SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy Read Online Free PDF Page B

medical community went by the wayside. He slowly began to discover traces of what might be truth tucked away in articles and books about vampires. In among the ridiculous fiction, he began to notice bits and pieces of reports in some more scholarly tomes that left him wondering. In one such article, published in a respected journal, he found reports of a "real" vampire who had been discovered. He flipped through the book in his hand until he found the page that contained the reprint.
     
    A True Vampire Story
     
    How It All Began …
     
    This is the story of Arnod Paole, one of the few vampire histories that has been sufficiently documented over the years to lend it historical validity. In the spring of 1727, Arnod Paole returned home from the military to settle in his hometown of Meduegna, near Belgrade. He bought some land, built a home, and began work as a farmer. After a short time, he married a local girl. Her father's land bordered his, and would be a fine addition, so the two were wed. Paole confided to his wife that he was haunted by nightmares. He dreamed that he would die early. In the military, he had been in Greece. Local beliefs there included myths about how the dead came back to haunt the living. They came back in the form of revenants or vampires. While in Greece, and hearing those tales, Paole believed he had been visited by an undead being. Afterward, he hunted down the unholy grave, on the advice of locals. He burned the corpse. However, what he'd done seemed so horrible to him, so frightening, he had to flee Greece. He resigned from the military and went home.
    Soon after marrying, Paole fell from a hayloft, and was brought, comatose, back to his home. Within a few days, and without regaining consciousness, he died and was buried in the town cemetery. A month later reports began to filter through the townspeople claiming Paole had been seen. Some said they'd seen him in their own homes, wandering like a ghost. Some weeks after those reports, many of the people who had seen Paole in their homes died under inexplicable circumstances. This caused the town fathers to sign a petition to exhume Arnod Paole. They must make sure he was dead.
    Two military officers, two army surgeons, and a local priest were called to the task. Upon opening the coffin they found Paole, but there was no decomposition of the body. He had new skin and nails, the old ones having fallen away. And on the corpse's lips they saw wet, fresh blood. They decided they must drive a stake through the body. They swore that when they did it, Paole screamed and fresh blood spilled out. Then they scattered garlic around the remains, and around each of the graves where Paole had sent his newest victims.
    All was quiet until 1732, when more inexplicable deaths began to occur. This time, the whole town went to the graveyard. What they found was written up in books over time, the reports given by three army surgeons, cosigned by a lieutenant colonel, and a sublieutenant. Eleven disinterred corpses showed the same traits as the Paole corpse had earlier. No decomposition, new skin grown, fresh blood in the body. There was never an explanation for the second instance of vampirism, although one theory was that Paole had feasted on local cattle as well as people during his walking dead phase. Perhaps, they said, when the cows were killed for meat, the vampire qualities were consumed and came alive in anyone who ate the meat. It was the only conclusion they could find.
     
    Charles closed the volume and rested it on his knees. The evidence was sketchy, but it did point toward the possibility there might be something to the old myth. If he'd only found this one piece of truth, he might have dismissed it as hyperbole, as fancy, but he kept turning up more and more information in his studies that claimed there were, in the past and, even today, real vampires. People who had died and were yet not dead. People who lived on as immortals.
    He had brought it up to