Dracula's Demeter by Creativia

Join Doug Lamoreux, 2010 Rondo Award nominee and author of The Devil's Bed, for a rousing sea adventure, for romance... and for terror. Come aboard Dracula's Demeter!

In his classic 'Dracula', Bram Stoker, with a few cryptic entries in an unnamed captain's journal, offered scant hints regarding the terrifying voyage that brought the vampire king from his homeland to a blood-rich London. Now, the whole mind-rending tale is told.

July, 1897. The Russian schooner, Demeter, sets sail from Varna carrying fifty oblong boxes partially filled with earth. A month later, in the midst of a raging storm, the derelict Demeter runs aground in Whitby, England, her crew missing save for her captain, tied to the wheel with a crucifix in his lifeless hands. The only living thing aboard is a huge dog that escapes into the night.

Dracula's Demeter is also a story of Trevor Harrington, a British scholar and fugitive. Of Swales, the old Scot cook, who deceives their commander but knows a good deal "aboon grims and boh-ghosts". Of Ekaterina Gabor, a beautiful Romanian who follows her lover by stowing away. Of Captain Nikilov, fighting for his ship and crew while something evil, more virulent than the black plague, decimates their number. Of Demeter herself, named for the Greek goddess of renewal, lost and tossed on an unforgiving sea. And of Count Dracula, at rest in Demeter's dark hold until the unintended actions of her crew resurrect the vampire and his unquenchable bloodlust.

Dracula's Demeter is a 2012 Lord Ruthven award nominee.