform preliminary investigations of the parallel Earths she discovers. On their latest, they get blackmailed into playing decoys for their in-world counterparts, Sonya and Ellen. They just hope it doesn't get them both killed. This is a short story, with a Preface and Story Excerpts.Dr. Mabuse has figured out a way to pierce the dimensional barriers between parallel universes and open portals onto alternative Earths. When she finds such a world, she hires Eile and Sunny to perform a preliminary, 24-hour investigation, based on their experience with their adventuring company Team Girl Inc., their special ops missions for Lt. Gen. Morgan Leia Ross, and their time in the Dreamlands. Based on their report, Mabuse and her sponsor Medb will decide whether to perform more in-depth investigations, with an eye towards possible exploitation.These initial investigations can be hazardous, but in this case their danger stems from a case of mistaken identity, when they are confused with their in-world counterparts. Then this resemblance is ruthlessly exploited when they are blackmailed into playing decoy for them. They have no choice, not if they hope to get home in one piece. They just hope their latest adventure doesn't get them both killed.

Differel Van Helsing is the heir to the legacy of her ancestor, the conqueror of Dracula. She is also a 12-year old girl, but when her father is killed she must fight for her very survival, her only ally a stable cat. Her only hope is a cryptic reference to a mysterious weapon, but she doesn't know if it's even real. Or if she can reach it before she is caught and killed. This is a novella.Differel Van Helsing is the 12-year old descendent of Abraham Van Helsing, the conqueror of Dracula and founder of the Caerleon Order, Britain's premier monster-hunting organization. She always knew that one day she would take over as Director from her father, but that wasn't suppose to happen for another nine years.Now her father is dead, and his murderer has made an attempt on her life. She must flee to stay alive, but that cuts her off from any help from her servants and the Order's agents and paramilitary troops. She is on her own; her only ally is a stable cat, while her only hope is her father's mysterious deathbed confession about a secret weapon hidden in the family crypt. She wants to believe him, but how can she be sure it wasn't a delusional dream?More importantly, will she survive long enough to find out?

In addition to her training to one day run the Caerleon Order, Vlad Tepes Drakulya is teaching Sir Differel Van Helsing how to hunt monsters, but it proves useless when she is caught by a Hag who threatens to eat her. The only person available to help her is one of the subordinate chefs. But how can a cook protect her from a powerful paranormal being? This is a short story.Sir Differel Van Helsing must be well trained before she can take over the Caerleon Order when she comes of age. Her staff is concentrating on teaching her how to perform her administrative duties and to defend herself, but she also wants to be a monster hunter like Vlad Tepes Drakulya. Though her staff is against it, he believes she could be a great one, greater even than her ancestor, Abraham. However, he insists upon training her himself, using his own methods.They are unusual to say the least, and she doesn't fully understand their purpose, but they seem useless when she is kidnapped by a Hag, who intends to eat her in her own kitchen. Helpless to prevent it, she assumes the worst, until Madam Trumbo, one of the subordinate chefs, appears. She is her only hope, but how can a mere cook save her from a powerful paranormal being?

Medb hErenn's confidence goes beyond arrogance to border on hubris. She often leaps into dangerous situations without thinking, and she can be goaded into doing so by pricking her pride. So when she heard of the Upas Tree and its deadly affect on anyone who saw it, she had to see if the stories were true. She just didn't consider what might happen if they were. This is a short story.Medb hErenn's confidence exceeds arrogance to border on hubris. Subconsciously, she truly believes she is invulnerable, due to her prodigious strength and endurance, and her profound magical abilities, and while far from foolhardy, she often leaps into dangerous situations without thinking. Worse still, her enemies can use this weakness against her, by luring her into traps through appeals to her curiosity or pride. Once she realizes she is in over her head, she may curse her short-sightedness, but when she extricates herself, her subconscious conceit reinforces itself and she learns little from her experience.So when she heard of the deadly Upas Tree, which could kill anything that simply laid eyes on it, she had to see if it lived up to its reputation. She did not believe it would, but she also doubted it could harm her in any event.Her companions often warn her that one day her overconfidence will be her undoing. Perhaps this is finally that day.

