Spanning 500 years in the life of the vampire Radu Vladislas, this long-anticipated prequel to the SUBSPECIES series chronicles Radu’s descent from a noble warrior for the Church to a depraved creature of the night. Stolen by crusaders on the night of his birth, he has no knowledge of his bloodline: his mother a demon; father a vampire. Trained and exploited by a brotherhood of mystic monks to slay all enemies of the church, fate brings him back one night to the castle of his father, armed with the monster-slaying Sword of Laertes, to destroy the vampire Vladislas and reclaim a holy relic: the Bloodstone. The events of that night turn Radu from a noble man into a vampire with no master, setting him on a centuries-long quest for sustenance, for companionship, for the treacherous one who stole him from the sun, and for the Bloodstone he hopes will bring him peace.