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once again soon after Alexei’s encounter with Vlad. Nicolae soon realised that Alexei was a good man and the two had become close friends.
    When Vlad’s army had disbanded, Nicolae had planned to join another army but Alexei and Nicolae both knew that Nicolae would become remorseless, cold-blooded, beyond redemption if he joined another army. So Alexei insisted that he come home with him. Nicolae eventually agreed.
    Alexei made Nicolae welcome in his home and in exchange for this Nicolae taught Alexei to read. All the books that Isabella had learned from were originally Nicolae’s.
     
    The murders had started infrequently at first. One here, one there, but the victims had all been Gypsies. People presumed that they had frozen to death or died of old age. They took little notice of the tiny puncture marks on the necks of the dead bodies.
    The sporadic murders of the Gypsies continued for the next two years. The people of the villages paid no attention to them. They did not really care if a gypsy lived or died. Unfortunately for the villagers, they soon paid for their complacency.
    A child disappeared from the village, a young, healthy little girl. The people of the village searched night and day in the woods. During their search some of the villagers went missing themselves. After some time passed they found all the bodies, one by one.
    The first body they found was that of the child. She was found face down in the ground. When they examined her they found a few drops of blood leading to two tiny lacerations on the child’s neck. One of the villagers remarked that he had seen a wound like this on one of the dead Gypsies but had thought nothing of it.
    The villagers became angry. They wanted explanations, and they wanted retribution. They needed someone to blame for the tragedy and they chose Vlad. They had heard rumours that he had gone mad, for not only had he lost his wife, he had lost his child as well. Stories flourished about him becoming a recluse, skulking around in the darkened hallways of his castle, completely alone. By the end of a few weeks nearly everyone blamed him for the murders.
    Alexei protested this, but Nicolae was not so sure. For Nicolae knew what losing your family could do to a person. He and a few villagers decided to go up to the castle to see for themselves whether Vlad was still there.
    They waited for darkness and then started the short trek up to the castle. Their families watched from below. As they got closer to the castle all that the families could see were flickering flames from the torches their husbands and sons carried. The forms of the men were obscured by the darkness and by the dense forest. When the exploration party got within a hundred yards of the castle entrance, a few torches seemed to be suddenly snuffed out and the light from the others darted about as if the carriers were running away from something. Within a few minutes all the torches were out. The families could see and hear nothing of the men who had walked up to the castle, but they feared the worst.
    Weeks passed as they slowly recovered the bodies of the men. Nicolae was the last to be found and like all the others his face showed panic and terror. The villagers had no idea what had happened, but the expressions on the faces of the dead convinced them that they did not want to know.
    The anger of the people now turned into fear and they refused to talk about what had happened. Forty years drifted past in silence. The murders still continued and the fear remained as strong.
    Alexei had been grief-stricken by the death of his friend and had always said if he ever had a son that he would call him Nicolae.
    Unfortunately, he had never been blessed with a son. His wife, like his daughter, had died in childbirth. However, unlike his son-in-law, he had loved his own child and enjoyed watching her grow up into a beautiful girl. Isabella was growing more like her mother every day, although even Alexei could see at an early