The affluent small town of Aurora is riddled with secrets.  Secrets stemming from the actions of one illustrious vampire: Nikolai Constantin.

When vampire Michael Calabria goes to Aurora to visit his uncle, Jonathan Claiborne, he meets the beautiful and enigmatic Rebecca Ashby.  While Michael and Rebecca are skeptical of each other at first, a friendship and attraction blossom between them after they discover their shared vampirism.

When it is revealed that Nikolai is coming to Aurora, and that he plans to inflict the Vampire Curse on the whole population, Jonathan and Michael rush to find a way to stop him.  Their search for the only way to kill a vampire leads them to Brasov, Romania, where they run into Jonathan’s old flame, Christina Burkiveck.  Unbeknownst to them, Christina was turned into a vampire by Nikolai, and has discovered a detailed description of how to kill a vampire in the only copy of the Mors de Lamia (which means “Death of Vampire” in Latin), a book written by German clergyman Heinrich Kramer in the late 1400’s.

A series of occurrences and twists lead to one fateful event taking place in The Room on the second floor of Jonathan’s mansion, and an unexpected new villain emerges…

          A girl sat at a corner café, sipping on a cup of coffee. The coffee didn’t do much for her; she was used to drinking stronger stuff.  She put the cup down with an expression of distaste.
     It was nighttime, and a dark and eerie aura seemed to bathe the town of Aurora, as it always did.  Aurora wasn’t a town you would want to stop in on a road trip across America.  It was a cornucopia of wealth, but many of its illustrious residents seemed to be holding secrets.  Secrets that stemmed from the actions of a single man.
       The girl picked up the cup again, and drank as if, by drinking a copious amount, she could convince her taste buds to change their opinion. Suddenly, she saw a man across the street.  He was very attractive: blond, in his early 20’s, with a form that suggested that of an athlete. But it wasn’t his aesthetic that caused the girl to study him: she had never seen him before, and if she hadn’t seen him before, that meant he was a visitor. Visitors who strayed out into the streets of Aurora after nightfall often happened upon some bad luck. 
          The girl quickly set down her cup of coffee, settled the bill, and started to make her way across the street.  The mysterious visitor was sitting on a bench, looking down at his phone as if studying a map.
“Hello, do you need any help?”
The visitor looked up.  His surprised expression changed into one of awe.  The girl who had asked the question was remarkably beautiful: she had wavy dark hair cascading past her shoulders, and round heavily-lashed dark eyes set in a face reminiscent of those beauties that classical painters were so fond of.
“Um, yes. Do you know where I can find the house of Jonathan Claiborne?” replied the visitor, an appealing expression in his blue eyes.
“Jonathan!” The girl’s face indicated that was the last thing she had expected the visitor to ask.  “What on earth do you want with him?” she asked, in a slightly suspicious tone.
“He’s my uncle, actually.”
“Indeed!”
There was a moment of silence, during which the two eyed each other intensely.
“His house is kind of hard to find, “ the girl said, “I can take you there if you like.”
“Really? That’s very kind of you,” the man replied, with a disarmingly charming demeanor.
“No, I’m going there anyways. Do you have a car?  Cause then you can just follow me.  If you don’t though, we can just go in mine.”
“My sister forgot one of her bags at the airport, so she took the car to go back and get it.  From what I had heard of Aurora, I mistakenly thought that it was small and simple enough to navigate easily. I guess I was wrong, “ he laughed.
The girl smiled, showcasing a row of perfectly aligned white teeth, “Alright, we’ll go in mine then.”
“I’m Michael, by the way,” the man said, as he stood up quickly, “Michael Calabria.”
“Rebecca Ashby,” the girl replied.
They made their way over to Rebecca’s car, which Michael quickly noticed was a very nice Mercedes sedan.
“So you know my uncle?” asked Michael, opening the door for Rebecca.
Rebecca was impressed by his gentlemanly attitude. “You could say that,” she said, with an air of holding something back.
Michael’s face showed no emotion, but he wondered what exactly this girl’s relation was to his illustrious relative.
“So, where are you from?” asked Rebecca, after what had seemed like a century’s worth of silence.
Michael was grateful that the conversation had started back up again, but he paused momentarily.  “California,” he said, as if it had taken him a long deliberation to decide what to say.
Rebecca glanced at him, quickly studying his expression.  She turned her eyes back to the road.
