Vampiric Retirement. The Last Three Vampire Gods: Book 3

By David Stevens

A Brief Introduction To The Story Thus Far.

Three of the six vampire Elders, the self-appointed vampire gods, have been killed by the renegade known as Four, and those who accompanied him. The cavern of the late Count Dracula was invaded. The Elders found there were killed.
The hunt is now on for the remaining Elders. The vampire war has been slowed, but not halted. The risk of humanity losing has been reduced slightly by the renegades’ actions.
The group of four vampires, fighting for the freedom of the world, are preparing to exit the cavern and continue the hunt. The world is moving forward. The days slowly passing as the fear level reaches its highest threat to humanity and also to the vampire nation.
The world, as both races knew it previously, is changing.
To whose benefit is currently unknown.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Stevens
• Release date: Feb 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463255599

David Stevens

Dr David Stevens is generally regarded as one of the world's leading project strategists, particularly in value management, value engineering, risk management, partnering, project alliancing and strategic planning.His academic qualifications include three Masters degrees MEng (Hons); MSc (Environmental Psychology); MA (Literature); and a PhD, (Psychology). The framework and theoretical basis for his facilitation techniques are derived from his specialisation as an organisational psychologist. He is a member of the Australian Psychological Society. Dr Stevens was an Adjunct Professor at the School of Engineering and Industrial Design at the University of Western Sydney for ten years (1999 – 2009). He has acted as an external examiner of doctoral level theses. He has authored 7 books, one of which is a major international text published by McGraw Hill. He has held several board positions and has been Chairman of an Australian Standards Committee.

Book preview

A Brief Introduction To The Story Thus Far.

Three of the six vampire Elders, the self-appointed vampire gods, have been killed by the renegade known as Four, and those who accompanied him. The cavern of the late Count Dracula was invaded. The Elders found there were killed.

The hunt is now on for the remaining Elders. The vampire war has been slowed, but not halted. The risk of humanity losing has been reduced slightly by the renegades’ actions.

The group of four vampires, fighting for the freedom of the world, are preparing to exit the cavern and continue the hunt. The world is moving forward. The days slowly passing as the fear level reaches its highest threat to humanity and also to the vampire nation.

The world, as both races knew it previously, is changing.

To whose benefit is currently unknown.

The story so far can be read in Vampiric Retirement

Books One and Two

by David Stevens

twitter. @DS_books. Or at his site: http://tinyurl.com/ov9e5lu

Prologue.

Vampires exist amongst the human population. They have not existed for three hundred years as depicted in stories and legends. They have lived secretly among humanity, constantly feeding off them, using them as a food source for thousands of years.

They are not an anomaly born of Vlad the Impaler, nor are they the progeny of Count Dracula, but an alternative creation brought into existence by nature as mankind also flourished. They filled a gap in the development of intelligent life on the planet, a divergent pathway from the evolution of mankind.

They cannot change humans to vampire by their bite. That is a fallacy created by the minds of writers attempting to describe a story. They progress their nation by breeding much as their food source breeds, using those rare genetically matched few who are suitable as hosts.

The older they become the more powerful they are. The Elders, the six original surviving creatures, have roamed the world for eons untold, and as such are near perfect in their abilities, and evil beyond contemplation in their desires.

Sunlight is no barrier to the older vampires, it has little effect and does not kill them. The Cross of God means nothing to them as most consider themselves almost gods in their own right. Silver does kill them, turning their bodies to burnt cinder. The storytellers got that right.

Why this story exists:

In the seventeen hundreds, four of twenty new vampires fought against their natural tendency. As they aged and developed, passing through the centuries growing stronger, they learned and developed both in abilities and disgust at how their race had degenerated. They rebelled. So were born the first aide to mankind, creatures from a dark time brought into the light. The age of the vampiric protector was born.

Death followed until of the four, there was only one. He decreed that the race, as it was, should end. That entailed the destruction of the Elders, the progenitors of the vampire race. The oldest of them all should be consigned to history.

The Elders decreed that he, the vampire known as Four, should join his three other rebellious comrades in death. Thus the battle for the lives and souls of all commenced. The end of the human rule was instigated as the war between races moved forward from the shadows, into the light.

Three Elders were killed. Their capabilities granted by their great age were taken from them by others. The traitor to the vampire race known as Four, along with his bonded life partner Felina, ended their lives. Revelation drove their war hard. The warning to the human world, with the help of the British Deputy Prime Minster Voite, initially brought an end to the Russian mainland invasion by United Nations troops under the control of the vampire Elders. Retaliation was instigated. The vampire war continued and accelerated. It had become a fight for the survival of one race over another.