Eile and Sunny are two adventurous young girls who share a house in Denver. However, unbeknownst to them they have a secret roommate, and she finally decides to reveal herself. This is a short story.Eile and Sunny are two adventurous twenty-something girls who met when Eile rescued Sunny from being kidnapped by enemies of her parents. They fell in love, and after the crisis had been resolved they decided to live together.Sunny was still in danger, so their mentor, Medb hErenn, acquired a house for them in a secure gated community. She gave them the run of the place, but there was one room, in the basement, that was off limits.That didn't sit well with Sunny, who burned with curiosity to discover what the mysterious room contained. When she and Eile finally gained access by accident, they discovered that they shared the house with a secret and rather unusual roommate....

Medb hErenn and her companions Morgiana the Thief and Mephitis the Apothecary are trying to get out off the Plateau of Leng, but the only way is across a deep chasm bridged by a web spun by a Leng Spider. Rumor has it that the spider offers safe passage to anyone who pays its toll, but will eat those who cannot. So the problem becomes, can they pay its price? This is a short story.The Plateau of Leng in the Northern Lands of the Dreamworld is a most dangerous place. Few people dare to travel its interior except as part of large, well-armed caravans, but one exception is Medb hErenn. As such, people will hire her to escort them across the Plateau, or to act in their stead on some mission of personal importance.Mephitis the Apothecary of Ulthar needs ingredients for her concoctions that can only be obtained from the Plateau and the surrounding mountains. She hired Medb to act as bodyguard and guide, and their mutual friend, Morgiana the Master Thief, to help her gather what she needs. In return, she will pay them a large remuneration, and they can raid the abandoned tombs and forgotten ruins to their hearts' content.Their expedition has been successful, but a migration of the gargantuan Leng Spiders has cut off the usual routes out of the Plateau. In desperation, they make for a rumored pass bisected by a deep chasm, over which a Spider has spun a bridge. Supposedly, it allows travelers to use it, but they must pay a toll, and the gossip claims that it will eat whoever cannot.They have no other choice, but the question is, can they pay its price? And if not, can they avoid the rumored fate?

Few of us ever see our shoulder-devils, those personifications of our own evil side, and those who do are generally hallucinating. But Sir Differel Van Helsing has to be different.... This is a short story.According to long-standing folk tradition, we all have shoulder angels and devils; personifications of our own good and evil sides. They "appear" whenever we face a moral dilemma and offer advice on how to resolve it; we then choose which advice to take. This trope has classically been used in theatre as a means to portray a character's inner dialog to the audience without engaging in a monologue. Nowadays it mostly serves as a form of parody or comic-relief, though even then its allegorical nature is instantly recognizable. Even so, the trope still appears in serious works, such as The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis, wherein the classical roles are reinterpreted in the forms of the Tempter and the Guardian Angel. Even so, for the vast majority of people this trope remains metaphorical. After all, no one ever actually sees these personifications.In the world of Sir Differel Van Helsing, however, the allegorical battle between Good and Evil takes on a more personal and concrete form. Furthermore, she has many enemies who wish to destroy her, or corrupt her and turn her to their cause. It therefore should be no surprise that one would impersonate this trope and actually appear to her in person.

Sir Differel is slowly going insane! And no one in the Caerleon Order can help her. Aelfraed calls on Eile and Sunny, Team Girl, to get to the bottom of the situation. But can they solve the mystery without going insane themselves? This is a short story.Aelfraed and the staff of the Caerleon Order are worried. Sir Differel appears to be going insane: she can't sleep, she's hearing voices and having hallucinations, and she has become paranoid of and hostile towards her own people. Nothing they can do seems to help; even Dracula cannot break through her malaise.To make matters worse, she must appear at a meeting of the Privy Council within a week, and if she has not recovered by then, there is a real danger that they will depose her as Director and appoint someone else to replace her, who most likely would defer to them rather than follow his own judgment.In desperation, Aelfraed has turned to her best friends, Eile and Sunny of Team Girl, for help. They agree to do what they can, but they're not sure if they can do anything at all. Especially when they discover that Differel's trouble has been caused by a new enemy, one who will prove to be her most persistent, as well as her most implacable.

