Seven years after the eventful night that Mina was almost turned into a vampire, she is now happily married to Jonathan Harker and has a lovely son called Quincy until her past comes back to haunt her. Mina’s life is thrown into turmoil as a gypsy sorceress with a hidden agenda casts a spell from the book of the dead to bring Dracula back from his grave. Mina’s worst nightmares are unleashed as her husband and child are brutally slaughtered and she is reborn with a bloodthirsty appetite and dark vengeance. Seeking revenge and to be reunited with her loved ones, Mina battles against all odds and survives into the twenty first century, until a handsome stranger arrives to document Mina’s life who is not quite what he seems…
Mina Harker: The Curse of the Vampire is a compelling sequel to Dracula, which also acts as a standalone story. Bringing back the old characters and adding new ones to create an emotional, action packed modernised fantasy from Mina’s perspective with an added twist at the end.
Targeted Age Group:: 14-35
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
I have always been a massive fan of Dracula stories and films. From a young age I have had an obsession with vampires and I have always wanted to write my own take on Dracula. I came up with this idea as a teenager but did not start writing the book until a couple of years later. After I had finished the first draft of the book I realised it was too short and fast paced to be a novel, so I eventually published Mina Harker: The Curse of the Vampire as a novella.
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
I kept the most important characters from Dracula: Mina Harker, Jonathan Harker and Count Dracula himself, and I added my own twist on them, as well as inventing new characters to make the story my own. Some of the characters I invented for this story seem to be quite mysterious and I plan to write other spin off novellas based on two of them in the future, which will tell their stories before and after Mina Harker: The Curse of the Vampire was set.
Book Sample
INTRODUCTION- A PASSAGE FROM MINA HARKERS JOURNAL
Seven years had gone by since the night that Dracula became a lifted curse from within my soul. The night he died on our way back to London we felt everything that we had been through was surely worth the wait of our lives together. Nothing on this earth could possibly ruin Jonathan’s perfect smile that night. We were both entirely happy, even though we had to travel to the edge of Hell and go through the flames on our way out, it was worth it. To finally be Jonathan’s wife and settle into our home was remarkable, it was all that I ever wished for. Although there was once a time when he thought himself too poor for me, but now he just wanted to look after me and make sure that nothing else from hell or earth would harm me. I told Jonathan that my worst fear had almost turned into reality when I nearly became a reflection of the evil that the Count possessed.
The night we reached London we conceived our first child: we named him Quincy after the brave Quincy Morris who didn’t make it through the flames, but not one day goes by without him in all of our hearts. After the ordeal with the Count I believed that Professor Van Helsing was pursuing a notion to separate the good and evil from mankind; I believe the Count inspired him to do so, even though you couldn’t really call him a man. I have changed remarkably since that night: I am still the sweet and loving Mina I always was, but with an added realization and understanding of fact and fiction, I have become a lot braver than I used to be. But lately over the past few weeks, I had started to feel quite confused and I began to fear that my mind could not recognize fantasy from reality any longer. I have not told Jonathan as I do not want to worry him, although day by day I can feel myself losing my way and all of the light inside me gradually dimming and I do not know how to fight my way out from within the hold that the darkness has bestowed upon me.
PROLOGUE
The monster lurked around me, jumping out from every dark angle of the room. A butcher and what a butcher indeed for all he wants is my blood. All of the energy and life was being sucked right out of me. I felt so tired and drained and I became weaker as the seconds ticked by. Tick. Tick. Tick. I fell into a deep state of being where everything was black and red. Black for the butcher and red for the blood that he takes. Deep feelings of horror rose upon me as three dark haired creatures suddenly crept around me. Side by side they stared at me with their evil faces, one much smaller than the other two but still as toxic.
The monster came beside me and all that I could feel was the sharp sting of death. Blood spurted from within my veins and began to cover him and I could tell that he liked it. He was enjoying my agony, my death. Straight out of Hell he was sent as the rest. The beasts all began to prowl around my bed. I could feel the heat rise throughout my body like I was being possessed by a hundred burning candles. Am I in hell I wondered? My blood began to boil and each of the natural beats of my heart began to fall further and further apart. I was on the verge of death surrounded by fire. My muscles began to swell up beneath my skin as blood dripped from the lining of my hair. Then suddenly with the next tick of the clock my heart stopped beating…
Red blood fell down the periphery of my half mortal neckline and as I was divided of my endless draining blood, I felt my entire body shiver with fear. I realized that my bloodline was now to become one with an immortal being. Blurred visions of horrific deaths then hit my eyes, and when I opened them all I could see was he, the vowed demon of the night staring upon me with eyes as red as tormented souls, burning inside huge holes of encrusted flames.
‘Mina my love,’ I heard him say inside my mind, as my hand fell through the remaining ashes of his existence…
CHAPTER ONE
This dream had now haunted me for longer than my life was ever worth. Do you not wish that if you could go back in time, you would reinvent every last second that slipped through your fingers? I always have, as I have always felt trapped and suffocated in the dreams of my past: to move on was my ultimate desire although seemingly impossible, so instead I had found myself trying to live within my agonizing fears and regrets.
