“Sometimes, when people got sick or caught a contagious disease that forced them to cough blood, they were thought of as vampires. They were hanged, burned, and cremated. Sometimes, they were staked in the heart and buried six feet under. Whole villages were burned in Europe during the Vampire Craze. Just like witches had been hunted in Europe in the sixteenth century. Thousands of witches had been burned here in Lohr; and vampires were the next threat.”
“What did you say? Lore?” Loki wondered.
“Lohr, with an ‘h’. It’s where we are now, a small town in Germany where my ancestors lived for years. My father, Angel Night von Sorrow, was born in this town. It’s in Bavaria, Germany. There’s even a castle here called the Schloss, the same as the castle in Sorrow. My father later built a replica as an epitaph to his hometown.”
“So is the word ‘lore’ as in ‘vampire lore’ taken from the city of ‘Lohr.’?”
“I have no idea. You should visit Lohr when you leave this dream. It looks like it has been cut from the fabric of fairy tales. It’s where my family originated.”
The colors in the world around Loki changed gradually. The wind that was protecting her father whirled and spiraled in the sky like mad paintbrushes spattering different kinds of colors into the air.
“What’s going on?” Loki asked.
“Hold on,” she said, pressing her fingers against her forehead like psychics sometimes do. “I’m trying to show you other things while we stand right here. The colors painted a graveyard around them. Everything that the wind painted turned into flesh, blood, stones, and it was all in 3-D. It was so real that Loki couldn’t believe it was a dream, as if they were living inside an animated portrait that changed its scene on its own.
In the middle of the graveyard, Loki saw Angel talking to a man in a black cloak.
“That’s my grandfather, Night Sorrow,” Snow White narrated like a voiceover in a movie scene. ”He was the most vicious vampire king in Transylvania, a direct descendant of the very first vampires in the world.”
“The very first?”
“Yes, and don’t ask me who they were because I don’t know. Night Sorrow, my grandfather, fled to Lohr from Transylvania after the peasants burned his castle when they discovered his true evil nature. Night Sorrow isn’t his real name. It’s said that it was inspired from the fact that he brought ‘sorrow’ to the ‘night’ when he fed mercilessly on humans in Transylvania.”
“Quite a resume you have here. Are you sure that you’re Snow White, because things don’t make sense.”
Snow White didn’t comment, and continued her story. “Once Night Sorrow settled in Lohr, he was ordered by the mother of vampires to create a secret vampire clan that would be strong enough to stand up against the vampire hunters who were chasing them all over Europe. She wanted to create a kingdom and rule Europe, all within a hundred years span. It was the only way for vampires to come out of the dark and declare the right to live among humans,” Snow White said. “Night sent his son, Angel, my father, to a regular school attended by other peasants in Lohr, disguising him as a human. He wanted Angel to mingle with humans and study their lives so he could learn their weaknesses.”
“I thought vampires were powerful enough they didn’t need to use such maneuvers,” Loki said.
“Not during that time of history,” Snow White Said. “They were weaker and they were few. They didn’t know why they were created, and ended up being hated and hunted everywhere. In order for my father to mingle among humans in Lohr, the mother of vampires delayed Angel’s transformation into a full vampire until the age of sixteen.”
“Didn’t his human friends ask about Angel’s family?” Loki wondered.
“My father was granted two human slaves—those who were bitten by vampires but not fully turned—to assume the role of his parents. The vampire slaves did anything they were asked to because they were neither humans nor vampires, and they needed the vampires to feed on them or they would die. They were two women, pretending to be my father’s mother and aunt, claiming Angel’s father had died. Their names were Jeanette and Amalie Hassenpflug.”
“Why do think these names sound familiar?”
“Because the Brothers Grimm collected the Snow White story from them; it’s written in history books,” she said.
“Are you saying they lied to the Brothers Grimm?”
“Or the Brothers Grimm lied to the world. I don’t really know the truth.”
Loki saw Angel sink to his knees, begging his father for something. His father’s eyes turned red with anger.
“What’s going on there?” Loki said.
“Angel is asking Night to spare him from feeding on human blood to complete his transformation. As you have seen, my father only fed on animals. He was about to turn sixteen. His spying mission was about to end, and it was time that he transformed into a real vampire, and turned against humans, which he didn’t want to do anymore. Raised with humans, my father was torn between two worlds. He resisted becoming a full vampire against his father’s wishes. Are you ready for the next shift?”