Page 111 - Microsoft Word - FANG EMPIRE - NOVEL.docx

“What?”

Judar chuckled. “Gamal caught this thing in one of his traps.”

“What happened to it? Is it diseased?”

Maran Dara spoke ominously. “Algul.”

“Algul? What does that mean?” said Ramoth.

“He says it’s a vampire,” said Judar.

“A vampire?”

“He put it into a pit with a poisonous snake. The rabbit was bitten over and over again. The

venom had no effect on it. It attacked the snake and sucked its blood until the serpent was dead.

The next day the snake rose from the dead. It was a vampire like this one.”

“It crawled around behind the rabbit like a slave,” the Mystic said.

“Prince Omar used to talk about these creatures,” said Ramoth. “He liked to go vampire

hunting. No one believed he would find anything, but he was the prince and that was his pleasure.

He always came back empty handed.”

“My grandfather was a mercenary with the Ottoman Turks,” said Judar. “When I was a

boy he told me of a bloodsucking Romanian prince named Vlad the Impaler. He skewered his

enemies on long spikes . . . like you do, Ramoth. They called him Dracula.”

“Vampirism . . . a disease of the whites,” said Ramoth with a wave of his hand.

Judar reached out and took the vampire rabbit by the neck.

“I don’t know . . . there is always a first for everything.” He thrust the rabbit into Ramoth’s

face. “Blacula!” he said with a mocking smirk.

Ramoth flinched as the rabbit bit at the air with its fangs. Judar and Gamal laughed.

Ramoth was not amused.

“That sounds ridiculous,” he said.