Sir Differel and Lady Margaret, aka "Dribble & Maggot", need a vacation in the worst way, so Differel decides to introduce her frenemy to the Land of the Dreams of Men, in the hope that she will grow to love it and give her another adventuring companion. Margaret just wants to relax; too bad she won't get her wish. This is a short story, with a Preface, a Bonus Story, and Sample Excerpts.After ten Waking-years of sojourning to the Land of the Dreams of Men every night -- the equivalent of over 600 Dream-years -- Sir Differel Van Helsing has become a veteran Dreamer and a formidable force. Though she frequently adventures solo, between Team Girl, her Dream-husband Victor, and their mutual friends she has no dearth of traveling companions in case she wants one. However, she regrets that her frenemy, Lady Margaret Rose Chesham, never learned to Dream.So when an opportunity arises for her to introduce "Maggot" to the Dreamlands, "Dribble" jumps at it, and while Margaret is reluctant, she is sufficiently intrigued to give it a try. Differel hopes that Margaret will learn to love the Dreamworld as much as she does, and thereby give her another adventuring companion, but she just wants to relax.Too bad she won't get her wish.In the Bonus Story, two saurian scientists examine two hominids, a man and a woman, and begin to question the nature of what it means to be "human".

When Differel Van Helsing married Victor Plunkett in the Dreamlands, it was between crises, so they never had a proper honeymoon. As such, when the opportunity arose for them to spend a week all alone on a deserted island, they jumped at it. Unfortunately, an old enemy has decided to crash the party. This is a short story.Differel Van Helsing had been married to Victor Plunkett in the Waking World for four years before he was killed by an assassin seeking to kill her. The loss devastated her, and she very nearly resigned as Director of the Caerleon Order as a result.Years later, when she learned how to sojourn to the Dreamlands each night, she discovered that he had been a Dreamer himself, and that after his death he had retired there to live out the rest of his Dream-life. By the time they were reunited, he had become a diplomatic troubleshooter for the Island Nation of Punica, and had been made the Marquis of Elissa. They discovered that their love for each other was just as strong as ever, and he proposed to her. At first she was not certain if she should remarry him because of the time they would be separated when she awakens each morning, but finally she yielded to her heart and said yes.They wed between crises, so they never had a proper honeymoon, but then an opportunity presented itself that allowed them to spend a week alone on a tiny deserted island. They jumped at it, and spent six days in connubial bliss, doing little beyond eating, sleeping, the occasional swim in the ocean, and making love.On the seventh and last day, however, an old enemy, bent on revenge, crashes their party. Taking them prisoner, he intends to sell them as toys for others' amusement: Victor to a wealthy matron, Differel to the Moonbeasts. In both cases, they are unlikely to survive for long with either their lives or sanity intact.Differel and Victor have no weapons or retainers to help them, but they are far from helpless.

On Christmas Eve, Connie, daughter of Eile and Sunny of Team Girl, runs away from home to become a vampire. Giovanna Borgia, the vampire BFF of Team Girl, invites her to a vampire Christmas party in a cemetery and introduces her to a little girl vampire. Unfortunately, some vampire hunters have decided to crash the party, and they have targeted Connie and her new friend. This is a short story.Connie, the eight-year-old daughter of Eile and Sunny of Team Girl, is fed up. Her parents pay more attention to her sister Liza than they do her. She concludes they don't love her anymore and she decides to run away. She wants to become special, to teach them all a lesson, so she goes to Giovanna Borgia, a vampire and one of Team Girl's best friends, and asks her to make her a vampire.Giovanna invites her to attend a vampire Christmas party in a nearby cemetery, and there she meets Angela, a child vampire her same age. They strike up an unlikely friendship, and Connie learns what it means to be a vampire, the bad as well as the good.However, a group of vampire hunters decides to crash the party, and they have targeted Connie and Angela for extermination.

