Chapter 1: Childhood Memories
Although his mother had done excellent job raising him with love and teaching him to accept completely his gifts, he could still hear the voice in his nightmares.
..."Look at him Mina! This thing can't be my son!"
"Don't be a fool Jonathan! I was already pregnant..."
"When you gave yourself to the monster, is that what you were going to say?!"
"Don't you dare blame me Jonathan Harker! Do you think I don't know what you did with his women? Please Jonathan, we were both unsuspecting prey to the things that lurk in the shadows."
"I'm sorry, I can't... Looking at him is like an open wound on my honour, on the honour of the Harkers."
"Miss Murray, you have one week to discuss your options with your solicitor, but I strongly advise you to sign the dissolution."...
When he had been seventeen, Professor Van Helsing had recruited him and introduced him to the shadows.
Their quest to find the root of the epidemic had led them to the cave in Wallachia and the Lord of the Cave.
Even with his considerable powers, Quincey Murray had not been a match for the Lord, who he had easily incapacitated Quincey and killed the Professor.
"I have been waiting for some one like you for so long...All others were like him."
"I can see you resemble our kind, but something is profoundly different about you. You can walk in the daylight."
"All of us had once been humans looking to unlock the prize of the Black Elixir... But it was a trap..."
"Somehow you mother was able to drink and not have miscarriage."
"But you are not complete... I can make you complete."
The Lord had striped him of his clothes and started scribbling runes on his skin with a feather he was dipping in his own blood inside the open wound in his other hand.
When the runes were complete, Quincey felt the worst thirst of his life, and even the mental exercise he had been practising from his early childhood to control killing instincts was now useless as voices were echoing in his mind to kill and take power.
In the dust which covered a clearing among piles of bones, the Lord drew an alchemist's circle. He picked up Quincey and two of them were standing in the centre. The Lord bit Quincey's neck while exposing his own neck for Quincey to bite, and this activated the ritual.
To Quincey the blood full of Black Elixir felt like vortex of fire cycling between the Lord and himself. Faster and faster.
At the climax the Lord stopped drinking and shouted to heavens his last prayer to the powers of hell: "Fire, walk with me!" Fire burst from the circle and incinerated the Lord, leaving Quincey to fall unconscious.
His sleep was full of nightmares and demonic visions. Something was judging if he was worthy. He was and a voice said: "You are free of your mortal destiny Prince of Darkness, Prince of Light. The Continuum will serve you."
When he had awoken and got out of the cave, a very different world had been waiting for him. Europe was burning under fires of the World War I. All armies were full with unscrupulous officers ready to reach for the occult in order to exterminate the opponent.
As he was trying to return home to England, among many horrors, Quincey had stumbled on a Red Cross medical unit under attack from a pack of military trained Strigoi led by a Master Vampire.
It had been the first test for his new powers and an easy victory, but more importantly by helping the medical unit he had met nurse Julia – an angel in this hell on Earth. Apparently, Julia was well versed in all things occult and magical (thanks to her the unit had been able to hold back long enough for him to save them), and called herself muggle-born witch.
After the war they had gotten married, and to Quincey's utmost happiness his completely human daughter Rose had been born. Qunicey had suspected that Rose had inherited both his demonic powers and Julia's magic and that the two somehow cancelled each other out made so that Julia's people could not detect Rose as magical (and neither could demons).
Years later Rose would marry John Evans and give birth to Petunia and Lily.