Memoirs of an Immortal Life

Memoirs

of
an

Immortal Life

Candace L. Bowser

MEMOIRS OF AN IMMORTAL LIFE

Copyright Candace L. Bowser
Jan. 2013

Second Edition for Kindle Users

Cover Illustration Copyright 2014

by Dark Water Arts Designs

Names,
characters, and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead was done so based on research and readily available information from various web sources.

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. The Berne Convention Copyright Laws of 1988, and the Digital Millennium Copy Right Act of 1998, enacted by Congress protect this work from piracy and any transmission is strictly prohibited and will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Disclaimer

This book is written in what is sometimes referred to as “King’s English
”. The reader may notice certain words are spelled to coincide with the time- period of the novel and the old style of the English language was used in writing. This was done intentionally to establish accuracy.

DEDICATION

To my husband, who patiently supports my dreams.

With Special thanks and undying gratitude to
Samatha Burasco-Britz, who was my beta and editor.

T
o Bram Stoker, who inspired my love of the darkness through finely written prose, who wrote with bravery and tenacity in a time when the literary world began to blossom outside of society’s norms. You were a man far ahead of your time and were greatly under-appreciated during your lifetime. You shall continue to be a great source of inspiration to me, and many others, so for this, I thank you not only for conjuring a dream within but also for the vision you created whom so many now adore...

Prelude

I am an Immortal. I would not have chosen this life had the choice been mine to make; had I known that which could save me would prevent inevitable death, that my life would be one of solitude where those loved would eventually wither and die. Born the daughter of a great man who bore a hidden curse, it was not known to me the fate that awaited me. My name has been many throughout the centuries; but my true name, the one given to me at the moment of my birth, had fallen to obscurity until only a few days ago. My life is a constant reinvention, now living under the guise of a horror novelist in the current century, but now that the truth is known, there will be denying my lineage any longer. I am Claudia Ambrosia Van Helsing, daughter of Abraham Van Helsing, a descendant of the man known as Vladimir Tepes of the Baserab, and am a surviving member of the Dracul. A woman who, from this day forward, shall no longer be solely known as the author who bravely chose to pen her life story.

Not all castles are for fairy tales. Some are for kings, Some are for queens, and some harbor what is best left to shadows...

The Beginning

History tells a story. Every story has a beginning and an ending. It is the details left lying between that are often overlooked, even misunderstood, or fabricated to make the story believable, understandable, and
more suitable for mankind. Yet in the most basic piece of history, the line between the hero and the villain is not always as clear as one would believe. Such is the case regarding the life of Vladimir Dracul and the life he lived.

Dracula did not die as Harker and the others
were led to believe. He lived on under many other names throughout the centuries. My father, who by all accounts, was thought by Mina, Jonathan, and Lord Arthur to have returned to his old life as a renowned physician had in all truthfulness taken the partially beheaded body of Vladimir Dracul to a secure location hidden from the rest of the world. I was, at the time, a very young woman who did not understand the importance of the man in the coffin we transported nor the importance of the creature's world. I would not learn the truth about either of them until much later in my life, and to this day wish time would have been kinder, a better friend so to speak, so that I might have had the opportunity to mind the darkness between them.

My father kept it well hidden the Dark Prince lived. He had become fascinated with the creature and the implications his kind could have on modern diseases of the blood. The possibilities of using the rare qualities Vladimir’s blood possessed
in the name of science was a tempting proposition my father could not resist. They were the same qualities that drove my father to use Dracula to further his medical studies, hiding him from the world for his own personal reasons, and keeping him a near prisoner – though it can be said with ease Vladimir was never a prisoner for it was within his power to leave whenever he wished. What began as near madness to kill a creature both feared and misunderstood led to an obsession even more bizarre; a friendship and a bond that even I could not understand until nearly a century later when Dracula presented me with my father’s diaries and his own.

Part of my father’s mania in blood related diseases stemmed from my mother’s death. Catherine Anna Van Helsing had carried a recessive gene that did not become dominant until she became pregnant with her first child. By the time her second child was born, the rare form of hemophilia she possessed killed her in childbirth. My sister, Ophelia, died only days after my mother. My father
became consumed with finding a cure knowing that I too carried the recessive gene. He knew it would be only a matter of time before the illness would overtake me and begin to exhibit symptoms. His quest to save me bordered on near madness the same as any parent would carry to save their child, however, my father's madness came with a stark and troubled difference.

What they did not know at the time, when Mina had departed Carfax Abbey in the keep of the Dark Prince to return to his beloved Wallachia, was
my father was already an Immortal and had been pursuing Vlad for the last four hundred years. The call from Jack Seward was merely a convenient coincidence that led to a strange twist of fate. Abraham Van Helsing had once been known by a less recognizable name in historical texts. My father was someone quite dear to Vladimir. It was a fact my father never knew until his death.

