by Drew D'Amato
Vlad looked out the window. There was not a cloud in the sky. The brightness of the sun cut through the cold autumn air. “What a beautiful day,” Vlad said and then he heard two sounds—the police sirens coming from the street below, and a banging on the emergency exit’s door.
Vlad walked over the door and pushed it open. He wasn’t scared. He knew whoever it was, it couldn’t be a Raduson.
“Vlad, the windows are—” Malachi walked in, and then evaluated the room.
“It’s over Malachi. It’s finally over,” Vlad said with a smile.
“The police are coming.”
“Ah, no concern.”
Vlad walked over to the suit of armor.
“You know why Radu kept this suit of armor?” Vlad turned the helmet to the left.
The entire suit on its base moved over to the left. The suit revealed a hole in the floor.
“He couldn’t move it if he wanted to. There is a secret passage here that leads all the way down to the sewer below.”
Malachi walked over and looked down the hole. “Vlad, you never cease to amaze me.” “This life never ceases to amaze me.”
“So what does a retired vampire do?”
“I don’t know, but we have an eternity to find out.”
Malachi smiled. “See you at the bottom, master,” he said and jumped through the passageway.
Vlad took a moment to take everything in. He looked around the sunlit room. Radu was dead, finally—no doubt about that—and the war was over. He looked down at his sword, reading again the inscription on it. He had rid the world of the Lord’s true enemy, pure evil. He sheathed the sword and jumped after Malachi.
EPILOGUE
Almost thirty years have passed since the death of Radu, and Vlad still replays the last moments of his brother’s life every so often in his mind. At this moment though he wasn’t thinking about Radu, but about someone else who had a major impact in his life. He was thinking about Jasmine.
Today was Jasmine’s funeral. Vlad kept an eye on her throughout the rest of her life. He and Malachi had moved back to Philadelphia, using the money they had left and some new identifications from Morris to rebuild their life in the city of brotherly love. The full-circleness of it did not escape Vlad. He dropped into LA from time to time to keep an eye on her, but for all the money and powers he had, there was nothing he could do to stop the breast cancer that had taken her life.
She had moved on after Vlad, and aside from her life cut short while still in her fifties she had lived a full life. She had gotten married and had two children. The husband—the lucky man he was—was someone Vlad took some comfort in that she ended up with. She had married Pacami’s nephew, Justin. They had two beautiful children. The daughter looked like Jasmine when Vlad first saw her. She had her father’s crystal blue eyes. She cried as they lowered her mother’s coffin into the ground. Her father comforted his daughter. These past few months had been hard on the whole family. The son did not shed a tear though. He was in his thirties and he was tough. He looked strong, focused—the dark eyes of a warrior—as he watched the coffin lower into the ground.
Vlad did not dress up for the funeral. It was a dark, grey November morning. The sun hid itself. Vlad came with Malachi. They had never made any more vampires, they never needed to. To bring this curse upon anyone else would be wrong and cruel. The two got used to the thought of living an eternity with each other, but a little bit of Vlad was buried today.
Jasmine was buried at Calvary Cemetery. Vlad and Malachi stood more than thirty yards back away from the rest of the family, trying to give the impression they were there paying their respects to another grave, but Vlad had a tough time taking his eyes off the service.
In a few days it will be Vlad’s six-hundreth birthday. There was going to be a big special about his life on TV, but Vlad could care less to watch it. He did not need to see what scholars supposedly knew about him. Maybe he would watch it for a laugh, but he knew the entire episode would be focused on his cruelty as a human. No one in the world was aware of his mercy, and how he had saved the world. That was fine with him—the most noble jobs were the thankless ones. But still, history had never been more wrong about anyone who ever walked the earth.
Six hundred years on this planet, but watching Jasmine getting buried was one of the hardest days of his life. Even harder than the day he had to say good-bye to her. This was too much for him. Tears started to form under his eyes and Malachi motioned at him to leave. Vlad nodded in agreement.
Vlad would never forget her and always thought about her, just like he still thought about Elizabetta. He would always think about them because he loved them. Vlad and love have a lot in common. Like Vlad, love never dies.
AFTERWORLDS
First off, I would like to make it clear that I am not religious. I don’t even consider myself Catholic, though I was born one. If anything I would say I am Agnostic. The Catholic overtones in this novel were not written with the intent to be religiously preachy. It was not used in anyway to insult a religion or declare one religion superior to the other. The myth of vampires is tied to Christianity—holy water and crucifixes hurt them—and Vlad Tepes III fought as a Catholic against Muslims like his brother. That is why Christianity is used so heavily in this work. The Catholic references were simply used to validate the backstory of the history of vampires. I loathe when in vampire stories, vampirism is explained as some blood mutation, or created by some pagan gods that comes from nothing more than the writer’s imagination.
This book was written by a vampire fan for vampire fans. (Not to promote the next cover of Tiger Beat, or to cash in on the recent vampire fad.) It was copywritten in 2001, with the intent to stay as true to the traditional vampire mythos as possible. I was not trying to rewrite the rules of being a vampire, but to explain them. A lot of the historical references in this story are based on historical facts. Feel free to research any of them yourself. For those of you who noticed the obvious similarities in the Jasmine-Vlad storyline, it was intended to be a salute to the original Dracula. Imitation is the best form of flattery.
This story has changed a lot since it’s genesis in 1999, while wasted in college watching Bram Stoker’s Dracula. With my mind filled with a lot of questionable chemicals, I asked the question, “What if Vlad was alive today, and what if he was good?” From there I researched the life of Vlad Tepes III and his actual life wrote the backstory itself. I had his mortal enemy—Radu—and a connection to where this vampiric power came from—The Order of the Dragon.
The book was not originally intended to have so many historical references. In fact it was not even supposed to be a book, but a movie with a shitload of action. The sword fight in the skyscraper for the ending had been around since almost its inception. However, Vlad would be a human and he would get to be with his love afterward. Through maturing as a writer I felt that was just not the right ending.
Also since I got the idea until it was published, I went from an undergrad with no idea what my major would be, to acquiring a master’s in history. The research was intense, but I was dealing with a character that had been alive for almost 600 years. I thought writing that he just hid in the shadows would be a cop out. I was actually more inspired by the “Highlander” movies than anything else in how to write these characters. How they changed aliases throughout the years, and played roles in important events in history. I also had to tie them to events in history that did regard vampires—like the vampire scare in Europe and explain why Bram Stoker would choose to model his novel after Vlad.
The final product before you is a book about the history of the legend of vampires and Vlad Tepes III, with a lot of kick ass action scenes. I hope you enjoyed it Faithful Supporter. I know I did, and I think there is still more of the story left to be told.
D. D.
Mar 2001-Dec 2011
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