Descendant - Graham Masterton

[nightreader]

Descendant by Graham Masterton (Severn House 2006)

The story begins in Antwerp 1944. Captain James Falcon of a top secret counterintelligence unit is called to the scene of a woman’s murder. Her heart has been ripped out and her blood drained. One of her children saw the killers, three of them and one was wearing a unique distinctive medallion. The old lady in the apartment downstairs talks of the ‘night people’.

Captain Falcon knows them as the strigoi – Romanian vampires allied with the Nazis to infiltrate and destroy resistance groups across Europe. Falcon learns there is a powerful leader named Duca, but as he closes in on him the house is bombed by a V2 rocket and Falcon assumes him to be obliterated.

Several years later in 1957 Falcon has set up a new life, then he is approached by the military, conscripting him again to hunt the strigoi. It emerges that Falcon’s own Romanian mother had been secretly drafted to hunt the vampires, and he is shocked to learn she actually captured Duca and sealed him in a lead casket for transportation to America where military scientists could study him. The plane carrying the casket then crashes into the Thames en route to the US, and because of the secrecy of the operation it was never listed as missing. Falcon is told his mother also died on the plane, although he’d always believed she’d died while he was serving in Europe. Then a dredger finds the wreckage in 1957, and naturally the casket is opened and the body count in London suddenly rises...bodies with their chests sliced open, hearts removed and drained of blood...

Though he is a likeable and charismatic character Falcon is single minded and ruthless when dealing with the strigoi. He no longer sees them as human and has no hesitation about torturing them for information to lead him to his goal - to destroy Duca.

The strigoi are fascinating creations. Described as being more like distant cousins of the nosferatu the strigoi were isolated for centuries in the forests and mountains of Romania, becoming inbred they developed different strengths and weaknesses to traditional vampires. They can move about in sunlight but need occult medallions to give them enhanced night vision. They don’t have fangs, using instead sharp knives to slice open their prey. There are two types - strigoi mort are the true undead, always vibrant and beautiful, they retain their memories and skills from when they lived, they can move at incredible speed and can appear only as flickering shadow passing by, they can also squeeze through the smallest of spaces and walk across ceilings and up high walls. They pass on the strigoi curse through the Embrace - an intimate exchange of blood or bodily fluids. The Embrace creates strigoi vii, creatures with a raging taste for blood which is never quenched. When they can stand the thirst no longer they return to the original strigoi mort to sup more blood, which poisons them until they too become strigoi mort.

Falcon chases Duca and his offspring through London, killing some in a gory fashion typical of Masterton - nails hammered through the eyes, head cut off, body buried in consecrated ground and the head boiled until the brains melt. Falcon has a hunting kit - the vampires are repelled by mirrors (it shows the corruption of their true selves), can be bound by silver thumbscrews and the open pages of a blessed Bible can blind them with an intense light.

The hunt for Duca becomes personal for Falcon and they are well matched adversaries. There’s a good speedy chase to Southampton to catch Duca as he tries to flee to America on the QEII. But that’s not the end of the story...

I’m quite a fan of Masterton’s work and this didn’t disappoint in any way. I liked the 1950’s period, it didn’t overpower the story and added some pleasing moments - like when a character comes out of a shop and sees a movie poster for a new picture called ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, showing at the Regal cinema. The vampire creations are as nasty as you could want them, and Duca is arrogant and aloof and totally bad - not like the flimsy vamps of recent fiction.

Shame on those booksellers who only have room on their shelves for a couple of Masterton books, squeezed in between King and Rice. Seems to me he deserves better.