The Vampires of Mars

PART 1

THE VAMPIRES OF MARS

INTRODUCTION

In the many centuries past and throughout mankind's long reign over the planet Earth. Superstition and folk law had always played a major role in driving fear into the hearts and minds of the less educated. Even all the way up the chain to aristocracy, feeding their imaginations with dreadful and fearful imagery. For within these story's and superstition, lay hints of truth, shrouded though it may be and hidden in the depth of time, the real truth behind legends were never, ever what they might have imagined them to be. Not even close, especially when it came to the life and origin of the infamous vampires and their mistaken ideology.

Vampires, dismissed for many hundreds of years and now nothing more than a bunch of myths and tales from the times of old. People now generally understand that Vampires are in no way thought or believed to be real. And so, a vampire today adds up to purely nothing more than a child dressed up as say, Count Dracula on Halloween, or as an actor in make-up performing in a box office movie, meant to entertain the masses. Even our kids eat their morning breakfast with cartoon vampires on television and Buffy the vampire slayer entertains the adults over their evening meal. Plastic joke fangs and dustbin liner capes are all that remains of an age old myth of a supposedly feared race known as Vampires.

These days nobody other than crazy people actually believe in Vampires because, after all, Vampires don't really exist!

Or at least, that's what we thought.

Chapter 1⃣ Hidden in time.

The year is 1686 in central London, England and the last living vampire in the world has been cornered hiding away in his own derelict mansion from an angry mob with the intent of killing him.

"My time has almost come" he quietly speaks to an artifact that is on a tall dressed table, "they have found me again! What should I do?" The artifact speaks back with a masterful tone "You disappoint me!" It said as a large red gem glowed as it spoke "six hundred years, and you have wasted it on that retched world and now it is all lost to us! Your fate is sealed" it said.

The vampire cowering and desperate to appease his master strokes the artefact with his bony fingered hands and long sharp chipped nails "I could sleep until this turbulent time has passed and I am long forgot" Suggests the almost skeletal figure clearly in pain from not feeding.

The power and presence of the mystical object is enough to cast obedience without delivering even a single word, the vampire almost penitent holds out his hands to plead with it's silence.

"Please Sire I can still serve you" he protests in a desperate attempt unwilling to disappoint his superior.

With the transmission ended at the other end silence was his only reply "so be it!" He says in a depressed tone. Giving up, he gently takes the dark, jewelled ornament from the table and carries it through the damp house taking care not to stumble on dead rats and debris from his crumbling home. He reached an extremely damp kitchen area which has water trickling from a crack in the ceiling, dirt and thick grime covered the sink and cupboards as a fly covered corpse lays rotting away awkwardly piled on a stack of old news papers and filling the kitchen with putrid odour. A fragile looking shell of what used to be an energetic killer places the stone device down on the floor beside an old wooden trap-like door. He feels for an elaborate key from a chain around his clammy grey thinning neck and unlocks it.

Always prepared for darkness, melted old candles are everywhere where there's a suitable surface, although mostly unlit.

He picks the one closest to the door and tips the candle into a flame from one already lit on a dresser. The new flame of his candle flickers and dims, almost extinguishing from the draft as he turned to bend down for his precious cargo.