Covenant with the Vampire
Beginning fifty years before the start of Bram Stoker's novel, Covenant with the Vampire introduces us to Dracula's family, who are bound by a covenant as ancient as their blood to serve Dracula and to protect him. At the castle of Prince Vlad Tsepesh, also known as Dracula, Vlad's great-nephew Arkady has recently taken over the job of managing the thriving, busy estate. Arkady is honored to care for his beloved though eccentric great-uncle...until he begins to realize what is expected of him in his new role. Either he provides his great-uncle with victims to satisfy his needs, or Vlad will kill those Arkady loves. He is trapped into becoming a party to murder and sadistic torture. And it is in his blood. When Arkady learns that his newborn son is being groomed to follow one day in his footsteps, he knows that he must fight Dracula, even if it means his death.
Children of the Vampire
It is Amsterdam, 1871, twenty-five years before the start of Stoker's novel, and twenty-five years following Arkady Tsepesh's flight from his family's ancestral castle with his wife and young son, Stefan, after learning that he and his family are bound by an ancient covenant to serve their ancestor, Prince Vlad Tsepesh, who is also known as Dracula. For Vlad is a vampire, and the fated firstborn sons in every generation must bring him the victims he needs to survive. Arkady had tried to break the covenant and failed. He is now a vampire, separated from his beloved wife and son, with one all-consuming desire - to destroy Vlad before he draws Stefan into eternal service through the blood ritual. But Arkady has come too late to Amsterdam. Vlad kidnaps Stefan, and spirits him away to the castle in Transylvania to undergo the blood ritual. Arkady enlists the help of Stefan's stepbrother, Abraham Van Helsing, in his thrilling battle against Vlad, as he seeks to free his family and put an end to the age-old blood covenant - even if it means he must destroy his own son.
Lord of the Vampires
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, startlingtruths behind the original Dracula.
http://www.jeannekalogridis.com/dracul_excerpt.html
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