VAMPIRIC RETIREMENT

The Last Three Vampire Gods

DAY SIX: Early Morning, a plan proceeds

Regan lay still and silent, an immortal faking death, a hunter of the night watching and waiting for the perfect time to lunge upon his prey. He looked, his tether nearly having reached its end. The time was fast approaching. The time for action, to hunt and to kill, was close.

Soon, he said, as he lifted his eyes to look toward the dark night above.

Soon, he repeated, glancing down at his wristwatch.

His vampire army was in place and to the best of his knowledge it had remained undetected. The humans were within the concealed hiding place his followers surrounded. They waited in their base before him, unaware. Soon they would be at their most vulnerable. Most would be asleep dreaming of their cleverness at escaping the vampire nation’s hunt for them. Those few who might be awake would never expect to be attacked as the first rays of sunlight appeared over the horizon.

Regan planned his assault on the farm with a meticulous care and attention to detail. He watched now, noting the time as the seconds to his planned assault ticked away. Four-thirty am, he would wait for another ten minutes. With his decision made he reached out for the flare-gun, flicking its safety catch to off, enjoying the feel of its smooth pistol grip against his sweating palm.

The self-imposed wait dragged hard and long at the mind of the watching leader. He looked down at the farm’s front wall. Ten of his best, oldest, most trusted vampire warriors waited in silence hidden from sight by that wall. All of them steeled for his command. He could see them clearly despite the still fallen night. The leader on the ground turned his head to look up at the hillock towering above him, knowing that his leader, no Regan corrected himself, his Master, was watching and waiting.

Tension was at the peak of excitement as Regan tilted the flare gun upward. As the second hand on his watch ticked around to the twelve he increased the slight pressure on the trigger. At exactly twelve he squeezed harder firing the weapon into the air, launching the single red flare high over the farmyard beneath him. It arched upward casting a clear red light as it flew. Beneath him there appeared from the ground by the wall ten flitting figures.

They ignored the gateway preferring to fly upward and over the low wall, directly toward the barn. The barn where Regan’s quarry, she that the Elders had ordered eradicated, had retreated within to hide. The ten vampires moved as one, flowing over the wall and across the farmyard. They led the attack just as Regan planned. Four-forty a.m. exactly his troops assaulted the barn.

All around the farm figures appeared and moved forward. To the right the younger vampires, nearly fifty of them, closed on the buildings. To the left a smaller group approached the farmhouse and its outbuildings. The ten forced the barn doors open without resistance from inside. They achieved their aim. They were inside and undetected.

Regan watched, a smile of pure pleasure marking his face. His mouth was open, his fangs bared. He laughed silently, his eyes glowing red with bloodlust as he watched his plan being enacted before him. All for his pleasure. The farmhouse was invaded seconds after the barn. A radio crackled. It was a call from the farmhouse to Regan. It told him they searched the house, there were no humans present.

Again the radio crackled. They found a lift set beneath the stairs. It would hold four of them only, and so they proceeded onward with their invasion. Regan wondered why only four in such a lift? But he dismissed the thought as being unimportant to his attack. All it would do was slow down their entrance time. It would change nothing of the outcome.

Within the farmhouse the lift doors opened. The four older vampires entered and pressed the only button available to them. The lift doors closed. It descended and soon the doors opened once more. The vampires flew out of the confining space. They spread out in the small empty room with a single corridor leading away. One pressed the up button sending the lift back for reinforcements. The doors closed. Soon there were eight and then ten of the vampire nation’s fighters gathered together within the room, nervous of the corridor awaiting them.

The barn was huge, but the vampires had known and so expected that. A tractor and a combine-harvester were parked within. A neat pathway around the vehicles was demarked across the concrete floor by mud dropped and pressed into the surface of that floor by the passage of heavy vehicles. The ten searched and soon found a portion of wall which looked out of place.

Forced opened by them, the wall revealed a command and control station. Two buttons attracted the vampire leader of the invasion. One said ‘up,’ the other ‘down.’ He pressed the down button and before him the floor split and a large section began to drop away. His force flitted to the descending floor section riding it down. Other younger vampires arrived and joined the ten. Thirty rode down into the bowels of the Earth. Thirty desperate, determined creatures waited as the lift dropped, wondering what would be at the bottom of the concrete sided well into which they were descending. Others dropped after the lift, lowering themselves by their own power, joining the assault force, not wishing to miss the fight and its expected human spoils.

