Prologue:
Trevelyan led the small band through the countryside, uncertain of what they would find. They had been out a week, ever since Wendell (in one of his more lucid moments), had summoned him to the throne room.
It had been a strange day. Trevelyan was in the middle of supervising a torture when a guard had come down into the dungeon to inform him that he was wanted. Leaving the writhing farmer hanging from chains he’d followed the vampire up into the citadel above. Trevelyan had paid no mind to his unkempt appearance as they went, his graying brown hair had been tousled from the exertion of his activities, his fatigues (stained with various fluids), hung limply against his once burly frame, he sighed stepping into the elevator. So much for a relaxing afternoon, he thought.
The throne room was bathed in near total darkness. The great shields over the windows having long since lost power were in the up position over the great windows which ran from far down on the towers face to the room’s ceiling. Torches guttered along the walls. In years passed the throne room had seen opulence to rival even Earth’s most vain rulers. It had also seen cruelties unimaginable. Now it was a shell of its former self. Great cracks transversed the marble floor and spidered across the black walls. Heaps of refuse lay scattered about. Those few who chose to come here to conduct business did their best not to look around.
A dais sat at the back of the room, directly across from the windows, its steps cracked and pitted. Twin thrones rested at its top. Once grand in appearance, they had falleninto a sad state of repair along with their surroundings. The one on the left which had belonged to the long dead Lady Aurora Von Calistein, sat empty and covered in dust. To its right Wendell Bushemi, Emperor of the known world sat as he had nearly every day for the past century; lost and alone within the fragments of his tortured mind. He’d been that way since the summer following his usurpation of Christopher Von Calistein. At times Wendell was found to be lucid, though those times were few and far between.
His eyes looked out upon the room before him, seeing nothing of those in his presence nor of the filth around him. Within his mind a cool, sensual voice had started speaking to him.
Wendell my dear, Shiva moaned. She was the Goddess that lived beneath the citadel on the Isle of Wight where Wendell dwelled and to whom he had sworn his loyalty.
With a barely perceivable twitch of his eyes, Wendell answered her. Yes, my Queen?
There is a disturbance in the winds of magic, I have felt it for many days now, Shiva purred, the sensual sounds of her voice sending a shiver of delight through her child’s mind.
Yes, so you have told me before, Wendell replied. He could almost see Shiva’s graceful head nodding in anticipation to his response. Her thin, almost bird like neck causing her porcelain face and its cascade of platinum hair to move in a fashion that stoked the fires of lust burning deep within him.
I have searched long and far for its source, Shiva continued. I believe I have discovered it.
Wendell sucked back the saliva which had begun to form in his mouth. He wanted badly to know the cause of thatwhich vexed his Queen that he might destroy it, but Wendell had learned through the years that she would reveal this in her own good time.
Shiva smiled in the picture in his mind, her white lips parting slightly to reveal a hint of sharp feline teeth. Our enemy, your enemy still lives.
What? How is that possible? Wendell demanded to know. Shiva didn’t have to tell him who their enemy was, there was only one. Christopher Von Calistein. I killed him with my own bare hands, Wendell said obstinately. He could remember his fight with the dreaded vampire lord who’s DNA had been used to create him and countless others so that his wife Aurora could have a child. It had been a difficult battle fought atop the very citadel he now ruled from. In the end, Wendell had prevailed and thrown Von Calistein to the street far below after blinding him with the peculiar magic he alone possessed which made other vampires unable to stand beneath the morning light, Von Calistein’s armor had been found at the base of the tower, filled with ashes.
Shiva broke in on his thoughts, easily pushing them aside. So too thought I. It appears it is not so, however. He has been using magic to communicate with the dead. This is how I discovered that he still lives.
Wendell tried following her words but was still stuck on the idea that his father still stalked the Earth. How was it possible? Wendell knew that there should have been no way anyone, living or undead could have survived the fall.
Shiva drew his thoughts back to her. Even now he is using the knowledge he has gained from the dead to try to return to the land of his birth and retrieve something which he believes will be of use in destroying you and all you have created.
He’s returning to America? Why? It’s nothing but a smoldering nuclear wasteland now. Wendell suddenly wished the cloak of insanity would return to him so that he wouldn’t have to deal with the situation unfolding before him.
I know not, my child, but returning to it he is and you must stop him from achieving his goal, Shiva said, her voice cold. I last felt him up near Warforth, along the mainlands Western coast. Seek him out my child. Destroy him.
For the first time in over ten years Wendell nodded his head and spoke, his voice horse and cracking from disuse.
“Trevelyan, get me Trevelyan.”
Vampires scurried to do their Emperors bidding.
Presently Wendell’s second-in-command, a grizzled looking vampire named Trevelyan stood before him. His eyes danced at the thought that his Master might have returned from the seas of insanity that he sailed.
“Yes, my lord?” Trevelyan said, his once thick Ulster accent having faded slightly with the passage of time.
“Our enemy Christopher Von Calistein still lives,” Wendell croaked.
“But, that’s impossible?” Trevelyan sputtered.
Wendell waved a long nailed hand dismissively and went on. “Even now he seeks passage back to America to retrieve some sort of weapon. He is up near Warforth. Find him. Kill him.”
“Aye, Wendell, I'll find the bastard,” Trevelyan said, turning quickly on his heels to do as he was ordered.
Behind him Wendell’s eyes glazed again as the grip of madness retook him as its bride.
Now as Trevelyan stalked through the thick undergrowth South of Warforth he still found it difficult to believe, despite the evidence to the contrary they had found. Someone had cut down a small tree in a clearing three miles back, and from what Trevelyan had been able to discern, fashioned it into a boat of some sort. A large pile of wood shavings had been near by, as well as broken bits of cord. A peasant he’d found living in a hut nearby had explained what had taken place in the clearing, only after Trevelyan had threatened to sic his men on the man’s daughter. Information in hand, he’d had the small shack burned to the ground, its inhabitants still inside. How could ya still live? Trevelyan wondered again.
A light rain was beginning to fall as Trevelyan led his men up a short hillside. Reaching its peak, he looked down at the town below. Warforth was one of those settlements which had sprang up on the mainland during the Von Calistein’s rule. Then it had been an actual town with buildings constructed of stone and wood, its streets paved with cobblestones. Now however, it was little more than a collection of flimsy huts with thatch roofs, the materials of the old settlement having long ago been carted off by the Bushemi’s for other projects. Trevelyan grinned cruelly as he thought of the suffering and hardships the humans must be enduring here on the coast. The smile fled from his lips almost as soon as it appeared as Trevelyan looked out passed the town and toward the sea. Nearly two miles out a boat floated. He could tell that it had been fashioned from a log. As he watched the wind caught hold of the crafts fabric sail and pulled it further from the shoreline.
“Son of a bitch,” Trevelyan groused to himself. His eyes flaming coals, he turned his back on the small town. “I want this place burned ta the ground,” he said indicating Warforth behind him. Then Trevelyan stalked off to radio the latest developments back to base.


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Text from Gods of Fear.
Gods of Fear ©2018 Ian Totten The Blood God's Trilogy Book 3 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever, or stored in any information storage system, without prior written consent of the publisher or the author, except in the case of brief quotations with proper reference, embodied in critical articles and reviews. Cover Art and Interior layout by Deb GypsyOwl Bryan ISBN-10:1548364185 ISBN-13: 978-1548364182