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Informationen zum Autor Jeanne Kalogridis is the author of Covenant with the Vampire , Lord of the Vampires , Children of the Vampire, and The Burning Times , among other books . Klappentext In this terrifying, brilliantly imagine novel, Jeanne Kalogridis returns the same dark, sensual territory she visited in Covenant with the Vampire. Once again she explores the breathtaking battle waged in the hart of the Family Dracul-as the innocent take up arms against the monster. In the flickering gaslights of Vienna a brother watches-as a woman of alabaster beauty, his sister, takes two lovers at once. Then she pours her passion into the most forbidden act of all . . . In the streets of Amsterdam a young man, the secret lover of his brother's wife, is whisked into a waiting carriage for a long journey into darkness and reunion with his father . . . They are a family bound my an ancient curse, one generation pitted against another, taboos shattered, their firstborn's blood sipped from a silver chalice. In his stony fortress waits Vlad the Impaler, while his heir, Arkady, cries out to his sons: "Let the curse end with me!" "Jeanne Kalogridis has launched a vampire hero who will haunt my nights for decades-or lifetimes-to come."-Jacqueline Lichtenber, author of Those of My BloodThe Diary of Arkady Dracul 30 OCTOBER 1845. The dragon wakes. So say the rumini, the peasants, when the thunder rolls over Lake Hermanstadt and drums against the surrounding mountains. In its crescendo they hear the voice of drac, the great dragon: the Devil himself, roaring a warning to those souls foolish enough not to flee his wrath, foolish enough to linger on the banks of the wind-tossed lake in the face of the rising storm. Dozens die each year, struck down in a blazing mortal moment by lightning. The sun is recently set, and I, like the tempest, am recently wakened. I remain, fearless, seated upon the cold earth beneath the shelter of a towering pine, and stare yearning up at the dazzling bolts that fleetingly illuminate the threatening clouds, out at the black, depthless water that has lured many a suicide. I long for death; but that sweet oblivion is not to be mine. Not until my work is done.… The air smells electric; the brilliant, jagged streaks dazzle me to blindness. They pain me, as once it pained me to stare full into the sun. Even without their light, on this forbidding moonless eve, I see clearly enough to wield my pen, to perceive the colours of all surrounding me, as though it were day: the deep evergreen of trees and mountains, the indigo water, the browns and greys of dying grass upon the shore. Renewed thunder, cascading from the sky and echoing again and again and again as it hammers the mountains encircling the lake, so fearsomely that it is easy to understand why the uneducated rumini attribute it to the Evil One. To my ears, it is no warning but an invitation to the school of darkness: the Scholomance, where the Devil’s own acquire the black arts—and lose their souls. Mine is already lost, along with my mortal life, months before. Yet I remain here, hesitant—not quite willing to ally myself with Evil in order to fight it. Here is the truth: To save my wife, my child, all the coming generations of my family, I am a monster. So shall I remain until I am powerful enough to destroy him, the greatest of all monsters: Vlad, my ancestor and nemesis. For months since my transformation, I had been unable to continue my diary, unable to chronicle my infinite despair at the bloodthirsty creature I have become. Now I see the need to leave a record, in the event—God forbid!—of my failure, and Vlad’s continuance. For I have tried to destroy him; oh yes, I have tried. In my naïveté, I went to his castle again the second night after my horrific rebirth, armed with a d...
About the author
Jeanne Kalogridis