* * * * *

At the farmhouse front-door a young looking female stood dressed all in black latex and leather with a helmet on. She looked nervously inside. She had not wanted to be involved in this attack. She had been one of the vampires who arrived at the coven late. She hesitated at the Master’s call, not sure a war with the humans was necessary, or would be beneficial to anyone but the Elders.

She was an anomaly hiding in the open, within a hidden coven, surrounded by humanity. She was not old enough to live in the real world, to walk in the sun, to be a part of the larger community. She was a very confused vampiress. She knew what she should be, how she should act, but deep inside she could not bring herself to hunt the ancient food source, or to kill or maim for no good reason. So far during her two hundred years of existence she had avoided feeding on humanity. She survived by hunting the lower echelon of life, the cattle, the wild dogs. Anything she could find that was not intelligent. She remained hidden from her kind by her stealth and cunning and with a little luck thrown in to mix the pot.

She believed there had to be another way, a better way to live, to co-exist, despite the instructions and demands of the Elders. Despite their self justifications and obviously burning need to rule over the vampire nation. She hesitated, wanting no part of the vampire assault unfolding beneath her.

She also knew she would have to enter or have her confusion discovered. She knew thoughts such as she was having should not, and would not, be tolerated to exist in one such as she. She knew if she was discovered she would be killed, but still she hesitated.

She decided her safety demanded she enter the farmhouse. How far she would proceed from then on she did not know, but she would not be killing any humans she discovered. It seemed to be unlikely they would discover any at all, considering so far there had been no resistance to their invasion.

She followed her companions into the house watching and listening, cautious in the extreme. The lift vanished taking four more of her kind down to the base below. Soon it would be her turn she knew, then what? She wondered, as the lift doors re-opened and four more entered to ride down the concrete tube into the base below.

She was in the last group of four waiting to descend, but the lift did not re-appear. The button was pressed to call it, but nothing happened. She reached out flicking a light switch. There was no response. The power was gone, switched off. She felt concern for her young friends and companions below. She sensed a trap had been sprung. She waited, confused, scared and wondering just how undetected their assault really had been?

DAY SIX: The Assault, watched

Alison Fletcher, the vampiress training officer and friend of the humans, watched the incursion of a small section of the huge underground military base created and commanded by the Deputy Prime Minister Voite. She stood by his side along with Mike Wilkinson and Carol Kline, carefully studying the images captured by multiple hidden cameras located across and within the farm, known as entrance three of the base. Around them, unseen troops were moving into position. Voite planned well. He lured the vampire assault force into his base and under his control, all without them realizing they were being manipulated.

* * * * *

Regan watched as the last of his vampire army penetrated into the farmhouse and its huge barn. He was informed by radio of the discovery of the vehicle lift hidden within the barn, and of the incursion being underway. That was the moment his radio failed. It broadcast only static to him. He had lost all contact with his troops and he could do nothing but wait, and hope, and pray to his Gods that all was going as planned.

He felt certain he achieved his initial aim. That of entering his troops into the base in undetected silence. Now all he had to do was wait. Shortly his leaders would realize radio communication was not available. They would switch to using messengers, and then he would hear in extreme detail all about the attack. And, the death of the she the Elders ordered destroyed. He smiled, hissing his pleasure as his plan unfolded perfectly beneath him.

From above he heard a whooshing sound. He turned his head looking back and down the hill, seeing only his guardian with his shoulder-held ground to air rocket launcher kneeling with the weapon lifted preparing to fire. He watched as the single rocket fired, their only such missile was let loose. Then the ground exploded. His campervan headquarters exploded, all in a raging fire-ball of flame and ripped aluminium sheeting.

The kneeling vampire was thrown into the air burning as destruction rained around him. Rockets, Regan realized, there were two of them. Each exploded into his base of operations. His control point. He watched in an agony of failure as his imagined glorious future also exploded before his eyes.

He turned his head back to the farm, feeling the heat of the missile attack rearing up toward where he lay. Before him the last of his troops had vanished. There was nothing apparently wrong down there, but the attack on him directly implied he had failed. He felt the potential loss of his covens. The imminent murder of his forces. It hit him hard ripping into his guts.

He was as good as dead once the Elders discovered his failure. His attack had failed. He cursed the humans. He cursed the Gods. He cursed himself for being so sure, so certain, so ingloriously adamant in his planning. He had failed! The gods had let him lead his vampiric army into a trap. At trap he, in his arrogance, had not detected or even allowed as a possibility into his mind, and therefore into his military campaign planning.

