A WHISPER OF ETERNIT

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really didn't know anything about vampires other than what she had seen in movies and the little Dominic had told her. KnowingHollywood , she doubted if their portrayals of vampires were any more accurate than their portrayals of cowboys and Indians in the Old West.

So, where to find out the truth? Would Dominic answer her questions? If she had access to a telephone, she could hook up her laptop and do some research online, but for now that was out of the question.

Books?She thought of the library with its shelves and shelves of books. Would a vampire have research books on vampires? There was only one way to find out.

She went to the library first thing in the morning. The door opened on well-oiled hinges. Stepping inside, she opened the curtains wide. Sunlight poured into the room.

She had never before seen so many books, except in a library. A sliding ladder provided access to books on the top shelves.

She started in one corner of the room. There was no rhyme or reason to the arrangement of the books. Paperbacks were tucked in beside expensive volumes bound in leather. His taste in reading was varied, from Shakespeare and Steinbeck to Chaucer and Dickens, as well as novels by more contemporary authors. She found encyclopedias, dictionaries, books of poetry and limericks, and novels in just about every genre imaginable, from westerns to horror.

She was about to give up when she hit the jack-pot. Located at the top of the last shelfwere three rows of books, all of them having to do with vampires. Some were novels by Elrod, Huff, Yarbro ,Hamilton , and Herter ; some were research. She glanced over the titles:The Complete Book of Vampires, V is for Vampire: An A to Z Guide to Everything Undead, The Vampire Encyclopedia, The Vampire Gallery , andVampires, Restless Creatures of the Night .

There were also a couple of books on Transylvanian-born Vlad Dracula, also known as Vlad the Impaler , who had killed thousands of people by impaling them on wooden poles, surely one of the most horrible deaths imaginable. In spite of his cruelty, he was hailed as a hero inRomania for defeating the Ottoman Turks.

She also found several editions of Bram Stoker'sDracula . It was said that while trying to find a model for his vampire, Stoker had come across the history of Vlad Dracula, who fit Stoker's vampire perfectly. Vlad had died under mysterious circumstances; he had been decapitated, and it was rumored that his body had never been found. She recalled hearing somewhere that Stoker's novel had never been out of print since it was first published in 1897.

Whether vampires were real or not, they certainly garnered their share of literature. Plucking several books from the shelf, she curled up on the sofa and began to read.

In the next few hours she discovered that, according to the books, a true vampire was a dead body. It wasn't a spirit or a ghost or a demon from hell. Some believed that vampires weren't human at all, but a separate and distinct species. Unless they met with some sort of fatal accident, like a stake through the heart, they were immortal. They needed the blood of the living to survive. They had superhuman strength and while they were helpless during the day, they were practically unstoppable at night. Of course, since they were already dead, they were naturally hard to kill. They lived in graves. They had the power to control animals and could even turn into bats or wolves or dissolve into mist…