Impaler — John Salonia

What makes a man into a monster? Prince Dracula, Scourge of the Turks, is a gruesome enigma to his subjects, as well as to his enemies and the spies of his "allies" at his court. His nickname, Vlad the Impaler, is well earned. However, even the most savage of Dracula's executions exhibit a thread of twisted ethics, leading through the sardonic prince's labyrinthine morality to the psychological scars at the center of the maze. These flaws motivate Dracula's attempts to control his treacherous nobles, the boyars, while simultaneously fighting off the enemy nations and faithless allies that surround Wallachia, his principality. The boyars have murdered Dracula's father and elder brother Mircea under orders from one of these faithless allies - Janos Hunyadi, the great Hungarian crusader, who hates Dracula's family for its political misdeeds. The boyars extirpate any prince who refuses to be their weak puppet. After spending his childhood as a political prisoner of the Turks, resisting their ceaseless indoctrination attempts, Dracula is neither weak nor a puppet. But his mental scars run deeper than those inflicted by the Turks. Dracula's psychological wounds begin in his cradle, where his love-hate relationship with his autocratic father Vlad is forged. Dracula's distrust of human nature is worsened by the treacherous political turmoil of his homeland. The death of Dracula's mother Armilla while giving birth to his brother Radu creates a lifelong hatred between the brothers, for Dracula blames Radu for Armilla's death. Dracula's psyche is warped further when the Turks capture him, with his father and Radu. The boys are held as hostages at Egrigoz, a Turkish indoctrination center for political prisoners, to ensure Vlad's obedience to the Sultan . . . an indoctrination that goes horribly awry. In Part 1, "A Forest of Stakes," we find Dracula in the midst of his reign of terror, and glimpse the twisted results of his nightmarish childhood. In Part 2, "Roots of Blood," we flash back to Dracula's childhood and explore the complex psychological, social, political and sexual traumas that warped his psyche as he grows to adulthood. In Part 3, "The Tenderness of the Starving Wolf," we experience Dracula's fall from power and his death. IMPALER is a thriller, a love story, a horror story, and an intimate portrait of a man twisted by fate. And it's proof that the truth IS stranger and more wondrous than fiction.