There is nothing quite like the shivery pleasure of reading a spooky horror story on a dark night with the curtains drawn and just a lamp to give you light. So, turn down the main lights in your bedroom, get yourself comfortable and prepare to be deliciously afraid by the first book in a new series of spine-tingling horror novels, Vampire Plagues.
Vampires have featured in horror stories all over the world for centuries and they come in all shapes and sizes. But in Vampire Plagues they come in their hundreds and nobody is safe. Using the dark jungles of Central America and the dismal streets of Victorian London as its atmospheric settings, the first book of Vampire Plagues is a chilling adventure story that will have you in its scary grip right from the start.
Young Jack Harkett knows the vast shadowy docks of London like the back of his hand. This is home, his playground, the only world he knows. But even Jack is not prepared for what happens one night when the docks are still and the day's business is over. A ship docks in the darkness. It looms up out of the night like a giant ghost and suddenly a great black cloud billows up from the deck into the night.
The silence of the night is broken by the beating of wings and Jack cowers transfixed as he realises that the dense cloud is hundreds of black bird-like creatures swarming into the skies above London.
The bats are not the only things to leave the mysterious ship that night. A young boy, about the same age as Jack, suddenly comes running down the gangway to the dockside. He is terrified out of his wits and stands shaking with cold and fear when he reaches dry land. Jack befriends the boy, and the story of the terrible vampire plagues takes off with a vengeance.
The frightened boy tells Jack a strange and horrific tale. The events he has seen on board the ship will haunt him the rest of his life, and Jack listens enthralled as the story unfolds. It is an awful, unbelievable tale of ancient gods, superstition and a consuming, fatal illness. As the two boys huddle together that night, they do not realise what the future holds for them.