High above his head he heard the screaming sound of rotor-blades fast approaching. Seconds later he heard the repeated rapid fire of heavy calibre machinegun bullets tearing into the devastation beneath his position. He knew he had to fly if he was not to be chopped to pieces by the attacking helicopter. He flitted away following the ridge-line of the hill, staying low racing across the hilltop.

The helicopter turned in the air above him. The ground bounced and splattered all around him. He pushed himself to the maximum. He used his strength, his best efforts, his everything in fact, to escape as terror reared in his mind. He turned away from the ridge-line dropping over the far side, nearer to the farm. The direction change took him out of the sight of the attacking helicopter. He halted, turning back, looking up, preparing for one desperate chance. He made ready to attack the craft as it floated over the ridge-line.

He had no firearms to use against the craft. He had nothing but his hands, his feet and his teeth. Still he waited timing his launch to bring him beneath the belly of the helicopter. The time arrived, he attacked. The chopper detected him. He knew because it halted, hovering above him. Regan flew, gaining height, converging on the underbelly of the craft.

He planned well. His attack took him out of the reach of the helicopter’s milli-gun. He reached up grasping the landing strut to the left side, the pilot’s side. He pulled down reaching higher with his other hand, grasping out eventually finding the door. He clutched at the handle yanking and ripping it down, tearing the door from its frame. He flew upward entering into the helicopter’s cockpit.

The co-pilot was reaching for a side-arm, which did not matter to Regan, he wanted the pilot. The co-pilot was also the gunner and as such he was at the front of the craft and helpless to do anything positive for his companion. Regan grasped the pilot. He ignored the scream of agony that blew into his face. His clawed fingernails rent deep through tough clothing into the human flesh beneath, securing a hold on the screaming man.

He twisted away breaking the harness, pulling the pilot with him. The helicopter lost stability. The engine speed died back, along with its ability to stay airborne. Regan floated back. He was missed by the rotor-blades as the chopper banked left away from him, falling slowly from the sky. He held the limp defeated form of the pilot out before him. His anger rife he thrust the pilot down toward the spinning blades as the helicopter closed with the ground below.

The pilot saw his death as it approached. There was nothing he could do to resist it. He ploughed into the spinning blades, his body chopped apart as together they all fell to their doom. Regan watched seeing the gunner trying to exit the craft, but he was not quick enough. The vehicle was too near to the ground for him to have any hope of escape.

The ball of flame exploded upward rearing a hundred feet into the air. Weapons fired into the ground, a rocket launched adding to the explosive contact. The pilot died a brief second before his co-pilot. For them it did not matter. To Regan it was a slight revenge for the destruction of all he believed was his due. He departed flying away from the farm, away from his failure into the rising sun.

Less than ten minutes had passed since he had ordered the invasion via his flare-gun. Now all was lost, the battle and his people were doomed, trapped within the farm and its underground human hiding places.

* * * * *

Voite watched as the vampires gathered in the underground room beneath the farmhouse. He waited until the time was right, then he waited some more. Soon the vampires were bunched up and clearly feeling nervous. They filtered into the tunnel allowing more room for those waiting or arriving behind them to follow.

Alison pointed out the incursion was led by an older vampire, though even he was not much over four-hundred years of age. The rest were young. In some cases very young! The proliferation of helmets with blacked out visors indicated she was right.

The camera switched to the upper floor. Three male and one female vampire were waiting for their turn to enter the lift. Alison watched, noting the apparent hesitancy of the female. She wondered at first if it was caused by fear, but to her she seemed to be more concerned with looking behind her at the door, then looking forward at the lift. Alison knew her own race and this one tweaked at her mind, this one was different!

Clair, the fourteen year-old daughter of Carol Kline turned to look at the gathering.

The war in Russia seems to have stalled. Your revealing broadcast has turned the humans against their vampire leaders, she announced with a head nod and a smile toward Voite. She returned to continue her monitoring.

The time had arrived. Voite gave the order and the power to the lift was shut off trapping those already beneath ground. It left them with no option but to move forward and deeper into the complex via their respective tunnels.

Voite, have you noticed the proliferation of helmets in the group, Alison pointed to the screen. They are all young vampires. I would advise not killing them. There is no point in such brutality when there are other options available.

Voite listened to her, he valued her inside knowledge and her understanding, and never doubted her loyalty to both him and the human race. She once was one of those creatures out there, waging war, following the Elders decrees, but she encountered humanity in a strange way and changed sides, becoming a key part of his organisation.