“Really…” she said, under her breath.
Michael felt it was his turn to say something.  “Have you lived in Aurora all your life?”
“Well, I was born here, but I only recently returned here,” Rebecca said, “I spent time in England, New York, France, and some other places.”
“What were you doing in ‘England, New York, France, and some other places’?” asked Michael, smiling.  For some reason, the way Rebecca had responded to his previous question made him skeptical as to if she was telling the truth.
Rebecca was silent, and Michael momentarily felt as if he said the wrong thing.
She finally spoke up, “Just living life.  I explored, tried different occupations, loved different people. Where in California are you from?”
“Beverly Hills,” said Michael.  Rebecca smiled; it seemed a fitting place for him.
He went on, “I spent a couple years in Italy though, my father’s from there.  My mother is Jonathan’s sister.”
Rebecca glanced studiously at him again.  Michael coolly returned her gaze.
“Now here’s the road that takes us to Jonathan’s place,” Rebecca stopped the car momentarily.
          They had passed a flurry of specialty shops, and seemingly expensive houses with impeccably manicured lawns.  But this road, this road seemed strangely out of place to Michael.  It was a nicely paved dirt road, surrounded by tall pine trees on all sides.  A small burst of nature amongst the modern darkness that he had seen so far.
Rebecca drove down the road, and made a sharp turn.  A gate was clearly visible.  It was a very majestic gate: very tall, and black wrought iron with magnificent swirls.
Michael chuckled; it was a fitting gate for his uncle.  He wondered how ominous Jonathan’s actual house was.
Rebecca looked at him and laughed, as if guessing what he was thinking.  “It suits Jonathan, doesn’t it?” she asked, smiling.
Michael nodded, “Yeah.”
Rebecca hopped out of the car and made her way to a small keypad at the side of the gate, Michael watched her intensely.  She punched in a few numbers and the gate started to open.
Michael flinched, it was curious that this girl was so familiar with his uncle’s house, and even knew the code for his gate.
Rebecca slid back in the car.  “There we go.  Are you ready?” she asked, a smile on her face.
Michael laughed, “Oh I hope I am.”
         Rebecca sped the car through the gates and up a road which led to a house that seemed to belong in a Gothic novel.  It was very, very, large, and when Michael looked at it, the pointed arches and flying buttresses overwhelmed him.  He swore quietly under his breath, and Rebecca responded with a quiet laugh.
“I know it’s a bit…grim,” she said, understandingly.
“You could say that,” Michael said, “It’s huge, my gosh.  You don’t normally see architecture like this in America.”  He looked incredulous.
“Well, if you have unlimited money and time, you can get anything you want,” Rebecca said, taking in Michael’s face with no small portion of amusement.
They had reached a point in the road which connected to a large stone walkway, hedged in by well-kept Cyprus trees.  Rebecca stopped the car. 
Michael got out of the Mercedes, and stood quietly: absorbing the grandeur of his uncle’s abode.  He quickly realized that Rebecca was already halfway down the walkway, and ran to catch up.
“How well did you say you knew my uncle again?” he asked.
“I didn’t say,” Rebecca replied, matter-of-factly.  Michael sighed.
They had reached the end of the walkway, and proceeded to go up some steep steps.  They then reached the door: the door’s style was reminiscent of that of the gate’s.
Rebecca rang the doorbell.  An old man, with hair and a mustache as white as snow, appeared.
“Murray,” said Rebecca charmingly, “this is Michael.  He says he’s Jonathan’s nephew.  Is Jonathan here?”
“He’s here,” said Murray, with a slightly grumpy note in his tone.  He eyed Michael suspiciously.
Michael wore a startled expression now: the inside of the house was nowhere near as ominous as the outside.  It was all marble and velvet and wood.  Rather reminiscent of a hotel from the 1930’s.  The ribbed vaults were there, but softened by the rest of the interior.
Rebecca handed Murray her trench coat.  “We’ll be in the study,” she said.
She gently tugged on Michael’s arm and led him on a two-minute trek into a large comfortable room.  The room was filled with books, a wooden desk, and there was a fire burning in the fireplace.  In front of the fireplace was a large leather sofa and a comfortable looking red chair.  It was in this red chair that Rebecca decided to sit.  The chair suited her, almost as if it was made for her.  Michael looked at her curiously.
“Rebecca-“ he began.  “Yes?” she asked, eyes wide.
But before their conversation could go further, Jonathan Claiborne walked into the room.