At the time Vladimir cursed his allegiance with God and the Church, it
was known to very few that he had brother who had devoted his entire life to the clergy. It was not an odd occurrence for a family to proceed in this manner during the Dark Ages. In fact, it was quite common place to ensure the family bloodline survived. Clerics were allowed to have families, and sexual relations were not forbidden unless one had been exalted to the height of Monk or Father. Many families sent at least one son into the clergy and the profession of God to secure their lineage for future generations. Kings and their sons often died in battle leaving no one to carry on the family name and crest. By placing one in the charge of God, they remained cloistered safely beyond death.

He had entered the Romanian Order at
Sighișoara
under his given name of Belcor Baserab at the very young age of five years. It was not until much later he
was given the Anglicized name of Ahbrim.

I have read the detailed entries of the diaries and the painstaking steps he took to save his brother’s soul countless times. Belcor and Dracula
were separated when they were very young, so young they had never known each other as children; only as men, and only Dracula possessed the faint, lingering memories of a sibling lost. There was no bond between them as there often was between siblings. Vlad was groomed for greatness. Belcor was groomed for God and from the day Belcor Baserab was placed within the Order only Ahbrim remained.

Ahbrim kept detailed records of his encounters with the young Vladimir. His superiors were impressed with his concern and devotion toward the man who would be the next leader of Wallachia and Romania. Knowing who he actually was, they placed him as the guardian of Vlad’s spiritual well-being and soul. Vladimir was the favored soldier of God in the eyes of the Vatican. Ahbrim had spent the first sixteen years of his life in relative seclusion
being groomed by the Archbishop Mordecai Vedesti to be the spiritual advisor to Kings. He never knew he was being groomed to care for a man who was his own brother and would not know the truth until his death. Vladimir knew the truth all along and perhaps it was all that Ahbrim alive despite his efforts to kill Vladimir in the end.

Ahbrim’s responsibility to Vladimir was not one to
be taken lightly. Vlad had been in possession of the Ottoman Turks for nearly half of his life. He was a highly prized prisoner of war who held the esteemed place of being the son of a King. He was not only leverage but also young enough to be malleable. It was the hope of the Ottomans to mold the young and impressionable Vlad to take on their cause, their religion, and send him home to his people with the intent of using him to overthrow his own country. It did not go quite as they had planned. Ahbrim noted Vladimir’s faith was too strongly rooted, his soul too devout, and his body too committed to Christ for the Ottomans to turn out his heart. ‘Their efforts’, he had written, ‘may have been that of valiant men whose defiant nature led them to believe they had corrupted a child but in the end the man of God still remained.’ Vlad feigned acceptance of their beliefs in order to gain release so he could unleash his vengeance and make them pay with their lives.

Ahb
rim took his duties seriously when he learned Vlad’s father Vlad the II was returned to the Romanian statehood in 1431 and did the unthinkable by making a pact with the Ottoman Turks to concede the ownership of his two sons, Vladimir the III and Radu, to the Sultan in 1436. By doing so, his sons were to serve as hostages of Royalty. Vlad was imprisoned, beaten, and whipped with a horrid device called the cat-o-nine tales - a leather whip fashioned with metal spikes that protruded from the ends of the whip devised to tear flesh from the victim’s back. His stubborn behavior led to his abhorrent treatment whereas Radu was an exemplary Royal prisoner and converted to Islam. He was honored with the title of Bey and given control of the Janissary contingents.

These were the formative years of my Uncle causing him great strife and hatred for not only the Ottoman Turks but also for his brother Radu and the Young Prince Mehmed. He grew to be envious of
his half-brother Mircea and also of the Hungarian. He was angered at his father for trading him to the Turks and breaking the Order of the Dragon’s oath to stand against the Ottoman Empire so long as there was breath left within the Order.

Realizing my Uncle could not be broken, it was decided that he would later be released under what was referred to as probation of interment and be taken to be educated in logic, the Qur’an, Turkish, Persian, and works of literature. He would speak these languages plus many others fluently in later years. My uncle was an expert equestrian and swordsmen as well as a gifted archer. His penchant lie in his ability to extract confessions through torture as would later be
come discovered many years after his ‘death’.

His memories are strong in my blood, the memories of my Uncle, as I carry his blood within me; the memories of each disparity he faced, of each
blood-curdling scream he invoked, of each tear he shed for his beloved. I keep in my possession the diaries of two great men: my father and my uncle, and that of one woman: my own. Though not every entry of the diaries are contained here, it conveys what is important - the truth. It is time the world knew the truth. It is the true story of the Order of the Dracul, the true story of the Order of the Dragon, that must be told, the story of three unlikely people, how they shared one commonality, and how that commonality saved me from the darkness of death's door.