She decided to join Voite if only to fight for freedom for all. She stipulated to be asked, not ordered or even expected to join in, where there was the potential for the death of a vampire. She had so far never refused to support the troops. She recently even rescued a human female from a coven in the company of such troops. Voite trusted her implicitly.

She had become a great asset to the base, to him. She had undertaken the role of training officer, which added significantly to the survival rate of his personnel. She also became his personal protector at times. She recognized that without Voite the human race was doomed. The vampire race, under the Elders malignant guidance, would take control of the planet and feed off of the humans, keeping them as slaves and as a food source. She was opposed to seeing her new friends treated so badly and for no sane purpose. So, she fought, as and when she could.

One of her students, the youngest she had ever undertaken training, was currently manning a computer. Her name was Clair and she should really be in the playroom, as Alison called her training place. She was not, having instead decided to insert herself into the control room. Alison was proud of her, as was her mother, Carol Kline.

Agreed, Voite said.

He too wanted to limit the bloodshed. He ultimately wanted peace between humanity and the vampire race, not the destruction of one in the other’s favour. He issued a new set of orders.

Mike smiled. He had been listening in and agreed with Voite’s decision, as did the cabinet minister who was also listening in. She liked the humanity of Voite and she liked him as both a leader and as a man.

All were agreed, now all it would take was for the vampire force to realize they were trapped. Then to agree and accept the offer of survival for all. Failure to agree meant certain death for them. There would be no other choice. All they could do, all they could hope for, was some common sense would lead to an avoidance for the necessity of a massacre. Silent prayers were said as the time ticked on.

Alison turned Voite away from the main screen. She had a request to make of him. She did not need his permission, she could have just done what she intended, but she had too much respect for Voite to do that. So instead, she asked, and he listened, nodding an Ok to her idea, but warning her to be careful, just in case she was wrong.

DAY SIX: America

The Presidential Order was given and the flight crew were aboard and throttling up ready for take-off. Six minutes remained before the order would be superfluous. Six minutes to fly nearly two-hundred miles, select their target, light it up and then release their single cruise-missile and escape prior to its detonation. The crew pushed the envelope, ignoring all safety procedures, all pre-take off checks. Each member knew the lives of the world depended on the next six minutes and on them delivering their pay-load.

Airborne they pushed the stealth bomber to mach 2. Computer aided they flew across the desert heading for one isolated position. Their target was located and ranged. They descended to five-hundred feet to avoid detection by the silo base and therefore its counter-measures to being attacked. The target area was locked into range by the map reference provided to the computer.

The single weapon was armed at one hundred and thirty-miles, making it ready to be launched. The craft wobbled as the single double door hatch retracted interfering slightly with the streamlined air flow of the stealth bomber. At one hundred and twenty-nine miles their target appeared on the fire-board. At one hundred and twenty-five miles and with one-minute and fifteen-seconds remaining, the captain ordered separation. Beneath the stealth bomber a long thin tube dropped away, falling clear of the aircraft. Small thin wings popped out to stabilize the falling object. A single engine ignited and the cruise missile launched away from the stealth.

Once cleared, the captain pulled back on the joy-stick, kicking the flaps, banking hard left and accelerating into a steady climb.

One hundred million dollars exploded into a fire-ball. The cruise missile now nearing its target detonated as the ground before it turned to liquid, and the air through which it flew burned and expanded. They arrived too late to stop the launch. They were the second string, the last ditch. Another had beaten them to it, delivering their nuclear payload before them.

The crew knew almost nothing as the roar of flame and pressure first burned their craft and then tossed it through the air. A decision was made, they had lost, they were killed, but so was the base. A base which had been ready to start a nuclear Third World War. The President ordered three stealth bombers into the air to attack the missile base. Only one arrived in time. Only one launched its cruise missile effectively. The second aircraft died in the explosion that launch caused.

The third was ten miles further away having launched and banked hard to escape the fallout and fierce winds that would arrive shortly. The killing craft accelerated as fast as it could, but it was not enough, they were too close to the detonation. They were caught, grasped and plucked out of the sky. Thrown around as though they were a child’s toy. They were not burned up, some freak of weather or wind protected them. They survived. Damaged, incapable of flight, but they had survived. The crew ejected. As their seats separated, and they tumbled through the air looking upward, they each received a fine view of the roiling cloud of radioactive energy and soil, exploding into the classic image of a giant mushroom.

