Prologue:
It is the year of our lord 916 A.D. A plague has swept our land. A dark death. A creature has come out of the dark depths of hell, to plague us. No one is sure who or what the creature is. It has no compassion, it attacks man as well as woman and child. We live in fear...has god sent this demon to punish us? The creature gobbles up human flesh like a child with candy on Christmas...what is this creature?
- from the records of Bishop Linstvock of Czechoff
THROUGHOUT the whole vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet with such fearful fascination, as the vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both. Around the vampire have clustered the most sombre superstitions, for he is a thing which belongs to no world at all; he is not a demon, for the devils have a purely spiritual nature, they are beings without any body, angels, as is said in S. Matthew xxv. 41, "the devil and his angels."[1] And although S. Gregory writes of the word Angel, "nomen est officii, non naturae,"--the designation is that of an office not of a nature, it is clear that all angels were in the beginning created good in order to act as the divine messengers, and that afterwards the fallen angels lapsed from their original state. The authoritative teaching of the Fourth Lateran Council under Innocent III in 1215, dogmatically lays down: "Diabolus enim et alii daemones a Deo quidem natura creati sunt boni, sed ipsi per se facti sunt mali." And it is also said, Job iv. 18: "Ecce qui seruiunt ei, non sunt stabiles, et in Angelis suis reperit prauitatem." (Behold they that serve him are not steadfast, and in his angels he found wickedness.) - From Philip Rohr's De Masticatione Mortuorum.
The darkness of night crept along through the town of Czechoff, but you wouldn't know it was even inhabited. Broken doors flapped in the stirring wind and the dust lifted through broken abandoned store windows. There were no candles lit, nor sound from any corner of the seemingly deserted town. But at the end of the deserted road, lay the church. A large, heavily ornamented building, it was situated at the end of the town, as if to welcome it's nonexitent members.
The candles in the church had burnt out in the last gust of wind that had torentted through. It wouldn't have mattered if they were lit anyway. Standing in the encombassing doorway was a figure dressed in black, his hands stretched towards the alter. At the foot of the splintered altar, kneeled, a young woman. Her long, straight, black hair covered her pale face, covering her pleading and sobbing greenish, silver eyes. She looked about in her early twenties, her dress was hiked up past her knees. In her hands, she frantically rubbed a silver cross. Her whole body rocked back and forth, shivering oscassionally from her sobs. She appeared to be praying, staring at the painting of Jesus above the altar.
"Please, God!" she called out, her voice full of fright and moans.
She had not seen or heard the figure in the doorway.
"God can't save you now, my child." The low voice rummbled through the empty chamber as the figure advanced on it's frightened audience.
The young woman jumped at the sound of the voice and her head whipped around showing her pretty face. And once she realized who it was she frantically scooted backwards into the altar.
"No! God! No Jesus! Please Save Me! No!!!"
But her screams were heard by no one.