Record of the Blood Battle (20 page)

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I
t’s always been my intent to write the Nobility as villains. Even now that remains unchanged. They’re always meant to be run through with D’s mystic blade. However, after all these years of writing, at some point I seem to have become attached to the villains, too. I say “I seem” because a Noble who appears in this volume—Baron Macula—is the spitting image of the beloved fairy tale character Humpty Dumpty. As I wrote his physical description, I realized,
I don’t think I can kill this one off
. Unless my memory fails me, the baron should be the only Noble in the Vampire Hunter series who’s survived. This might be a bad sign. An author can’t go getting emotional about the villain.

However, the Nobility/vampires have been intriguing creatures from the very start. In the stony basements of ancient castles towering in forests darkened even at midday there rest gorgeous yet forlorn coffins, and with the failing light of dusk the fiends go into motion like shadows. At their center is the tall master of the castle, dressed in black and sporting strikingly elongated canine teeth. For drinking blood, he is cursed and feared by humanity. Those that he preys upon do not find an end in death, but rise again as creatures like him. As vampires.

But what is it that’s so abhorrent about vampires? In light of the ways humans kill other humans, the act of drinking blood seems almost kind and elegant. What’s more, the dead rise again and go back to their loved ones. Granted, they’re looking for blood, but can’t we overlook that?

Try watching Hammer Films’
Dracula A.D. 1972
. In it, Dracula only bites three people. His victims don’t become vampires but are murdered instead, though that was probably the work of his disciples. But what of the cruelties Dracula’s nemesis Van Helsing inflicts on the count? At the very start he gets the spoke of a carriage wheel driven through his heart, and after his resurrection he’s stabbed with an iron knife, dropped two stories onto a stone floor, has his face burned by holy water, and the stake that deals the coup de grâce is part of the spike-lined pit he falls into—and Professor Van Helsing, with cruelty knowing no bounds, even hits the count’s back with a shovel to drive the stake in deeper! All the count does for a reprisal is to hit Van Helsing and knock him against the wall. Van Helsing is the dangerous one!

Now, it’s not entirely due to this movie, but my attitude toward the Nobility has mellowed, and I can’t deny that I may find them more sympathetic. I suppose the pudgy little Baron Macula is the result of that. It’s possible I’m headed off in a direction I shouldn’t pursue.
As the villains of the piece, make the Nobility even colder and crueler
, the writer within me commands. I should probably listen to him. Nevertheless, I have one request of you. Please don’t forget the lovable Baron Macula.

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November 2013

While watching
Alice in Wonderland

Hideyuki Kikuchi