Dracula's Demeter

"...a fiendishly clever and welcome addition to the Dracula mythology." - Fangoria Magazine July, 1897, the Russian schooner, Demeter, set sail from Varna carrying fifty oblong boxes partially filled with earth. A month later, in the midst of a raging storm, the derelict Demeter ran aground in Whitby, England, her crew missing save for her captain, who was tied to the wheel with a crucifix in his lifeless hands. The only living thing aboard was a huge dog that escaped into the night. Bram Stoker, in his classic 'Dracula', 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. The 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.