My name is Mina Harker, and yes you have probably heard of me from my eventful encounter with Prince Vlad: better known to you as the one and only Count Dracula. As in the earlier days of my existence I still live within London, holding onto dear memories of the past and whatever hopes remain for me, as my life has not exactly turned out the way that I had planned. The twenty first century was a major change but one that is easy to live by: my once grand accent has now faded into a mere commonly olden tone; my youth and beauty that once were are now just a distant vision of the past. My lack of human blood was just enough to survive, although my hair turned white and my skin aged with wrinkles, yet it was always my own choice to live off the blood of leeches. I order them directly to my home via the internet, as I try my best to fit into the new time-line of humanity. One thing that has changed on the outside is that people accept me now and they do not think of me as a beast any longer, as they once did over a century ago. Instead, many mortals wish they were like me and even though severely undeserved, they think of me as some kind of goddess like role model.
While evaluating my existence, I heard a mere tap at my front door. A quiet but forceful tap of a hand that rang around inside my eardrums like a church bell, seen as everything was much louder now than it used to be. With a strange light headed feeling I preceded to the door, pulling it back from the hinges to unveil a shadowed figure of a man in black, unknown yet strangely familiar looking. The stranger in my midst was very tall and his hair shimmered like black diamonds on a summer’s day. He was overly handsome with a fashionable appearance and stood out to me like a moth to light. His rugged facial features appealed to my darker side. His scent was completely intoxicating like golden musk with a hint of Mediterranean spice. He looked at me and spoke with an air of honor in his masculine tone.
‘Greetings’, the stranger said smiling.
I stood in awe and began to find myself getting lost in his deep dark eyes, until I pulled myself from this fantasy on his second speech.
‘You are Mrs. Harker, aren’t you?’ the stranger continued.
‘Yes, yes I am, and you are?’ I replied still gazing at this magnificent being.
‘I am Nathanial Shade, and I have travelled from the borders of Romania to gain your permission to interview you on your life as a vampire and how you came to be.’
In that instant I began to wonder why this man stood in my presence and most of all if he was telling me the truth: why would someone be this interested in me? It was nearly time for my meal and my bloodlust for this stranger made it an easy way to kill. He was of course all the way from Europe, and it was a possibility that he might not have anyone at home waiting for him. It could be so easy like taking candy from a baby, yet I must not even think of such things. Refraining from draining my guest dry in an instant motion I slammed the door shut in his face, as a large amount of confusion ran throughout my mind. I could feel myself changing and in that moment I stumbled and scraped my nails deep into the door as I ran inside. I swiftly made my way to the living room and used a prickly syringe to drain the blood from ten bitter leeches, before wrapping a tightly wound piece of elastic around my arm, injecting the sweetly sour blood into my venomous system. I could feel the blood pounding through my veins, making my entire body shake and pulsate with the warm feelings of satisfaction. As the blood began to settle and my vision became that of a human rather than a killer breed, I headed back towards the door. To my surprise Mr. Shade was still stood in the exact position that I had left him.
‘I apologize for the sudden vanishing act, I just…’ I tried to say as I stuttered nervously.
‘Felt a little… Shall we say hungry?’ he responded.
‘How did you guess?’
‘I have researched you well Mrs. Harker, there is nothing about you that could surprise me’.
I laughed.
‘You may come inside then Mr. Shade, if you are not frightened of me.’
‘Quite the contrary Mrs. Harker.’
Mr. Shade looked deep into my eyes with a smirking expression crawling up the right side of his tanned cheek, before slowly following me inside. His fearless presence fascinated me. Firstly by knocking on a vampires door in the dark hours of the night and secondly that door being mine.
Nathanial stared around my gothic Victorian living room as if it was well known to him. My home of course was like a small fraction of myself. My living room was decorated with blood red walls and black furniture pieces. My charcoal curtains sustained a feeling of majesty in my home, thick enough to keep out all of the lights of the day. You would think by now with all of the world’s technology that a cure would have been invented, so that I could feel the warmth of the summer sunshine upon my face once more, yet nothing had. Nothing but eternal darkness that is, but after over a hundred years one gets used to this mere existence. My flooring is made from the finest marble and matches my Victorian marble table which is home to a great crystal candelabra that I kept as a reminder of the past. A decorative gothic crystal collection of Venetian masks surround the bare remains of the crimson walls.
‘Your home is beautiful Mrs. Harker.’
‘Thank you, would you like a drink at all?’ I responded.
‘I do not drink at this time during the day’, Nathanial replied with a pause, and with that he laid out a note book, a blue pen and a voice recording machine.
‘Are you ready to begin Mrs. Harker?’ he asked.
I nodded my head in response as he picked up the tape, speaking softly into the machine.
‘My name is Nathanial Shade and I am here with the infamous Mrs. Mina Harker on a quest to discover the unknown source of her powers and how Mina’s curse of the vampire came to be.’
All of a sudden I began to feel the overwhelming fear of what questions my interviewer would ask me and worse yet the dreaded answers that he would dredge up from my fatal past. He then proceeded in asking me what it felt like to be a vampire with which I simply responded:
‘This life was given to me by a monster, the very creator of this disease that runs throughout my cold body, but I now am what I am and I have learnt how to live with it without taking human lives. Although it was never as easy as it has become, the lustful desires of the blood from within ones warm flesh is an overwhelming addiction, but I guess the start of my story comes from my second meeting with the dark lord, my creator.’
Nathanial then looked deep into my eyes as if he was analyzing every one of my thoughts to find out whether my lips were insincere. I wondered if he then realized what I was thinking as he instantly turned away. He then stood up and started to circle my living room, taking short strides with an attractive air about his presence. I felt confused as my subconscious mind came to one single thought and as I parted my lips, my story began to unfold.
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