Born to Darkness

What if... the two greatest evils of the Twentieth Century were set on a collision course? You'd get a dark, intelligent and highly original vampire story. Poland, 1941. An invading German platoon stumbles upon and is slaughtered by an enigma known only as DER VAMPYRE. Back in Berlin, DR. AUGUSTUS HEISSERMANN recognizes the attack for what it is and persuades the Nazi high command to secretly back his plan — to acquire and study the specimen. Meanwhile in Paris, the American Nobel Laureate PROFESSOR MARLOWE KEATS, who has a paralyzed arm from birth, is abducted by the Gestapo while attempting to flee before the German incursion. His new French bride, ISOBELLE, is held hostage as he's sent to an underground laboratory in Poland to collaborate with Dr. Heissermann. When Keats first lays eyes on the wretched being he is intrigued, repulsed, and moved to pity. As the experiment unfolds, Der Vampyre's evil influence permeates the lab in a series of bone chilling murders, apparent suicides, and supernatural mayhem. Recognizing that Keats is unlike his captors, the creature breaks its silence and speaks with the outsider. Marlowe gradually brings it back from centuries of carnage only to learn that it has lost all recollection of its former human identity. Against setbacks of failure, betrayal and espionage, Heissermann ruthlessly pushes the experiment onward. The stakes raise when Keats learns not only that his sequestered wife is pregnant, but that the true objective of the experiment is to inoculate a unit of unstoppable, vampyric super soldiers. Will Heissermann succeed in breeding an undead perversion of Aryan ubermensch? Will Keats reconcile the dilemma between acquiescing to blackmail to protect his wife, or sabotaging the experiment in order to save the free world? And will Der Vampyre discover the secrets of its own past, or will it instead wreck untold wrath upon its captors? A hybrid of two enduring genres, the story is one Part grizzly horror yarn and one part World War II thriller. Executed smart and straight, it explores themes of human frailty, redemption, and the dual faces of evil: both contemporary and supernatural.