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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 After the death of his half brother! Stefan! at the hands of Vlad Tsepesh--also known as Dracula--and after the destruction of his vampire father! Arkady! also at the hands of Vlad! Abraham van Helsing has traveled the world slaying many vampires. With every vampire he destroys! Bram becomes stronger and Vlad weaker! and soon Bram hopes he will be able to finally kill the fearsome vampire who has kept the Tsepesh family enslaved through a centuries-old blood ritual. But a desperate Vlad and his vampire great-niece! Zsuzanna! summon help from the most powerful! brutal! and beautiful vampire of all--Countess Elizabeth of Bathory. Bram learns of their plot to destroy him! and makes his own move to strike out at Vlad before Vlad can put him to death. He teams up with a courageous band of humans as he hunts Vlad--including Mina Harker and John Seward--and they finally succeed in killing the head of the Tsepesh clan! just as Bram Stoker foretold in "Dracula. But the terror does not end with the death of Vlad! for there is another force that drives Vlad! Zsuzanna! Elizabeth and all the vampires! an ancient entity more evil than anything Bram has ever encountered: the Lord of the Vampires. And for Bram to defeat this dark lord! he must once again risk losing his very soul! to save not only his family! but humanity as well. In her final book in "The Diaries of the Family Dracul trilogy! Jeanne Kalogridis brilliantly melds her own fascinating story of the Tsepesh family with that of Bram Stoker's classic! "Dracula. Told in diary form like the first two books and Stoker's own chilling tale! LORD OF THE VAMPIRES reveals the dark! startling truths behind the original "Dracula. PROLOGUE Memorandum of Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia BUCHAREST, CURTEA DOMNEASCA, 28 DECEMBER 1476. Outside, the promise of snow; the weather has turned bitter and the sky leaden, cloaking the overhead sun. Yet the air tingles, as if with unhurled lightning. It dances upon my skin. We wait. He comes … Basarab is coming.… I smile up from parchment, ink, and quill at my trusted aide Gregor’s face, draped with shadows from the torchlight. Child of boiers, the Roumanian nobility, his features are mine—sharp, hawkish nose and chin, large heavy-lidded eyes, raven hair falling to his shoulders. No doubt we are related by blood, distant cousins at the least; he is at most half a thumb taller, so close are we in height. The resemblance ends there, for the intelligence possessed by our forebears flows in my veins alone. Look at him: The fool cannot resist peering from time to time through the curtains, at the city spreading out below us, at the high, fortified walls built at my command. At what lies—what will lie soon—beyond those walls. He thinks I do not know. Laiota Basarab with an army of four thousand Turks, come to murder me inside these stone walls and steal my throne, so recently reclaimed. And I with but half as many men, and my champions returned to their northern kingdoms. The traitor comes.… You know all that can be known of treachery, do you not, Gregor? Oh yes, you return my glance with the most fawning of courtesies, but I see your heart; I hear your very thoughts. You swear fealty to me, the voivode, but your loyalties lie with the inconstant boier, the nobles who will again deliver their country into the hands of Basarab, lover of Turks, for the sake of a mercenary peace. All this did the Dark One reveal to me last night within the Circle. I doubt it not, for I have of late acquired further talents unknown to common mortals: the reading of the thoughts and hearts. As Gregor paces uneasily before the curtain,...