They tumbled some more until their parachutes opened. The jerk ripped through each crew member as the chutes deployed. They hung helpless, little marionettes, baby dancers to the music of destruction, as the nuclear death filled half of the world they could see. A death delivered on a scale incalculable to a normal man, imparting to each a wondrous feeling of awe at the roar and power being driven up into the sky.

Death delivered by an explosion that nothing within nine miles could have survived. They lived through the experience. They lost their craft, but they lived. The President received radio conformation of a seismic disturbance in the target area. He did not receive a confirmed launch of an inter continental ballistic missile (I.C.B.M) from the silo base. His order saved the day. It cost the lives of a full stealth crew, destroyed completely three square miles of land, killed a farmer, his wife and their two young boys and also a single farmhand, but it had stopped the vampire attempt to start the Third World War.

The President was pleased, though later he would be saddened at the losses he was forced to incur, just to halt the vampire war in this phase.

His wife approached looking down at him as he sat in his chair waiting. He gave her a thumbs up when confirmation finally arrived, indicating to her that they had succeeded. She smiled at him, crossing the room, reaching out to him, touching his shoulder, doing what she must and always did. A President’s wife, supporting her President husband.

The telephone call was put through to the President. It reached him in his relaxation room with his ever loyal loving wife, each of them looking out over the Whitehouse lawn toward the people he ruled and was responsible for, and to. He picked up the receiver. A Whitehouse staff member announced that the Premier of Russia was on the red phone for the President. He accepted the call, wondering what next?

DAY SIX: Russian/German Border

The Elder escaped from the U.N. command tent, flying in fear. Four, the traitor to the vampire nation, his words became clear, their meaning obvious. Death was not something a god Elder ever wished to encounter or even considered possible. According to the traitor he killed not one, but three Elders, and he was coming to hunt him down.

The need to escape was driven first by self survival and secondly by a desire to ensure their war continued. Normally, he would have flown for the caverns of Dracula, to the remaining Elders hidden within. That was not an option. Four was there and he claimed to have killed them, which meant he was far more powerful now than he had any right to be. He was on a par with an Elder, perhaps even well beyond being on a par with a single Elder.

The thought of encountering the renegade unprepared filled him with terror. He departed from the war he had ordered started, flying hard and fast across Germany, heading toward a place he considered safe. Instinct directed that he head for the place in which he lived and had spent so many happy years, a place where his wife waited for him. He headed toward France and more directly toward Paris.

He had always lived in the city. He had been there since the beginning of its construction. More recently he served as a senior SS officer during the German occupation of France. The war was fun for him, a time of great pleasures. A time where humanity had been available to satisfy his lusts. After the war ended he changed his appearance and blended in perfectly. Throughout the world his previous identity had been hunted for war crimes, while he sat comfortably in the same house he had occupied throughout the invasion and the war.

He was known as the returned owner, the original Master of the house and its grounds. His coven surrounded and protected him adding a gloss to his presence. His wife was selected not for love but for expediency. The real owner had been married and his wife was well known as a socialite.

The Elder picked a female who looked much like the previous wife. Together they apparently resumed their normal life. Returned exiles picking up the pieces in a war torn France, regaining their lives, taking back what was theirs. What could be more natural and pleasing than a return to how life should be?

The real owners had gone to the Nazi death camps. They were not Jews. They were not dissidents. They were the victims of an Elder who required their home, lives and businesses for himself. Death had come slowly filled with anger and hatred. They did not know it was the vampire nation who condemned them to slow starvation and cruelty in the camps. The human husband witnessed his beloved wife wither to nothing, and then shot out of hand when she failed to obey an order.

He, despite being much weakened in both body and spirit, attacked the guard in question, trying with his last breath to save his wife, to at least protect her with his own feeble body. The rifle butt shattered his skull. He died shortly after receiving the blow, but not before he watched her executed. Their lives were stolen from them, just two of the many millions who died, one way or another during the upheavals of the Second World War.

The Elder replaced him and now seventy years later he was still occupying the house and the life he had stolen. Now he was returning to that life once more, but in fear. Not in victory but as an Elder thwarted, an Elder angered, a surviving Elder. One now of three, not six as it had always been for him. He was convinced he was still a god Elder. As such he was one that would be seeking revenge on a traitor for the murder of his brethren, his companions from birth and through the sixty centuries of his life to this point.

He passed from Germany into France. Soon, very soon, he would be home. Tiredness demanded he rest. He sought a place to feed and retire for a few hours. There he would rebuild his strength for the last leg of his long hard journey. Beneath him, set in the rolling pleasant fields of France, he discovered