Chapter 1: The Mark of the Beast

Chapter 1: The Mark of the Beast

The coppery tang of blood was so thick it felt like a film on Thomas’s teeth. It clung to the damp basement air, a nauseating perfume of decay and violence. His breath came in ragged, shallow gulps, each one a struggle against the tightening knot of panic in his chest. On the cracked concrete floor, a man lay still, his eyes wide and vacant, a dark, spreading stain blooming from the splintered piece of a wooden crate Thomas had driven into his chest.

Thomas was sixteen. He wasn’t a killer. He was a kid who mowed lawns and was saving up for a beat-up Ford Escort. This job—helping the strange old German cobbler, Mr. Baumann, clear out a derelict mansion on the edge of town—was supposed to earn him an easy fifty bucks.

Now, a man was dead at his feet.

A wave of dizziness washed over him. His left forearm screamed, a fiery agony from where the intruder’s teeth had clamped down just moments before. The bite mark was a ghastly purple crescent, already swelling. He had to get out. He had to call the police. He had to call his mom.

Scrabbling backwards, his sneakers slipping in the gore, Thomas pushed himself to his feet. The wooden stairs leading up to the kitchen, to the outside world, to sanity, were only ten feet away. Freedom.

“Stay.”

The voice, calm and heavy as a gravestone, cut through his terror. Mr. Baumann stood at the foot of the stairs, blocking his path. The old man hadn't flinched. He wasn’t panicked. His tweed coat was unruffled, and in his hand, he held not a phone, but an old, heavy-looking pistol with silver inlay on the grip. His eyes, usually clouded with age, were sharp and focused, fixed not on Thomas, but on the corpse.

“Mr. Baumann, we have to go!” Thomas pleaded, his voice cracking. “He’s… he’s dead! I killed him! Oh god, I killed him. They’re going to put me in jail.”

“The police will not help us,” Baumann said, his German accent thickening with grim certainty. “And you are not going to jail. You did what you had to do.”

“What I had to do? He was a burglar! Maybe he was homeless! We need to call 911!” Thomas took a step towards the stairs, his entire being screaming to run, to escape the blood and the smell and the old man’s unnerving calm.

Baumann didn’t move. He simply raised a hand. “Thomas. Come here.” It wasn’t a request.

Every instinct rebelled. Run. Flee. Forget this ever happened. But the authority in the old man’s voice was an anchor, rooting him to the spot. He had known Mr. Baumann for a year, ever since he’d started doing odd jobs at his dusty shoe repair shop. He was eccentric, sure, with his garlic garlands and quiet intensity, but he was just a kind, lonely old man. Wasn’t he?

The man holding a pistol over a dead body was not that man. This was someone else entirely.

Hesitantly, his legs trembling, Thomas shuffled back toward the body. The dead man’s face was waxy and pale, his lips pulled back in a silent snarl.

“I need you to look,” Baumann instructed, his voice low. He knelt beside the body with a stiff groan, utterly unfazed by the pool of blood he was sinking into. He pulled a small, sharp pocketknife from his coat.

“What are you doing?” Thomas stammered, horrified.

Baumann ignored him. With a surgeon’s precision, he sliced through the sleeve of the dead man’s cheap jacket and flannel shirt, exposing the pale, sinewy flesh of his bicep. And there, stark against the skin, was a tattoo. It was old, the ink faded to a murky grey-green, but the symbol was unmistakable. A swastika.

Thomas stared, confused. “He’s… a neo-nazi?”

“No,” Baumann said, the word cutting like chipped flint. He pointed with the tip of his knife. “Look closer. See how the lines are thick, uneven? This is not ink from a needle. This is a brand. A mark of ownership.”

Ownership? The word made no sense. It was just a tattoo. A hateful, ugly tattoo on a dead burglar. But as Thomas looked closer, he saw what the old man meant. The skin was scarred, raised in ridges, as if the symbol had been burned into the flesh. An icy dread, colder and deeper than his initial panic, began to seep into his bones.

“I don’t understand.”

“This man,” Baumann said, rising slowly to his feet, his gaze sweeping the dark, forgotten corners of the basement. “He was not here for the copper pipes. He was not here for anything of value. He was a guard dog.”

The metaphor hung in the air, grotesque and terrifying. Thomas’s mind reeled, trying to connect the dots. A burglar. A brand. A guard dog. It was the disjointed logic of a nightmare.

“A guard dog for who?” Thomas whispered, his eyes darting around the basement. Suddenly, the oppressive silence of the derelict mansion didn’t feel empty. It felt… watchful.

Mr. Baumann finally looked at Thomas, and the weariness in his eyes seemed ancient, a sorrow that stretched back decades. “For his master. The one we are here to find. The one my father hunted, and his father before him.” He gestured with his chin towards the body. “This one is what we call a Diener. A servant. He lives on scraps from his master’s table. And in return for this pathetic existence, he guards his master’s resting place during the day.”

“Master?” Thomas shook his head, a hysterical laugh bubbling in his throat. “What are you talking about? This is crazy. You’re scaring me, Mr. Baumann.”

“Good,” the old man stated flatly. “You should be scared. Fear will keep you alive. Stupidity will get you killed.”

He took a deep breath, the garlic cloves around his neck rustling faintly. “For seventy years, I have searched for him. Across an ocean, through a dozen cities. I grew old. I grew sloppy. I thought he was gone forever, a ghost of the past. But two weeks ago, I found the records for this house. Purchased in 1946 by a shell corporation with ties to the old party. I knew. He is here.”

The pieces were coming together in Thomas’s mind, forming a picture so monstrous, so impossible, that he wanted to claw it away. The old stories from the war Mr. Baumann sometimes told. The strange books in his shop filled with Latin and arcane symbols. The silver-inlaid pistol.

“What is he?” Thomas asked, the words barely audible.

Baumann’s eyes held his. “He is a predator who wears the skin of a man. A creature of endless night and insatiable thirst. He is Ulrich von Strauss, an officer of the SS, and something much, much older. A vampire.”

The word hit Thomas with the force of a physical blow. Vampire. It was a word from horror movies, from cheap paperback novels. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. But as he looked at the branded corpse on the floor, at the inhuman bite mark on his own arm, and at the deadly seriousness etched onto Mr. Baumann’s face, a sliver of terrifying belief pierced through his denial.

“You have a choice, Thomas,” the old man said, his voice softening for the first time. “Your part is done. The fifty dollars is in my wallet. You can take it, walk out that door, and never look back. Tell the police you saw nothing. Tell yourself this was a bad dream. I will not stop you.”

The offer was a lifeline. Thomas’s heart leaped at it. He could leave. He could run home, lock his bedroom door, and hide under the covers until the sun came up. He could pretend this night never happened.

But as he looked at Mr. Baumann, standing alone in the bloody basement, an old warrior preparing for one last battle, a different feeling stirred within him. It wasn’t courage. It was a morbid, terrifying curiosity. And a sliver of something else—a feeling of debt. The dead man would have killed him if Baumann hadn’t shouted a warning.

Fear was a physical thing, a cold weight in his stomach. But the mystery was a hook, and it was already sinking in deep.

He looked from the stairs to the dead man, then to the resolute old cobbler. His throat was dry.

“What… what do we do now?” Thomas asked, his own voice sounding alien to him.

A faint, grim smile touched Klaus Baumann’s lips. “Now,” he said, gesturing towards the shadowy depths of the mansion above them, “we find his throne.”