Eile and Sunny play Braveheart and White-Lion, fighter and magic-user role-playing characters in the online game Otherworld. In their current session, they attempt what no one has accomplished: steal the Eye from the Devourer, the idol of a tribe of savages. It seems so simple; why hasn't anyone done it before? They are about to find out. This is a short story with a Preface and Sample Excerpts.Before they met in person, Eile and Sunny spent many hours together playing the online role playing game Otherworld as the fighter/thief Braveheart and the magic-user White-Lion. This is another of their sessions.The Devourer is the pagan god of a tribe of wild savages, who worship it in the form of a giant stone idol. Placed in the center of its face is a large gem that represents its single eye. Many adventurers have tried to steal that gem, but all have failed, and most were killed by the tribe, or offered as sacrifices to their god. Braveheart and White-Lion, Team Girl, decide to attempt it. After all, it seems so simple; they can't understand why no one else has succeeded.They are about to find out.

After the death of her husband, Sir Differel Van Helsing decided to take some time off and tour the English back-roads on a motorcycle, and rethink her life. Unfortunately, paranormal threats are everywhere, and she cannot ignore them. This is a short story.Sir Differel Van Helsing once believed she would never have a family of her own. It just seemed inconceivable that she would ever forge an emotional tie to another human being that could leave her vulnerable and thus compromise her ability to run the Caerleon Order.Then she met a good man who genuinely liked her for herself. Despite her attempts to resist, she eventually fell in love with him. They married and conceived a child, and she came to believe they would be together forever.When he was assassinated by a rival monster-hunting organization, her whole world fell apart. Though she recovered in time, she came to question her commitment to running the Order. She knew she could not be an effective director if she had any doubts, so she decided to take some time off to reconsider her life's choices.Taking a cue from her parents' premarital activities, she bought and refurbished an antique motorcycle so she could tour the English country back-roads alone as an outlaw biker. She plans to spend whatever time she needs to work through her dilemma, because she realizes that whatever decision she makes will be final and irrevocable for the rest of her life, and she wants to make sure it is the right one.Unfortunately, paranormal threats are everywhere, and try as she might she cannot ignore them, or her duty.

The Council of Cat Elders and the High Queen of All Cats need vital information concerning a possible threat by the Fomorians of Hazuth-Kleg, but all their other sources have yielded nothing. So they call upon Medb hErenn to perform an act of desperation, one that could destroy them all. This is a short story.In the Dreamlands, the Cats are probably the most powerful political, military, and social force extant. Even mighty rulers, such as King Kuranes of Celephais and Queen Elishat of Karchedon, bow to their will. They go where they want, do as they please, and answer to no one, except their Queen and her Council of Elders. They are quick to punish any wrong done to them, and their retribution is as brutal as it is swift and final. They fear little, and run from only the gravest of danger.So, when they summoned Medb hErenn to their council in the town of Ulthar, asking for her help, she understood that only sheer desperation would force them to call on outside aid, especially her own unique abilities, and that it likely involved great danger.The only thing she couldn't know was that it could destroy them all.

The night before Christmas is a time of miracles. Eile and Sunny do all they can to make this true for the homeless women and their children living in Pastor Sjauken's shelter. But there is another force at work this night, which makes use of the Girls for its own ends, even though they are unaware of it at the time. This is a short story.Every Christmas Eve, Eile and Sunny of Team Girl spend the day at Pastor Sjauken's homeless shelter for single mothers and their children, preparing and serving meals, handing out presents, and generally helping everyone to make merry. In their own way, they like to remind his charges that miracles can happen.But tonight they will be involved in another miracle, as a force greater than themselves manipulates them without their knowledge, only this time it could mean the difference between life and death.