Craven
by
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Why write a journal dedicated to my life and death, you might ask? It is as I said, partly out of vanity, wishing that future centuries know of my comings and goings, providing testament that I was here. Perhaps these by then fragile pages will cry out to all and declare there once lived a mortal who traded his soul for immortality for noble reasons; who murdered, yet had compassion; who did evil, yet was good; who practiced deception and treachery, yet maintained honor.
I spent centuries reliving my life and my death but only days pondering their worth. In the end all may have been in vain. My epitaph, had I a monument to put it on, might well read: His strength was tested and he failed. A wiser immortal, however, might note that often what appears to be failure may be success. It is no less an enigma than beauty itself.
As all stories need a message cloaked in a moral sermon to satisfy the reader’s need for justice, so must an immortal’s journal shroud its mystery in such a manner that men of wisdom will argue its merits over the centuries. One such sermon has come to me:
To humankind, I am at best a myth, something to scare naughty children. At worst, I am an evil, heard of but never seen, a heartless monster stalking innocents to spill their blood without purpose. However, I tell you now; I am not such a monster. I am not the dreaded Vlad the Impaler who legend, and I assure you it is but legend, anoints as the first of our line.
Be leery of myth, for it is no friend to the quick or the dead. It is but foolery for those who welcome it rather than face the truth, even when the myth is often more horrifying than the truth. Still, truth, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder. Sadly, in the end, myth overshadows truth, for there are those who benefit from the deception: the Priests, the Scholars, the Nobles and, most of all, the Vampire.
The truth is we are not that which legend would demand we be, at least not all. Nor are we the blood-drinking beasts that history paints us to be. The lives taken by all of my kind that ever existed could not match the carnage of humankind upon humankind. Consider the wars that one nation wages against another for gain of land or wages or for insult.
So judge me not, until you have walked the roads of eternity, as have I.
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About the Book
When a strange creature leads a band of marauders to ravage his village and kill his parents, young Craven Arneau escapes and seeks revenge. During his flight to safety, he is befriended by a reticent monk who takes him to the safety of his monastery. There he meets Danielle, a young peasant girl who tempers all thoughts of revenge. However, his contentment is short-lived when his past catches up with him in the form of a cuckold Baron who charges him with rape and murder. Craven is again forced to leave his life behind. While on the dusty, dirt road to safety, more tragedy befalls him; those he left behind at the monastery fall prey to the evil creature who fed upon his village. When his journey brings him to the French town of La Rochelle, Maurice Chassell, an ancient Vampire, convinces him that in order to destroy the horror that has tormented him all these years, he must die and become its equal. However, despite his alliance with Maurice, revenge constantly evades him. Only when he encounters Joseph, a Vampire even older than Maurice, does he come face to face with the lies and deception that have tormented him since his death and rebirth.
About the Author
Hughes’s career in the United States Navy included tours of duty with the USMC, patrol duty aboard the nuclear submarine, USS Francis Scott Key, and a tour of duty in Vietnam. After retiring from the navy in 1976, he obtained certification as a Physician Assistant from the Medical University of S.C., followed by graduate and postgraduate degrees from the University of N.C., Charlotte. Born in Waynesboro, Va., the author now resides in Salisbury, N.C., where he works as a Physician Assistant at the W.G. “Bill” Hefner VAMC. The author’s previous novels include Darcy Miller, Exodus Conspiracy, Mulberry Street, and The Wedjat. His new novel, Craven, answers the question: Where do Vampires go to die?