A vampire is hunting Darius and his sister. But before he can destroy it, he must first learn its name. To know a demon's name is to hold power over it. Name the beast and bind the beast. Name it not, and be its feast. So claim the ancient demonologies, buried for centuries in forgotten chronicles. For Darius, those sinister words may be the difference between triumph and ruin. For his sister, Elise, the difference between salvation and damnation.
As Vlad Dracula prepares to face the Ottoman armies massing before Constantinople, eerie rumours of blood-drinking monsters spread across medieval Europe. Darius struggles to protect those he loves while making sense of the horrors gathering around him. Yet the death toll is rising, and age-old superstitions are proving terrifyingly real. As innocent blood is spilled, Darius must rush to uncover forgotten lore and learn the true name of the thing that stalks the darkness beyond the firelight. Every delay may cost Elise her life. Every mistake places his companions in mortal danger.
Meanwhile, haunted by the unsolved death of his father and the sins of war, George searches for answers amidst the chaos of a crumbling empire. Yet the closer he comes to the truth, the more he fears redemption lies beyond his reach, and the more it seems that both his fate and Darius's are leading toward damnation. But the truth is more terrible than either man imagines. For some names were never meant to be spoken. Some doors were never meant to be opened. And some evils hunger not merely for human lives, but for immortal souls.
Overall, there's quite a lot to this one that works incredibly well. Most of this is tied into the stellar storyline that adopts a genuine dark fantasy route to real history by mixing mythologies together with genuine history, leaving this one to be incredibly immersive and engaging as this plays out. The exploits of the main vampire and his crusade across Europe are quite a strong start, making this come together with the kind of thrilling action where not only is this atmospheric with how the encounters come off but also provides the groundwork for the kind of mythical creature rampaging through everything here. The means through which these incidents start to provide evidence of a strange, vicious creature running around, hinting at the bloodthirsty lore of the creature overall, creates a kind of generally dark starting point for his search into finding out what is really responsible. This is incredibly well-handled and quite chilling, focusing on a clock to get through everything and solve the riddle about everything to stop the creature from striking further victims.
The second half of the storyline, bringing this hunter together with a slew of other survivors to try to bring down the vampire plague spreading across the country, is just as fun for slightly different reasons. Instead of being a thrilling race against time to unravel the clues buried in these ancient texts regarding the identity of the ancient being, this part goes for a more humanistic touch as we get in-depth regarding the team and their pasts coming together into this strange unit. The different figures are each given their part of the story to bring them closer together over the journey, not just adding heart and warmth to this gruesome story but also giving them relationships that are quite engaging throughout here. This becomes the main crux of the book as they continue on their quest and become closer as a unit, strengthening the connection between each other but also the reader as well, giving this enough to overcome a slight and unimportant issue in this being slightly too long for its own good, involving so much going on. However, this can be easily overlooked and ignored, creating an immensely likable read.
5/5
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